My previous post (The Blight at the End of the Tunnel, Aug. 12) included some thoughts on revolution in general, as well as how the idea of revolution can be applied to the American experience. One could, in fact, contend that -- starting with the American Revolution -- we have been a revolutionary society all along, the process having proceeded at different speeds and with different degrees of intensity, and with a focus on different aspects of life and culture, but never actually pausing for very long. I referred to the 1950s as a period of a predictable turn toward conservatism, and in fact the 1920s were as well – both post-war times, note, and perhaps reflecting an unconscious need on the part of the citizenry to reassert tradition, normalcy, and predictability. (Note that Warren Harding's campaign slogan in 1920 was “Return to Normalcy”.) But at the same time, these two “conservative” episodes carried within them the seeds of what came after – the New Deal in one case and America's own cultural revolution in the other. And I think part of this is simply the fact that Americans are never satisfied; dissatisfaction and restlessness are hard-wired in the American genome. In times of war we long for peace, and in times of peace we long for war – or, at the very least, some sort of uproar. We're like cats who, when there's nothing around to chase, make up things in their head. Apparently our ideational beginnings gave rise to this, because, after all, Utopia is, by definition, a fantasy and is unobtainable, which means that on some level we are perpetually frustrated and are always looking for a new cure – a new enterprise or project that will either work magic and achieve the Utopia of our dreams, or constitute enough of a distraction that we'll forget about Utopia for a while. And eventually this cycle of frustration and shattered dreams can lead to despair, and that, in turn, can lead to suicidal impulses – not so much for individuals as for the culture as a whole. We start to think that perhaps the answer is revolution, not evolution. Perhaps not only “creative destruction” but total destruction is the answer – and we are now seeing this attitude played out on the streets of our cities on a daily basis.
(I might note that we are always faulting the Europeans for being jaded and cynical. This may be true, but it does save them a lot of frustration and grief. Even the French Revolution, which was ideational in the extreme (they even changed the names of the months), soon devolved into an empire with an emperor. But we press on, and the rest of the world shakes its head just as it is doing now. “When are the Americans ever going to get over this 'saving the world' thing? It's so annoying...")
But can a nation really commit suicide? Well, empires certainly can, and the reasons are many. It can be based on pure fatigue or on loss of political will. It can be based on economics, as when an empire becomes more expensive to maintain than whatever monetary returns it provides. Or, maybe the natives (who are always restless) rise up and start killing people with bullet and sword, and throwing bombs and taking people hostage. It can be based on rising objections and protests on the home front, from both humanists and pragmatists. It can even result from a sense of shame – an awakening to the fact that empires invariably require brutality and exploitation (and no small amount of racism, either explicit or implicit), and are thus demoralizing not only for the occupiers but for people with a conscience on the home front.
But nations are not empires. Nations are – at least traditionally – much more coherent than empires. They are held together by traditions and loyalties, not only to the nation but to – once again – the “eternal verities” like race, ethnicity, religion, and family. So for a nation to allow itself to slip into chaos is a remarkable thing, and yet it happens – and in our time (by which I mean the modern era, socio-politically speaking, which began with the American and French Revolutions) it always happens primarily because of revolutionary ideas, not merely from material need. And as I said in the previous post, this country was especially vulnerable to the idea of revolution because it began with one. After all, once you've decided that the “eternal verities” – those things that have held societies together for all of recorded history – are no longer primary but are of secondary importance at best, then it becomes purely a war of ideas, and who is to say which ideas are better than any others? We talk about “democracy”, for example, as if it were some sort of rock-solid, monolithic principle of sociopolitical existence. But it's nothing of the sort. It is fragile, and indeed rare, in human history, and is not in all that good a state of health in our time either. All you have to do is reflect on the number of countries that – inspired (or coerced) by us – declared themselves democracies, formulated a constitution, and then with nary a pause turned back into dictatorships. Dictatorships, mind you, with constitutions that are completely ignored, and that mouth words about “human rights” at the U.N. (and even criticize us on that count) but could not care less at home.
