My early impression this morning has been that a lot of Americans are feeling a little shell shocked from the naked display of super-legality exhibited by President Biden in last nights speech. Ripping one’s opponents is a mainstay of electoral party politics, for sure. However, this apparent move to virtually declaring all out war, all but criminalizing the 70-plus million Americans who have thrown their hats in with Biden’s political opposition, seems unprecedented for a regime that fancies itself a liberal democracy in spirit, and a federal republic in fact.
However, Americans just don’t pay enough attention to their northern neighbour. (Yes, substack spell-checker, we spell it with a u.) For over half a year now Canadians have been experiencing a similar move to virtual criminalization of Prime Minister Trudeau’s opposition, not only accusing his opposition — in the form of “anti-vaxxers” — of threatening social well-being and literally the lives of “our” children, but openly questioning how much longer Canadians should “tolerate” such people.
Leaving aside for now the question of whether Biden and Trudeau are anything more than sock-puppets or poster boys, as the avatars of the ruling class their recent rhetoric indicates that the managerial class is removing the gloves, as they say. It’s bare knuckle time, kids. The fact is, there’s always been a paradox deep at the heart of these managerial class regimes that fancy themselves beacons of popular sovereignty — whether formally so in the U.S., or informally so in Canada. This paradox is revealed in that within such regimes, on the one hand, the “people” are promoted as the virtuous fount of sovereignty, legitimacy and democratically expressed wisdom; while, on the other hand, the very same “people” are despised as the festering, deep-seated repository of irrationalism, atavism, and bigotry.
In the past, this paradox has been successfully papered over by managerial class ventriloquism. That technique though doesn’t seem to be working as well any more. Perhaps we’ve reached the limits of managerial class rationality. In a classic 1950s science fiction film, I think of as a continental cultural cooperation, since two of the top three billed leads were Canadian, Forbidden Planet, we eventually learn that the ancient Krell people achieved the ultimate of rationality, by turning themselves into pure, disembodied, mind. What they hadn’t counted on though was this unleashing of pure mind would also unleash their darkest impulses. In the words of Walter Pidgeon’s Dr. Morbius, they unleashed monsters from the id.
I suspect something like that is how the ruling faction of the managerial class is feeling about now. Since the late 19th century they have ushered in a world of mind boggling technological achievement — from combustion engines to lightening speed communications, with the promise of AI and transhumanism just around the corner. From their perspective, we should all be part of the great new hive mind, basking in the rapidly approaching singularity. And just as it seemed they were on the pinnacle of their great technological achievement, the populist monsters from the id have risen up to challenge their accomplishments, their value assumptions and their rule.
As I’ve been saying for over a month in this substack. The new populism is an existential threat, it is the managerial class’s monsters from the id. They’ve papered over the paradox at the heart of their liberal democratic mythology with managerial class ventriloquism apparently as long as they can. Expect naked super-legality from here on. And we’ll be here, doing our theoretical best to make sense of it as it happens. So, if you haven’t yet…please:
And of course, please:
I took a trip to Sam’s Club this weekend. Leaving my little elite/managerial class tech boom community and heading 15 miles to the real world. As I looked around the Mall parking lot and the surrounding community, I saw low-middle income families with their old gas powered vehicles living what had been for decades considered the American Dream. Buying the large scale treats/candies, picking up cheap toys and clothing that is characteristic of Sams/Costco. There’s no way of knowing how these people vote or even if they vote. Looking around at them, I wondered if the managerial/elites are aware that there is a huge world of people out there who could not care less about their pie in the sky agenda (green energy, white supremacy, etc.) I just don’t see these people adopting this stuff. These folks only briefly touch up against social media and when they do the marketing agenda of the woke corporations isn’t relevant to their world. I’m reminded of the Amish communities that interact with “the English” . For the most part, they dismiss the “English” values and utilize their innovations only when their found to be meaningful to the work at hand. I just don’t see how the managerial/elites infiltrate this huge swath of the world that has clearly tuned them out.
Brilliant! Reminded me of: "the moral order, when suppressed, reasserts itself as an avenging monster in the midst of the chaos and suffering of cultural revolution."
from https://www.fidelitypress.org/book-products/monsters-from-the-id