This topic is popular in my circles. For example, the brilliant and extraordinarily nice Chris DeMuth writes,
I believe that an important cause of our political turmoil is the decline of representative government—where law is enacted by elected legislatures—and the rise of declarative government—where law is dispensed by bureaucracies and courts.
With all respect to Chris, I cannot see the Trump election as a revolt against the Administrative State. His hammer just doesn’t connect with the nail.
If you read the whole piece (it may be behind a paywall), you will find that what Chris wants conservatives to support going forward is what I want them to support: reining in the Administrative State; more competition in K-12 education; more commitment to free inquiry in higher education; regulatory reform (not always meaning deregulation); and finally, and most important in my view,
One way or another, America is going to move from a debt-financed welfare state to a tax-financed welfare state. If the transition is abrupt and chaotic, it will bring widespread hardship, especially to the Somewheres who have become increasingly dependent on transfer payments, and possible political instability. For this reason, it would be nice if a few courageous souls in active politics would specialize in mastering and advertising the problems; this could help condition public expectations and encourage personal contingency-planning, and might even set the stage for a Churchill-like summons to leadership down the road. But the transition, hard or soft, will present opportunities as well—as the political scientists say, the American system gets around to needed reforms only in response to crises. When Congress is obliged to fund a much larger share of entitlement and welfare spending with tax revenues, it will just have to pick up its fiscal reins and exercise a level of collective discipline that no current member has experienced. The political parties will have to wake up from populist hallucinations over taxation, redistribution, and economic growth. And American citizens will acquire a much keener sense of their obligations to one another.
But there is a sense in which it strikes me that our standard focus on political economy may be anachronistic. I find myself muttering, “It’s the culture war, stupid” as a description of the situation that we face currently. Think of it as the progressive-minded, college-educated women forming up at one end and the cantankerous non-college educated men forming up at the other, with the rest of us either choosing sides or trying to find some middle ground.
We Millennials understand the importance of relying on each other to sustain ourselves much better than the boomer generation, who was taught much more of “every man is an island” mentality. Of course, we had a fundamentally different experience growing up than baby-boomers, which is why we tend toward broad based governmental solutions which mitigate volatility.
Eventually we are going to have to confront what no one seems to have the courage to mention, in that as boomers age, the next crisis will be healthcare which will decimate the decades of savings the boomers concentrated. Suddenly, state provided healthcare won’t seem like such a bad idea, and the impotent shouting we have been carrying on about why we need a state healthcare solution may finally be heard once mom and dad go bankrupt despite a fabulous 401k.
Suddenly, state provided healthcare won’t seem like such a bad idea
Because the government will magically come up with money to pay for it? Or because the government will somehow make it less costly?
Are you really saying tax the millennials to pay for the boomers?
The U.S. has no problem in spending roman empire levels of money on the military-industrial complex, and we even had an increase during this administration! The argument that we can’t pay for state-sponsored health care immediately falls apart if we actually make it a priority.
Does anyone here actually disagree that boomer healthcare is going to tank the economy eventually? It’s going to make 2008 look like a simple overdraft in a checking account.
The argument that we can’t pay for state-sponsored health care immediately falls apart if we actually make it a priority.
We spend quite a bit more on health care vs. MIC.
The subtext of “state-sponsored” health care is that there will finally be some cost controls.
The argument that we can’t pay for state-sponsored health care immediately falls apart if we actually make it a priority.
The argument that most people can’t get down to an optimal weight immediately falls apart if they actually make it a priority.
Those two statements are equally true, and equally useless.
Hint: what happened to the military-industrial complex during the Obama presidency?
The last of the Boomers will be eligible for Medicare in 2029-2030- that is just 11 years from now. They already have their government healthcare solution. So, Roger is correct- it is you that will be opening a wallet to pay for it all.
Medicare isnt free. A while back I used a JP Morgan calculator that estimated we would need $240,000 for health care in retirement. I believe 40% of retirees dont have 401ks. Of those that do, the median account value is about $140,000.
