The Old Era is Ending

and nobody knows what comes next

In Britain they are having a general election on July 4. Experts agree that the Conservative Party will be demolished.

In the US we are having a general election November 5. Experts agree that anything could happen, even that the Democrats’ pedal-to-the-metal anti-Trump lawfare may blow up in their faces.

(And wouldn’t that be something. Every ruling class needs to learn that the point of things like law and due process is intended to limit the power of the ruling class. And make it really hard for a ruling class to use its power to neutralize the opposition.)

The Brit situation is historically important because the Conservatives are the sole survivor of the Tory vs. Whig binary that defined British politics after the Dutch invasion of 1688 that the new ruling class called “The Glorious Revolution.” Bless their hearts. The Whigs became the Liberals in the 19th century and deflated in the 1920s as the workers and the intellectuals switched to Labour. The Tories became the Conservatives in the 19th century and now they are like to expire in the upcoming general election. As the Brits say: “past their sell-by date.”

To be replaced by what? Obviously, by a populist middle-class party. It may inherit the Conservative Party or it may start from scratch or it might empower the current Reform Party. But anyway, Nigel Farage is the face of populism in the UK as Trump is the face of populism in the US.

And in the US? The Republican Party is already a populist middle-class party. Who knows what the Democratic Party will end up as. But I am sure it will be racist. It always has been.

Why is this happening? Because the rule of the educated class is in its autumn and the leaves are falling off the tree.

Put it this way. After World War II the educated class in Britain implemented national systems of pensions, health care, and education. In the 1980s Thatcher put the brake on spending and lowered tax rates. So the economy flourished for a season. But there was no real reform of the educated-class agenda. Britain still has national programs for everything as proposed by Royal Commissions and administered by the educated class, and the system is almost, but not quite, broken. Meanwhile the educated class, primarily through Labour but also with the acceptance of the Conservatives, is implementing the next exciting episode of educated-class rule: The War to Save the Climate. Guess what: the ruling class will lose the War to Save the Climate.

After World War II the educated class in the US ramped up the 1936 election winner, Social Security, and after a 20-year pause courtesy of General Eisenhower, implemented national health care for seniors and the poor, and national welfare and national college education. In the 1980s Reagan put the brake on spending and lowered tax rates. So the economy flourished for a season. But there was no real reform of the educated-class agenda. The US still has national programs for everything as implemented whenever Democrats had a decent majority, and the system is almost, but not quite broken. Meanwhile the educated class, primarily through the Democrats but also with the go-along-to-get-along Republicans, is implementing the next exciting episode of educated-class rule: The War to Save the Climate. Guess what: the ruling class will lose the War to Save the Climate.

I say that the way to understand the situation is through Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s notion of the political as the distinction between friend and enemy. To be Real Simple, there is no politics without an enemy. Our rulers have two enemies: the nightmare of climate change and the nightmare of racist-sexist-homophobes. A century ago the two enemies were robber barons and German emperors with crazy mustaches. But that was then.

Why is this? I say it is because of Gaetano Mosca and The Ruling Class. Every ruling class has a “political formula” and our ruling class formula is that it fights for the oppressed against the oppressors. Back in the day the oppressed were the workers and the oppressors were the employers. Today the oppressed are blacks and LGBTs and the oppressors are far right white settler colonialists and populist nationalist politicians. Because that formula is not quite enough to provide a complete moral framework in the educated class, this political formula is augmented by the existential fight to stop climate change. What is interesting to me is that this existential peril should be understood as a religious belief, that we humans are evil sinners that are despoiling the Earth and going straight to Hell. Unless we repent our fossil-fuel sins and are saved.

Yes, but experts agree that DEI is essential and NetZero is needed to save the planet! Sorry, Charlie, but “experts agree” and “scientists agree” tell us nothing. The government-adjacent experts and government-funded scientists are merely the bribed apologists of the regime. And why wouldn’t they be? There is money and status to be had by repeating ruling-class slogans in the public square.

Meanwhile the ordinary middle class just wants to live an ordinary life. Ordinary people have always wanted to live an ordinary life. Down the ages. And that’s been a problem for ruling classes. Down the ages.

