The modern class struggle and the Trump effect.

I got this from my Online friend Brad Torgersen, he had picked it up off USA Today.  I was surprised as was everyone else that the liberal USA Today would print something that wasn't a character assassination on President Trump.  I have blogged repeatedly about the Trump effect and why he got elected, he was the first president that spoke of the forgotten man.  the one that seemed to get forgotten in the inter-sectional identity politics of the modern age.  he surprisingly has become the spokesman for the middle class, you know the one that the GOP traditionally ignores and the Democrats discarded.  You know the ones that President Obama called "Bitter Clingers" and 2016 democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called "Basket of deplorables".  We are the ones forgotten about when the politicians play their games in D.C on the Potomac.  It seems like we play by the rules and "do right" by society by working, paying bills and the myriad of taxes.  Our kids are the ones joining the service and sacrificing but "Our Betters" children go to the Ivy League schools to learn how to network and then use the system to their advantage.

 The article from USA Today:

To understand events around the world today, one must think in terms of the class struggle.

This sentence sounds like something that could be written by a doctrinaire Marxist. But it is nonetheless true. Much of the current tension in America and in many other democracies is in fact a product of a class struggle. It’s not the kind of class struggle that Karl Marx wrote about, with workers and peasants facing off against rapacious capitalists, but it is a case of today’s ruling class facing disaffection from its working class.

In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

"Yellow Vest" protesters near the Champs Elysees in Paris on Nov. 24, 2018. (Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images)

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Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the “New Class,” noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion’s share of the goodies. Workers and peasants stood in long lines for bread and shoddy household goods, while party leaders and government managers bought imported delicacies in special, secret stores. (In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: “But what if the communists come back?”) 

Djilas’ work was explosive — he was jailed — because it made clear that the workers and peasants had simply replaced one class of exploiters with another. It set the stage for the Soviet Union’s implosion, and for the discrediting of communism among everyone with any sense.

Elites of postwar institutions don't want change

But the New Class isn’t limited to communist countries, really. Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements.  And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change.

The postwar era saw the creation of international institutions ranging from NATO to the United Nations to the World Bank, along with a proliferation of think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to accompany them. It saw the vast expansion of higher education in the United States, and the transformation of academic degrees into something close to must-haves for the upper-middle class. It saw a great expansion of power on the part of media organizations, and on the part of government bureaucrats and lobbyists, both of whose numbers increased enormously.

But after the turn of the millennium, other Americans, much like the workers and peasants in the old Soviet Union, started to notice that while the New Class was doing quite well (America’s richest counties now surround Washington, D.C.), things weren’t going so well for them. And what made it more upsetting was that — while the Soviet Union’s apparatchiks at least pretended to like the workers and peasants — members of America’s ruling class seemed to view ordinary Americans with something like contempt, using terms such as “bitter clingers,” “deplorables” and flyover people.

Class wars in America disguised as culture wars

Suddenly, to a lot of voters, those postwar institutional arrangements stopped looking so good. But, of course, the beneficiaries showed no sign of giving them up. This has led to a lot of political discord, and a lot of culture war, since in America class warfare is usually disguised as cultural warfare. But underneath the surface, talk is a battle between the New Class and what used to be the middle class.

If you look at the “yellow jacket” protests in France, the election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and events in places like Italy and Hungary — or, for that matter, the Brexit movement in Britain — you find a similar unhappiness with institutional arrangements and the sleek and self-satisfied elites who benefit from them.  People who, in President Bill Clinton’s famous phrase, worked hard and played by the rules now suspect that the rules were rigged, and that they were treated as chumps.

Talking about the yellow-vest movement, French geographer Christophe Guilluy observes: “Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist, but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.”

That’s right. It’s class war masquerading as something else, but people have seen through the mask.

Understanding this won’t make the conflict less intense, but it might make it clearer what’s really at stake. What’s happening in America is an echo of what’s happening in democracies around the world, and it’s not happening because of Trump. Trump is the symptom of a ruling class that many of the ruled no longer see as serving their interest, and the anti-Trump response is mostly the angry backlash of that class as it sees its position, its perquisites and — perhaps especially — its self-importance threatened.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of "The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself," is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

"Self Hating Elites Are hating Our Commonwealth"

 I remember reading way back at the turn of the last century that the people that graduated from our elite schools were imbued with a sense of duty, (besides making money) of a sense of altruism, a sense to do what's is good for the country also, to temper their judgement and decisions as to not hurt the country in their pursuit of fame and fortune, and most did just that, and those that didn't were shunned by high society.  But now how things have changed, our "elites" work at cross purposes to the needs of the country, like they want us to fail, not realizing that if we fail, they will also, somehow believing that they money and power will protect them, but it won't...WHere could they go...Europe?   That place is more of a dumsterfire than we are, the middle East?...nope China has a lot of influence there as does the Mullah's.  Short sighted they are, their fortunes are tied in with this country, and they have forgotten it.

   I got this from "Washington Examiner"

DENVER, CO – JANUARY 20: Members of the Communist Party USA and other anti-fascist groups burn an American flag on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on January 20, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States with Vice President Kamala Harris at an inauguration ceremony in Washington DC earlier in the day. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

The Great Seal of the United States proclaims that the American founding is a novus ordo seclorum, a “new order of the ages.” On the one hand, the Constitution of 1787 was indeed a remarkable achievement, establishing a new commonwealth intended to protect the natural rights of all citizens. On the other, the American founding and the changes that have occurred over time can best be understood by looking further into the past, especially the taxonomy of regime types identified by such Greek philosophers as Plato and Aristotle.

Such history will help us understand the danger the American project is put in by its current corps of self-loathing elites.

Plato and Aristotle were the founders of the science of politics. The Ancient Greek science of politics differs from the political science of our time by focusing on the big questions: What is the best form of government? What form best ensures the excellence (arete) and happiness (eudaimonia) of the citizens? What causes the corruption and decline of a political community? In contrast, today’s political science concerns itself with minutiae. Adopting the value-free perspective of modernity, the political scientists of our time cannot adequately explain why one form of government is superior to another, other than personal preference. Today’s political scientists, therefore, write more and more about less and less.

The Greeks postulated a direct relationship between the human soul (psyche) and political constitutions. The Greeks divided the human soul into three parts: nous, the intellective, reasoning part; thumos, the spirited part, concerned with honor and justice; and epithumeia, the appetitive part, concerned with basic human desires and especially subject to the passions.

