Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 8:57pm

The non-Deplorables’ Revolution (1932-????);
A Contemporary Jeremiad

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?…The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”—Hillary Clinton, Democratic Fundraiser, 2016.

INTRODUCTION

In these days of uncertainty it’s hard to be optimistic.  I apologize for introducing even more reasons to be gloomy, but better to be aware of what may be than to stumble into it unaware.

Here is our contemporary Jeremiah:  Angelo Codevillo, Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute and emeritus Professor of International Relations at Boston University.   He’s written an article, Revolution 2020, that outlines the revolution of the oligarchy against the deplorables.  What is this oligarchy?  Codevillo implicitly defines it as government (deep state) allied with the industrial establishment, academia, all the familiar villains.   Codevillo’s thesis is summed up in this quotation from the article:

“Our revolution is by the ruling class—a revolution from above. Crushing obstacles to its growing oligarchic rule is the proximate purpose..But the logic that drives the revolution aims at civilization itself.” Angelo Codevillo, Revolution 2020.

It’s a long article and takes some effort to go through in toto.   What I propose to do here is to summarize the important points and illustrate them with quotations from the article.  I hope this will be a sufficient teaser that readers will go to the original.  (By the way, the featured illustration  is a painting of the Baltimore Riots that occurred during the Civil War, highly relevant.)   So, let’s start off with origins.

WHENCE COMETH THE PROGRESSIVE OLIGARCHY?

“In the 20th [century], the notion that good government proceeds from scientific expertise, as well as the growing identity between big business and government, fostered the growth of a single nationwide Progressive ruling class. Between the 1930s and the early 21st century, the centralization of administrative power in this class’s hands did much to transform the American republic established in 1776-89 into an oligarchy”.—op.cit.

I won’t give the details of how this oligarchy came to be.  Go to the article for that.   More important is that this oligarchy, in addition to ruling, wishes to establish a code of values (values contrary to those envisaged by the Founding Fathers) that everyone should follow.  If they don’t follow these, then they are morally culpable, evil.

“As its members’ powers grew, they developed a taste for disdaining independent Americans and acquired whips for punishing them.”—op. cit.

THE DEPLORABLES ARE EVIL

Where has this disdain and imposition of pseudo morality come from?  From academia, who have trained politicians and media stars.  Despite a greatly increased funding for public and higher education, the academic class does not confer benefits on this country:

“By any measure, the increases [in funding] have been huge. These were supposed to uplift Americans intellectually and (maybe) morally. But they have dumbed down the nation to the point of mass illiteracy at the bottom and, at the top, created herds of ignorant, haughty, debt-ridden college graduates, fit only to enforce government edicts against Americans they despise. But the money also built up and entitled a class of monied, entitled, self-indulgent educrats—mostly administrators. U.S. college towns nowadays are islands of luxury, ease, and hate. They act as the ruling class’s gatekeepers”—op. cit

And the presumed moral superiority of the “Progressive” ruling class requires that those who disagree be labeled as inferior, both intellectually and morally.

“…the Progressives’ affirmation of superior worth, to be pursued by exercising dominance: superior identity affirmed via the inferior’s humiliation.” Affirmation of one’s own superiority by punishing inferiors is an addictive pleasure. It requires ever stronger, purer doses of infliction, and is inherently beyond satisfaction..In short, the Progressive ruling class’s intensifying efforts to oppress those they imagine to be their inferiors is not reversible. It is far less a choice of policy than it is the consequence of its awakening to its own identity—awakening to the powers and privileges to which they imagine their superior worth entitles them. It is awakening to its deep resentment—indeed, to hate—for whoever does not submit preemptively.” [emphasis added] op. cit.

LEGISLATION AND RULES TO IMPOSE MORALITY

Codevillo gives an extended discussion of legislation and administrative rules that have been used to impose Progressive notions of morality, in many cases laws and rules that violate the intent of the Constitution for equal protection under the laws.

“Thus, willy-nilly, the Act [the 1964 Civil Rights Act] established what U.S. law quickly recognized as “protected categories” of persons. This negates the American republic’s bedrock: “all men are created equal.” It invited whoever perceives himself disadvantaged or dishonored to construe himself part of such a category and to invite the government to discriminate against his foe. As government joined in some people’s quarrels against others, government became fomenter and partisan in endless strife.”