It turns out that democracy, like some rare plant, needs the right soil in which to grow and flourish or it will fail. And that soil has a lot to do with national character, as I've pointed out on other occasions. The anglophone world seems democracy-prone, or at least not instinctively opposed to democracy. The Hispanic world is disposed to get all excited and enthused about democracy, and to stage a revolution or coup every five minutes in its pursuit, but when they get it they become disillusioned and turn to dictatorship instead (although fist fights breaking out in the legislature do make for interesting television). For Asians, democracy is nowhere to be found in their histories or traditions, and yet a few have tried it and succeeded, probably because they are cultures that are fairly uniform and strong on tradition, so democratic government, if it's a thin layer on top of what was already a healthy approach to governing, seems to be working, but it's really the national character that's doing the work. Africa? Well, tribalism has worked there from time immemorial, but when it's transplanted to nation-states (artificially created by the Europeans, not unlike what occurred in the Middle East) it turns monstrous and human catastrophes – up to and including genocide – occur. Then we have Eastern Europe, where democracy is also a new idea after centuries of kings, emperors, and czars, and – once again, based on national character – sometimes it takes, and sometime it doesn't. (Reflect on the fact that even communism, under the iron boot of the Soviet Union, had different characteristics in different Warsaw Pact countries. In Yugoslavia it was relatively relaxed, whereas in East Germany it was like a Fourth Reich.)
So yes, this novel idea that the ancient Greeks came up with (and the modern Greeks can't make work no matter how hard they try) went underground for centuries, then suddenly reared up out of the tomb as a result of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and was transplanted from philosophers' studies in Europe to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. And with this scant pedigree, it was declared an idea for the ages, and the answer to all human woes and longings.
So we know the Founders were already defying human nature. They would have none of this “fallen world” and “original sin” nonsense – man was free to create, and re-create, himself at will. And yes, there was skepticism even among the believers – but it was considered worth a try. A noble venture – and maybe we shouldn't complain if it took nearly 250 years to come a cropper. (Some will say that our dues-paying is overdue. But that may be a moot point at this point. The revolutionary genie is out of the bottle. He's big, bad, and ready to kick butt.)
The problem with history is that it's not like a video tape that you can put on rewind, do some cut-and-paste editing, and try again a different way. We have to live with whatever happens. Whether the American Experiment was a success depends on one's perspective – would things have been worse if we hadn't declared independence from “Old Blighty” and struck out on our own? I don't sense that Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are suffering unduly. And they certainly don't have even 10% of the problems and crises that we suffer through all the time – and yes, they too are “nations of immigrants”. (But, and by the way, they never saw fit to pursue the mirage of empire, and that may, as much as anything else, be a reason for our current situation.) (“Canadian Empire”? It's all they can do to hold on to Quebec.)
All I know is that if you ask the average “man on the street” in, say, downtown Seattle, or Portland, or Minneapolis, or Chicago, or New York, they'll tell you that America sucks, and was a mistake from the beginning, and should be done away with. Quite a shocking verdict for what was supposed to be an experiment in building the ideal society.
So let us now turn back to revolution. Democracy has always been a revolutionary idea, and so has socialism, and so has communism – so it's easy to see how these are often confused in the fevered imaginings of “poly sci” professors and their students. If some power to the people is good, than all power to the people must be even better, right? The problem is that the more power is turned over to the people, the more likely it is that said power will be appropriated, organized, consolidated, supervised, and dominated by would-be dictators. Take a cue from language. “People's republics” are always dictatorships. “Republics” may or may not be, depending. A “democratic republic” is sliding in the direction of totalitarianism. A federal republic, on the other hand, is the most structurally resistant to tyranny simply because power is at once distributed among the populace but also concentrated at different levels in elected officials who are, ideally, answerable to the public. So we have a balance between the absolute tyranny of the tyrant and the more subtle tyranny of absolute, or pure, democracy. A perhaps cynical, but still accurate, way of putting this is that the ideal government is one of mutual distrust between the leadership and the citizenry, which necessitates checks and balances between the two, not to mention maximum transparency. (Throw in term limits if you like; I sure would.) So our conservative leadership frequently talks about “mob rule”, and populists talk about the “ruling elite” – and the thing is, they're both right. The difference is that mob rule has a short half-life; it is a political mayfly and is soon replaced by tyranny, whereas the ruling elite has staying power because they gradually take over all the instruments and means by which leaders are selected.
