Isegoria

Mencius Moldbug reserves the right to refer to red-staters, collectively, as Amerikaners:

Like their lexical analogues, the Amerikaners are a cultural group of European stock, but their present-day traditions cannot be easily connected with any group in modern Europe. We cannot say this of the Universalist Eloi of the coasts, whose connection to the English Dissenters and their secular, liberal heirs has been continuous since day one. For example, American traditionalist or “fundamentalist” Christianity, which is nominally Protestant but seems almost Catholic next to the thoroughly Quakerized blue states, has historical roots which are quite obscure and thoroughly American.

His question is, When will the Amerikaners decide that they’ve had enough?

Sixty (60) percent of American voters call themselves “conservative.” Voting as an organized, disciplined bloc, it should be straightforward for them to defeat and destroy the remaining 40 — let’s say 20% Eloi, 20% Morlock. Moreover, if such a majority demands a comprehensive reconstruction of government, not just a cosmetic change among a few ceremonial officials who have no real executive authority, the Eloi and Morlocks can hardly resist them. Especially since the American military class is, almost by definition, Amerikaner.

In retrospect, any such reconstruction would be accepted by all, of whatever caste. The Eloi will see the light, as they always do. As Osama put it: they like the strong horse. In an Amerikaner republic, Eloi will elbow each other out of the way to eat overpriced American food, wear marked-up knockoffs of American prole clothes, live in actual old American buildings, etc, etc.

Of course the Eloi already do these things. But in our New Albion, they will do them with flags, God and guns. (Possibly even Confederate flags.) And the Morlocks will be forced to deal — as they already are. (Although once the bar is reset, I suspect that less force will be required.) [...] And Sarah Palin will put together a small edition of her family’s wise old Alaska sayings, bound in red, white and blue, which fits nicely in the lapel of your blazer.

You may, or may not, be thankful that this is not going to happen. It is not going to happen because the Amerikaners are not organized enough to make it happen. Given infinite time, they will certainly get organized, which is why I say “when” rather than “if.” But time is not on the Amerikaners’ side. Their horse has been weakening for the last century.

The Amerikaners’ problem is that they’re governed by their enemies, the progressives, who have converted democratic politics into a reality show and rule through the extended civil service. The civil service is nominally responsible to the elected arms, but the latter would have to put up a terrible fight to even touch them. And progressives fight the peril of a “populist” democratic reaction with two slow, but inevitably lethal, strangulation tactics: subsidized progressive education, and Morlock voter importation.

The last quasi-successful Amerikaner reaction was the “Return to Normalcy” of the 1920s. Considering the royal ass-whupping the Amerikaners have been taking since then, “normalcy” (which, in classic Amerikaner style, is not even a word) is an awful mild description of the converse. But not even a gentle, Harding-Coolidge style restoration is a real possibility today.

The fatal flaw in the democratic mind of the Amerikaner, or “conservative,” is that he believes that his country’s political system basically works and is the best in the world. It has just gone slightly off the rails in the last few decades. But it can be set right with a minor corrective operation, ie, replacing a few ceremonial officials with good, clean-minded, child-bearing Amerikaners.

This belief system, which has no correlation with reality, is at the heart of “conservatism.” It shows no sign of going away. The fatal allure of insisting that right-wing conservatism is really the true democratic liberalism, the other having strayed, is an irresistible anglerfish lure. (The Rev. Dabney will set you straight.)

Therefore, the Amerikaners are unlikely to organize and act effectively until their electoral position has declined to the point at which a democratic restoration is not only nontrivial, but in fact impossible. At this point, USG [the US government] will have imported tens if not hundreds of millions of new Third World residents. It will be obvious that military government is the only route to any kind of American restoration. The inevitable alternative is a North America indistinguishable from the rest of the Third World.

Have you been to the Third World? The armed forces will have to act. Let’s hope they can all get it together to be on the same side.

Mencius Moldbug has refined his previous five-caste definition of the American social spectrum down to three castes — Eloi, Morlocks, and Proles — and has declared Sarah Palin the proletarian candidate:

You see, the so-called “Democrats” (whom, here at UR, we call the Inner Party) and their purported opposition, the supposed “Republicans” (or Outer Party) have completely different beliefs about the nature, purpose, and function of the office known as the “Presidency,” for which they appear to contend. As usual, the IP is right and the OP is wrong.

To the IP (obviously, also the Eloi-Morlock Party), the so-called “President,” ie, the player whom callers help select in USG’s quadrennial reality show, is hardly a temporal position at all. It is really more of a spiritual office. The Roman pontifex maximus is a fine analogy. I also admire the phrase “bully pulpit,” which I feel could be used a good bit more.