Good point. Derrick doesn’t seem to realize that, if Boomers’ healthcare costs decimate anything, it will be Medicare, not their 401(k)s. I’m not sure why that would be a good argument for extending Medicare to All. One would think the opposite.
Actually, the only rationale for “Medicare for All” would be to control costs by limiting and rationing care: force everyone to get their healthcare from the government so that the government can limit costs by denying expensive treatments. That would be the opposite of guaranteeing a “right to healthcare”, although it would be very consistent with the notion that socialism can make us all equally poor.
Medicare for All would redistribute money from the old to the rest. The old would get less, but people without good health insurance today would get more. It’s straight up redistribution. Justified or not? Medicare doesn’t seem to be Actuarially Equivalent, but at least these people did Medicare tax their whole lives.
Are you surprised that the party of journalism majors and unskilled brown people is proposing something that will transfer money from old white people to themselves?
P.S. Most UBI proposals I see are similar. UBI pays a lot less than Social Security and would be a bad deal for old people.
What we have now for healthcare is similar to utilities in a natural monopoly. Health care companies privatize their profits and socialize their losses. They accomplish this by effective lobbying and regulatory capture. Since healthcare is evidently insulated from actual market competition, as evidence by rises in medication prices like insulin and Epipens, we need more competition.
Simply put, the market has failed to adequately compete on prices, and so the government has to step in as a counter-weight to the natural monopolies.
Help me understand how these two statements are compatible:
1. Healthcare companies privatize their profits and socialize their losses by effective lobbying and regulatory capture.
2. The market has failed to adequately compete on prices.
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying healthcare companies pushed for an anti-competitive environment, and the resulting problems for consumers are a market failure. Therefore, more government intervention is necessary.
I’m not buying it.
Natural conservatives are people who get married, stay married, and have kids. Conservatives really only have to ask one question about any policy or stance they are considering. Does it help normal people get married, stay married, and have kids?
I recommend this for all conservative institutions, regardless of their particular nature. Ask that question over and over and make it their mission statement. If you’re a Church is what you are doing helping your congregates get married, stay married, and have children? The answers tend to be conservative ones. It doesn’t just have to be about government and government policy.
This brings its own fiscal discipline in the sense that excess taxation of the middle class makes it hard to get married, stay married, and have kids. So does a breakdown in law and order, poor educational policy, etc. If you’re going to have transfer payments, you should do everything in your power to target this group. This will also help to exclude wasting money on either the underclass (who can’t get/stay married) or progressive single ladies (who don’t have kids). Those that won’t respond to the incentives to get married, stay married, and have kids shouldn’t be getting any slice of whatever resources conservatives can command.
If you trying to target and grow your core constituency this is the best bet.
Worth adding a refinement. I forget where I’d read it, but it’s an important one: have kids that will present you with acceptable grandchildren before you’re too old to enjoy them. It’s rather unsatisfactory if normal people bear and bring up kids only to see them reliably poached by the opposing tribe and/or consumed in gene shredders.
What is the conservative position nowadays on gays getting married, staying married, and raising kids? What about immigrants importing their family-centric social orientation through chain migration?
I won’t pretend to offer the conservative notion, but here is my own.
Studying the statistics, the idea of gays getting married, staying married, and having kids is a complete statistical anomaly (like a BIG anomaly if you run the actual numbers, this isn’t just speculation). It might as well be zero. Even getting/staying married as well as being monogamous is a big anomaly.
I think this is just an image that was used to sell the idea to conservatives, not a reality. I don’t see any evidence of it changing now that gays are more accepted, not many gays are interested in marriage at any point (actual gays mentioned this during the marriage debate). Liberal areas of the country don’t seem to have any different gay behavior than conservative ones.