As I said, the concept of revolution, the very idea, is of relatively recent vintage, and I trace it to the American Revolution, which, in turn, inspired the French Revolution, although they had different results, to put it mildly. But what all revolutions have in common is that they aim to destroy the old system, root and branch, and replace it with something better – more humane, more compassionate, more fair, etc. – you know the drill. When it comes to the old system, they – to paraphrase Jesse Jackson – want to end it, not mend it. There are many other common elements, but this is the most important – it's the driver, the energizer, the sine qua non of revolution. But, having said that, it's also the case that revolutions come in two major types – revolution from below, and revolution from above.
It's revolution from below that constitutes the stereotype and which people find inspiring – the oppressed masses spontaneously rising up against the oppressors, storming the Bastille, leading kings and emperors to the gallows, and so on – all excellent movie material. Rag-tag revolutionaries waving red flags, setting up barricades, torching buildings, stealing from the bourgeoisie... hmm. It's starting to sound kind of familiar, isn't it?
But then what is revolution from above? In a sense, all revolutions are revolutions from above, because as I said in the previous post the oppressed masses are not theorists. They are not “idea people”, and they don't have a plan or a program. This is left up to the rabble-rousers and activists, and they, in turn, are the products of the universities and of the rarefied environment of radical political and economic thinking that is most readily found in shabby coffee houses in the bohemian sections of the city (or, more recently, in faculty lounges and seminar rooms). So the vector, the arrow, goes from the academe and intelligentsia directly to the people without being routed through the government as in the case of the New Deal.
But that's not what I'm referring to, and in that case “above” only refers to the educational/intellectual continuum. It's when political leaders themselves foment, aid, and abet revolutions – apparently against their own government and power structures – that the paradox comes out in bold relief. The New Deal was a revolutionary regime, in a sense, and it was shot through with communists, but I don't think its functionaries had total destruction on their minds – after all, where would that have left them? Even if they wanted the United States to become a people's republic, they expected to achieve this by means of evolution rather than revolution, and – most importantly – to keep their jobs. Another way of putting this is that the New Dealers had radical notions, but they were also pragmatic enough to know when to put on the brakes.
So revolution from above is the exception rather than the rule, without a doubt. And it is a much more recent phenomenon – so recent, in fact, that I would almost say it was invented by Chairman Mao. At a certain point, he had tremendous, but not yet total, power... he had long since taken over all of China... and yet he was dissatisfied. And he felt that reactionary elements were creeping in – vestiges of the old order, of tradition, of thinking other than his own – and he decided that to preserve, and further refine, the purity of the revolution, and solidify his power, he had to take steps. So he did what revolutionaries always do, or at least dream of doing: First, define a crisis – a problem that needs fixing – and then recruit, or assign, vast hordes of mostly youthful, but fanatically loyal, followers to stage demonstrations, close down universities, put their professors on trial for “reactionary tendencies”, and generally run amok throughout the country for years, hunting down the last vestiges of the old ways – traditions and symbols, art and literature, anything with a cultural stamp on it – and get rid of them. Thus, the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard. And yes, on frequent occasions they would check back with the Great Leader for guidance, and hold massive rallies and parades (with the omnipresent accordions), and the rest of the time they had the Little Red Book of his thoughts, which they held in their iron grip the way a tent-revival evangelist holds the Bible.
It's a truly fascinating episode, and worth study because it's being re-enacted before our very eyes by Antifa and the militant wing of Black Lives Matter. And yet there are Chinese senior citizens today who wax nostalgic about that era, the way veterans of the Spanish Civil War wax nostalgic, or someone who was out on the street during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, or even “Were you at Woodstock?” It was a youth movement, basically – but youth are seldom, if ever, self-guided. (I suspect that even the Children's Crusade of 1212 was overseen and manipulated by cynical adults.) Youth have energy, determination, idealism, and they are driven by emotion... and they are fair game for anyone who wants to exploit them for any reason. In the case of Antifa, we have a bunch of skulls totally empty of everything except cauldrons of frustration and rage. They are the ideal foot soldiers, but you don't want them sitting around the conference table – and forget about any invitations to Davos, Martha's Vineyard, or the Bohemian Grove.
