The Blog

2021-

2021-08-22 d
THE STATE OF THE DISUNION IV

For our elite, the fall began during the tail end of the Bill Clinton presidency when Democratic Party strategists augured that they’d soon have a permanent hold on power thanks to urban intellectuals, young single women, racial and ethnic majorities, and the LGBT community. What is described as a coalition is in fact a mélange of clients with varying and sometimes opposing interests that can only be held together by stoking a communal hatred of the national majority—the white middle class.

It was hardly a coincidence that this demographic was the source of the wealth that the establishment was busy transferring to themselves and abroad, through initiatives like the North American Free Trade Agreement. The elites rationalized their impoverishment of the white middle class by claiming that they were dying anyway. And when the American heartland didn’t die off quickly enough, the establishment credentialed themselves as progressives by calling the people who live there racists. Being racists, they deserved all the bad things the elite had decided for them. Thus, by betting on sectarianism as the path to permanent power, American elites polarized the United States.

The elite institutions that weren’t already part of the left establishment, like entertainment, the academy, the media, and the foreign policy and national security bureaucracy, were co-opted through party initiatives—as, for instance, the Beltway think tank Center for a New American Security vetted the rising ranks of U.S. military officers.

Owning all the institutions is a sign of great power and demoralizes opponents. So it was hardly surprising that much of the Republican establishment attached itself to the rising elite and reshaped its policies to fit. Take George W. Bush for instance: After 9/11 he invaded two Muslim countries for revenge and deterrence, but in time he changed the mission to promoting Middle East democracy, a pet theory of pro-Palestinian academics. When Sen. Mitt Romney marched with Black Lives Matter, and Gen. Mark Milley advocated for critical race theory, they were simply demonstrating that they had adopted the manners and belief system of the dominant power. The only problem with owning all the institutions and compelling obedience from all the elites is that there is no one left to warn you when you’re courting trouble.

The elites upended the common wisdom of American politics, which held that the trick to winning elections is to capture the large center of the country and ignore the extremes on both sides. But because the new creed held that polarization was the key to holding permanent power, the policies became ever more eccentric. Thus the Democratic Party disciplined the sectarian mob by making sure it backed all of its initiatives without question. Further, it kept the coalition coherent by focusing its rage on the internal enemy, which identified itself anytime it questioned those initiatives. Here were the racists again, raising their ugly voices against progress.

Accordingly, Barack Obama’s rhetoric became increasingly brittle in his second term. If you’re not for trans bathrooms, you’re a transphobe. Question the wisdom of legitimizing a terror state’s nuclear weapons program and you’re a warmonger. “That’s not who we are,” he said to deflect any hint of criticism. Depending on the policy in question, this meant that according to the ruling establishment, anywhere from 50% to 90% of the electorate wasn’t really American.

Seen from this perspective, it becomes clear that the Biden administration’s new national security priorities have been a long time in the making. The absurd claim that the country’s chief threats are “domestic terrorism” and “white nationalism” or anyone who opposes COVID lockdowns or questions the integrity of the 2020 election is the culmination of a project the Democrats embarked on 25 years ago: The white middle class is the enemy. And they are much larger than the nearly 75 million Americans who didn’t vote for Joe Biden—they include anyone who fears having their businesses closed again or doesn’t want to be forced to take a vaccine. And as we have seen, many of them are neither white nor middle class.

Of course institutions like the press and intelligence bureaucracies would enlist in the project to split the country. The party owns them. And so there is no one left to question the wisdom of breaking with the more than 150-year-old compact that is the political and cultural foundation of America’s post-Civil War peace—racial equality. And there are no institutional elites left to ask whether it’s a good idea to purge the combat ranks of the U.S. military by targeting “white supremacism.” America’s all-volunteer military is 43% minority, but the majority of its combat units are made up of white males. So why purge them? To make America vulnerable to foreign adversaries? Maybe the elites are more fearful of the domestic cohort still armed with a powerful group solidarity—i.e., patriotism—and most likely to defend what the elites are determined to destroy.

It’s frightening to see American leadership pulling America apart at the seams. And it’s shocking to see our constitutional order ripped to shreds as the establishment undercuts property rights, imposes capricious public health regulations, mandates experimental medical treatments, and holds political prisoners. But the lesson of Ibn Khaldun is that these destructive policies are simply indications that a cycle that has been repeated through the ages is once again in motion. To watch history erupt in our own timeline is indeed terrifying, but it is part of the natural order of human societies.

“Their prowess disappears as Time feasts on them,” Ibn Khaldun wrote of dying regimes. “They reach their limit, the limit that is set by the nature of human urbanization and political superiority.” Evidence of the establishment’s decay is everywhere you look—the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the public health bureaucracy’s failed (response to a fake COVID pandemic], even Obama’s 60th birthday. Who would publicly celebrate leadership of an effort to split a nation on behalf of a sectarian gang that is only kept from each other’s throats by driving them at a much larger force, one made more cohesive and angry by the elite’s incessant attacks? Only a deracinated and delirious regime would parade an assortment of celebrities from the worlds of entertainment and politics to demonstrate its self-arrogated superiority in front of a nation it locked down, bankrupted, and mocked—only an intoxicated elite with no one left to take away the car keys.

By definition, the numbers are always against elites—they consist of small coteries of leadership and their needy retinues. The success, indeed survival, of any elite depends on its ability to cultivate and maintain group solidarity.

— Lee Smith

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