I don’t think “the closet” did this either. You see the exact same behaviors in Ancient Greece or other pre-christian civilizations. Chickenhawking in big then too, most relationships were relatively short and involved a teenage boy and a man. These people were expected to “grow out of it” and marry one day. Despite no Christianity and no taboo about homosexuality, gays didn’t drift towards any kind of gay marriage.
What pro-social thing to do with them? I don’t know. Thebes formed its gay lovers into a phalanx and told them to kill the enemy.
Personally I think society had already got off their back before gay marriage any the few gays serious about that kind of thing just moved in together and did it. They didn’t need societal approval, which of course became forced and coercive because you can’t make people approve of you.
Those gays that do follow the family script, while very few in number, are very wealthy (I think average household income among the married with children crowd is like $250k+) and located in important cultural hub cities like DC, etc (the NYTimes did an excellent job providing hard numbers on this). So I can see how opinion leaders bought into this, but not how it’s a reality for most people. The reality for most people feels a lot more like the Catholic Church or a Pride Parade.
I think for the average person exposure to gays is bad. Gayness is associated with hedonism, drug use, singleness, promiscuity, and nihilism. That’s a measurable truth, not mere speculation. Despite its media cliche, having a gay best friend is probably bad for you, since you tend to become more like the people you spend time with. I’ve observed that in my own life. I also had a friend who wanted to prove the church was wrong about gays by taking one in and trying to Jesus it up with him…and the dude lived up to all those negative stereotypes above and had to get kicked out eventually.
Of course I wouldn’t recommend hanging out with straight people who behave that way either, but there is the rub. If you describe the gay lifestyle but say the person is straight, you would defiantly say they have huge mental or personality issues.
On immigration, I’m not seeing any “family values”. For Mexicans in the first generation there are decent enough results on things like divorce, crime, etc. However, by the second generation those values all revert to exactly the levels you would expect from their IQ. There is something about America that, as Moldbug used to put it, turns Helots into Dalits. So I’m not convinced that new immigrants from the south have great family or work values or anything else compared to natives, especially after the first generation. In the case of the Caribbean Islanders that came and colonized the Northeast, they aren’t even good in the first generation.
It’s also worth asking “what kind of family values”. If we mean “clannishness” it’s not necessarily a positive. The Sicilian Mafia had family values of a certain kind, but they were the type that made it OK to do anything negative to the broader society in the interests of your family. You need to be clannish enough to keep out the out-group, but not so clannish that you engage in ant-social behavior versus the in-group. It’s a tough balance. White people went too far to one direction and we got the world wars, and now they are reacting too far in the other direction.
My own view is that the only thing that really matters is *normal people* forming families and having kids. That makes up most of society, are the only people likely to actually follow through on that script, and has been the driving force of societal advancement forever. If normal people succeed at this, we have a future. If not, it really doesn’t matter how “inclusive” we were. We don’t need a solution for every little minority, society doesn’t owe them anything.
“With all respect to Chris, I cannot see the Trump election as a revolt against the Administrative State.”
I disagree. You can see it in the use of the CRA to dismantle the most egregious rules passed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Also, look at the initial Cabinet appointments. There were many people who were in direct opposition to the administrative state. Not all were approved and not all remained, but that was clearly the theme.
This just in: Senate confirms ex-coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run Environmental Protection Agency
Excellent.
If the EPA confined itself to controlling poisons, instead of CO2, then it would not be necessary to boomerang between ultra-radical leftie $10/gal gas authoritarians and nutjob corrupt coal-insider rent seekers.
Which is 99% of the problem with government, and fully described in Road To Serfdom.
Please identify an ultra-radical leftie $10/gal gas authoritarian who has led the EPA. I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with one, given all that boomerang stuff going on.
The EPA is a government agency. It is controlled by our representative government via legislation and by senior management hired by the executive branch. It is not a rogue agency. Senior managers placed by the Executive branch do get their way. There is not a revolt going on.
The Supreme Court has largely affirmed the claim that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases based on the Clean Air Act. That can be changed if new legislation changes the laws.
