Essays in Idleness

There are two principal political parties in modern America (in which I include up here). In the Natted States, the population is divided roughly equally between those of “progressive” and “regressive” habits of mind; in the Canadas, the former have come to dominate.

The tipping point was reached much earlier up here, and the new “metapower” (Foucault’s term) was seized, politically, from within the Liberal Party. The strategy was to disenfranchise the “conservative” half of the electorate, by undermining all national institutions, and hosing down Canada’s previous identity. I’d count, say, 1982, as the point of no return. That identity was replaced, definitively, under a revised Trudeau constitution, with a new “multicultural” identity, in which citizens were themselves redefined, from free persons whose rights were inalienable, to interchangeable clients of an omnipotent State, which could dispense rights whenever it was in the mood — and withdraw them whenever the mood changed; however frequently.

This is the Democrat strategy in the larger, and still less amenable, country next door. As Andrew Breitbart and Antonio Gramsci might agree, this is an essentially cultural process. Politics are visible at the tip of the iceberg, but “progress” requires a more thorough “cleansing,” of old cultural norms. The cancer metastasized more from Hollywood, than from Washington DC. The takeover of the Democratic Party as the vanguard “agent of change” was only part of the institutional takeover of America. As important was the takeover of the mass media, and even corporate boardrooms. Those who weren’t “progressive” would now be “cancelled”: must cease to be.

All cultural change has a religious dimension. The Democrat representatives of the “powers and principalities” mentioned by Saint Paul, are characteristically godless, themselves. But they depend on a massive, core constituency of low-information, low-intelligence, easily manipulated urban voters.

Those who can still see the stars at night tend to remain in the ancient, God-fearing default. In the cities, where the masses may not grasp that milk comes from cows, let alone that someone must milk them, the belief that the economy is based on government cheques is more common. That is the god of the populous cities, and for most city-dwellers, not voting for their “godless god” of progress, seems a kind of heresy.

The idea that such heretics should be deprived of their freedom, starting with freedom of speech, does not appeal to the “rural” voter, including people like me — a “country hick” type who paradoxically lives in the city. The idea that laws and constitutions should be flexible, to accommodate the latest schemes of a progressive technocratic élite, doesn’t flourish among us country bumpkins. But to the efficiency experts in the city, what is our problem?

For the city folk are tolerant. It wouldn’t be a problem if the bumpkin constituency would just stop trying to express itself; if people who voted Trump would keep it to themselves, and stop wearing red baseball caps. (They should wear Batflu muzzles instead.) But they won’t cut it out. They exhibit appallingly bad taste, and that is why they must be suppressed. “Unity” requires “diversity” — i.e. strict conformity, and unwavering obedience to ideological commands.

The means used were hardly legitimate, in the old-fashioned sense of consistently legal, but these Democrats now control all the levers of national political power in America. Moreover, election rules have been, and will be, systematically “reformed,” to remove the risk that they will ever be defeated again. They now have the votes in Congress to alter whatever they please.

While I have long been opposed to mobs — an urban phenomenon — I can understand the frustration of some Republican voters. Even kittens object, to being sewn into pillowcases, and may not appreciate the argument that they are being dipped in the river for their own good. Perhaps that is why, somewhat feline myself, I am less outraged than most city folk when they are accused of using their claws.