Mao knew that the rising tide of chaos would never reach his level – and this is an important point, and extremely relevant to our current situation. It would reach, and engulf, the universities, and would help clean out the last vestiges of the old ways – the reactionaries – from the bureaucracy. And it would also help Mao solidify his grip on all cultural aspects of the country, particularly the ones that had traditional roots, like opera. Because if you erase culture and tradition, the citizenry become helpless, vulnerable, and dependent, like so many eggs without shells.
But here's the interesting part. Once the youthful masses had done their work – after the last parade, and after the big-character posters had started to weather and fade – the Red Guard was disbanded, and anyone who protested was dispatched by the People's Liberation Army with an efficiency that made liberals world-wide gasp in wonderment (and not a small amount of fear – if it happened to the Red Guard it could happen to them). In other words, the foot soldiers of the Cultural Revolution were not rewarded the way American Revolutionary War soldiers were with land “out west”. They weren't provided sinecures in government like so many of the Soviet bureaucrats (or those of the New Deal). They were simply eliminated, because they had served their purpose. They had, in a sense, imposed a “final solution” on bourgeois elements in society. China was now pure. It had workers and peasants (many of whom made a regular habit of starving to death) and the controlling elite – the two-class system which is the ideal of anyone with totalitarian dreams. Not only was the socioeconomic middle class gone (this had been accomplished years earlier) but middle class thinking and habits were also extinguished along with the traditions that middle-class people tend to “cling” to. Mao came out on top as supreme leader, and happily assumed life-and-death power over 800 million people. He thus became not only the most powerful man in Chinese history, but the most powerful man in world history as well. When Nixon paid him a visit in 1972 he was actually dating up.
If you have the time, I urge you to study the history of the Red Guard (you can start with Wiki – it's OK, I won't tell) and marvel at the parallels between them and Antifa and the militant BLM. And if history repeats itself even slightly, you can expect that, once our home-grown “anarchists” have done their work – i.e. destroying our urban centers so they can be “re-imagined” as centers of a Soviet-style system – they will be dismissed, and if they refuse to be dismissed they will be eliminated. (It's no accident that the Democrats have nominated Kamala Harris – an ass-kicking, merciless law enforcement type – to be vice president. I would fully expect her to be put in charge of such an operation, and for her to be way more efficient than Janet Reno.)
And so we see that Mao, who was an absolute lunatic when it came to economics and central planning, was a political genius of the first water who makes our current crop of leaders and politicians look like babes and sucklings. It's small wonder that his well-fed face is the one that graces so many art gallery walls, coffee-table books, and T-shirts (I haven't see the bubble-gum cards yet, but I'm sure they're out there). There is nothing new in human nature about worshiping power, and it matters not how that power was attained or the amount of suffering required for its attainment. (Note how readily Americans convert villains into heroes – Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and so on. There may be a Mount Rushmore made of stone for “socially acceptable” American heroes, but there is also a Mount Rushmore of the mind for the other kind. And new faces are being added with each passing day – not mentioning any names, of course.)
OK. So now it's time to get more specific about the parallels between Mao's Cultural Revolution and our own revolution, or let's say its final stages which are playing out at present. And also between the foot soldiers – the Red Guard for Mao and Antifa/BLM for our ruling elite. The first step is always to either identify a crisis or create one. For Mao it was a lack of ideological purity among the bureaucracy and academics, and a general clinging to tradition on the part of the citizenry in general. For our ruling elite, the first crisis was, of course, the candidacy, nomination, election, and administration of Donald Trump. This crisis didn't have to be invented or, ahem, trumped up – it was a true existential threat to the interests of the ruling elite, if not to their very existence. Among those interests – well, see Galaxy B in the previous post – but prominent among them would be:
Elimination of national borders
Unlimited immigration (no longer defined as legal or illegal)
Gradual takeover of the business sector by large international businesses, and the elimination of small business (ditto small farms, this process already being well along)
Elimination of the middle class through taxation and inflation
World government, a world economy, and a world currency
“Pro-choice” policies, primarily for population control (both domestically – focused on minorities – and overseas – focused on the Third World)
Radical environmentalism
And among the techniques to further those aims would be:
Emphasis on “social justice” and collective, multi-generational guilt
Opposition to gender roles and even to the concept of gender
Hostility toward individual rights and private property
