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The Left’s Eternal Attack
When the USSR collapsed 30 years ago, it never occurred to anybody that the next major assault on constitutional democracy and western culture would be led by the world’s richest people. Communism was ever the plaything of unhappy middle-class intellectuals. The concern for the workers was usually eyewash and the appearance of compassion was an artifact of the hatred for the status quo, itself the presumed root of all injustice.
But who would have guessed that after the stunning political triumph accompanied by decades of unimagined wealth creation, many if not most of the most favored beneficiaries of that victory would turn against their own cultural and legal heritage that has bestowed so much good on so many? Not just a few spoiled heiresses and party boys seeking action and meaning by joining The Revolution but the movers and shakers are themselves lining up against the existing order. Not just to make more money in the time-honored tradition of corruption, money, and power but a concerted effort to undo the entire culture and political order.
At present, I am re-reading Witness by Whittaker Chambers. He described in detail his life in the American Communist Party and his fellow Communists. He said that becoming a Communist in those days was invariably a reaction to the horror of modern warfare and/or economic crisis. Communism combined the appearance of scientific rigor with a kind of moral purity and certainty that seemed like the only salvation for a broken world.
The horrors of WWI and the Great Depression that induced Chambers to embrace communism really have no contemporary corollaries. America’s recent wars may seem somewhat ill-conceived but casualties were nowhere near the same scale as with past wars. The looming shadow of nuclear war with the Soviets that had shaped a generation has passed. The “population bomb” was a dud, even “peak oil” was a bust. And our political and economic system has continuously yielded undeniable progress (and “inclusion”) at every level.
There is neither a decent current global crisis with which to indict Our Creator for permitting it or for causing a broken world, nor is there a new coherent secular theology comparable to the tomes of Marx and Engels.
Yet the same perverse appetite for crisis and a substitute near-religion to solve that crisis is still with us. Climate change has filled that void for many but the contrast between apocalyptic rhetoric and actual data is increasingly stark. Greta is no longer novel and still quite boring. I think some freezing Germans and Britons this winter will begin to put an end to the appeal of this new religion.
And Americans cannot have become such a silly people that the “plight” of the trans will become our main concern. The alleged claims of injustice suffered by the alphabet people are quickly losing juice.
Of more concern perhaps, is the bizarrely framed national reaction to George Floyd’s death. It was remarkable not just for the distorting power of media and skill of race hustlers but the size of the appetite for crisis and for dramatic visions of injustice, a need to invent a dragon of racism that only some personally cleansing political contrivance can slay. (What is that mindset? Does it have a name?) What is the shelf-life of the moral buzz from wokeness, a lame substitute for Communist zeal? How much damage can it do before it too flames out?
Whatever the source of that shape-shifting appetite for mutating and killing our cultural heritage, it appears to be increasingly endemic among the rich. The annual gathering of the Davoisie (a wonderful term somebody coined for the global jet-setting policymaking elite) would be harmless or even beneficial if it were merely the rich male equivalent of bored wealthy housewives looking for a committee or community cause to join.
But that persistent enemy is still issuing the whispered invitation to indict and then purport save the world with procrustean, anti-human schemes masquerading as shining visions. That enemy now finds itself in possession of wealth, power, technologies, and political influence that not even Hitler or Stalin could provide. The power to buy elections and governments, to rework and pervert education at all levels, to control all communications, and restructure the world now in the hands of a few like-minded men increasingly hostile to the premises of democracy and western moral order is something quite new. Who saw that coming? Does anybody ever see it coming?
Published in General
Could you go into what this means in some detail? I think I probably totally missed what you are referring to as ‘how to take advantage of this phenomenon’.
In 1988 I was doing volunteer work for a congressional candidate and told him how I had read that Republicans were doing a lot better than Democrats with small donations and the Dems were doing better with large donations, and that we should make something of it. By that I meant that we should emphasize how we are the party of the people rather than of the big monied interests. In those days that should have had some resonance. But he didn’t grok it. He replied that you can’t run a campaign on ten dollar contributions, which of course is not the point at all. My wife and I made a contribution that was a lot larger than ten dollars, and he liked that, and put us on a list to ask for donations when he lost and was trying to hit people up to help with his campaign debts. The poor guy was better than some of the wackos that had tried to run against our long-time extreme left congressman, but he didn’t understand what he was up against. He told us he was trying to attract the Reagan Democrats, which I think he had been advised to do by RNC consultants, but he had no idea what that meant. And I was not articulate enough to explain it better.
