"We have met the enemy and he is us..." -- Pogo, American comic strip character.
I told you last week that I would tackle the issue of how we, as a Nation, got to this ridiculous point where a President could be accused of fabricated crimes, constructed by a combination of his political opponents and the professional bureaucracy, convicted (so to speak) in a mockery of Due Process and Constitutional Norms, and the true criminals -- the people who have obviously broken laws, engaged in a conspiracy to do so and in the process shit all over the cherished republic they claim to be "saving" -- can escape their just desserts.
For now, anyway.
What we are seeing is a revolt of a mostly self-selected elite against the masses of people -- to whom it is nominally responsible, and upon whom it depends for it's position -- the elitist perceives as a collection of inferior breeds.
To begin, we need to examine two important concepts. The first is the concept of Hierarchy (any system of beings or things ranked one above the other), and Managerialism (the application of managerial techniques to the running of an organization). As briefly as I can describe then:
Hierarchy is the single, most-prevalent system of organization that we know. It exists in every aspect of Nature that we can perceive. Beehives and anthills, pods of killer whales and prides of lions, flocks of birds with their pecking orders, and human beings, all adhere to Hierarchical systems of organization. Simply put, there is a division of society into a pyramidal structure of the High, The Middle and the Low. Historically, there has never been another sort of human organization, ever.
The three groups ultimately have different goals and interests, although they can band together and cooperate where interests coincide, but these are usually little more than momentary alliances of immediate utility. In short, generally, the goal of the High is to retain their position and privileges that come with it; the goal of the Middle is to exchange places with the High (often enlisting the help of the Low in order to do so); the goal of the Low is to eliminate the distinctions between High, Middle and Low and erase all distinctions between people, although in practice what this usually results in is the High and Middle (theoretically) being pulled down to the Low's level, with the Low never achieving their primary goal or improving their general lot in life.
This is because the High and the Middle owe their position (and thus, their claim to the system's rewards) within any Hierarchy to two fundamental and unalterable principles -- these would be competence and utility. The goal of any hierarchy is to achieve it's aims quickly and efficiently; the incompetent do not aid in this quest, and those who can add no useful effort towards this achievement are both quickly weeded out of the Hierarchy. They become The Low by default.
(This, incidentally, is why the political left exists -- because there will always be useless and incompetent people, and if they don't at least have the appearance of a voice in public matters, they'll only riot.)
Managerialism implies (because when James Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution, he was concerned mainly with politics, but the theory can be applied very liberally to all human endeavors) that all of our experiences in Life, but particularly in the areas of business and government, are perceived through the lenses of competing Hierarchies. That is to say, that once you are born and go through the process of life, you don't find yourself attached to a single hierarchy, but instead find yourself connected to a variety of hierarchies and many of them will have opposing goals, methods and means.
You are born into a Hierarchy. This would be "a family". As you grow and begin to take your place within society, you come into contact with other Hierarchies -- social, educational, economic, professional, political, religious, and so forth.
So, all of society is basically a series of competing Hierarchies, each one arrayed against or teamed to many of the others in constantly-shifting alliances that are all dedicated to the achievement of their own goals.
In something of a philosophical/organizational tango, however, the two principles -- Hierarchy and Managerialism -- often merge and begin to function within a single system. The culprit here is complexity.
Throughout history we see that as society becomes more complex the demands for organization and efficiency rise in proportion. Every new technological advance, every new social revolution, scientific discovery, change in population and distribution of wealth, industry and resources, creates a new set of problems. As any system becomes more complex, the more-difficult it becomes for those at the top of the Hierarchy that runs it to know, in detail and with certainty, what that system is doing. There simply is too much going on for a single human being (or even a small group of human beings) to know what is happening at any given time.
At the bottom of the Hierarchy, a similar problem arises. As the system becomes harder to navigate, branches out into new arenas, new techniques are applied, those at the low end similarly cannot make sense of what is happening to the system as a whole. As an example, it would not be difficult to imagine that a factory worker in the early 20th century would have no idea what the accountants and lawyers the system had accumulated during it's growth were doing, and vice-versa. Or even care.
The system simply becomes too big for the greater mass to understand.
And so arises the Middle Level, generally regarded as "specialists" and "experts" in the minutiae of running the system, Here, we're concerned with the effect on government, but it is easier to visualize the system in terms of a business.
In a business you have four types of people: Executives who are responsible for guiding the business to profit. Managers who are responsible for making the business efficient so that it can be run at a profit. Workers who do the work that generates the profit. And then comes the fourth layer, the administrators, who do not work on the factory floor, they do not set policies concerning what the business does or how it produces anything. They exist rather to enforce policies, ensure compliance with law, market goods and services, do the book keeping, interact with the press, academia or government, and arise simply as a means of solving practical problems that cannot be solved by traditional labor, nor by executive action.
