STUPID INDEED BUT MOSTLY VICIOUS
The opposite of vice and stupidity is Curtis Yarvin. I highly recommend visiting his website. Yarvin provides the best analysis I know of the kind of regime we live in – a distributed oligarchy that he names “the Cathedral.”
Yarvin is also an enthusiastic supporter of a monarchic form of government. Mostly, he justifies it as the only form of government that can amass enough power and focus to replace the current disappointing oligarchy.
I agree with Yarvin, who is a much smarter man than I am, on most things. I do have two issues, however, with elements of his thinking – a small one and a big one.
The small one is that Yarvin, I feel, has a blind spot when it comes to republics. He often refers to Aristotle’s eternal categorization of humanity’s systems of government – monarchy, oligarchy, democracy – but ignores both Aristotle himself and most of all Cicero (in De Republica) and their identification of republics as a “mixed” system of government, where elements of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy all reside together in a sort of balance.
Why do we have to have a monarchy? Why can we not restore the republic? Yarvin argues the most common form of government during the span of mankind’s history is a monarchy. Perhaps, but mankind’s most successful civilization, the Anglosphere, has mostly been governed by limited monarchies and republics. Yarvin may have a persuasive answer, but I am not aware of it. I myself wrote about republics here, here, and here.
My bigger issue is a bit more interesting and probably means that Yarvin is not only smarter but also a nicer person than I am.
You see, Yarvin and I come from a similar background. Sort of. I’m an immigrant and he is obviously not. But we are both Gen-Xers whose defining era was the techy and optimistic 90s; we have both launched ourselves into the midst of the American elite through good schooling and a career in tech or corporate America.
As a consequence, we have both dwelled amongst and interacted with the American elite – sometimes as members of it, sometimes as covert aliens, sometimes as banished heretics.
Yet somehow we’ve developed opposing impressions of the elite. Yarvin, on several occasions (for instance here and here), including his famous Tucker interview, has been very kind to America’s Brahmins. “They are my people, they are good people!” he exclaimed at Tucker, arguing they, the elite, are but misguided apparatchiks who could otherwise be harnessed towards constructive purposes.
I think they are demonic.
Sure, you may find the sporadic deluded midwit wine mom planting a BLM sign in her yard just to be “cool;” or the cynical careerist middle manager who declares his pronouns to be “He/Him.” But by and large America’s liberals, not their hordes of illiterate minions, but the Brahmins Yarvin easily absolves, are a shrieking Stygian choir.
Get in their minds. Understand their psychology. What kind of person looks at ordinary people, their heritage, their ancient way of life and systems of meaning, and screeches in contempt, “Racists!” If we targeted such judgment at the denizens of Papua we would immediately be declared bigots unfit for polite society.
Yet America’s liberals gleefully excoriate, attack, and dismantle everything ordinary Americans find worthy of meaning: The traditional family, faith, gender roles, the congregation, America’s history and place in the world, America’s heritage as an Anglo-Western nation, America’s scientific prowess (“Math is racist! Waa!”), America’s building names! Is there any American tradition the Left does not wish to deconstruct?
In my book, this is called bullying. The person extracting a sense of joy and self-assurance from the humiliation of another, weaker person, is a vile bully. It is also a demented cult of purity. The more Michelle from Deloitte and Lee from McKinsey manage to distance themselves from middle America – from those they deem toothless gun-toting Walmart shoppers – the more social credit they get.
Remember, the flagship movement binding this nefarious coalition is BLM, a vicious blood libel against America, so failing the test of any statistical analysis, one would have to be retarded, brainwashed, or vicious to support.
The late Roger Scruton called this the “Cult of Repudiation,” yet repudiation is only part of it. This is a blasphemous trinity of repudiation, cruelty, and purity-striving. In this sense, the term “Brahmins” really fits – America’s elites distance themselves as “pure” from the Walmart masses below.
Golda Meir, my favorite Israeli Prime Minister, famously quipped after meeting with the Israeli chapter of the Black Panthers, “They are not very nice people.”
So no, these Brahmins are not nice people either. They are the Host of Hades, bat-winged imps and screaming Furies from a Lovecraftian hell with the stench of a thousand open graves.
I guess I’m not very nice either.
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