Source: Christopher Chantrill
The telling thing about Joe Biden’s acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination last week was what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a ringing call to fight systemic racism and advance the Oriflamme of wokism. It was, instead, mostly an anodyne rehearsal of standard American patriotism, and featured the usual Four Point Plan — okay, Four Crises Joe is going to fight:
The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60’s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.
YouTube screen grab (cropped)
Actually, I predict, in two years comedians will be making jokes about all four “crises.” Worst pandemic? Yeah, since the infestation of Pet Rocks! Worst economic crisis? More like the biggest v-shaped economic bounce in history. Racial justice? Over a career criminal that overdosed himself and died while being restrained waiting for the ambulance? Climate change? Yeah, I get it. That “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” really was the worst thing ever. Imagine, bitter clingers and gun nuts driving needlessly all over the continent! The sooner we put a stop to that, the better.
Biden’s speech shows that even in the depths of Woke Central at the DNC they know that you win elections by appealing to Commoners, and Commoners are interested in a great America where they can work and wive and thrive and build their lives using their God-given talents.
Did I mention Curtis Yarvin’s three-layer theory that modern society is composed of Gentry, Commoners, and Clients (of the Gentry)?
It is orthogonal to the current woke theory, publicized by Matt Taibbi, that society is composed of “oppressed peoples,” their “allies,” and “white oppressors.” This theory is similar to a notion advanced by a German in the mid-19th century that society was composed of “proletarians,” their allies the Communists, and the “bourgeoisie.”
You can see what these last two theories have in common: they license lefty soyboys, ancient and modern, to sock it to the baddies and for their leaders (Fidel) to accumulate fabulous fortunes in the process.
Also, do you see that the oppressed peoples, allies, white oppressors theory is a moral theory that has already figured how the world ought to be, whereas even Chuckie Marx had to explain to his readers in The Communist Manifesto how the proletarians were helpless innocents and the bourgeoisie were monsters, and then in Das Kapital how the science — the science! — agreed with him.
Pity that the day after Das Kapital was published the classical economic science Marx used got superseded by four economists all proposing a Marginal Revolution. How Dare They! Revolution is Our Lefty Thing!
But here is what I can’t get out of my mind after watching Joe Biden’s pretend patriotism. How come it took so long for a guy like Trump to come along and make his pitch squarely at ordinary American Commoners. Really, what took so long?
I think the answer is that, up until the day before yesterday, Commoners were split between the parties. The Democrats were the intellectuals and Southern racists and victims du jour plus some Commoners. The Republicans were the business and professional classes plus the rest of the Commoners.
Not anymore. Now Trump owns the nationalist patriotic America-is-the-best-country-in-the-world shtick, plus one thing more. He is going flat out to encourage blacks and Hispanics to come out of their ethnic enclaves and into the glorious day of self-conscious all-American nationalism.
See, I don’t agree with the civic-nationalist/white-nationalist/whatever-nationalist analyses. I believe that all politics is fake tribalism, a political sales job to persuade people who are not blood relations that they are in fact related. The fake tribe of the modern Victim is the urban ethnic enclave. The fake tribe of the educated Gentry is the global elite. The fake tribe of the Commoner is the nation-state. And once blacks and Hispanics become Commoners, they will become American nationalists; you watch ‘em.
In recent decades blacks have been coming over to the GOP in their onesies and twosies, courageous heroes like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Herman Cain, and now Candace Owens. Imagine what happens when they start coming over in battalion strength. Now you know why the Democrats insist on a Trayvon Martin (2012) or Michael Brown (2014) or George Floyd (2020) event in even-numbered years. Just like our Cold War leaders kept us in line by teaching us to fear the Commies, Democrats keep blacks in line with fear of white police brutality.
Because once blacks start identifying as Commoners, it’s Katy bar the door on today’s Democratic Party.
But that’s okay. They’ll come up with a new shtick. You watch ‘em.
Meanwhile President Trump is implementing a stunning reinvention of the Republican Party into the party of all-American Commoners. And if he succeeds? Oh. My. God.