Think of them as technical specialists -- lawyers, media people, advertising specialists, Human Resources directors, research chemists, academics, pollsters, marketing specialists, finance experts, and so forth. They do little to no productive work -- they don't usually make anything of value for sale -- but they come into existence as the company grows, comes into contact with more of the market, or comes into contact with government.
And that last part, "comes into contact with government", is the important part.
The more any system grows the greater the possibility it will, eventually, run afoul of government. And when I say "afoul" I don't mean because the system has done anything inherently wrong or illegal, but because it has effects on the rest of society that often need to be regulated. As American society and business expanded, government expanded alongside, ready to rule, regulate, enforce, examine, etc., what was happening everywhere. Sometimes just-in-case, but more often for the purposes of taxation and coordination.
Eventually, you can't do anything without coming into contact with the legal system, the regulated market, or some (usually dumbassed) government regulation, or merely a bored Congresscritter or bureaucrat looking for some way to justify his position.
The same process evolved within government. As the needs and scope of government increased, so too did the need for specialized labor that dedicated itself to often arcane and exacting fields of study, regulation and organization.
The Modern CEO no more runs his company than the modern politician runs your government. Both are too remote from the center of "production", and thus, not privy to all that happens under their purview. The system has become too big, too unwieldy, and comes into contact with too many areas of American Life for even 535 members of Congress and a President to effectively manage. Unlike the Hierarchies of the past, The High no longer exert control. That privilege has been usurped by the specialist Middle. The High now simply choose between options provided by that specialist Middle.
The days when a Carnegie, Rockefeller, or Morgan might actually know all of his employees by name (or at least by face) and have even a passing knowledge of their functions and tasks, disappeared under a haze of complexity. The days when a Congressman might have provided more-personal service to a constituent, likewise, have gone. These functions have now been surrendered to a nameless, faceless, bureaucratic mass that doesn't do much which is technically useful, but without which the very nature of complexity swamps the ability of any organization to do much of anything, productive or not.
The key to the power of this Middle is coordination.
With the advent of better technology and communications, it has now become technically feasible to organize a society within an inch of it's metaphorical life. And if we look back to our little discussion of competing hierarchies, it is now also technically more-feasible for particular hierarchies to exert levels of control -- to achieve their aims, even in the face of opposition -- than ever before.
The vast Middle, which owes it's position to the idea of control over chaos, is no longer, in a real sense, a group of competing hierarchies. Since most will owe their (very good) livings to the (shotgun) marriage between Public and Private Sector they don't see themselves as members of "teams" so much as a single class. Why shouldn't they? They perform similar functions; they often come from the same schools; they have the same ultimate goal -- to extract a living from other people doing things that other people won't do, because who in his right mind would concern himself with the minutiae related to the dimensions of an airliner seat? Or spend his days pouring over vast lists of figures related to wool production relative to international trade agreements? Who the fuck wants to learn Hindustani or Bantu just to spend endless weeks negotiating over the color scheme of the background at next year's (useless photo-op) "summit meeting"?
I'm simplifying a great deal, but this is literally what these people often do "for a living".
Coordination is paramount: public opinion must be shaped; harmonizing the efforts of various government bureaus and contractors is necessary; foreign support and agreement must be obtained; the whole thing needs to be publicized; laws and regulations need to be written and enforced; reports (that no one will ever read) must be generated to keep oversight at bay. If you have these powers, it becomes easier to control the society around you and so advance the priorities of your Hierarchy, while eliminating or delaying the advance of other Hierarchies arrayed against you.
The real boost this system got were the results of two World Wars and the Great Depression.
The Depression created a groundswell of demand that government "do something". As a result, we got the proliferation of government agencies, disguised as Works and Relief projects, which swelled the ranks of the Middle. Their effect was marginal in terms of recovery from the Depression, but it all worked out just fine for the people who created, administered and organized them.
It was said that the people FDR had collected around him "came to Washington to do good, but stayed to do well." And that was not far from the truth. The very sight of them "doing something" was often enough to give the impression that government was on the side of the Little Guy and had a desire to see to it that the country emerged from bankruptcy, but we can now view most of their efforts as useless. Simple "make-work" projects, lavishly funded by increased taxes and hefty government borrowing that ended up as hefty paychecks for the people tasked with administering those programs.
(Although, to be fair, some of them had unintended benefits. The TVA and dam-building of the 30's had the unintended benefit of ensuring enough electrical production capacity, and a grid to distribute it, to make the great industrial effort needed to win the Second World War -- and the atomic bomb -- realities.)
