It has been said a number of times in recent years that the U.S.  is undergoing a period of flux, a state of rapid churning on the political-social level with any number of contradictory trends appearing and vanishing while few permanent changes are evident.  After 2013, this may no longer be the case.  Events of this past summer indicate that a new political paradigm is settling in -- one in no way friendly toward American life as we now understand it. 

This new system was outlined by Dr.  Angelo Codevilla in his 2010 book, The Ruling Class. Codevilla saw clear signs of the formation of a ruling elite in the U.S., a convergence of interests among both "liberal" and "conservative" politicians, along with industrialists, academics, and members of the entertainment and media worlds.  It has become expedient for these blocs to combine their efforts in order to protect and extend their own interests, even in defiance of the American political system and secular creed as it has always existed.  Opposing this effort is the "country class," the vast mass of Americans, essentially the middle class (to be American is, in a real sense, to be middle class), who have invested their lives in the traditional state of the country and expect to see it remain as it is.   These past months present us with clear evidence that the Codevillian ruling class is beginning to take shape. 

(A major influence of Codevilla's thinking is James Burnham, particularly his The Managerial Revolution, which discovered basic similarities in the attitudes and procedures of communism, fascism, and New Deal liberalism.  Burnham, a onetime Trotskyite who played a large role in the founding and development of the National Review, predicted a grim postwar world in which these ideologies converged and melded to rule what was left of the Western world.  His thinking guided George Orwell in the writing of 1984.)

There is in the natural world a class of phenomenon called the "phase change," in which a substance will change from one state to another without much in the way of notice, as water turns to ice at 32'F and many liquids will sublimate into gas.  The political world often acts the same way -- consider how the tumult of Weimar Germany suddenly became melded into the mass reflection of a single lunatic's will after 1933, or the way that Central Europe simultaneously dismissed Marxism in favor of Western democratic capitalism in 1989.  Is the U.S. going through such a phase change as we watch? Many of the most controversial episodes of the past few months -amnesty, gay marriage, the various NSA scandals -- strongly suggest such a transition in political structure.

The American people -- the country class -- have made it clear that they don't want amnesty, that it is completely unacceptable and uncalled for.  There is no "emergency" involved in illegal immigration at this point in time, nothing that can be termed a "crisis" -- no rational reason why any such bill should have been passed.  And yet it was rammed through the Senate in pure defiance of public opinion. 

The prime mover behind this year's attempt at amnesty is not a northeastern liberal or GOP RINO with farming interests demanding stoop labor, but a self-styled "Tea Party" Republican, Marco Rubio.  The motivation in this case is obvious, though I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere: Rubio wants to be president.  He thinks he can buy off the Hispanic vote with his amnesty bill, then swing right and rope in the Tea Party vote -- halfwits as he takes them to be -- with a few bloodcurdling speeches about ObamaCare.  This will enable him to slip into the White House in 2016 or 2020 without popping a sweat.  Simply put, Rubio is trying to transform himself into a Republican Obama. 

There are a few problems with this scenario.  Perhaps the major one is the fact that the Hispanic vote is not a bloc, like the black vote.  It's a variegated population of different nationalities that have two things in common: the Spanish language and their annoyance with Cubans.  As Rubio ought to know, Cubans feature as something like the WASPs of the Hispanic Americans, elitist, stiff-necked, and disdainful.  Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and other Latinos are as likely to vote for Hindu maharajah as they are for a Cuban-American politician. 

Another turncoat in the immigration case is Kelly Ayotte.  We have no clear idea why Ayotte flipped; all we have heard is the standard Hallmark Card "immigrants are people too" gibberish before she fled to hide out in a cabin the White Mountains.  I have a sneaking suspicion that she was bullied into it -- her announcement had all the signs of someone making a statement under duress.  Bullying of high-level females is a topic that never comes up in regard to Congress, though we hear about it endlessly in the military and the corporate world. 

Both these politicians were sent to Washington as reform candidates, both sold out at Warp Factor Six, in a period measured not in years but in months.  This suggests either that it was planned that way -- that Rubio andAyotte intended it all along -- or that the ruling class has highly persuasive methods.  Or perhaps, as is usually the case in the quotidian world, both. It suggests that, as Christ might have put it had he been preaching in the brutal and unforgiving third millennium, that we put no faith in senators.  (Or governors, either.  Jan Brewer's recent behavior regarding ObamaCare has been just as egregious as that of the pair above, though it took her longer to get there.)

Gay marriage is another case where the wishes of the majority have been tossed aside.  Despite heavily manipulated opinion polls, gay marriage remains the obsession of a minority.   Two-thirds of the states are still holding out against it despite heavy pressures from all sides.  The push for gay marriage is purely elitist; it began by being rammed through the Massachusetts State Supreme Court by Chief Justice Margaret H.  Marshall, the wife of Anthony Lewis, the late ultraliberal New York Times columnist. That has remained the method throughout.  Gay marriage is yet another ruling-class project, and was carried out as such in the Supreme Court's DOMA ruling.

