Our World War Educated Rulers

world champs in world war

A couple of weeks back I wrote about the Three Ages of Liberalism in “Fukuyama, Discontents, and Humpty Dumpty.” I wrote:

First is the Age of Ideas, when a new educated class was creating a cultural space for the educated middle class in a feudal world that only valorized Those Who Pray and Those Who Fight. Hey, whatabout Those Who Think? That's what classical liberalism was all about.

And a grand time was had by all. But then came the age of putting ideas into practice.

Second is the Age of Revolution, when the educated class transformed its ideas into political power in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. They replaced titles of nobility with titles of credential, Dr. Jill Biden. Democracy, baby!

I’m inclined to think that, in the next age, the Age of the Commoner, we will have a Clause in our Commoner Constitution banning the grant of any Titles of Credential.

Third is the Age of Supremacy, when the educated class ruled the world and imposed its ideas -- at enormous expense in lives and treasure -- on the lower orders, in their own best interest, of course. That's what presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, and liberal democracy were all about.

As I think about the Age of Supremacy of the educated class, I think its characteristic feature is World War. I know it is naughty of me, because all the world knows that the global educated class is committed to Peace. Maybe so, but I just feel that here in the United States our educated rulers have, since the turn of the 20th century, been addicted to World War.

First there was World War Warm-up. That’s the Spanish-American War to you. Yes, it was a minor thing, from April to August 1898, but you gotta start somewheres. So, under pressure from the Democratic Party, President McKinley decided to teach the Spanish a lesson.

Then, of course, there was World War Kaiser. The Great War, they called it, back in the day. Stupid War, I call it. Mind you, I get it. After being humiliated by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, why not get the Brits and the Russkies into a Triple Alliance against the emerging German Threat. And if you are a former college president, why not get your name up in lights as the President Wilson that “made the world safe for democracy.”

Next up, there was World War Hitler. Due to the cunning of President Wilson in punishing Germany with reparations in the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles, Germany was mad as hell and elected a hellish madman to restore the dignity of the people that had invented modern philosophy and modern chemistry and modern physics. Only the genius of President Roosevelt to put the madness to rest, but not without the deaths of 6,000,000 Jews in Nazi death camps.

Then came World War Commie. Really, if the United States could teach Germany a lesson, why not teach Russia a lesson too? Anyway, with the help of the military-industrial complex the United States held back the Commie hordes and in the end the Communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics went the way of the Roman Republic.

Then it was time for World War Fossil-Fuel. See, ever since Winston Churchill switched the Royal Navy from coal to oil in the early 20th century, the wiser heads of the world knew that we had to keep the lid on the crazy rag-head Muslim mullahs in the Middle East. Else how could we wisely govern the world? Of course, the mullahs didn’t really appreciate this wisdom and so they decided to cut the World Trade Center off at the knees. Then followed 20 years of teaching the mullahs a lesson and the Afghani Taliban teaching the US a lesson. Fortunately the world is going off fossil-fuel because saving-the-planet, so that’s all right.

Now we are in World War Climate-Change. You see, the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 0.03% to 0.04% since the industrial revolution puts the world in existential peril. So trillions of dollars must be spent on wind farms and solar power, coal and gas power stations must be shut down, cars must be electric-powered, and little kiddies in Third World countries must be put to work mining lithium for electric batteries. And if the CO2 threat isn’t big enough, there is the methane threat, with methane concentration at the dangerous level of 0.0002% of the atmosphere.

And then there is World War COVID. What a blessing that was for educated credentialed experts, to print trillions of money, lock-down, mask-up, vaxx-a-gogo, regulate up the ying-yang. Most educated experts go to their grave before getting a chance to order millions of people around.

Hey, don’t forget World War Race. Experts agree that the world — and especially the United States — is wilting and dying under the systemic racism of its White Oppressors, and all good people are determined to fight as Allies of Oppressed Peoples and defeat the hegemony of the White Oppressors.

And if that doesn’t work there is World War WEF. The brilliant vision of Germany engineer Klaus Schwab sees a post-national world that has Built Back Better from the disaster of the COVID pandemic with world leaders trained at future-leader boot camp run by his World Economic Forum.

It really is a lot of fun for our advanced educated ruling class to have managed all these world wars so brilliantly over slightly more than a century. Of course, every ruling class keeps a sharp eye out for enemies, and leaps to defeat them whenever they raise their cowardly heads above the parapet. But experts agree that the modern educated class is second to none in its devotion to the art and science of World War.