Never Forget that We are America
Everyone's having a grand old time celebrating the end of the Bush-Cheney dynasty. Then, we all ask, what comes next? Most people dive into the details of the next politics here and here. I've done the same here.
But I think we need to think first about who we are. And who our enemies are, because "there is no politics without an enemy."
Job One is to celebrate who we are. And "who we are" is the heart and soul of America.
As you might expect, all the world's thinkers have been working on this: who are "we" and who are "they." But the most sophisticated thinkers understand that a really sophisticated analysis of society requires at least three layers or classes. Like this, from my Three Layers in Brief:
Back in the day, the Romans classified humans into Patricians, Plebeians, and Slaves. Then Marx updated things with his Bourgeoisie, Communists, and Proletarians, and now our wokey friends have come up with their Allyship notion of White Oppressors, Allies, and Oppressed Peoples. Notice how lefties think that the Bourgeoisie and the White Oppressors are on top, because oppressors. If only.
But then there are people that are genuinely trying to understand modern society. There's Curtis Yarvin with his Educated Gentry, Commoners, and Clients, and me with my Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
But Thomas Sowell, in The Vision of the Anointed, reckons that today's society consists of the Anointed, the Benighted, and the Mascots. He's right. Our liberal friends and their pals at the FBI are the Anointed. Trump voters are the Benighted, and all the scheduled classes of victims are the special Mascots of the ruling class, displayed in appropriate trophy cabinets in every Anointed home.
Now just between you and me, I think that the Sowell analysis cuts a little too close to the bone, it's so true that it would be impolite to repeat it in company where women with #WeBelieve yard signs are exchanging virtue signals. In addition, we don't want to insult the lower classes as Mascots, even if they are.
But the central thing to get straight about the future is that we -- ordinary Americans that just want to obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules -- we are the heart and the soul of America. We are Responsibles; we are Commoners; we are Yeomen; we are nothing special, just Anybodies. Our liberal friends are special Somebodies -- with their conceits and their activism and their credentials and the fair-traded oils with which they are anointed -- but they are not the center of America. The various hyphenated Americans are Americans with full rights, but they are not the center of America; they are still learning to sing the glorious Song of America, and many of them sing it out of tune.
Our liberal friends look at the crowd at a Trump rally and upchuck. Sorry, cupcakes, that is what ordinary Americans look like: with their MAGA hats and their pickup trucks. You'll find the same kind of folks at a ball game, at a family picnic, at a Little League game, at a Trump Car Parade.
Okay, so whatabout our liberal friends, the Educated Gentry, the Anointed, the Creatives? I think the fundamental thing to understand about them is that their belief system -- that they are called to create a new, just society -- is almost bound to fail. All creative endeavors are almost bound to fail: many are called but few are chosen. But our liberal friends are taught from their cradles, or at least their freshman orientation, that the progressive belief system is bound to succeed, bound to transform the world for the better. So even when the vision is failing, even when progressive programs are Making Things Worse, our liberal friends still believe.
Then the lower class: the Clients, the Subordinates, the Mascots, the Nobodies. What about them? These are people -- there will always be such people -- that depend on a superior to take care of them. Indeed, there is a part of every one of us that expects to be protected. Right now the lower class believes that our liberal friends, the Anointed, the Educated Gentry, are most likely to take care of them. Our task is to show them that we, the ordinary Anybody Americans, are more likely to do that.
We ordinary Americans are the heart and soul of America. Our liberal friends are the enemy, because, for maybe 50 years, they have treated us as the enemy. But I think that they are out of gas and gliding towards disaster, and pretty soon their wings will start hitting the tops of the trees in the forest. Meanwhile, we should be reaching out to the Clients of our liberal friends so that they know we will be there for them when they need us.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
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