Do you really have a right to complain about government if you consent to such absurd notions about how to go about managing it? How could any organization work under such circumstances? We have mechanisms to make these things work. If you decide up front to trash those mechanisms, whose fault is that?
Not the EPA, but Dept. of Energy secretary Stephen Chu promoted $8 + per gallon gasoline during the Obama administration.
Hopaulius – The comment you are referring to was made by Chu in September 2008, before Obama was elected, and obviously before he became Energy Secretary.
While I think you rightfully cited Chu as probably the most problematic cabinet member ever on this issue, his opinion never became policy.
While Obama did pursue some questionable incentives to promote renewable energy, he also expanded U.S. fossil fuel energy production. Energy prices were kept low.
Trump did not inherit a European style policy of inflated gas prices to fight climate change.
Given the political polarization I don’t think that “Reining in the Administrative State” is feasible or will last very long. Attempts to do so may actually make things worse as changes in party control will cause changes to be implemented hastily and then whiplash back and forth.
What I would like to see are proposals to create competition within the government for delivery of services. Loosen up proscribed rules from Congress to the agencies and lean on outcomes and let the agencies compete (somehow) for management/oversight of those outcomes.
The idea that we will move from a debt financed to a tax financed welfare state is wildly unrealistic. The size of the entitlements, which politically cannot be reduced, is such that any attempt to finance them with taxes would tank the economy. They will continue to be debt financed and the Fed will purchase whatever amounts of Federal debt they have to in order to keep interest rates from skyrocketing.
I agree — and, as the national debt continues to grow, we will follow the pattern of most of Latin America in the 20th century, by reaching the point where the only way to finance the welfare state is by runaway inflation. Which will be permanent unless and until we are lucky enough to have someone like Pinochet take over.
Why not follow the pattern of Japan?
Steve Bannon famously pledged “deconstruction of the administrative state”. There is some truth to this. The reality of the Trump Administration’s war on the administrative state is far short of Bannon’s promise or Kling’s hopes but is far better than I expected.
Kling is right that Trump’s election was motivated primarily by the culture war.
The next big target for a populist revolt against the “administrative state” is higher ed and the university system. That is ripe for major reforms. Education should be more available to everyone. It should be more geographically available, it shouldn’t matter which city you live in. It could be done at much less cost. The different functions of the university system should be unbundled. The current model is somewhat archaic.
“Education should be more available to everyone.”
Education or schooling. We have lots of the latter although with credential gatekeepers to keep the riffraff out. Actual education is not only declining in provision, the schooling system actively works to damage discipline of the intellect, regulation of emotions and establishment of principles.
As for widespread provision of schooling, with some education, no doubt, we have that in the Mega online universities, such as Western Governors University. They are targeting and providing useful schooling to adult learners, i.e., post-“college”-age. Unlike traditional residential colleges, they are organizing for the much broader population over a wide range of their lifespan. The traditional universities go with the “got to get them young while they are impressionable and easily indoctrinated” strategy.
“Western Governors has 88,585 undergraduates, according to U.S. Education Department data, more than the top 14 universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings combined.”
–‘The Rise of the Mega-University’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb 2019
I have a dim view of online schools like Western Governors. On the surface, they are exactly what I want for society and what I described: they offer lower priced education to people everywhere, and are largely unbundled from the other functions of universities.
The first giant downside is the education they offer is extremely limited and superficial. None of the serious STEM classes you could get at any good unversity are available there. They don’t offer proper math, science, and engineering classes. They offer coding boot camp style classes to help people land entry level jobs in the programming field, but that’s it. It’s fine for what it is, but it’s very limited.
The second giant downside is that human students need a social component. They want to see human peers, human coaches, and develop human relationships. I’m not sure what the exact solution to this is, but I can see the the current online only model can never hope to compete with traditional universities as they are.
