G7: Repeating Dead Rituals from a Former Age

 

In 1910, nine European sovereigns posed for a final “family photo” before the Great War. They gathered for the funeral of King Edward VII, appropriately enough. Within ten years, the majority had lost power via abdication, assassination, revolution, or death.

The image came to mind after seeing this week’s photo of the current masters of the international order who gathered in Cornwall for the G7 summit.

I couldn’t help but think…

Another group of aloof leaders stubbornly out of touch with the people they’re supposed to represent. Politicians who condemn authoritarians while offering them sweetheart deals behind the scenes. Mouthing words of unity while aggressively pursuing their self-interest. Leaders who gripe about the rabble who lost trust in them but find it beneath them to earn it back.

Unaware how to move forward, they mindlessly repeat the dead rituals from a former age.

Every poll demonstrates that people have lost faith in their elite institutions; not so obvious is what will take their place. In his prescient book The Revolt of the Public, Martin Gurri analyzes the moment:

The immediate target of revolt is an elite class that has failed persistently, on its own terms. The elites once were wrapped in the mantle of authority and delivered grandiose national projects, but now the public knows them too well, and they can only mutter and stammer, demoralized. They loathe the public for their humiliation. Politicians have lost faith in the idea of service, or the common interest, or the promotion of some universal cause or ideology: they exist, in office, merely to survive, or more accurately to be seen surviving, to suck up the attention of mass and social media. It has come to pass that presidents are chosen from the casts of reality TV shows. Political actors more and more resemble the real actors in Hollywood, whose company they keep and whose perverse predilections they seem to share.

Staged photo ops and elbow bumps only reinforce the sense that our “meritocratic” post-WW2 order is as fragile as the aristocratic courts of 1910 Europe. The difference today is that the elites have already lost faith in themselves. Instead of forging a new future, they lock the serfs in their homes and ridicule anyone who dares oppose them.

Increasingly, the proles’ reaction to this mockery is a shrug. Indifference terrifies the institutions even more than opposition and spurs them to greater fantasies of control. We need a Great Reset, a Global Minimum Tax, and smartphone passports to prove your vaccination status (and shares other metadata you don’t need to worry about). The proles laugh harder.

Pantomimes like this week’s G7 Summit reveal an enervated order that doesn’t wield power so much as it clings to it. The danger ahead is that, as Gurri writes, “You can condemn politicians only for so long before you must reject the legitimacy of the system that produced them.”

Everyone senses a change coming and pray it’s nothing like what swept away the world of 1910.

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  1. JimGoneWild Coolidge
    JimGoneWild
    @JimGoneWild

    Sad. Elbow bumping. It should die with face masks. Never Again!

    • #31
  2. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Gazpacho Grande’ (View Comment):
    Here’s how you know they’re useless. If all of them were gone, tomorrow, magically – what would change? What would stop working? Would the lights go out? Would the food not show up on the shelves at the grocery store? Hell, the dollar might gain in value because we’d stop spending so much the Fed wouldn’t be spilling trillions into the economy.

    If they all were magically gone tomorrow, things would probably improve.

    As far as the dollar gaining in value – Trump saw to it that this actually happened,

    So the lab generated-virus mysteriously leaked, with lie upon lie being told to bring about unprecedented sledge hammer Full Stop to our economy. With the top med authorities in our country pretending there were no remedies. And that 3.4% of us would die. (Even though it is now reported that Fauci stated in an email that there would be an equal or less frequent number of fatalities from Covid than from a normal flu.)

    Some 800,000 mail in ballots, most of them unrequested, were sent out as a “measure to allow full election participation” even though Covid’s emergency  measures were so severe. Steve Crowder of “Louder with Crowder” got a hold of the mail in ballot holder list, as well as the newly registered voter list, to check things out.

    He found a voter address that turned out to be a median strip on a roadway. Other addresses that turned out to be empty lots.

    In counties like Maricopa County AZ where the Dems won by under 20k ballots, the idea that 800,000 mail in ballots were sent out is extremely significant.

     

    • #32
  3. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    JimGoneWild (View Comment):

    Sad. Elbow bumping. It should die with face masks. Never Again!

    Face masks have (or had) some redeeming social value. Elbow bumping does not. 

    • #33
  4. Steve C. Member
    Steve C.
    @user_531302

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    JimGoneWild (View Comment):

    Sad. Elbow bumping. It should die with face masks. Never Again!

    Face masks have (or had) some redeeming social value. Elbow bumping does not.

    Our betters have no dignity. They are self important blow hards. If George Washington were alive today, he would weep for what we’ve become.

    Scratch that. Washington was too dignified to cry in public. 

    • #34
  5. YouCantMeanThat Coolidge
    YouCantMeanThat
    @michaeleschmidt

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):

    Gee. 7 people we can do without.

    Here’s how you know they’re useless. If all of them were gone, tomorrow, magically – what would change? What would stop working? Would the lights go out? Would the food not show up on the shelves at the grocery store? Hell, the dollar might gain in value because we’d stop spending so much the Fed wouldn’t be spilling trillions into the economy.

    We would all be exactly the same. The guy who plows your road in the winter doesn’t rely on a president to get that job done. The local utilities don’t need any one of those people to generate, transmit, and distribute power. If anything, these idiots represent what gets in the way of things getting done.

    Ask SpaceX. Or anyone trying to pull a construction permit for their house.

    At least their tailors would miss the older bunch…

    • #35
  6. YouCantMeanThat Coolidge
    YouCantMeanThat
    @michaeleschmidt

    JimGoneWild (View Comment):

    Sad. Elbow bumping. It should die with face masks. Never Again!

    “Never again” is the most perishable of memes… just ask any sentient Jewish person.

    • #36
  7. YouCantMeanThat Coolidge
    YouCantMeanThat
    @michaeleschmidt

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    JimGoneWild (View Comment):

    Sad. Elbow bumping. It should die with face masks. Never Again!

    Face masks have (or had) some redeeming social value. Elbow bumping does not.

    Quoth (more or less) Mallard Fillmore(R): “Ending masking is a disaster for those of us who are appearance-challenged.”

    • #37
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