We know what the gays get out of this -the appearance of popular acceptance while retaining the ability to spit in the face of the straight majority, as made utterly clear by their nuptial rituals of drag queens marrying leather boys or the vision of females in XXX-large tuxedos.  But what exactly does the elite get out of it?

One thing above all: the destruction of the family.  The family is the chief and strongest element of Edmund Burke's "little platoons," the local congregations -- churches, guilds, clubs-- that protect and aid the individual against the monster state.  Everybody but the most unfortunate of us has a family that can be turned to in the most desperate of hours.  But as we all know, this is doubleplusungood  -- all of us little Janes are supposed to turn to the State, and none other. 

So to exercise total control over a society, the little platoons -- family above all -- have to go.  That is what we're seeing here.   If this is allowed to continue, the future for families in general will resemble the present of the black family -- effective destruction, an existence as wards of the state alongside crime, drugs, and promiscuity wrecking entire communities. 

The next step will be to go after the children.  Within a short time we will see a campaign to lower the age of consent to 12 or 13, with strictures for lower ages effectively nullified.  This has been a primary goal of the homosexual rights movement for decades.  We saw it begin with the Kaitlyn Hunt case in Florida -- though that has collapsed thanks to little Kait's personality disorders.  It will be forced through using the same methods as gay marriage:  bogus court cases filed to protect minor's "rights" and expand their "freedoms." (The latest in this effort was seen last weekend in the now-infamous Betsy Karasikop-ed.  As we all know, any minor boho artist whose entire body of written work consists of a handful of pieces about cute animals can get her submissions placed in the Washington Post anytime she likes.)

We come to the NSA scandal, which put the headstone over movement conservatism.  With few exceptions, national security conservatives -- Andrew McCarthy, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney -- came to the defense of Obama on the grounds of "national security." What this argument overlooks is the fact that Obama, throughout his career and without serious exception, has corrupted and exploited every system he came into contact with.  Academic, judicial, political -- he has squeezed 'em all dry.  The evidence suggests he has done the same with this nation's security systems.  (It also overlooked the fact that the scandal, like most scandals, got worse as it rolled along.  It's easily possible that some of the names mentioned above are feeling twinges of regret at speaking too soon.)

Establishment conservatives -- and I'm talking about the blue blazers here, what I've in the past called Northeast Corridor conservatives -- have long posed as noble Romans tsk-tsking over the fall of the Republic while not getting involved themselves.  They don't get their hands dirty with actual politics or confrontations with the left, they simply sit back and discuss what Madison or Locke would have thought about it all. 

This in and of itself makes them an elite, and opens them up to the temptations of an elite.  Over the past few years, rather than confront the left, they have in large part stooped to doing the left's dirty work.  They -- and I'm speaking here directly of Brooks, Frum, Lowry, Parker, and Noonan, and indirectly of many others -- worked hand in hand with the left to destroy Sarah Palin, the most impressive natural politician in this country since Reagan.  They undercut and ridiculed the Tea Parties, thus joining hands with the IRS and the major media.  Many are even now attacking Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. 

Consider the fact that establishment conservatives have put more effort into attacking their own over the past five years than they have the left over the past fifty.   Consider that both ObamaCare and Rubian amnesty originated from within "conservatism."

We have reached a fork in the road, and the establishment conservatives have chosen for the elite.  They are in the process of becoming the right wing of the ruling party.

For decades, the conservative formula has been for East Coast conservatives to make the case and suggest policy, while elected conservative Republicans carry out what they could of this program, supported and guided by staffers recruited from conservative think tanks.  With many leading conservatives both in the journals and the think tanks having chosen for the ruling class, this formula is no longer operative. 

We could go on -- McCain turning into Obama's personal attack dog (accompanied, as always, by the attack poodle Lindsey Graham), the decision by Justice Ruth Ginsburg to "officiate" at a gay wedding, the quiet acceptance by both Congressional Democrats and Republicans of illegal personal health-care payoffs in contravention of ObamaCare strictures. 

So what is the ruling elite we are facing? With far leftists and blacks at one end, remnants of the old WASP ascendancy mingling with Hispanics and Asians in the center, and urban conservatives on the right, this is not your typical 20th-century statist conglomeration.  This is something new; the old appellations just won't work.  It's probably best to simply identify its chief characteristics for the time being: a worship of the state as a source of power, a veneer of "progressivism," in the sense that society consists of "problems" that can be solved only by state-wide efforts, green technology,  and of course, a hefty dose of classism. 

This goes a step beyond Dr.  Codevilla. What we are seeing is the foundation of a new form of technofeudalism.  Conservatives often waste their time fighting enemies that no longer exist -- consider how often we see people ranting about invisible "hippies" or "communists." In fact, the major impetus to the current progressive program isn't political at all -- it's a combination of economics and pseudoscience.  The ruling class believes that we are on the verge of an environmental collapse, triggered by "climate change." They intend to keep their toys and privileges no matter what.  The rest of us will have to do without -- no heat, bad food, no transport, all of life's luxuries (and freedoms)-- vanished with the snows.  They will retain all this and more in well-protected enclaves, keeping a careful eye on the proles with their drones and PRISM-derived surveillance systems.  The American ruling class will by this means join the transnational elites living the same way -- as in many areas, among them Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America, they do already.