A great analogy is adult exercise: think franchised (or chain) exercise programs like Les Mills, CrossFit, Orange Theory, etc. Those programs all have some online instruction, but it’s very rarely used. Seeing human peers and human coaches is a big part of the experience. Experts design “curriculum” programming. That curriculum programming is available at franchise/chain facilities around the globe. They cater to different skill+commitment levels.
Perhaps what we need to recognize is that we are approaching the bounds of labor specialization. We can create scalable organizations and markets and generate great wealth by pursuing deep labor specialization, but we don’t have the political and social structures to scale with it.
Do we really think federal and state legislatures can take on more complexity? Do we have any alternatives?
I don’t really think of the “culture war” as between progressive college-educated women vs. cantankerous non-college educated men.
The “culture war” is between social conservatives and social liberals. It’s not primarily about economics, but about things like church attendance, gay rights, the traditional family, drugs, sex, racial inclusivity, gender norms, dress codes, and food choices.
People on both sides of this divide can be college educated or not, and they can be men or women, although there might be some bias in both cases. The social liberals may be more “progressive” on economics, but only the far left attempts to tie culture war issues to economic policy, and conservatives are just as willing to use the state to try to engineer society to suit their cultural values (i.e. child tax credits).
This is not to say there might not be some sort of “progressive college-educated women vs. non-college-educated anti-feminist men” axis shaping up , but that doesn’t really encompass the whole culture war, just a couple of tiny factions of each side that really dislike eachother.
The “culture war” is between millions of individuals who have a kaleidoscope of different interests, motivations, and concerns, and have grouped together in various coalitions, ultimately, into a bipartisan “Republican” or “Democrat” divide
Kling characterized the bipartisan divide one way, you chose different categories and issues to highlight.
You characterized the culture war as “conservatives” vs “liberals”. I see those labels as synonyms for “Republican” and “Democrat”. Both sides want to “conserve” the sacred of the past and present even though they have bitterly different views on what should be conserved and what shouldn’t. When we use the word “conservative” we generally just mean the view aligned with the “Republican” coalition. Both sides want to embrace “progress” towards a better future with bitterly different views on the specifics. When we use the word “progressive” we generally just mean the view aligned with the “Democrat” political coalition.
I would characterize the divide as people who have severed faith in American institutions and the media and those who have not. The people who have lost faith have scattered but generally conservative social leanings, but are so thoroughly disgusted with the way America works that they think only a wrecking ball like Trump makes sense at this point. Trump equals revenge, and his loathsome behavior is integral to that revenge. They get a visceral thrill out of watching institutional America and those that believe in it squirm.
I would agree with Hazel Meade that the view of the culture war as between progressive college-educated women vs. cantankerous non-college educated men is not particularly useful.
If a conservative attempted to deliver an agenda that directly served the interests of non-college educated men, but attempted to do so through institutional means and with institutional respect, they would lose.
Good comment too. That explains the Trump phenomenon much better than other analyses I have seen. At least it explains why so many Trump supporters don’t seem to care about the continuous stream of ridiculous Tweets.
You are correct about the culture war of the 80s, which was fought primarily between “family values” conservatives and social liberals. The new war does seem to have morphed into one that is more identitarian. One could call the left side college-educated women, Bobo, cosmopolitan. One could call the right side non-college educated men, anti-Bobo, not cosmopolitan.
You mention sex, for example. In the 80s conservatives advocated chastity, sex within marriage, etc. Liberals argued for permissiveness. Nowadays, it’s just as likely that liberals will argue against promiscuity, especially that of heterosexual males, which is seen as reflecting male disrespect of women. Liberals are also quite sensitive to portrayals of women as sex objects in media. In the 80s, conservatives were the ones opposing too many scantily clad women in media (for different reasons). Liberals’ views on sexual matters reflect college-educated women’s sensibilities and rejection of “cantankerous non-college educated men”.
I don’t think the left argues against promiscuity (I certainly don’t get that impression). Rather, it argues for a contradictory and impossible standard of “consent”.