RNC consultants like Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt who sabotaged Sarah Palin, taking millions to make sure Republicans lose. I thought of that yesterday when I saw Dr. Oz’s ‘crudite’ ad. Who in their right mind would put that word in a candidates mouth or allow him to say it in a scripted ad?
When the Soviets were collapsing my immediate boss at the time says ( I don’t remember the conversation just the belief) following a visit by my counterpart from the Soviet Embassy and a despairingly honest conversation about what was going on on his country that I said the communists would be back but in the US. The direction of the Democrat left wing was already obvious, but I had no idea how fast it would occur and that it would be so deep and definitive as to win and destroy us. The Chinese transformation helped speed the whole thing up as they appear (falsely) to have been able to combine top down communism with market based industrialization. I don’t know if our leaders don’t know what’s happening or just don’t care because they don’t realize that it will occur so rapidly and that it will destroy us in their professional lifetimes, even if the Chinese didn’t have that objective at the top of their agenda.
So you observed the changes occurring in fund raising and political consultant advice neither of which did I have an awareness, although Reagan’s switch of Parties should have been some sort of signal. I did read and was concerned with what Allan Bloom was noticing in academia. Did we have anyone at that time who saw and spoke about the whole thing?
Now I have to figure out who this “Dr. Oz” is.
Now I know, and I’m not going to throw him under the bus for any faux pas, or even speak disparagingly of it.
At the time there was a lot of talk on the WSJ editorial page and elsewhere about how big business was easily co-opted by regulators, to the disadvantage of small business. I don’t know that anyone anticipated that it would lead to what we have now on social issues as well as economic issues.
I’m talking about the utter stupidity of the ad. Crudite ! Really? Is there no one on the staff to point out elitist that sounds.
We are in the grip of post-modernism denying the validity and thus the deployment of the logic underlying the very development of our western civilization. That’s why we daily get a serving of meaningless word salad by those in our highest leadership positions. The word science no longer is used to mean what science truly is. Real science, the Karl Popper version, is how we solve perceived problems like climate change, energy resources, and population growth. The linguistic gymnastics never end. If we can’t turn it around in these next two election cycles we face a collapse of our civilization by continuing on this path set by the progressively insane Left. They throw away all that we have learned.
When I saw that ad, it brought to mind the out-of-touch comment Obama made way back in 2012, I think, campaigning in Iowa, about the high price Whole Foods was charging for arugula.
Was it Gore or Kerry who suggested that the solution for low farm prices in Iowa was for the farmers to start growing Belgian Endive?
I have no idea. It’s a new word to me, and I’m not going criticize it just because some lefties make fun of it.
Exception: If some lefty uses the word, I might have some fun with it.
But this is why Republicans cower under their desks. With every little faux pas (or great one) other Republicans want to distance themselves from it. I say let the guy make his mistakes in peace.
I’ve seen the commercial twice and I cringed both times. Did anyone on his staff even mention that it might be better to pick up some eggs, bacon, and a loaf of bread; food that most real people eat?
I remember when the Soviet Union fell, I mentioned to a friend (actually, not a friend) something to the effect that Communism was failing, and what did she think of that? And she gave me a look as if, It ain’t over. She was right. Crazy, but right.
Maybe he was referring to crudités. Oh. I see he was. I thought he was talking about deplorables! Still can’t find the video.
I couldn’t find it, but Breitbart news Saturday had an interview with an Armenian opposition research organization that was focused on Oz. It was unbelievable. Not very Republican. Not very conservative. Not patriotic. Weird. Really weird TV segments that no republican is going to like. He has dual citizenship with Turkey and he wasn’t going to give it up unless he won. Friends with their weirdo president. Served in the Turkish military.
I heard about this. No wonder the big money is running away from him.
Not the whole thing, but James Burnham’s book about the Managerial Revolution talks about the change from a capitalist ruling class to a managerial ruling class in the U.S., where the managers are the government administrative state. I don’t think Burnham realized how much further the transition had yet to go, but it shouldn’t be surprising that successful capitalists would be attracted to the ruling class, hang out with its practitioners, and become somewhat like them.
Then throw in the fact that Western Central banking is run completely wrong and totally compounds this. People have no idea.
This is how you get on the train of centralization as Iwalton describes.