Strict government programs and controls to insure equal social and economic outcomes
Radical redistribution of wealth via taxation and confiscation (not intended to impact the ruling class, no – the redistribution would occur from the middle class to the lower classes, with the ruling elite extracting a “handling fee” along the way)
Promotion of identity politics
Use of science as primarily a political tool
Another very telling similarity between Mao's Cultural Revolution and what is going on now, i.e. an earmark of revolution from above, is that cultural symbols are among the last things to fall (literally in the case of statues). Note, among the traditional “memes” of revolutions from below is the pulling down of statues, and it's almost the very first thing that happens. First you get a mob led by a rabble-rouser, and the next thing you know they are pulling down statues of the leader (king, emperor, czar) and of high-ranking military officers, and of historic figures. This is the first shot fired, as it were. But revolutions from below also tend to be relatively precipitous in terms of visible manifestations, and they progress through countries at a fairly rapid rate. In Mao's case, the revolution (the second Chinese revolution, in fact) was a done deal and things had, apparently, settled down into a kind of routine, but as far as Mao was concerned the revolution was not yet over (he called, in fact, for “continuous revolution”), and among the things still needed was the destruction of cultural remnants of the pre-revolutionary period. So down came the remaining temples, tombs, works of art, libraries, and so on. In the present case – and as a sign that the revolution is in its final stages – we are at the point of tearing down statues – not just the obvious ones (Confederate generals) but also statues of the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, and religious figures. So what seems like the beginning – and you'd think so if all you ever saw was the nightly news – is actually the beginning of the end.
So if we have the goals and techniques of our current revolutionaries roughed out, who are “they”, anyway? In Mao's case it was easy; it was him, and a few loyal henchmen. For us at this time it's not so simple, but let's give it a shot.
The list would certainly include the moguls of Silicon Valley, communications, and e-commerce... and certain other large corporations (but not the old-fashioned ones like manufacturing), and globalists of all stripes, George Soros being the most prominent but there are plenty of others whose efforts are not as obvious or overt. (And by globalists I don't just mean the home-grown type. Anyone on the planet who qualifies and who has a vested interest in the socioeconomic fate of the U.S. qualifies.)
Now – you may be asking -- what about the “social media”? What about Hollywood? Late-night TV? Politicians? The Democratic party? The mainstream media? Academics? And so on. (You know, the usual suspects.) The truth is that no one of this motley crew actually originates ideas (including academics in our time). They merely parrot what they've been told by people higher up the food chain. They read from scripts and “talking points”. They sound authoritative, but they're all tools. They may think they're clever and original, and “cutting edge”. They may think they're manning the barricades, and leading the march against all that is old, worn, and out of date, but they're no more than high-class whores who can be “canceled” in a heartbeat if they dare wander off the reservation.
The best single bit of evidence for this is that, no matter what the topic is, they will all say the exact same thing about it, and at the same time. You see this on a daily basis. The leader of the pack – typically the New York Times – says something about someone or something, and the rest of the pack repeats it word for word over the next 24 hours as if it's something they came up with as a result of their own hard work and diligence. (Sometimes I think we'd be better off with a single news source, the way the Soviet Union had Pravda. It was more efficient and saved all kinds of time. And in fact, we may be heading in that direction.) (How many channels were there on Soviet TV? One, maybe?)
So, basically, the word goes out each morning – the script, the talking points – and it's dutifully picked up and turned into “news”. But who originates it? Well, in China it was Chairman Mao. In this country it seems to originate with a cabal of, once again, globalists and various titans of non-traditional industry – you know, the same ones who actually own the print media, social media, and pretty much any other source of “information” you can name. In the Soviet Union it was the ministry of propaganda, and they were doing the bidding of party leaders. And, just like our mainstream media, their propaganda was tiresome, repetitive, and mind-numbing... and as far from the truth as any old folk tale of Baba Yaga, but even more frightening.)
To put it another way, actual “news” should be reality-based. It should be about actual events. It may lead into analysis or comment, but the basic facts should be considered sacred. This is a principal that use to be taught in journalism schools but has long since been discarded. Now “reporters” and “journalists” consider themselves “agents of change” like teachers, and so are completely unabashed about promoting absolute fictions as long as it furthers the agenda set by their masters.