They believed that various polities each reflected a part of the human soul. In this taxonomy of regimes, the noetic part of the soul was seen in rule by the one; the thumetic part of the soul in rule by the few; and the appetitive part of the soul in rule by the many. Each form of rule had a good and bad version, the former based on rule for the benefit of the entire polity and the latter rule on behalf of the ruler or ruling class alone. Thus, the good form of rule by the one was kingship; the bad form, tyranny. The good form of rule by the few was aristocracy; the bad form, oligarchy or plutocracy. And the good form of rule by the many was politeia or a balanced constitution, which the Romans translated as res publica and which is most properly rendered as commonwealth in English; the bad form was democracy or ochlocracy: that is, mob rule.

This taxonomy led the Greek historian Polybius to suggest that all political regimes were subject to the “cycle of constitutions” (anakuklosis politeion). A kingship begins virtuously, but over time, the rule by the one on behalf of the whole deteriorates into tyranny. The virtuous few, the aristoi, depose the tyrant and reestablish well-ordered rule. But over time, that aristocracy deteriorates into oligarchy. The oligarchs are then overthrown by the virtuous many, but the balanced constitution that is put in place inevitably deteriorates into unruly democracy, after which the cycle will repeat. This cycle of constitutions was the central problem for the Greek founders of the science of politics: essentially, that good forms of rule become corrupted and tend to descend into bad forms.

These days, we tend not to think in terms of cycles. Indeed, the essence of modernity is the idea of linear progress. But the Greek taxonomy of regimes is useful in examining what has happened to the United States. The U.S. Constitution established the good form of rule by the many: a self-governing republic or commonwealth. As such, it established a “balanced” structure of government, in which the executive branch, in essence, represented the one, the Senate represented the few, and the House of Representatives represented the many (and the judicial Supreme Court represented the mediation between those elements and the law itself). But its foundation was ultimately democratic, in that both the executive and Senate, as well as the House, were elected by the many, albeit indirectly.

But for a variety of reasons — not least of which has been the rise of the “administrative state,” an unconstitutional pseudo fourth branch of government in violation of the principle of separation of power — the United States now exhibits the characteristics of oligarchy. Oligarchy, you’ll remember, is what the Greeks considered the bad form of rule by the few, in our case a ruling “elite” that includes not only unelected bureaucrats ruling in their own interests but also corporate leaders in tech, finance, and media. This oligarchic elite establishes rules from which they themselves are exempt.

Of course, all complex societies have a “ruling class,” which can be either aristocratic or oligarchic. The United States has prospered when its ruling class has been aristocratic. In such cases, the interests of this aristocratic ruling class have coincided with the interests of the nation as a whole. But problems arise when an aristocratic ruling class devolves into an oligarchic one, the interest of which diverges from that of the republic and its citizens.

We have seen this with the evolution, or rather devolution, of previous American elites from aristocracy to oligarchy: how America’s first aristocratic elite, the Federalists of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, devolved into an oligarchic rump of resentful and bitter New Englanders; how Thomas Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy of virtue and talents” became the cotton oligarchy of the antebellum American South; how the industrialists of the late 19th century became the plutocrats of the Gilded Age; how the great statesmen who won World War II and presided over the establishment of the post-war liberal world order devolved into an elite that undermines the American power that is necessary to maintain an order that benefits all American citizens, not just the ruling elites.

The new American oligarchy differs from its predecessors in one unprecedented way: its utter disdain for the American republic, as well as for its fellow citizens. In the past, the members of an aristocratic ruling class loved the United States as a nation and its principles, or at least identified their own interests with those of the country. But not only does today’s oligarchic ruling class not love the United States, but its members make it all too clear that they hate it. In this, they resemble the Athenian oligarchs who favored Sparta over their own city and its citizens.

For example, our oligarchic elites today insist that the United States is racist to the core and that Americans who espouse patriotic nationalism are anti-immigrant purveyors of ethnic and religious hatred. Our oligarchs are for “open borders” without the assimilation that has always characterized and facilitated immigration in the past. They reject the reasoning of the Founders, who saw the necessity of what Hamilton called a “common national sentiment.” As Hamilton argued, “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.” In contrast, our oligarchs view themselves not as citizens of America but as “citizens of the world” who reject national sovereignty and embrace “diversity” as a normative, positive good.

Our current oligarchic government-corporate-media-technology-finance complex poses an existential threat to republican self-government. For decades, its economic policies have hollowed out the American middle class and helped to impoverish American workers, while the economic gains have accrued to the oligarchs. In this, they resemble the Roman elites who replaced free labor with slaves from Rome’s wars of conquest, creating a seething urban proletariat to be bought off with bread and circuses.

Our present oligarchs follow the same path by buying off those who can be bought with government programs. Those who do not acquiesce in the oligarchy’s enterprise, who are not compliant with its actions, are dismissed as resentful racists or “anti-science” troglodytes, whose punishment is to be subject to surveillance and limits on speech and association. If they do not accept the tenets of “diversity and inclusion” in language or the workplace, they are subject to the loss of employment and social status. All the while, there is the clear, black irony that these oligarchs are, in fact, the largest beneficiaries of the society and institutions they wish to destroy. This renders our ruling elites not only oligarchic but self-hating and stupid. Do they really think they can benefit more from the wreckage of a broken polity?

The United States is at a tipping point. Will we as citizens reclaim the mantle of republican self-government or meekly submit to the rule of our oligarchic elites? If the latter, the American commonwealth is at a tragic end.

Are Conservatives anti-intellectuals?

I got this from The Resistance

One of the most recent statements made of Conservative or the Tea Party members is that they are “anti-intellectual,” or against the “educated class.”   It has been said enough for me to think that it is a leftist talking point, so it therefore bears examining.  While such a statement might be made about populist movements, I cannot say that this is at all true here.
I say that because the founders were intellectuals.  They were leaders in society.  Franklin was a publisher.  Jefferson was an inventor.
Here are the rest of them.

