Revisiting Politics as War World

trying to make politics shameful

It was only last November, 2023, that I launched my Three Worlds concept upon the world: the War World of politics and activism; the Abstract World of the market economy; the Life World of the family and neighborhood.

I like it. I especially like the idea of War World, that anyone in politics, in the ruling class, in activism, is instinctively drawn to conflict and domination. As Horkheimer and Adorno write in Dialectic of Enlightenment:

What men want to learn from nature is how to dominate it and other men.

I think that any hierarchical institution, including a church, is drawn to conflict, domination, and hegemony, because hierarchical organizations mimic the organization of an army, and a hierarchical organization needs a goal.

That’s why management consultants all want their clients to have Vision Statements and Mission Statements.

• A vision statement is aspirational and expresses your brand’s plan or “vision” for the future and potential impact on the world.

• A mission statement is a simple statement about the goals, values, and objectives of an organization.

These statements help put the employees on a war footing.

I think that if you see the world of politics through my War World lens it helps you understand it better. I had an example experience with a recent post of Richard Hanania. He thinks that conservatives are dumb.

Conservatism has a human capital problem… The issue is not simply that Democrats win over college graduates. More importantly, the disparity is much more extreme when you look at those in the idea generation space, namely education, journalism, academia, activism, and the arts.

What he leaves out is that the “idea generation space” is politicized, and politicized by people that believe that politics is the royal road to justice. If you want justice then you need to pursue political power so you can impose your justice on the world.

But I say that politics is War World; if you are into politics you are into war. And I say that “politics is the royal road to injustice.”

Thus, the problem for conservatives, and the ordinary middle class in general, is how to dial back politics so that it is limited to arresting criminals and discouraging would-be world saviors, and that it does not crown its devotees with status and power.

But what do we do with the people dominate us and that Hanania calls

High-Status, Low Pay (HSLP) professions, where intelligent and hard-working people make less money than they could elsewhere but instead get compensated in status and power.

The point is, I think that the HSLP people are like the gentry class in 19th century novels. They check the boxes, get to the right schools, get appointed to comfortable sinecures in the government / cultural / regulatory / activist space just as the 19th century gentry class got to be state-church priests or members of parliament or army officers back in the day.

But the really “intelligent and hard-working people” are the ones that try to build new status and opportunities in the venture capital and startup world.

For me, the people that go into “education, journalism, academia, activism, and the arts” are followers not leaders. And frankly, I haven’t seen a good idea come out of any of those places in my lifetime. Today they are all woke monasteries, and you’d better not mess with the Book of Common Woke.

Perhaps what is needed is a sea change in educated culture so that ambitious educated people think of careers in “education, journalism, academia, activism, and the arts” as jobs for dumb bunnies. And politics as shameful.

After all, there was a day when a military career was universally respected. Today the military is universally reviled, except perhaps for the educated manipulators in the “intelligence community.”

I say that One Fine Day, politics and activism will be reviled and politicians and aides and staffers and regulators and activists dismissed as “not quite out of the top drawer.”

Imagine if all high status people knew that if you are into politics and activism you are an addict of War World and liberally a war monger.