What counts, then – important point! – is not how true or false the “story” is, but how many people believe it, i.e. fall for it and use it as the basis for their thinking and even their actions. So pure propaganda isn't enough. Psychology comes into play as well, and identifying people's hopes and dreams – and, most importantly, their fears – is key to success. (And fears, by the way, can be created, and often are in order to serve this purpose. Our mainstream media are, above all, fear machines.) The leading, and most successful, psychologists of our time, therefore, are not those nerdy guys sitting next to the couch with a note pad in hand, but the masters of propaganda who dominate the media. They have more influence on more people than all of the psychologists from Sigmund Freud on ever dreamed of having. (And incidentally, one of the early masters of media-based propaganda was a man named Eddie Bernays, who was, lo and behold, a nephew of old Sigmund. Coincidence? I don't think so.)
So we have – as in a crime story (which this is) – motive and means. But how about opportunity? For a grand scheme such as this one to work, the timing has to be right. The problem, or crisis, used to kick things off has to be somewhat credible. And this is where the hat trick comes in... the golden opportunity... the triple threat that was just too great a temptation to be resisted. And this was – as is now painfully obvious – (1) Donald Trump, (2) the pandemic, and (3) the breakout of anarchy in our large cities. Trump all by himself was sufficient cause to start a revolution and keep it going, but in truth he didn't start it at all. It was lying in wait until the time was ripe. So Trump provided a cause celebre, and also acted as an accelerant.
But then fate dealt a trump card that even trumped Trump, namely the pandemic. And that was soon followed by the outbreaks of rioting, arson, vandalism, and looting for which the spark was the death of George Floyd. And I have to say, perhaps never before in history has such a total nobody, and his dreadful end, had such a profound impact on an entire nation – an impact which is irrevocable. I mean, every revolution has its heroes – the Nazis had Horst Wessel, for example – but the selection of George Floyd seems about as unlikely as possible – random, in fact. And yet here he is, an icon... a saint... a man whose visage is fit for carving into Mount Rushmore (once the visages that are there now have been pulverized by Antifa the way the Taliban trashed the Buddhas of Bamiyan).
And it was random, make no mistake. It could have been any one of a number of black “victims of police violence” over the years, but the time was right, and it was right because the citizenry had already been worked into a frenzy over Donald Trump. It's easier to light a fire with dry wood than wet wood, in other words – and in this case what we had was the equivalent of years of underbrush resulting from poor land management in the hills of California. The revolution had been rumbling like a volcano ready to erupt for decades, actually – all aided and abetted by those in charge, who were allowing the pressure to build and waiting for the right moment to release it upon the hapless citizenry.
But wait, there's more! – as they say on late-night TV ads. Trump would have been a tough target as long as he was riding high on economic successes, but then the corona virus, or whatever you want to call it, rose up like Godzilla. And the economy was magically wiped out – erased -- in a matter of days. By a virus? No, by the decisions of those who saw opportunity knock as never before – or who were the faithful servants of those who did (and yes, I'm referring to many mayors and governors, who had dreams of power and who saw temporary anarchy as a path toward that power). As far as I know, Donald Trump did not close down one store, or restaurant, or factory, or school, or anything else. He couldn't! That is not a power granted to the president by the Constitution. It was done by mayors and governors, who do have that power, and the alleged reason, of course, was to “prevent the spread of the virus” and thus save lives. Lives, but not livelihoods. So almost overnight, our economy crumbled to dust and all of the gains that Trump had been bragging about vanished, as did his chances of re-election, which was, of course, the whole idea.
And when it came to the rioting (which is still going on) – the same governors and mayors who shut down their respective economies as a knee-jerk reaction to the corona virus are also the ones who look on benignly as their cities burn. Nero himself could have done no better.
Now... you might be skeptical as to the issue of who's behind all of this. And yes, it's hard to make any direct accusations that would hold up in court. But consider:
The stock market – the plaything of the ruling elite, the unwashed being only allowed in the servants' entrance – did take a hit because of the corona virus. But as of this writing, the DJIA is back up to 94% of its all-time high. Not exactly on life support, in other words.
The net wealth of the seven richest men in the U.S. increased 46% between March 18 and August 15. Not a bad return on investment in crises! So... above a certain level the ruling elite are untouchable when it comes to the ups and downs of the economy. They profit when times are good, and profit even more when times are bad. (There were people who profited handsomely during the Great Depression as well, which led to some speculation as to how “unanticipated” the Depression was. My own theory is that depressions and recessions are basically looting operations, and what gets looted is middle-class wealth, and the looters are those in charge, not the rabble.)