• At the time of the convention, 13 men were merchants: Blount, Broom, Clymer, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Shields, Gilman, Gorham, Langdon, Robert Morris, Pierce, Sherman, and Wilson.
• Six were major land speculators: Blount, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Gorham, Robert Morris, and Wilson.
• Eleven speculated in securities on a large scale: Bedford, Blair, Clymer, Dayton, Fitzsimons, Franklin, King, Langdon, Robert Morris, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Sherman.
• Twelve owned or managed slave-operated plantations or large farms: Bassett, Blair, Blount, Butler, Carroll, Jenifer, Jefferson, Mason, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Rutledge, Spaight, and Washington. Madison also owned slaves, as did Franklin, who later freed his slaves and was a key founder of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Alexander Hamilton was opposed to slavery and, with John Jay and other anti-slavery advocates, helped to found the first African free school in New York City. Jay helped to found the New York Manumission Society and, when he was governor of New York in 1798, signed into law the state statute ending slavery as of 1821.
• Broom and Few were small farmers.
• Eight of the men received a substantial part of their income from public office: Baldwin, Blair, Brearly, Gilman, Livingston, Madison, and Rutledge.
• Three had retired from active economic endeavors: Franklin, McHenry, and Mifflin.
• Franklin and Williamson were scientists, in addition to their other activities.
• McClurg, McHenry, and Williamson were physicians, and Johnson was a college president.

Many of these men were from the top of American society.  I can see no angry mobs full of ignorant rednecks there.
Most of them participated in the Constitutional Convention, and what these men did was far reaching.    They recognized individual freedoms that government does not grant, but has an obligation to protect.  They intentionally made the government small, with limits on its powers, in order to avoid tyranny.  And, they made the smallest and the largest of us equal in the eyes of the law.  The small illiterate farmer had the same rights as the wealthy merchant or landowner.  (Note that at no time was the illiterate farmer eligible to confiscate part of the merchant’s wealth, but that is another story).  In so doing, the founders created a means by which the illiterate farmer, or perhaps his children, might rise through work or knowledge, to assume another role or place in society.  This equality of opportunity lead to The Unites States becoming the nation with the greatest innovation, wealth, and prosperity in human history.  History is driven by individuals; those who have the right idea at the right time-those that choose to act instead of follow. Our system allows those people to be heard, and removes obstacles to their legal actions.
I will say that we are against is elitism.  The founders created the nation, and while many went into (at times) government service at various levels, many others went back to work, or back to the farm.  They left us to manage our own lives, without the tyrannical interference of government.  On the other hand, our current elites crave power, and seek to wield that power in order to dictate most aspects of our lives.  The elites sneer at the common man, or others that offer a dissenting opinion.  They believe that they have a right to govern based on their education and so-called enlightenment.  They believe that they alone are endowed with the knowledge with which to manage our education, careers, salaries and wages, diets, housing, transportation, energy consumption, childrearing, media consumption, medical care, retirements, and so on.  They believe that our Constitution, based on a small government and individual freedoms, is outmoded and in need of re-interpretation.  They believe that we are far too foolish and short sited to deal with our problem.  In fact, how many times have we read that we are acting against our own self-interests?  When we choose freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it, the elites view us as foolish and petulant children that are in need of ridicule and the “loving” guidance of the all powerful nanny state.
To clarify the overall issue, Conservatives and allied groups respect education, and recognize its importance.  We want the education that prepares the individual for a role in our Constitutional Republic.  We want education that is locally controlled and not subject to political forces in Washington DC and state capitols.  We want education that teaches children how to read, write, and do mathematics. We want education that teaches children how to think independently by taking information and using logic to solve problems.  We want education that teaches our system of government, as well as our history, flaws and mistakes included.  We want education that teaches children how to recognize their own power as individuals.   The elites wants children to know how to put condoms on fruit, to be immersed in social justice and other fallacies of the left.  The elites want an educational product that belongs to the socialist/fascist herd, and looks to the elites for guidance.  They seek a mindless drone, not an individual. The results of elitist intervention in education are seen in high illiteracy, low graduation rates, and an exceedingly poor return for the monies invested.

In the end, Conservatives are not against education or intellectualism.  Intellectuals founded our Republic, and we need educated individuals to help maintain it.  We are against elitism-those who would use intellect, deception, and acquired power to deprive us of our individual liberties.

"Our Dysfunctional Overclass"

 I saw this article and the information did and didn't surprise me, It talked about our "Cloud People" and what they believed and what they would like to do to us "dirt People" you know the "Hoi Pelloi".  We are down in the Gunshine State visiting my brother and Sis in law in the panhandle near Destin.

What does America's overclass think of the rest of us? The short answer is "not much." They think ordinary people's splurging on natural resources is destroying the planet and needs to be cut back forcefully. And that the government needs to stamp down on ordinary people enjoying luxuries that, in their view, should be reserved for the top elites.

These are the implications of the results of two surveys of elite people conducted by pollster Scott Rasmussen by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, an organization that supports low tax rates and low government spending. The surveys covered not large swaths of the population but were confined to the top 1% of society.

One survey, the Elite, included only respondents with postgraduate degrees, household incomes above $150,000 and residents in a ZIP code with more than 10,000 people per square mile. Another, Ivy League graduates, included adults who attended Ivy League or other selective private colleges such as Chicago, Duke, Northwestern or Stanford.

You probably won't be surprised that the large majority of this Elite feels economically well off. Nor, if you've kept up with recent changes in party identification, will you be much surprised that 73% of these elites identify as Democrats and only 14% as Republicans.

What is surprising is the extent to which this American overclass would deprive its fellow citizens of things they have taken for granted. Half of these groups, 47% of Elites and 55% of Ivies, say the United States provides people with "too much individual freedom."

More than three-quarters favor, "to fight climate change, the strict rationing of energy, gas, and meat," a proposition rejected by 63% of the public. Again, "to fight climate change," between half and two-thirds favor bans on gas stoves (a recent target despite demurrals of Biden bureaucrats and New York state Democrats), gasoline-powered cars (heavily disfavored by Biden Democrats and California rules) and SUVs, "private" air conditioning and "nonessential air travel."

The ascetic economist Thorstein Veblen, in his 1899 book "The Theory of the Leisure Class," argued that the rich engaged in "conspicuous consumption" activities such as golf, polo and art collecting, for which ordinary people had neither the time nor the money.

A century and a quarter later, America has rich people hoping to deprive ordinary people of "conspicuous consumption" activities they can afford and where they clutter up the airports, interstate highways and high-end malls.