The First, and especially the Second, World Wars were a godsend to this Middle.
The efforts and level of coordination needed to raise, train, equip, transport, and supply huge armies overseas required the closest possible joint efforts between government, industry and public. The First World War saw this occur in a way never seen before in America; the Second World War would result in something similar, but differently-oriented.
The totalitarian governments of the Axis powers (and even an ally, like the Soviet Union) had taken the idea of competing Hierarchies and Managerialist principles to the maximum degree. The new organizing principle of these regimes was complete coordination of every aspect of human life in service to The State. Just a cursory study of Nazi policies shows to what lengths Men might go to achieve their aims, right down to defining acceptance into a Hierarchy based on blood, genetics, and bumps on your head, to the slaving of private industry to the needs of War instead of commerce, and the organization of mass deportation and industrialized murder on an incredible scale.
To defeat the Nazis, you had to become the Nazis...only "better" Nazis.
The Middle that was in place during the Depression took to this task with the same zeal they did to their old ones. The Middle expanded as more and more of American life became coordinated with, and subordinated to, the war effort. The government was now rationing food and consumer goods; it was directing that appliance companies now make fighter planes and pistols; it was taking commodities off the market, restricting travel and communications, monopolizing transport. It was pouring out films, books, magazines, radio programs, to condition public opinion; it was cooperating to an heretofore unknown level and closeness with it's counterparts in foreign countries. It was imposing rules and regulations under the state of emergency that previously would never have passed Constitutional muster, and which even the most-reckless of politicians would never themselves suggest.
And because the Allied side at least retained the old notions of free speech, the right of the citizen to negotiate the terms of his military service, and was still affected by old notions of liberal democracy and common decency, it managed to become more effective Nazis than any German, because it retained flexibility: it reacted to rather than stifled dissent; it learned from rather than arrogantly ignored it's mistakes; it was not (yet) totally infected with a sense of it's own superiority.
The Second World War and it's attendant problems of international security and economic recovery, and the need to defend the West in the coming Cold War, entrenched this New Middle..
Forever, they thought.
But nothing is forever.
Some will tell you that the reaction to Donald Trump is simply the reaction of sore losers. That it is a bunch of spoiled brats taking revenge against someone who promises to ruin their cushy lives of advancing by fucking up, producing nothing of value, and being paid very well for it. Others will tell you this is "all politics", They would all be partially right. Those elements certainly exist in the resistance to and actions taken against Trump.
There is a more accurate explanation, however.
What we are seeing is the entire fabric of on older regime and system being unraveled one thread at a time. The Rules on Everything -- foreign trade, national finance, the legal system, immigration, The Welfare State, public education, industrial production, environmental regulations, foreign relations and diplomacy, military structures and aims -- are being renegotiated. They are being renegotiated because they are no longer useful. Where once they existed to manage complexity, they have only managed to introduce more of it, and in the process, foster still more complexity and mayhem.
And so long as the Associate-Deputy-Assistant-Director for Potted Plants and Vending Machines at the Department of Education, or the Undersecretary for paper Clips and Staplers at the Department of Defense, or the Special Adviser to the President for Eskimo Computer Literacy at the Department of Commerce, or even the Special-Assistant-Deputy-Assistant-Representative for Poison Oak, Ivy and Sumac at the Department of the Interior could be expected to do nothing about the mayhem swirling around them besides either adding to it or making useless symbolic gestures in it's general direction, all was fine with the world of the Middle.
S/he drew a good paycheck, had gold-plated government bennies, wasn't expected to be particularly successful at their job, and didn't give a flying fuck if it ran Reagan's America or Stalin's Russia (those at the top of the political hierarchy are always temporary -- they come and go, but the bureaucracy is forever), since his/her main task -- the goal of their Hierarchy -- is to maintain and advance the current state of affairs that benefits them.
The "movers-and-shakers" cannot do without them; the general public does not know who they are or what they do; and they bridge the gap between these two states of ignorance to make themselves -- and the legions just like them to follow (AOC is not a blip on the radar: she's the vanguard of a newer-dumber-more-entitled Middle) -- indispensable, and in fact, the true rulers of society, with the power and means to apportion rewards (to themselves) and penalties (to their enemies) as they saw fit.
They, in effect, Managed Government and Society and by having direct access to the mechanisms of government (access and liaison) and distribution (regulation), decided winners (themselves) and losers (everyone else) according to their needs and whims.
Those days are now over.
