Sometimes I think that I’m a bit of a naughty boy to reduce politics and government to the simple notion that politics is all about the enemy, and government is all about handing out loot and plunder to the supporters.
But really, as you cast a philosophical eye over the doings of our Democratic friends under the magnificent leadership of President Joe Biden, what else is going on?
Ever since Joe and the Democrats got into power in January 2021 — 14 days after January 6. A day. That will live. In infamy! — they have been passing gigantic spending bills, trillions and trillions of spending. For people knocked out of work by the pandemic.
For “equity.” For clean energy.
And then, of course, we have the trillion dollar proposal to forgive college loans.
And just this week, President Biden announced that all people convicted of marijuana possession are going to be pardoned.
What can you call all that except “loot and plunder.” Vote for me and you’ll get your share of the loot.
But, of course, the Bidenoids are also going pedal to the metal on the enemies front. There’s the January 6 effort to paint all Trump supporters as enemies of the state.
There’s the National School Boards Association that wanted the Feds to pursue protesting parents as “domestic terrorists.” (But Attorney General Garland never, no never, called parents domestic terrorists, swear the fact-checkers on signed copies of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals).
There’s the deployment of FBI SWAT teams to arrest pro-life parents for violence against customers of abortion centers.
There’s the SWAT raid on President Trump’s Mar a Lago residence, and the SWAT team arrests of prominent Trump associates.
I’m reading Citizens, Simon Schama’s history of the French Revolution. I’ve got to the point in 1792 where the Austrians and the Prussians are threatening the eastern border of France, at cities whose names echo down the centuries: Metz, Verdun. This was just the excuse the revolutionaries needed to start indiscriminate arrests and executions of suspected enemies: priests and whatnots. And the Reign of Terror. Of course! Because Enemies!
See the point? Gotta have an enemy. Just gotta.
And when a political movement is ten points down, and inflation is raging and the Fed is raising interest rates and gas prices are going up and there’s a recession on the horizon and there’s a midterm election coming up in four weeks… And that’s just the little things. Gotta have an enemy.
But don’t forget the big things?
Why have blacks not thrived in the 50 years since the heroic Civil Rights Acts that liberals championed and eevil white racists opposed? We must fight the racist enemies!
Why do we still not have a woman president that all good people want and only sexists and male chauvinists oppose? We must fight the sexist enemies!
Why are we sitting around under the sway of climate deniers while the climate is frying and extreme weather like hurricanes are increasing in frequency and barges on the Mississippi are stranded because of the record low water in the river? We must fight the climate denier enemies!
In Nationalism professor Liah Greenfeld describes five different ways that white Europeans invented the “nation” of citizens to replace the old feudal “society of orders.” But it seems to me that the modern nation, ruled by the educated class, has become a cockpit of conflict ginned up to serve the needs of the rulers to have enemies to fight and to blame.
We need a generation of thinkers to think up a meaning of life, a culture — and yes, a politics — that can rule with a lot less enemies, and a ruling class that hesitates to gin up an enemy in its desperate effort to win the next election.
But where do we start?