For generations, Democrats have liked to portray themselves as the tribune of the little man, the defender of policies that enable ordinary people without special advantages, or with many disadvantages, to live comfortably, securely and in dignity. There may be some condescension in this posture, but also a considerable element of respect

This survey shows that today, this 1% of the public, which includes virtually all elective and appointive Democrats in Washington and states like California, New York and New Jersey, tends to see the bulk of its fellow citizens as selfish and destructive, in need not just of discipline but deserving of harsh restrictions on their freedoms.

This attitude is echoed by the wider group of Democratic voters. A 2023 Pew Research survey shows that while 31% of Republicans, even with their party out of power, think America "stands above all other countries in the world," only 9% of Democrats do so.

It's an unstable and dangerous situation when a largely one-party elite looks, with fear and loathing, across what Rasmussen describes as a "Grand Canyon gap" between it and its multiparty fellow citizens. It's reminiscent somehow of the "let them eat cake" French royalists in 1789 or Russian nobles in 1917. An overclass this disconnected and contemptuous risks disruption.

A better approach comes from an undoubted member of America's elite, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Speaking to CNBC at Davos last month, Dimon recounted a bus trip to Spokane and Boise and Bozeman: "People are growing. They're hungry to grow. They're innovating. It's everywhere. It's not just Silicon Valley."

Perhaps aware the Mountain West votes Republican, Dimon, who calls himself a centrist Democrat, conceded that former President Donald Trump "wasn't wrong about some of the critical issues" and was "kind of right" about NATO and immigration and "grew the economy quite well."

Of elite Democrats' contempt for Trump supporters, he had less to say. "The Democrats have done a good job with the deplorables, hugging their Bibles and their beer and their guns. I mean, really? Can we stop that stuff and actually grow up and treat other people respectfully and listen to them a little bit?"

It's a question other members of our dysfunctional overclass might ask themselves.

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. His new book, "Mental Maps of the Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America's Revolutionary Leaders," is now available.

Russia-Gate flops for the democrats.

I saw this on Consortium news and it touched on the Democrats continually pushing the Russia thing

Exclusive: The national Democrats saw Russia-gate and the drive to impeach President Trump as their golden ticket back to power, but so far the ticket seems to be made of fool’s gold, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry
The national Democratic Party and many liberals have bet heavily on the Russia-gate investigation as a way to oust President Trump from office and to catapult Democrats to victories this year and in 2018, but the gamble appears not to be paying off.

A sign at the Women’s March on Washington points out that the demonstration attracted a larger crowd than Donald Trump’s inauguration. Jan. 21, 2017. (Photo: Chelsea Gilmour)

The Democrats’ disappointing loss in a special election to fill a congressional seat in an affluent Atlanta suburb is just the latest indication that the strategy of demonizing Trump and blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat may not be the golden ticket that some Democrats had hoped.
Though it’s still early to draw conclusive lessons from Karen Handel’s victory over Jon Ossoff – despite his raising $25 million – one lesson may be that a Middle America backlash is forming against the over-the-top quality of the Trump-accusations and the Russia-bashing, with Republicans rallying against the image of Official Washington’s “deep state” collaborating with Democrats and the mainstream news media to reverse a presidential election.
Indeed, the Democrats may be digging a deeper hole for themselves in terms of reaching out to white working-class voters who abandoned the party in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to put Trump over the top in the Electoral College even though Clinton’s landslide win in California gave her almost three million more votes nationwide.
Clinton’s popular-vote plurality and the #Resistance, which manifested itself in massive protests against Trump’s presidency, gave hope to the Democrats that they didn’t need to undertake a serious self-examination into why the party is in decline across the nation’s heartland. Instead, they decided to stoke the hysteria over alleged Russian “meddling” in the election as the short-cut to bring down Trump and his populist movement.
A Party of Snobs?
From conversations that I’ve had with some Trump voters in recent weeks, I was struck by how they viewed the Democratic Party as snobbish, elitist and looking down its nose at “average Americans.” And in conversations with some Clinton voters, I found confirmation for that view in the open disdain that the Clinton backers expressed toward the stupidity of anyone who voted for Trump. In other words, the Trump voters were not wrong to feel “dissed.”

Hillary Clinton at the Code 2017 conference on May 31, 2017.

It seems the Republicans – and Trump in particular – have done a better job in presenting themselves to these Middle Americans as respecting their opinions and representing their fears, even though the policies being pushed by Trump and the GOP still favor the rich and will do little good – and significant harm – to the middle and working classes.
By contrast, many of Hillary Clinton’s domestic proposals might well have benefited average Americans but she alienated many of them by telling a group of her supporters that half of Trump’s backers belonged in a “basket of deplorables.” Although she later reduced the percentage, she had committed a cardinal political sin: she had put the liberal disdain for millions of Americans into words – and easily remembered words at that.
By insisting that Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee – after leftist populist Bernie Sanders was pushed aside – the party also ignored the fact that many Americans, including many Democrats, viewed Clinton as the perfectly imperfect candidate for an anti-Establishment year with many Americans still fuming over the Wall Street bailouts and amid the growing sense that the system was rigged for the well-connected and against the average guy or gal.
In the face of those sentiments, the Democrats nominated a candidate who personified how a relatively small number of lucky Americans can play the system and make tons of money while the masses have seen their dreams crushed and their bank accounts drained. And Clinton apparently still hasn’t learned that lesson.
Citing Women’s Rights
Last month, when asked why she accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking to Goldman Sachs, Clinton rationalized her greed as a women’s rights issue, saying: “you know, men got paid for the speeches they made. I got paid for the speeches I made.”

