Of Course We Are All Fools Heading for Disaster

But exactly when

There’s a frequent theme of non-regime writers that everyone else is a fool and a knave.

Here’s David Cole at Taki’s accusing everyone from Steve Bannon to Tucker Carlson for being an idiot.

Here’s Glenn Elmers at American Greatness worrying about the post-modernists

People on the Right need to get out of their comfort zones and accept that we are living in a new reality—a reality described perceptively by the postmodernist writers of the 20th century.

But then he complains that

For better or worse (OK, worse, by far), our moral-political life today is shaped far more by Friederich Nietzsche than by James Madison.

But you know. I don’t think it matters much. I certainly think that we should all understand what I call the “German Turn” from Kant to Nietzsche to the Frankfurt School postmodernists to Habermas. But right now it won’t make much of a difference.

That’s because whatever we think and write it won’t make much of a difference until the current regime runs out of other people’s money.

Why did Germany become a republic in 1919? And Austria-Hungary, and Tsarist Russia? Because they lost a war or ran out of money or both. Why did the Soviet Union come to an end? Because it ran out of money.

Why did FDR become a demi-god? Because he came after President Hoover who muffed the Crash of 1929 and subsequent bank failures.

Why did the Democrats lose in 1968? Because ordinary middle-class and working class Americans just couldn’t understand what was going on.

Why did Ronald Reagan win in 1980? Because “stagflation” was hurting Americans and ruling-class propaganda about Reagan’s extremism just didn’t matter when prices were going up at 10 percent a year and the economy was going nowhere.

So why could Joe Biden win in 2020? Because the current base of the Democratic Party — educated liberals, single women, and blacks — weren’t hurting enough to abandon ship.

If you want a Republican to win in 2024 then the basis of the win will be that the folks with the #WeBelieve yard-signs will be hurting badly. And blacks will feel abandoned. And ordinary middle-class Americans will be fit to be tied.

Will that happen? We don’t know. I’d say that the economy is cruisin’ for a bruisin’, but what do I know?

And that is true about almost anything.

I’d say that the post-modern movement and the critical theory movement represents a willful misreading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. But what do I know?

I’d say that the “woke” movement is actually a sign that left-wing culture and politics are headed for the rocks. But what do I know?

I’d say that the educated class’s faith in politics as the royal road to justice is guaranteed to Make Things Worse. But what do I know?

I’d say that the Biden pedal-to-the-metal spending on climate change and systemic racism is a gigantic mistake that will rebound on Democrats for the next couple of decades. But what do I know?

You see the problem. There are all kinds of people out there saying and doing real stupid things. But whose stupidity is going to make the critical difference?

All I can say is that we will all know. After it’s all over.