Simple question: Who doesn't have to answer to anyone? And the answer is not anyone in the media. And it's no one in Hollywood or on late-night TV, because one wrong move and they can be terminated.
Politicians? Forget about it. They live and die by elections, which are frequently, if not always, rigged by those in charge. Politics is like an old-time protection racket – either you play along or you wind up with cement booties (figuratively) (in most cases).
Ditto the Democratic Party. They are the biggest collection of tools on the face of the earth. (If, as Joe Sobran pointed out, it was really important they wouldn't let you vote on it, isn't it also true that if it was really important they wouldn't trust any politician with it?) (This, by the way, is one of the main motivations behind the existence of “think tanks” and certain non-profits, NGOs, and PACs.)
So that seems to narrow it down to some extent – but questions remain. This “ruling elite” everyone talks about – aren't they real people? Human beings? Not space aliens? And how do they get to the point in life when they are put in charge of the lives, and fate, of their fellow citizens? What are the membership requirements, in other words? Well, money seems to be pretty much an indispensable requirement – at least in this country, although in Europe you can still have plenty of influence if you're royalty. And, I suppose, a zeal to not only rule over others, but some notion that you being in charge will make the world a better place. This is an oft-overlooked quality of totalitarians. They all think the world will be better off if it comes under their spell and submits to their authority; Lenin had that idea, as did Stalin, Mao, and any number of others (including our own minor-league totalitarians). It's sort of like the idea that people who wake up every morning intending to “do evil” never get very far, but evil people who intend to do good (by their lights) can wind up ruling the world. (I guess we've penetrated to the essence of politics now.)
And, being only human and therefore mortal, members of the ruling elite have to be willing to, at some point, pass the baton to the next generation – and this seems to have happened quite seamlessly in our time. We've gone from the stereotype of pudgy guys in silk hats and gold watch chains to a bunch of dudes with bad haircuts and turtlenecks – and no one says, hey, I want J. P. Morgan back! Everyone just accepts that this is the way things are – that Mark Zuckerberg had to borrow a necktie in order to testify before Congress.
And along with the grandiose and egomaniacal notion of making the world a better place comes an image – a Utopian image – which invariably includes “me” as emperor of the world, and a vast army of slaves... and, strangely, the complete lack of a middle class, because who needs them? And, by the way, the complete lack of religion, because if they have me, who needs God? But this image has to be realized in some way; mere wishing won't make is so. So any policy, program, or strategy – whether implemented by government or directly by the private sector – has to be dedicated to that end. Now, the ruling elite are already in place, as are the lower classes – so what's missing? Oh yeah, the middle class is still hanging around – so if you will closely study the programs and policies of Galaxy B, you'll find that they are all aimed at the annihilation of the middle class, or at least support that agenda to some degree. And in this sense, the current revolution is pretty much a clone of all of its predecessors – in France, Russia, Spain, China, and plenty of lesser nations. One might say that there can never, by definition, be a middle-class revolution; any genuine revolution will be opposed to the middle class and in the interests of the current ruling elite, or a new ruling elite, with the lower classes kept on as slaves, serfs, and servants.
There is still, though, a “cloud of unknowing” about the ruling elite, how it operates, how cohesive it is, how it acquires new members, and so on – and this is, of course, intentional. All we can do is collect clues and hints, and ask the perennial question “Cui bono?”, i.e. “Who benefits?” This is sort of the extrapolation of the more common maxim, “Follow the money” – because, believe it or not, it's not always about money, and is in fact not about money at all at the upper reaches. Do our multi-billionaires really need more money? I mean, how many yachts, houses, mistresses, etc. can they do justice to? No, beyond a certain point it really is about power – about ruling the world. And what we are seeing now is the next step – a very big step – in that direction, namely to take full control of “the superpower” (as the U.S. fancied itself in the post-Soviet era). And not just social, economic, and political control, but enough control that their dreams of an earthly Utopia can be realized.
Still to come:
What happens next?
Will there be a counter-revolution (and if so, how will it begin and who will be in the front lines)?
And much more! Don't miss it!
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