The Wall Street bull statue by Arturo Di Modica

Her excuse captured much of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party as it moved from its working-class roots and New Deal traditions to becoming a party that places “identity politics” ahead of a duty to fight for the common men and women of America.
Demonstrating her political cluelessness, Clinton used the serious issue of women not getting fair treatment in the workplace to justify taking her turn at the Wall Street money trough, gobbling up in one half-hour speech what it would take many American families a decade to earn.
While it’s a bit unfair to personalize the Democratic Party’s problems, Hillary and Bill Clinton have come to represent how the party is viewed by many Americans. Instead of the FDR Democrats, we have the Davos Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats, the Hollywood Democrats, the Silicon Valley Democrats, and now increasingly the Military-Industrial Complex Democrats.
To many Americans struggling to make ends meet, the national Democrats seem committed to the interests of the worldwide elites: global trade, financialization of the economy, robotization of the workplace, and endless war against endless enemies.
Now, the national Democrats are clambering onto the bandwagon for a costly and dangerous New Cold War with nuclear-armed Russia. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish their foreign policy from that of neoconservatives, although these Democrats view themselves as liberal interventionists citing humanitarian impulses to justify the endless slaughter.
Earlier this year, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found only 28 percent of Americans saying that the Democrats were “in touch with the concerns of most people” – an astounding result given the Democrats’ long tradition as the party of the American working class and the party’s post-Vietnam War reputation as favoring butter over guns.
Yet rather than rethink the recent policies, the Democrats prefer to fantasize about impeaching President Trump and continuing a blame-game about who – other than Hillary Clinton, her campaign and the Democratic National Committee – is responsible for Trump’s election. Of course, it’s the Russians, Russians, Russians!
A Problem’s Deep Roots
Without doubt, some of the party’s problems have deep roots that correspond to the shrinking of the labor movement since the 1970s and the growing reliance on big-money donors to finance expensive television-ad-driven campaigns. Over the years, the Democrats also got pounded for being “weak” on national security.

President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1997. (White House photo)

Further, faced with Republican “weaponization” of attack ads in the 1980s, many old-time Democrats lost out to the Reagan Revolution, clearing the way for a new breed of Democrats who realized that they could compete for a slice of the big money by cultivating the emerging coastal elites: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even elements of the National Security State.
By the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council defined this New Democrat, politicians who reflected the interests of well-heeled coastal elites, especially on free trade; streamlined financial regulations; commitment to technology; and an activist foreign policy built around spreading “liberal values” across the globe.
Mixed in was a commitment to the rights of various identity groups, a worthy goal although this tolerance paradoxically contributed to a new form of prejudice among some liberals who came to view many white working-class people as fat, stupid and bigoted, society’s “losers.”
So, while President Clinton hobnobbed with the modern economy’s “winners” – with sleepovers in the Lincoln bedroom and parties in the Hamptons – much of Middle America felt neglected if not disdained. The “losers” were left to rot in “flyover America” with towns and cities that had lost their manufacturing base and, with it, their vitality and even their purpose for existing.
Republican Fraud
It wasn’t as if the Republicans were offering anything better. True, they were more comfortable talking to these “forgotten Americans” – advocating “gun rights” and “traditional values” and playing on white resentments over racial integration and civil rights – but, in office, the Republicans aggressively favored the interests of the rich, cutting their taxes and slashing regulations even more than the Democrats.

The run-down PIX Theatre sign reads “Vote Trump” on Main Street in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. July 15, 2016. (Photo by Tony Webster Flickr)

The Republicans paid lip service to the struggling blue-collar workers but control of GOP policies was left in the hands of corporations and their lobbyists.
Though the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president, raised hopes that the nation might finally bind its deep racial wounds, it turned out to have a nearly opposite effect. Tea Party Republicans rallied many white working-class Americans to resist Obama and the hip urban future that he represented. They found an unlikely champion in real-estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump, who sensed how to tap into their fears and anger with his demagogic appeals and false populism.
Meanwhile, the national Democrats were falling in love with data predicting that demographics would magically turn Republican red states blue. So the party blithely ignored the warning signs of a cataclysmic break with the Democrats’ old-time base.
Despite all the data on opioid addiction and declining life expectancy among the white working class, Hillary Clinton was politically tone-deaf to the rumbles of discontent echoing across the Rust Belt. She assumed the traditionally Democratic white working-class precincts would stick with her and she tried to appeal to the “security moms” in typically Republican suburbs by touting her neoconservative foreign policy thinking. And she ran a relentlessly negative campaign against Trump while offering voters few positive reasons to vote for her.
Ignoring Reality
When her stunning loss became clear on Election Night – as the crude and unqualified Trump pocketed the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – the Democrats refused to recognize what the elections results were telling them, that they had lost touch with a still important voting bloc, working-class whites.

The crowd at President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)

Rather than face these facts, the national Democrats – led by President Obama and his intelligence chiefs – decided on a different approach, to seek to reverse the election by blaming the result on the Russians. Obama, his intelligence chiefs and a collaborative mainstream media insisted without presenting any real evidence that the Russians had hacked into Democratic emails and released them to the devastating advantage of Trump, as if the minor controversies from leaked emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta explained Trump’s surprising victory.
As part of this strategy, any Trump link to Russia – no matter how inconsequential, whether from his businesses or through his advisers – became the focus of Woodward-and-Bernstein/Watergate-style investigations. The obvious goal was to impeach Trump and ride the wave of Trump-hating enthusiasm to a Democratic political revival.
In other words, there was no reason to look in the mirror and rethink how the Democratic Party might begin rebuilding its relationships with the white working-class, just hold hearings featuring Obama’s intelligence chieftains and leak damaging Russia-gate stuff to the media.
But the result of this strategy has been to deepen the Democratic Party’s reliance on the elites, particularly the self-reverential mavens of the mainstream media and the denizens of the so-called “deep state.” From my conversations with Trump voters, they “get” what’s going on, how the powers-that-be are trying to negate the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump by reversing a presidential election carried out under the U.S. constitutional process.
A Letter from ‘Deplorable’ Land
Some Trump supporters are even making this point publicly. Earlier this month, a “proud deplorable” named Kenton Woodhead from Brunswick, Ohio, wrote to The New York Times informing the “newspaper of record” that he and other “deplorables” were onto the scheme.

