I really felt sorry for the three diverse presidents of the Ivy League, when jumped-up congress-critter Elise Stefanik (R-NY) humiliated them before the whole world for simply doing their jobs and reciting Sacred Narrative from the Book of Woke about antisemitism on campus. Did you know that, according to La Wik:

[Elise Stefanik's] parents own Premium Plywood Products, a wholesale plywood distributor based in Guilderland Center.

By what right -- what right! -- does the jumped-up daughter of jumped-up white immigrants from the Czech Republic and Italy get to humiliate the Grand Mistresses of the Order of the Knights of Marcuse? Did I get that right? Are the leaders of the Woke Order of the Knights of Marcuse Grand Priests or Grand Masters?

Anyway, as Marx would say, the noble ladies were caught, fair and square, in the "internal contradictions" of identity politics.

There they are, reciting fairy tales told by wokey mothers down the ages:

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the victim of them all?

Yes, dear noble college presidents. The victim du jour tends to change from day to day, from year to year. And your mission, if you accept it, is to keep the victims in rank order of oppression, every day: otherwise you lose your job.

My recommendation, ladies, is to keep up to date on the rank order of victim museums in Washington, D.C.:

On the National Mall:
– United States Holocaust Museum
– National Museum of African American History and Culture
– National Museum of the American Indian

Not on the National Mall:
– Victims of Communism Museum

Not yet approved:
– Palestine Victims Museum

Need not apply:
– White Trash Museum (that's a joke, son)

There is another museum on the Mall that almost qualifies as a victim museum: The National Gallery of Art sponsored by millionaire Andrew W. Mellon. He was lawfared for tax-fraud in 1935-36 by FDR stooges. And when he was exonerated FDR got him to pony up cash for the art museum. But you ladies of the Order of Marcuse need not worry your heads about that.

By the way, ladies: you will notice that the questioner in Snow White was an evil stepmother. What is it about stepmothers, anyway? Especially since experts agree that most fairy tales were handed down from mother to daughter until the Brothers Grimm wrote it all down. Maybe the next woke Disney movie can explain.

All this is jolly good fun, although I feel sad for UPenn president Liz Magill who has had to resign.

But what is going on here? We need facts and logic!

For me, go-to guy No.1 is Gaetano Mosca and his book The Ruling Class. I learned about him in 2019 from "American far-right political theorist, blogger, and computer scientist" Curtis Yarvin and his "Clear Pill." Mosca writes that every ruling class operates with a "political formula" with which elites "subdue their peoples with illusions."

Obviously, from time to time, the illusions of the political formula fail to convince, like right now when we are supposed to believe that the murderous thugs of Hamas are really helpless victims. Oops!

Then there is go-to guy No.2, Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. His first Big Idea was "the sovereign is he who decides the exception," as when an emergency was established after 9/11 and extended last September 7, 2023. Schmitt's second Big Idea, in The Concept of the Political, was that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy.

What does that mean? It means that all the comfortable talk about "Government is The Things We Do Together" is a lie. Politics is about friends uniting to defeat the enemy, and there must be an enemy.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, the Deep State was the enemy.

When Joe Biden ran for president in 2020 Climate Change and systemic racism were the enemies. Before the 2022 midterms in his red-colored speech before Independence Hall the president warned us against the peril of the ultra-MAGAs and spoke of the "battle for the soul of the nation.”

If there is no enemy, then we can all sit down together at the local diner and work things out, all friendly like. And that would never do.

What is the point of Mosca's "political formula"? It illuminates the nonsense in the public square. When our liberal friends tell us that they are fighting for the oppressed against the racists, that's just their "political formula."

What is the point of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt and his friend/enemy distinction? It helps make sense of the eternal liberal war on racists and sexists and homophobes, and the current transgender war on TERFs. In any politics there must be an enemy.

What should the "political formula" and the enemy of the next regime be?

Good question, Senator.

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.

Image: Library of Congress