You could say that having seen “consent” fail as a standard of sexual normality that protected women’s interests, they are looking for some kind of change. They could go back to the old standard (some sexual activities are bad even with “consent”) and argue against consent based promiscuity, but that isn’t the tact. Instead its placing even more reliance on the “consent” concept, but layering up lots of bureaucratic standards to “fix” it. It doesn’t seem to be working that well beyond randomly ruining some people’s lives.
This is really an area where I think the left really goes of the rails and a more libertarian solution is called for. It’s true that consent gets murky with respect to sex when you consider how much is non-verbal communication, and the interpretation thereof. Which is why having bureaucratic standard is so problematic. This calls for something more like a social campaign where people simply distribute flyers like the “consent is sexy” type ones, instead about “reading non-verbal communication during sexual encounters”, or something to that effect. There should not be extreme punishments for misunderstandings, but instead there could be maybe some mechanism to shame guys that get overly grabby and don’t respect people’s boundaries, instead of subjecting them to a sexual assault allegation.
The college-educated-women vs. non-college-educated-men observation is an insightful one in characterizing the current identitarian culture war. However, for a complete picture, I think we still need to consider the ideological battle between equal-rights and equal-outcomes.
Traditionally, Dems emphasized equal outcomes and, hence, were attractive to non-college-educated men (union members, etc.) and others with poor outcomes. College-educated women, however, actually are among the most successful groups now. It’s not surprising that they are increasingly influential in the Democratic Party, given their abilities and given that other Democratic groups generally achieve poor outcomes. But, their prominence clashes with Dems’ ideological belief that good outcomes are evidence of unfair privilege. Dems continue to characterize college-educated women as victims, because they are women, while continuing to cast non-college educated men as privileged, because they are men, ignoring that college-educated women are achieving better outcomes than non-college educated men. Not surprisingly, that has alienated non-college educated men, who used to be part of the Democratic base.
Meanwhile, Republicans traditionally emphasize equal rights ideology over equal outcomes. However, the alienation of non-college-educated (white) men from the Democratic party created an opportunity for Republicans, which they have seized, primarily through their own version of identity politics. That has also created intra-party tension between the equal-rights ideologues and alt-Right identitarians.
So, yes, one can characterize the partisan battle as primarily “culture war”, and note that it’s really more identity politics (college-educated women vs. non-college-educated men) than traditional 80s philosophical culture war. However, there are now intra-party tensions reflecting the fact that the identity groups do not align with the equal-rights vs. equal-outcomes ideological battle.
Great comment. I think you’re correct with your insight that progressive college educated women vs. non-college-educated (white) men is really more identity politics than “culture war” per se, and in noting the tension between identity politics and equal outcomes. Although we have not really seen progressive college-educated women abandon traditional left-labor politics. One can only hope.
With all respect to Chris, I cannot see the Trump election as a revolt against the Administrative State.
Trump promised to protect Social Security and Medicare so there is little of the breaking down the administrative state. Trump campaign was the palo-conservative run by a major party nominee which in the past had been third parties runs of Perot and arguably Wallace. (Note I am not saying Trump agreed with Wallace segregation here. It is just Southern Democrats were conservative in a lot ways in 1968)
And listen to his campaign speeches; It was Illegal Immigration and NAFTA with free trade with China. It was the elite, blaming Clinton, that allowed all the Immigrants into the nation and it was the Clinton fault that a lot manufacturing jobs went to China thus crashing the WWC economic prospects. (I am not saying it all made sense that is what Neoliberals missed in 2016 that the WWC still wanted a Midwest Democrat on trade and Trump gave it to them whereas Romney private sector experience hurt his chances with electoral college.)
So any thoughts on conservatism has to deal with Trump being a Palo-conservative here.
With Social Security I don’t know how much we are talking administrative state. Maybe SSD benefits, but normal Social Security doesn’t appear heavy on the administration or bureaucracy. You get a payment of cash based on a simple formula and eligibility requirements.