New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

“I wanted to provide you with an unsophisticated synopsis of The New York Times and the media’s quest for the implosion of Donald Trump’s presidency from out here in the real world, in ‘deplorable’ country. … Every time you and your brethren at other news organizations dream up a new scheme to get Mr. Trump, we out here in deplorable land increase our support for him. …
“Regardless of what you dream up every day, we refuse to be sucked into your narrative. And even more humorously, there isn’t anything you can do about it! And I love it that you are having the exact opposite effect on those of us you are trying to persuade to think otherwise.
“I mean it is seriously an enjoyable part of my day knowing you are failing. And badly! I haven’t had this much fun watching the media stumble, bumble and fumble in years. I wonder what will happen on the day you wake up and realize how disconnected you’ve become.”
So, despite Trump’s narcissism and incompetence – and despite how his policies will surely hurt many of his working-class supporters – the national Democrats are further driving a wedge between themselves and this crucial voting bloc. By whipping up a New Cold War with Russia and hurling McCarthistic slurs at people who won’t join in the Russia-bashing, the Democratic Party’s tactics also are alienating many peace voters who view both the Republicans and Democrats as warmongers of almost equal measures of guilt.
While it’s certainly not my job to give advice to the Democrats – or any other political group – I can’t help but thinking that this Russia-gate “scandal” is not only lacking in logic and evidence, but it doesn’t even make any long-term political sense.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

"How To Cower Elite Wussies" at Davos

 

Another Snagged off Farcebook while I was on the cruise thingie.

It’s been hilarious watching Trump’s masterclass in “How to Cower Elite Wussies” at Davos.

The WEF elites mistake spreadsheets for courage and panel discussions for strength. Their effete, limp-wristed males wear tailored suits but have the posture and presence of substitute teachers. Their vinegar-faced females clutch lattes and explain - through trembling smiles - why YOU must accept less so that THEY can feel virtuous about “the transition.”

For years, these pompous windbags strutted around like philosopher kings and queens.

So sure of themselves. So brave when speaking to captive audiences and a compliant press. So bold when announcing that other people would need to eat bugs, tighten belts, lower expectations, surrender ownership, abandon tradition, and “adapt.” All delivered in that soft, bloodless Davos tone - condescension masquerading as compassion.

But then Trump, like Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, strides onto the stage and thunders “you shall not pass!”

And suddenly the Davos elites’ courage vanishes.

These feckless wusses are just wannabe tyrants. Real tyrants have nerve. They’re wannabe revolutionaries. Real revolutionaries risk something. The WEF class is managerial to the bone - precious career climbers, pretentious credential collectors, middle aged prefects who rose by never offending anyone stronger than themselves. Their authority exists only in rooms where disagreement is disallowed and consequences are theoretical.

That’s why the shift is so revealing.

The same crowd that wagged its finger at entire nations now speaks in careful hedges. The same mouths that confidently declared the future “inevitable” suddenly sound unsure. The same people who mocked dissent as ignorance are now desperately trying to sound reasonable, moderate, listening. Watch them physically shrink - voices softening, language watering down, principles melting into mush.

Because at heart, they are terrified of conflict they can’t referee.

They are brave when power is abstract; fearless when no one can say no; and ruthless when the costs are paid by strangers.

But faced with force, resolve, or a challenge that doesn’t care about their credentials? They fold. They always have. The Davos elite aren’t evil geniuses. They’re puffed up, evil mediocrities with delusions of adequacy.

Their brittle authority is propped up by prestige and fear of social disapproval. But once that fear dissolves, there’s nothing underneath. No backbone. No conviction. No willingness to stand behind what they so smugly demanded of everyone else.

Trump has exposed them for the feckless, ineffectual, self-congratulatory apparatchiks that they’ve always been.

Election day musings..

I intetially avoided watching any news and avoided as much as I could the gossip amongst the mechanics as we worked on the airplanes.  I did like when my lead commented after our crew meeting"alright you deplorables...Now go to work".  I was going to lunch and the word spread " they called it Trump won and Clinton conceeded",   I was pleased,    Now we have to come together as Americans....But first I will gloat a bit for all the media and other elitist that pushed the Clinton campaign....

 

Now we as Americans have to come together as a united people.  We have been separated by class, race and gender and people forget that we are Americans, now we have to be reminded of that.

 

I remembered a clip from my favorite show Babylon 5 right the liberation of Earth from the dictatorship that was the sitting president.   I remembered the phrase "we are sons and daughters of Earth and in the coming months we need to remember that."    That is my belief...

I saw this article from a pundit on Foxnews and last night and I really liked it so I shamelessly ripped it off.

 

Donald Trump shocked pundits (and many political experts) Wednesday by winning the presidency. But his followers weren’t shocked at all.
They understood from the start the power of Trump’s message, and the anger of middle class Americans.
Americans suffering from stagnant wages and lost jobs, who were the last to benefit from the liberal agenda of Barack Obama.
Americans fed up with the self-serving Washington political establishment, the crony capitalism and the insufferable political correctness stifling our workplaces and our universities.
Americans tired of the intellectual elites who look down on flag waving and old-fashioned patriotism and consider themselves morally superior.

Deplorables to Clinton: take that! A clear majority wanted to set the country on a new direction, and Donald Trump promised to do just that. He promised to Make America Great Again, and they believed him.
Even as the returns flowed in, the results appeared to shock the mainstream media commentators reporting on the vote. They didn’t expect blue collar workers in Ohio to flow to Trump; they couldn’t believe that union voters, such predictable backers of Democrats historically, would line up in the red column.

Where have these people been? This has been the bedrock of Trump’s support. People didn’t flood those huge Trump rallies because of rock stars like Jay Z or Lady Gaga; they turned out because Trump was saying what they longed to hear.

They cheered when Trump said he would revamp our trade policies to protect U.S. workers. They liked that he promised to close our borders and reestablish the rule of law. They especially applauded his pledge to take on the corrupt elites in Washington and to push for term limits.

The pundits expected Hispanics to hand several swing states to Clinton; while turnout was only modestly higher with the Latino community, Trump appears to have done about as well as Romney did with that community. That was unexpected.

Maybe next time Democrats should try to speak to the whole country, and stop slicing and dicing the electorate. Stronger together indeed!
Here’s what else happened in the 2016 election: voters decided to put the Clintons and their greedy corruption out to pasture. Clinton had everything going for her: a compliant media, a popular president in her corner, over a billion dollars in campaign fund and a well-organized party apparatus.
At the end, none of it mattered. Clinton had no message and no vision. She wandered as a candidate, portraying herself alternately as a benevolent grandma, a firebrand progressive and a champion of women and children.

In the closing weeks of the campaign she was the angry, shrill prude offended by Donald Trump’s lewd remarks about women, while at the same time lauding Jay Z’s foul lyrics. There is noting genuine about Mrs. Clinton. She is a hypocrite and she is dishonest, and the voters know it.
Clinton apologists will blame FBI Director James Comey for the loss, they will blame Vladimir Putin; they will say she lost because she is a woman. None of it is true. Hillary was a terrible candidate.