Because after decades of abuse and mismanagement, we have a country $20-plus trillion in debt; we don't win wars, anymore; our streets are overrun with criminals, illegal aliens taking up jobs, housing, and public funds, and homeless mental patients roaming free, shitting in the gutters and killing at random; the legal system no longer protects individual rights but concerns itself with punishing those who dare offend the Middle. The Middle did not even try to hide it's disdain for everyone else.
Lois Lerner was not an anomaly. Jonathan Gruber was not an aberration. Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch were the very definition of corruption and indifference. Ron Klain the primary example of the career political operative who hopped between political appointments and private lobbying, getting wealthy, but doing little else but contributing to the fraying of the American Fabric. Samantha Powers and Susan Rice were the visible, oozing pustules that signified the disease (internationalism) infecting American foreign policy that had turned it from an instrument of national benefit to one of national decline.
The Political Hierarchy vomited up it's losers, as well: Anthony Weiner was the epitome of the self-centered, entitled apparatchik. John Kerry showed that the only talent he ever had was marrying his dead friend's wealthy widows. Debbie Wassserman-Schultz managed to expose the left's real intentions through sheer incompetence and mismanagement. Joe Biden is the poster child for dumbfuck. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with their "What difference does it make?", "Bitter Clingers", "Basket of Deplorables" and "you can keep your doctor, if you like your doctor" were not outliers of some extreme position. They were voicing the real belief systems and plans of the extreme Left, or rather, the extreme leftist Middle embedded in government and it's attendant institutions.
The public demanded better. Unfortunately, it got Donald Trump. But even this, the Overlord must concede, is an improvement.
And Trump doesn't give a fuck about their Hierarchies, nor does he care for their style of Management, and the threat he represents to the Middle is the replacement of their way of life with systems much more to his liking. Being a businessman, Trump is used to giving orders and getting effective and efficient results. Four generations of Middle unused to working hard, being clever, doing anything effectively or efficiently, let alone economically, and being rewarded for being fucktards, fear him more than they would a double-strength, simultaneously-delivered AIDS and Ebola bomb shoved up their collective ass.
And this is why the Conspiracy Against Trump consists largely of career bureaucrats --the FBI, DoJ, CIA, NSA. Hillary may have lost (another) election to (another) man she claims wasn't qualified to be president, but she can delude herself into running again (and getting donors to pony up). Barack Obama may be out of power, but he was never really into doing the job, anyway, and just took it to get his name in the history books (unfortunately for him, it will not be celebrated) and stick it to the White Guys. Both Clinton and Obama may have even directed some or all of the conspiracy in the hopes that some of their nastiest shit will never see the light of day, but then neither one is that smart, that Machiavellian, or that involved (that's what the Middle is for, you see?) to have been "the masterminds".
Like they had been trained by years in government (Clinton) or by extracting a living from government in academia or by Affirmative Action (Obama), they understood the Old Rules of the Game: if you need someone to "do something", leave it to the "experts", and then either accept the laurels or deflect the blame afterward. It's not like anyone will ever be held accountable.
It is this New-and-improved-in-methods, but-dumber-than-fucking-horseshit Nazi that is at the heart of this matter, It is fighting for what it sees as it's class prerogatives and privileges, to maintain a system of (mis-)management that suits it's needs perfectly, and which sees the continuation and expansion, not the contraction and taming, of it's Hierarchy as it's primary goal.
It is even exhibiting the Antisemitism of the Old Nazi Party when it's other adjuncts and adherents -- the black Civil Rights crowd, the Academy, the media, the mayors and governors with wannabe ambitions, the Community Organizers, the feminists, Antifa Stormtroopers, the "activists" of a thousand stripes, all members, at length, of the Middle who make their livings by the same methods -- stand by and say or do nothing when their allies attack Jews, or when the results of their policies -- like mental patients and known felons released from jail for frivolous reasons -- walk into a rabbi's home with a machete and stab five people, or cops are ambushed in the street in the name of some of convoluted vision of "Justice".
They don't care. The checks keep coming in, they still live in the better neighborhoods away from the Unwashed Masses, they are shielded from the consequences of their actions and the specter of accountability and responsibility is something others have to fear, after all. They are the only Master Race. Because they think they are and because they have managed to implement a tyranny (of trannies?) that no one else ever dared to.
And, again, like the Nazis they are emulating, this group will stop at nothing to restore it's continued dominance over government and society, with the ability to dictate thoughts, tastes, policies, activities and beliefs by their very omnipresence and their perceived untouchability, and complimentary ability to crush dissent by abuse of power.
This is not a political issue; it is really a CLASS ISSUE.
The only defense against this sort of asshole is to make certain those who got caught pay dearly for what they have done, as an encouragement to the others to either leave of their own volition or to keep their heads down very low, indeed, because they can never be reformed.
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