Following thinkers like Curtis Yarvin I assume that the United States is divided into three parts, the Educated Gentry, the Commoners, and the lower class Clients. But my reader corrects me:
The ruling class or gentry as you call them have nothing to trade aside from providing capital investment. They have no trade. The gentry are not educated in knowledge of value to society. Perhaps we should say they are indoctrinated in a philosophy rather than educated in science. They receive degrees in puffery, pomp, and ignorance.
True. I confess that when I write about the “educated” ruling class or the “educated” gentry I am mentally putting the “educated” in scare quotes.
Because I don’t believe that the vast majority of people with educational credentials in our society are “educated.” Instead they have been trained and examined in ruling-class ideology and faithfully repeat the orthodox opinions they have been taught.
An orthodox society ministered to by orthodox priests is normal, and it usually works. Except when things go wrong.
Let me preach an example. Back in the day, when a ruler went to war, he financed his war any way he could, with debt from merchants and Italian bankers, by debasing the currency, by printing money.
But what does he do after the glorious victory? In the age of the Gold Standard, his advisers executed a policy of “resumption,” revaluing the currency at the pre-war gold price. Experts call this “deflation,” and it really screws workers and debtors like farmers. But it’s great for creditors.
The Brits did “resumption” after the Napoleonic Wars. That’s what the Captain Swing riots and Tolpuddle Martyrs were all about.
The Yanks did “resumption” after the Civil War. That’s what the Crash of 1873, and labor union strikes, and the Long Depression were all about.
The Yanks and Brits did “resumption” after World War I. That’s what the Brit General Strike in 1926 and the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression were all about.
It took until 1944 and Bretton Woods and geniuses Keynes and Harry Dexter White before the Yank and Brit experts figured out not to do “resumption” and deflation after a war.
But really, at the time, who knew what Keynes and White were up to?
Whatabout our own educated ruling class? Well, obviously they are clueless, just like in the olden time. Your Bidens, your Pelosis, your activists, your climate change grant recipients, your Barnacles and Stiltstockings in the regime administration, your regime scribes in the media: they literally know nothing, except the group mind they all instinctively share.
They are all doing what they and theirs have always been doing and they can’t figure out why everything isn’t working out.
What should we be doing to deal with the mistakes of the COVID panic? What should we be doing to avoid chaos in Eastern Europe and Western Asia? What should we be doing to break up the rigidities and the social breakdowns of the welfare state? How should we deal with a resurgent China run by a foolish autocrat? How should we deal with the successive cultish follies on gender? How should we balance the needs of people that want to live creative lives with the needs of people that want to live traditional lives with the needs of people that just want to be told what to do?
Well, to “tackle” all those things you need a real educated class, that has individuals that have really gone off into the desert and thought deep thoughts, and then come back again to tell the tale.
It is my religious faith that such people will eventually emerge. But first, the current educated class needs to be thoroughly humiliated and discredited. Because that’s how the world works.
Thank you for all you teach me. Wonderful article!