There will be enormous handwringing in both parties over the incredible success of Donald Trump. Pundits will dredge up any number of abstruse rationales for how Trump overcame long odds and humiliated both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
It’s not that complicated. Average Americans, the men and women who work hard and play by the rules, decided to make their voices heard.

Now comes the hard part. Trump will have to flesh out a thoroughly undernourished organization and quickly find the people who can carry out his agenda. The media will be gunning for him; impatient voters who took a chance on an untested leader may not have much patience.
Trump promised to quickly convene a special session of Congress and demand that they repeal and remodel ObamaCare. It is a brilliant idea. Imagine how excited the country would be to see actual progress. Maybe this will be the next shocker; Donald Trump might turn out to be a good president.

2nd Amendment and the motives of the left.

I saw this on another blog, and I snagged it, but for the life of me I cannot find the site again to give them the "props".    I have stated this many times, Gun control isn't about guns...it is about control, we the "unwashed masses" need our betters in DC on the Potomic to guide us.  I always knew that the driving force behind gun control is "people control, " same as with Obunglercare.  Once we don't have the means of resistance, we cease to be free and become serfs on the land that formerly was the single most free place  on the planet, but the population as a whole has forgotten what they were, bought the whole "hope and change" stuff and signed away their birthright.    The writings is from this person, the pics are from me.

When I think about this problem, one of the first things I remember is that when hostilities broke out between the American colonists and the King’s soldiers, the latter immediately attempted to secure the armory in Concord. From that failure came “the shot heard ’round the world”.

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“Gun Control” is nothing new. In fact, it’s been around for much longer than guns have existed. It’s been a universal phenomenon amongst human societies. And it’s never been about public safety. It has been, and always will be, an act of caste stratification and population control.

In ancient Feudal societies all around the world, notably China and Japan and many parts of Europe and the Middle-East, peasants and plebeians were prohibited from owning weapons. When the ruling aristocrats and feudal land-owners required a military force, their trusted retainers would issue arms to conscripted peasant-levies, and send them into battle as vanguards of the main force. After battle finished and the troops had looted the field, the retainers would retrieve these weapons and send the serfs back to work. Why were the commoners prohibited from possession of weapons?

Simple.

To prevent uprisings.

Remember that in these points in history, society was rigidly stratified, and the only individuals who could possess arms were men who had proven their loyalty to their rulers. These men were regarded as dignified individuals, men of honour and upstanding moral virtue, while commoners were regarded as little more than productive units in the inventories of their lords and masters. Just look at the culture of respect for the Knights and Samurai of old.

Control of the disarmed populace in turn went on to reflect and perpetuate such social stratification. Without the means to change their government by force, these societies were ruled by the strongest and wealthiest men with armies composed of a loyal minority to defend them.

Force is, and always has been, the highest, most fundamental form of authority. All other authorities have been, and always will be, derived from the means to exert and resist force.

In the late 1700s, the colonists of America knew this lesson from history all too well. During the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers fought against a tyrannical and oppressive government which sought to restrict the means to exert and resist force, and sought to take the majority of wealth away from the colonial population. The Second Amendment to the American Constitution was written to ensure that common citizens would always have recourse to the highest form of authority so that in the inevitable event of the ruling body no longer looking out for the interests of the common people at heart, they would be able to resort to force-of-arms to at least stand a chance of overturning a corrupted system.

With the advent of mass-media broadcasting and the rise of the New Feudal-Capitalist caste system, the ruling elites have gained a most powerful weapon: brainwashing. No longer have religious institutions been required to control the masses. Fear imparted by widespread propaganda now does it for them. Even more perceptive people can, and often are, influenced by this conditioning process during the formative years, developing attitudes of apathy.

Which brings us to the nature of Gun Control.

A wise man once said “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself” (a quote often misattributed to Joseph Goebbels). This is the insidious nature in which the elites of the world have been consolidating their power, by disseminating lies about the nature of force and the nature of weapons. This is most evident in the conditioning of unfathomable numbers of otherwise rational individuals to believe that there are never circumstances where recourse to force of arms is justifiable, and that “non-violent” action is always the best action, which has been demonstrated by history repeatedly to seldom be the case.

This propaganda also revolves around twisting of the facts and manipulation of popular preconceptions, with strong emotive undertones. All too often people remember the times when people use weapons to kill indiscriminately, but all too rarely are people informed of the millions of instances globally where weapons are used to mitigate unnecessary losses of life.

Firearms in particular represented a shift in the paradigm. No longer was it only the strong, quick-witted and talented who may wield arms, but now any individual with the inclination, time and access, has means to exert and resist force. A conceptual precursor to the firearm, the crossbow, drew similar ire during the Middle Ages, where a Papal Decree was issued to prohibit their use in warfare claiming that the ability to give a common peasant the ability to defeat the armour of a wealthy Knight and thus kill him, was an aberration to the natural order. Regardless, control over such weapons and their possession by the peasants was sufficient enough that most rulers saw possession of these weapons as justifiable.

Just as we in this day and age should understand that now, more than ever in history, possession of the means to exert and resist force is not only justifiable, but a necessity. Now more than ever we see a disparity between the wealthy and powerful and the poor and disempowered. Gun-control advocates live in ivory towers, and all too often the most powerful voices amongst them possess the weapons themselves, and/or retain individuals entrusted with such weaponry. This is damning evidence of the hypocrisy and elitism behind laws of personal weapon restriction. We live at a precipice of history, at the branch in the road where we may choose between a society where the minority of wealthy and strong are more equal than the majority, or a society where all men may stand as equals guaranteed by their capacity to exert and resist acts of force.

We are already descending down the path of the former, but it is not too late to stop this decay. The hardest part is overcoming the incessant propaganda, which is the reason why I have written this essay

Remember; you only have the power, if you have the will.

Blessings upon you all

The Tyranny of Moral Minorities...

 I clipped this off "FrontPageMag", Work has been busy again....

 

When pilots and flight attendants announced the end of the mask mandate in-flight, most passengers cheered. Everyone except the media which claimed the masked were the victims.

Biden, in an unexpected moment of sanity, said, "it's up to them” whether people wear masks.