For the IP, for example, the ideal “President” would be Nelson Mandela. But there are obstacles — St. Mandela, for instance, is not an American citizen. At least not in the strict technical sense of the law. Fortunately, our evolving standards of justice may at some point in the future, when we are more spiritually advanced, enable us to overcome this barbarous discrimination. When Archbishop Obama says that “the walls between the countries with the most and the countries with the least cannot stand,” perhaps he actually means it. Who knows, with such a great man? Certainly a good first step would be for a Federal court to realize that Mexicans are actually, in fact, Americans. (It’s not like they were born in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia or Antarctica.)

But obviously the most sacrilegious possible desecration is one in which an actual, practicing Prole is appointed, by some awful cosmic mistake, to the hallowed post of “President.” It’s basically like having a porn star elected Pope. Even as candidate vice-Pope, it’s way too far. The purpose of the White House is to teach the Proles that it’s wrong to be a Prole, and they need to stop. Now. I mean, duh. Ideally, the LORD would let America know at once of her mistake, and send Hurricane Gustav straight up the Mississippi to demolish the polyester-Americans and their so-called “convention.” (Which, frankly, could be mistaken for a multi-level marketing conference. At least if all you look at is the hair.)

Meanwhile, the OP (or Prole Party) has a completely different view of the “White House.” To the PP, the “President” is the CEO of America.

This illusion can only be sustained by people who either (a) have no idea what Washington is or how it works, or (b) do, but conceal it for their own political benefit. Collectively these individuals are known as “conservatives,” and they make up the right side of your radio dial.

(The radio cannot be adjusted beyond this built-in band. But it can be turned off. Please do not vote for, contribute to, or otherwise support the Outer Party. Outer Party politics is not effective against the Inner Party. Please forward this message to all your Avon subscribers.)

The truth is that the White House changes its entire nature as an organ of government when it changes between Inner and Outer Party control. An Inner Party presidency is simply a different institution from an Outer Party presidency. They are apples and oranges.

When the Inner Party is in, the Presidency is a vestigial organ. It would be a fun experiment to actually abolish the White House for four years. The results would be more or less the same. Every agency in Washington would function not only just as well without the existence of the President, but in fact much better.

For example, my mother was at DOE in the Clinton era. In the renewables area — she did a good bit of work for Joe Romm. Once I asked her what Sched Cs (political appointees) did under Clinton, and she said: “they got a nice office, and they were told to work on whatever they liked.” Indeed the main difference between Inner Party candidates is (a) whether or not they can win, and (b) the set of people among whom they will distribute the Plum Book.

A ceremonial presidency is perfectly consistent with Inner Party values, which stress that “politics” is bad and “public policy” is good, and the two should be stored separately — for more or less the same reason that sewage and wine are not shipped in the same tanker truck. As so often, the IP is exactly right about this. Except for the fact that the word “democracy” occupies the highest possible position on the mental totem pole of the Inner Party mind. If I could explain this, I might still be a believer.

(Moreover, the contradiction itself is a nice bit of misdirection. It points the marks away from inquiring into the nature, ingredients, and origins of the sausage called “policy.” But I digress.)

When an Outer Party man becomes “President,” he soon finds that all his efforts are devoted to solving the essentially unsolvable problem of preventing his name from becoming a historic byword for pure, infamous villainy. Maybe not quite like Hitler or Attila the Hun. But certainly like Mussolini, Richard II, Nixon or Ivan the Terrible.

The basic problem of the Outer Party in the White House is that, with minor exceptions such as the Pentagon, its mission is essentially one of preventing the rest of Washington from doing its job. Or at least what it thinks its job is. The military, of course, is an Outer Party shop, and can always be sent on bloody, expensive and counterproductive ticket-punching adventures. The rest of our permanent government, the civil service proper, is Inner Party to the bone. In fact, perhaps the best way to describe the Inner Party is as the party of the permanent civil service.

Which holds far more power than the White House. The While House can prevail or even contend only in the vast minority of conflicts with the permanent civil service. It is not good for the polls. When an Outer Party presidency’s approval sinks below 40% or so, it is defeated, and the agencies he supposedly “leads” ignore the “President” and all his handlers, cronies and contributors. Since polls are a function of public opinion, public opinion is fabricated by the press, schools and universities, and the latter are perma-pwned by the Inner Party, the resulting barbecue is too inevitable to be really entertaining. It’s best just to play along.

Example: for most of 2008, GWB might as well have been the prime minister of Namibia for all the influence he’s exerted over US foreign policy. Cheney probably wishes he was the prime minister of Namibia.