And that is why ruling classes need to take over the public square and suppress contrary opinion and censor and marginalize opposition and whip up a Narrative of Fear whenever it decides that it wants to go to war. Of course, very often, due to ruling-class mistakes and incompetence, war threatens us because the pride and the incompetence of our rulers has whipped up a coalition of powers against us. Or the ruling class policies interfering with the market and ordinary people living their ordinary lives has wrecked the economy and the ruling class searches for an enemy to blame for its own mistakes. Failing that there is always the End of the World.

OK. Let’s suppose that the educated ruling class in the UK is stumbling and bumbling. And surely it is a proof of God’s existence that the US is presented ruled by stumbling, bumbling President Joe Biden. Why? Let’s remember that the US is the last best hope of mankind on Earth. So of course God would be sending us a Sign that things have got to change.

But why? What’s the problem? Why would the world’s most educated class since time began be facing The Autumn of the Educated Ages, and stumbling around not knowing what to do, other than unleash the Wokies — which is actually worse in Britain right now than in the US because we have a First Amendment and the president gets to elect Supreme Court justices and other little things that God has provided for the last best hope of mankind on Earth — on ordinary people that just want to get on and live their lives?

It’s because the modern educated ruling class sits in an impossible position. Per Carl Schmitt its job is to fight enemies. But ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution, when the importance of food-growing land began to fade, ruling classes have not really had genuine enemies that threatened their food-growing land. Adolf Hitler was the last chap to say that his people needed Lebensraum in Eastern Europe so they could grow their own food. So, time after time, they have had to make it up.

This was made obvious in the Napoleonic Wars, when France went rampaging all over Europe to prove that France deserved to rule the world and discovered after 15 years that it didn’t. But did the victorious coalition take over the sacred earth of France and erase France and the French? It did not. It just sent Napoleon Bonaparte to St. Helena, a tiny island in the Atlantic, and life in France went on.

Then Bismarck created the German nation from its various statelets and principalities, winning wars against the Danes, the Austria-Hungarians, and the French. And after it was all over, Denmark was still a thing, Austria-Hungary was still a thing, and France was still a thing.

Anyone paying attention? Of course not. So the educated classes had to have World War I, between Germany and France and Britain and Russia, and latecomer to the party the USA. And after it was all over, Germany was still a thing, Austria was a new thing, Hungary was a new thing, France was still a thing, and Russia was now the Soviet thing.

But World War I wasn’t enough to cool the jets of the educated ruling class, so it reprised World War I in the greatest War of All Time, World War II — just so that J. Robert Oppenheimer and his pals could make an atomic bomb and President Truman could blow up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And after the war Germany was still a thing, though cut it two, France was still a thing, Britain was still a thing, Russia was still a Soviet thing, Japan was still a thing, and the US was the thingiest thing in all the history of things.

Do you see the point? Why didn’t all these ruling classes just cool their jets and let ordinary people live their lives and buy automobiles and air conditioning and See the USA in a Chevrolet and travel around the world in a jet plane where they didn’t bother anyone? Why didn’t the rulers just go play their silly power games off in a dark place where the sun don’t shine and do their power thing without bothering anyone?

Good question. Any comment, dear ruling class?

No reason, not really. Except that rulers gotta rule, and there is no politics without an enemy, and if there is no enemy the rulers will just make one up out of whole cloth.

Let’s suppose that our educated ruling class friends really are heading into autumn, and a new ruling class characterized by Farage and his pint and Trump and his hair. What then?

I think that what we need to do is make politics into sport. With nation leagues battling for the Super Bowl or the World Series instead of World War III. Or maybe it just requires an ordinary middle class to step up to the plate and tell every ruling class with its latest idea for a nice little war to cool its jets and go put it where the sun don’t shine.

Maybe, just maybe, we could get a ruling class that does what the ordinary middle class wants it to do. Just let ordinary people live their ordinary lives and have all the nations of the world compete to see who will Occupy Mars first.

Maybe we could start with the populist nationalist party of the UK challenging the populist nationalist party of the US to a Race to Occupy Mars. With the winner getting to name the first base on Mars after its first populist Prime Minister or President. And if the Chinese sneak in and get there first, they get to name the base: no harm no foul.

And the captain of the expedition that creates that first base gets to win the first Elon Prize.

OK. Enough of the fun and games. The point is that we are living through the end of an era; the old politics is breaking up. Something new is on the horizon.

But, to be honest, we don’t have a clue what will happen next.