But since Biden has as much impact on the policy of his administration as the shoeshine guy at Union Station, the DOJ and the CDC have triggered a legal challenge to the federal court ruling.

Biden and the entire D.C. elite don’t like wearing masks. Most people don’t. Universal masking is mandated to accommodate a vocal minority, most of whom are not immunocompromised or otherwise especially vulnerable, but who still demand that everyone accommodate them.

This tyranny of minorities has long since come to define the Democrat coalition which knits together single-issue victimhood voters whose pet issue, whether it’s police shootings, green energy, racial justice, men pretending they’re women, or the right of teachers to sexually indoctrinate kindergartners against the wishes of their parents, must take precedence.

That is why the Biden administration will fight for an otherwise unpopular mask mandate.

Democrat political authority comes from the moral authority of defending oppressed minorities. The old Democrat party which asserted that it represented an oppressed majority being kept down by men of wealth has made way for a coalition of increasingly implausible minorities.

That’s the wide gap between the party of Jackson and of Obama. And it’s Obama’s party now.

Beyond the racial minorities of the civil rights movement, the moral minority consists of wealthy white elites, their sexual fetishes, cultural obsessions, and neurotic tics. Masking is just the latest neurotic tic that the decadent element that makes up its ruling base demands of all of us.

From police defunding to mandatory masking to men roleplaying as women, the outré demands are a minority even within the Democrat coalition. But the minority of minorities, by banding together, take something that only 2% of the country might want and turn it into something that the 31% of Americans who identify as Democrats are obligated to support on the party line.

And if the Democrats win, the will of the 2% is ruthlessly imposed on the 98%.

Each minority horse trades intersectional political acceptance for its cause in exchange for supporting everyone else’s causes. The black nationalists get slavery reparations and police defunding while the men who wear dresses get to be on the women’s swim team. Feminists get abortion until the last nanosecond of birth and environmentalists can have the EPA regulate  backyard puddles. And wealthy hipster remote workers can make everyone wear masks.

Everyone gets what they want but the tradeoff is they all get even more things they don’t.

Fanatics and extremists are willing to make that tradeoff while terrorizing everyone else. The echo chamber of cancel culture is really a cooperative of crazies acting in concert to protect their own special privilege because they know perfectly well that in a healthy society and political culture their brand of insanity would never receive a hearing, let alone a mandate.

And they know that their best offense is by destroying norms to normalize their insanity.

The minority of minorities coalition forces Democrats to accept crazy premises and then to vocally defend them even when they don’t believe in them. Civil rights, once rooted in recognizable arguments about racial equality, has soured into esoteric culture wars. The simplicity of lunch counter sit-ins has given way, as it was always going to, to deconstructionist lists of grievances written by academic committees with their own specialized vocabularies.

Leftists still speak with the moral authority of victimhood even when they’re millionaires, but the moral language, once so clear and simple, pitting workers against bosses, black protesters against fire hoses, continues to be appropriated for every new incomprehensible cause.

Obama’s rise promised to revive the old moral assertions of civil rights for a new generation, instead he buried them under new layers of irony, postmodern exercises in egotistical empowerment, and deconstructionism, delighting the media while alienating Americans.

In the Biden era, the moral assertions weaponized for social media have become fumblingly ineffective. The Left declares that it must wield power in order to protect the power of corporations like Disney and the right of teachers to push sex ed to kindergartners. The remoteness of these causes from any classic paradigm of the oppressors and the oppressed reflects the distance that the Democrats have traveled from any notion of democracy.

The tyranny of minorities also ‘minoritizes’ morality into siloed causes that few can relate to.

Intersectionality labors to sell the various causes to those who have already bought into the coalition. The entertainment industry rushes to turn the incomprehensible trending mishmash of causes categorized as identity politics talking points into songs and shows to sway the public.

Morality requires universally agreed on values which moral minorities attack at every turn. The great effort to transform the existence of moral minorities into its own moral authority through intersectionality requires unsustainable amounts of messaging and outright intimidation. Cancel culture terrorizes people into not speaking or even thinking for fear they’ll run afoul of constantly changing codes that no one except their cultural oppressors can even keep track of.

Totalitarian states deploy mass propaganda like this either at the height of enthusiasm for their revolutions or at their insecure decline when everyone is starting to lose faith in the revolution. And it’s been a generation since even the faithful believe in the cause rather than the anti-cause characterized by a rotating cast of conservative hate objects in the media and social media.

The best evidence that the minority of minorities cause has become incomprehensible even to its adherents is the extent to which it relies on anti-cause outrages rather than a utopian vision.

What does the Biden administration stand for? What are MSNBC, Jon Stewart, and their cast of celebrity activists fighting for? Tellingly, the very title of Stewart’s failed new Apple TV show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, signaled this inability to articulate a positive vision of his politics.

A country faced with real problems has less patience for the moral narcissism of elites.

The tyranny of moral minorities uses an assembly line of victimhood to assert their right to absolute power, but both the causes and the problems have become alien to the crises, inflation, crime, and despair, that threaten to dominate the American body and soul.

The Old Left could have met economic crises with class warfare, but the Postmodern Left has lost any tenuous hold it ever had on economic issues. Even its familiar prescriptions of social welfare are centered around the preoccupations of its coalition with green energy nuttery, racial equity supremacy, and gender and transgender politics so that mere economics takes a backseat to what has become the far more exciting Marxism that puts identity over money.

How can you do class warfare when you’ve become a movement of billionaires whose supreme causes are electric cars that cost more than the average annual income, the sexual fetishes of wealthy men, and the fussiness of remote workers who don’t like being around other people?

It’s getting increasingly hard to disguise the fact that leftist revolutions aren’t about liberating the majority, but about enslaving it to the cultural obsessions of a tiny minority.

You can only dress up the tyranny of an upper class in oppressed drag for so long.

The moral minorities aren’t out to liberate anyone, including themselves, but to force everyone to use the words they want, to eat and dress like them, and to live like them.

There’s a leftist term for that, it isn’t revolution or liberation: it’s colonialism.

When 2% of the country gets to tell everyone else how to live, that’s true oppression.

Now their masks, literal and metaphorical, are coming off and they fear that more than anything else because power can simply be defined as a question of who has to accommodate whom?

In the sky or on the ground, in the classroom or the office, the answer is all too clear.