The point of urging lawlessness

America has a ruling class problem

The American elites are one vast social networking scheme that subsidizes each others' projects, arranges regulatory variances for one another's fiddles, places family members at elite universities and the top-tier banks, law and consulting firms, and reinforces each others' opinions. There is a bit more ideological variance tolerated than in the Chinese Communist Party, but only a bit. -- David Goldman

America has a nobility problem, and it means our leaders don't pay for their failures

Our Constitution forbids the creation of “titles of nobility.”  The Framers thought it was important enough that the prohibition appears twice, once forbidding the federal government from doing it, and elsewhere extending the ban to the states. ... 

Charles C.W. Cooke, a Brit who just recently became an American citizen, noted the practice of calling former government officials by their former titles and called it "grotesque.” It’s something he discussed in a recent book. 

"By custom, we allow our politicians to retain their titles for life. Throughout the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was referred to as 'Governor Romney,' though he had not been in public office for six years," Cooke wrote. "One can only ask, 'Why?' America being a nation of laws and not men, political power is not held in perpetuity, and there is supposed to be no permanent political class.   

"Americans do not have rulers, they have employees — men and women who can be hired and fired at will and who remain subordinate both to the highest law in the land and to the popular will that it reifies. It is wholly proper for individuals to adopt titles when they have been hired by the people. But it is utterly preposterous for those individuals to retain those titles when their commission has come to an end." 

In principle, Cooke is absolutely right. But in practice, America absolutely does have a ruling class, and a permanent political class, and they seem to be increasingly one and the same. (As Angelo Codevilla writes:  “Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust.”) And like any ruling class, they claim, and possess, privileges and immunities not available to ordinary citizens.

Read the whole thing. Also:

The next time we hear a lecture about caring from a woke Yale professor, or a sermon on systematic racism from a CEO, or more Hollywood confessional video drivel, we should pause and politely ask, 'But where do your children go to school? And why do you live where you live? And dine with whom you dine?' Then remember class, not race, is what divides America—the truth that the upscale white progressive dares not utter.

Connecting dots for Nov. 4

I posted earlier of how the Gleichshaltung is interested in you. Gleichschaltung is a German word that means “coordination.” Politically, it means "to get every institution to sing from the same hymnal." Gleichschaltung is the political modus operandi of the Left, wherever it springs up - Germany, Russia, China, Italy. 

In America today, it is Socialist-Leftist template campaigning to gain and consolidate their power in the 2020 election. And the preparatory "coordination" is going on now. And so some connected dots thereunto:

The Winter of Our Discontent:

One wonders if the unique American experiment in liberty is already too far gone to save. One must wonder if Lady Liberty is just a zombie, unaware she is dead as she wanders the landscape. Many of our elitist punditry class say that our current separation is due to a stark partisan divide – but in my observation, that separation is at a far more fundamental level and when understood, explains much of our current crisis. 

The separation is due to the segregation of Americans into two groups – the first are people who define their political objectives by their principles, the second are people who define their principles by their political objectives. ...

The latter group, those who define their principles based on their political objectives are historically the most dangerous to a system of liberty and they are always the most susceptible to the seductive siren call of collectivism (which includes socialism, Marxism, and communism) because this is the way collectivism works. Collectivism always begins with an objective, then a plan, then total subservience to the plan.

Everywhere the Left has bent to power, it has never demanded agreement with its goals, actions, or requirements. The Revolutionary Vanguard is very happy for you to give those things, but what they absolutely require is compliance, not agreement. 

I explored this in some detail back in The empty abyss of emotions and feelings: Ignorance is power for rule makers.

Not only is there no such thing as Truth, it is unforgivable even to speak as if there is. You have your truth and I have mine, and can't we all just get along? We are almost at the point achieved by the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union, when everyone knew that they were being fed lies and distortions but no one knew how to do anything about it and the price for trying to do so is much too high, anyway.  So everyone went along because they saw no other avenue.

And it's happening right before us: A Racially “Woke” Agenda Is Now Hardwired in Public Schools.

At Santa Monica High School, students organize and carry out “a systematized campaign” for social justice that can take the form of a protest, a leaflet, a workshop, play, or research project. They demonstrate their mastery of the subject matter by teaching about social justice to middle school students. Students at Environmental Charter High School are assigned to write a ‘breakup letter

with a form of oppression,’ such as toxic masculinity, heteronormativity, the Eurocentric curriculum, or the Dakota Access Pipeline. Students are asked to “persuade their audience of the dehumanizing and damaging effects of their chosen topic.” Students at schools in Anaheim, San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco are taught how to write a manifesto to school administrators listing “demands” for reforms. [Italics original]  

Those “ethnic studies” classes are not about teaching facts about history. They’re about casting a certain mindset in students, one that will incline them to activism against Progressivism’s designated villains. Murawski quotes Professor Julia Jordan-Zachery of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who said, “I oftentimes think of ethnic studies as radical social action.” That’s exactly what leftist educators want.

Yes, because compliance is the goal. And it is the only goal.

Changing subjects, let's talk about cell-phone technology. By the always on=-top-of-things David Goldman: 5G policy ‘biggest strategic disaster in US history’

And now, let's talk about money. 

What are the odds the market will crash during your retirement years?

Researchers have devised a precise formula for calculating this possibility

As it turns out, it's a good guide, but it is not "precise." Worth thinking about, though.

What happened to the Babylon Bee? It used to publish funny stuff, not serious commentary like this: Christians Face Clear Choice Between Party That's A Hypocritical Mockery Of Their Faith And One That's Openly Hostile To It.

"It's a really interesting choice," said Christian Tanya Lloyd. "By supporting the Republicans, I'm giving people further ammunition to dismiss my beliefs as an empty cultural pose. At least they like to pretend to be Christian, though, while sometimes it seems like the only thing keeping the Democrats from hunting me down with hunter-seeker drones like from The Terminator is lack of technology."

Always leave 'em laffing department:

And Epstein didn't kill himself.