This act,  worthy at its inception in 1964, now includes a variety  of presumed victims, and thus yields a client base for the ruling oligarchy.   Moreover, today’s communication channels act as agents to serve that client base and to tie it to the oligarchy:

“…the revolution of the ruling class requires inducing them [the clients] to share in the revolution’s logic of hate for its targets. This in turn requires control over channels of communication. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are indispensable for this. But creating and maintaining a sense of identity between oligarchs and the client mobs is possible mostly because of the latter’s gullibility.

THE FUTURE?

Codevillo is not optimistic about the future.  He outlines two scenarios, one in which Trump is re-elected, one in which the Democrats win control of the Presidency and Congress.   Even if Trump is re-elected, this will be only a blip in the course of the Revolution of the Progressive Oligarchy.  The public has been dumbed down too much to counter the propaganda of the oligarchy.

“For the ruling class, the electoral problem is that the intersectional coalition’s actions and demands have made far too explicit that crushing Donald Trump is only incidentally its objective—that crushing the spirit of independence in America’s “deplorable” population is its essential objective. How many Americans are willing to join the privileged ones in confessing their neighbors’ sins in exchange for the hope of being counted as “allies” of the folks doing the real oppressing rather than among the real oppressed? How many are happy that their company’s H.R. department now decides promotions, demotions and firings regardless of professional competence? Do most Americans really believe that the authorities ought to have the powers they exhibited during the COVID affair, and do they see the “mostly peaceful protests” as part of a brighter future for themselves?”—op.cit.

WHERE IS HOPE?

This last part is my own opinion.   By nature I’m a pessimist.  There’s no pony under the pile of horse manure in the barn, the glass is half-empty rather than half-full, etc..  But lately I’ve come to believe that there is a larger scale to history than just 10 or even 100 years.   The Celts who bade goodbye to the Roman soldiers would not see that Land of Hope and Glory that was to come many centuries later.    The Christians in the Balkans persecuted by the Turks would not know of the battles of Lepanto and Vienna.   The Jews herded to Auschwitz would not know of an independent state of Israel, where a Jew could be a Jew (or not).

God has his own designs, so that what we see as disaster may be a step to a brighter future. We can only pray

“… that God still looks after fools, drunks and the United States of America!”—Don McClarey, private communication

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GregB
Saturday, September 26, AD 2020 9:04pm

I saw a word used recently that describes the ruling class progressive oligarchy. The word is kakistocracy, a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Sunday, September 27, AD 2020 12:37am

Evil ultimately defeats itself leading one to be a near term pessimist and a long term optimist. This is the underling reason for believing in God. We all know evil is wrong even when it wins. We have our own personal experience to confirm this truth.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Sunday, September 27, AD 2020 6:19am

“How many are happy that their company’s H.R. department now decides promotions, demotions and firings regardless of professional competence?”

Truth! I just want to ask – does anyone here really think that a person should be promoted in a nuclear engineering field (or aerospace or medical or petrochemical or whatever) where public health and safety are paramount just because that person is a woman, or black, or gay, or Muslim? Really? Imagine a person qualified as reactor operator or ballistic missile technician on a nuclear submarine just because she’s a black lesbian woman, and there are too many white men qualified and not enough minorities! Now do that with a control room supervisor of a 1000 MWe nuclear power plant just a few miles from a major metropolitan area. Or a pilot of a 747 jet aircraft. Or the engineer of a diesel locomotive whose rail cars are carrying tanks of toxic or flammable liquids like molten sulfur, chlorine, ammonia and petrochemicals. Or your doctor about to operate on your heart. There is no group of people stupider than liberal progressive Democrats. But sin makes you stupid.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Sunday, September 27, AD 2020 7:45am

First, thank you for this review Bob Kurland. Great teaser.
Secondly, a reminder of the suffering, worn out and diseased troops at Valley Forge helps me to fight off pessimism. Trump is no George Washington however he is with the troops…the deplorables.
On the grounds of our Police department we prayed at noon, huddled around a mast that supported our first Presidents hope’s and dreams. A rectangular cloth made up of red, white and blue.
At out gathering was four Catholic Priests, Chief of Police, a State Trooper and thirty or so patriots.

An optimistic group.

Hold Fast.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Sunday, September 27, AD 2020 7:55am

Sic Semper Tyrannis

It’s natural for oligarchs to fear and loath the people.

Life in China Joe’s America:
See Powerline blog, 26 Sep, “In the video below, filmed in Hollywood, a Prius driver is stopped by a mob of Antifa/BLM criminals. They try to haul him out of his car, but he gets away. They pursue him in multiple vehicles, and pickup cuts him off. Again the criminals try to assault him, and again he saves his life by driving away. The video ends with the victim being arrested and handcuffed by the police.”

Trump 2020 or else

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