Medicare doesn’t appear to be any more heavy into the administrative state then private healthcare, though if you want to make the case that the administrative state is all over the entire healthcare sector I wouldn’t argue with you.
When I think administrative state I think about Charles Murray’s story about how setting up a homeschooling co-op in Frederick County, MD was way way more complicated, delayed, and expensive then it needed to be (I forget if the people entirely gave up in the end) due to government bureaucrats making it difficult for them. Administrative state = bureaucrats. Note that if you view many large institutions as essentially entwined and similar to the state this could be extended to “private” actors, NGOs, and the like.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/01/conservative-democracy
It doesn’t, because Trump doesn’t have a hammer. He only has a toy mallet in the judicial sphere, where the Federalist Society afforded him a sizeable backbench of politically aligned candidates, but that is all. In all other spheres, there isn’t even the beginnings of a backbench. Far from having enough cadre and clout to control the bureaucracy, many even of the Plum Book political offices are vacant, whether because of lack of candidates or because appointments are stuck in Congress, and apparently a lot of those that are filled, are filled with people from the two Bush administrations. As for Trump’s voters, they may have learned a thing or two in the last decade, but even at the best, their understanding of the political system of America resembles nothing so much as the old story of blind men feeling an elephant. They cannot agree to anything. Two less widely traveled old Moldbug essays on this subject make for depressing reading 10 years later: “Sarah Palin: the proletarian candidate” and “Actual Letter to a Liberal Friend” (Michael S.’s comments to the latter essay are also very good, though unfortunately Moldbug’s old blog has been cleared out and his new tombstone website does not have the comments). Quoting from the latter:
—-
If I had to describe it in a sentence, I would say that the rage [the revolt of Trump voters – C.] is easily explained, but not easily explained in the terms of those who feel it. They are clearly angry about something, but the actual words that come out of their mouths are often nonsensical and contradictory. This is why it is so hard for so many to get a handle on. It is simply inarticulate demotic discontent.
Basically, you will see this in any hieratic system of government which the peasants do not really understand. They feel, somehow, that they are getting jobbed. They are (in my opinion) getting jobbed. But how they are getting jobbed is infinitely more complicated than their simple peasant mind can understand. (Also, the idea that they are in some way jobbing the peasants is the farthest possible concept from the collective mind of the gentlemen.)
Therefore, the peasants open their mouths and out comes rage and nonsense. As a gentleman, you are fascinated and repelled by this extraordinary wave of rage and nonsense. Do I have this reaction right? You may of course feel free to disregard the crude metaphor of medieval class conflict, which is no more than a metaphor. Still, I feel it is a good way to ground the conversation in history.
One easy reaction is to blame Fox News. It is true: for the first time in a long time, the peasants have an exclusively peasant-themed mass propaganda channel. However, the objective observer notes quickly that Fox News is not so much telling its audience what to think, as telling them they are allowed to think what they already think. Since they are peasants, lacking any semblance of an aristocratic culture that can accumulate and transmit collective wisdom across generations, what they think is generally nonsense.
Fox News aggregates and retransmits this nonsense, but does not really direct it much in Goebbels style. In some ways it even moderates it – for instance, Fox, and neocons in general, are not much less aggressive in purging racism than establishment journalists. (It is certainly interesting to imagine an alternate 21st-century America that was as aggressive in purging communism as it is in purging racism. I have seen people get quite hot under the collar at the mere mention of this horrible gedankenexperiment, but it fills a need.)
…
But, although they do not reason openly and explicitly in this existential manner, the tea partiers feel emotionally that their entire system of government has lost, over the course of decades, their confidence, and needs to be replaced by something entirely different. The basic problem with their rhetoric is that in place of “something entirely different,” they insert two-dimensional cliches of historical American nationalism, dimly remembered at a folk level from the 1920s. It was no less nonsense then, but at least it had an aristocratic leadership caste, which was actually capable of governing a country. In short, it had Calvin Coolidge. Sarah Palin is no Calvin Coolidge.