Anyone who doubts this can take a look at the works of John Holdren, Obama's science czar, or the actions of former EPA chief Lisa Jackson, or the HUD programs going under the name "Regionalism," which intends to turn Americans out of their wasteful private homes and automobiles into vertical slums patterned after 1960s high-rises, where they will be allowed to work only at jobs within walking distance. 

We are to become crowded, hungry, cold, stupid, and poor, our transportation limited to bicycles (registered with the block authorities, needless to say, on the North Korean model), our access to information controlled by the same filtering systems that Google developed for the Chinese.  Education will be limited to such an extent as to make the goofball stoonts of today seem like the protégés of Socrates. 

If you want to see the American future from the point of view of the ruling class, look at Detroit -- a once mighty city that now features packs of wild dogs roaming through overgrown lots in abandoned neighborhoods.  There are photos of Detroit that hauntingly resemble third-world slum metropolises -- vast stretches of neglected, collapsing housing with the skyscrapers of the rulers looming in the misty distance.  This is what the Obama future looks like.  This is what the elite is willing to accept on our behalf. 

So what is the answer? Above all, we need to cease pretending that we are outside the problem.  This standard conservative response is no longer tenable.  To limit ourselves to sending our best to Congress only to discover that our "best" are hustlers no better than the sleaziest Dem apparatchik,  to retreat to the think tanks to construct alternate universes to live in, at worst to do pioneering research for the left, as the Heritage Foundation did with ObamaCare. 

Too many conservatives are retreating into the welcoming and comfortable past -- a largely imaginary era of certainty and sanity.  They are unwilling to face modern challenges that seem strange and unfamiliar, instead falling into nostalgia and wish-fulfillment. 

Tech is our friend.  For too long, conservatives have turned their back on technology as a progressive phenomenon.  (Also as something involving vulgar fellows who lack neckties and show no interest in modern dance.) Already we see that fracking has wrecked the plans of the green elites.  The closure of the coal industry was supposed to be followed by a slow national decline to pre-20th century levels on a schedule known only to Holdren and Jackson.  When the inevitable brownouts came, our rulers would simply shrug and state that we were "limited" by the capabilities of renewables, that we'd just have to get used to six hours of power a day.  Instead, within ten years we'll have a natural gas economy -- the largest and most profitable in the world -- with oil and nuclear as ancillary sources. 

As for surveillance tech, keep in mind that the mightiest information-gathering system ever devised was exploited for years by a woman trapped in a man's body and the spiritual offspring of Maynard G.  Krebs.  As we've learned from the Infowave, this kind of thing gets easier as time goes by.   And keep your eye open for the first $5,000 killer drone kits appearing on Ebay. 

Resistance on every level is the key.  ObamaCare was so badly designed that it actually rewards defiance.  The elite's total surveillance system can be overcome by the simple means of encryption on one hand and basic hackery on the other. 

We need to learn as much as we can and inform ourselves as deeply as possible.   When the cracks appear, we have to be ready to jam a crowbar into them, but we can't do that if we don't recognize the cracks or know what end of the crowbar to use. 

In the end, none of the elite's plans will work --ObamaCare , the gay apotheosis, green industry -- all these pipe dreams have been attempted elsewhere and have never worked.  ObamaCare is collapsing this minute with the terrible majesty of the Hindenberg at Lakehurst.  Green power has been revealed as a sure method of plunging headfirst into bankruptcy.   Justice Ginsburg's attempt to elevate gay marriages will simply make the Supreme Court look even more foolish than it already does. 

Nothing has gone right for the ruling classes since the 18th century.  The British wanted to transform America into another Ireland - a plantation and tax farm.  They saw their empire ripped in twain by the first extant army of free men in 1900 years.  The Bourbons wanted to intensify feudalism; they reaped the Terror and Napoleon.  The Nazis wanted technofeudalism on racist terms, the Japanese imperialists according to Shinto.  Both pulled the entire world down on top of themselves.  LBJ wanted the U.S.  run the same as his Texas ranch, with everything done his way.  He ended up drinking himself to death as one of the most casually despised men in American history. 

Now we have Obama and his cute little nomenklatura, his tag team of politicians, CEOs, justices, czars, and  professordoktors.  Abiding behind the walls of their gated communities, desperately pawing through every last email sent by a citizen, threatening the lower classes with robot drones.Do they truly come across as a generation of Caesars?

A long time ago, a man said, "there's a lot of ruin in nation." That's the school I belong to.  There's more ruin in the United States than in any other nation in history.  They could gouge at it for next millennium and it would remain standing while their bones crumbled into dust.   Somebody will always be coming up with fracking or founding Tea Parties.  We have no right to despair. 

There was a period in the late 70s when it appeared that the Soviets held all the cards - they were on the march worldwide, in Africa, Asia, and Central America, aided by the same American class that now wants to borrow the country for awhile.  Then Reagan came along and cleaned their clocks, because the Soviet system had no future.  It was based on nothing -- a series of gestures covering up sheer emptiness.  The same is true here.  So fear God and dread naught.  We will once again take our rest unafraid beneath our vines and fig trees.