Lex Anteinternet: A Primer, Part I. Populists ain't Conservatives, and LIberals ain't Progressives. How inaccurate terminology is warping our political perceptions.

Lex Anteinternet: A Primer, Part I. Populists ain't Conservatives, ...:

A Primer, Part I. Populists ain't Conservatives, and LIberals ain't Progressives. How inaccurate terminology is warping our political perceptions.

Conservatives are not Populists.

Far from it.

Liberals aren't Progressives.

Liberals and Conservatives have more in common, than they do to the other categories noted above

Populists and Progressives share many common traits.

Confused?

We hope to clear that up.  But let's start with this. A lot of commentary, particularly of an uneducated type, keeps referring to Donald Trump as "a conservative", and sadly, a lot of true conservatives fall right into line with that fallacy.  Populists right now continually refer to themselves as conservatives, which is because they don't know what conservatives actually are.

They'd likely be horrified if they did.  And indeed, occasionally they are.

Donald Trump is not a conservative.  He's a populist, or is appealing to them. There's a world of difference. People who figure he stands for conservative values are deeply misguided on this point.  He doesn't.  But in the right/left thin gruel political world we live in, it's slightly understandable how people could be misguided on this linguistic point.

But it's wrong.

Let's take a look at it.  More particularly, what are conservatives, liberals, populists and progressives, the four main branches of what we have around in terms of political philosophies right now.

Let's start with this. What is a conservative?

What is a conservative?

Logo of the British Conservative Party.

At the core of their Weltanschauung, conservatives believe that human nature is essentially fixed, and that it's been fixed by an existential external.  Religious conservatives believe that the existential external is God, but not all conservatives are religious conservatives.¹   Those who aren't, like George F. Will for example, would hold that the existential external is essentially our evolution.²

Because this is the core belief of conservatives, conservatives are strong advocates for the application of Chesterton's Fence, which holds:

Chesterton's Fence:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Chesterton, The Thing. 

This is why people tend to think that what conservatives stand for is not changing anything. This isn't really true, but they are very cautious about it.  Conservatives do not have any real faith that human nature is set to improve, and therefore have a large degree of caution regarding the changing of anything that's substantial until it can be determined why that thing came into existence in the first place.

And they believe that certain things, human nature, as noted, is essentially unchanging. Given this, they hope we all do as well as we can, but they don't have any view of remaking humanity or creating Heaven on Earth.

I'll note, I am, on most things, a conservative.

In most societies overall, except in cultures that are deeply conservative, conservatives are a minority.  They may be a large minority, but they are usually a minority.  The reason for this is that conservatism is, by its nature, somewhat pessimistic.  Conservatives hope things get better, but more than that hope they don't get worse, and often hope that the better is a return to some status quo ante that was less messed up.

Conservatives are nearly always a minority, which is one of their weaknesses, but they are also generally intellectual by nature, which is part of the reason that they are a minority and are comfortable being one.  Conservatives suspect most people instinctively agree with them, but don't know why, and they're comfortable with that as a rule.

A strength and weakness of conservatives is that they are reluctant to change things until its proven they need to be.  Conservatives believe that Chesterton's fence should have a pretty strong latch, or maybe even a keyed lock on it.  That's also a strength, however, as they're much less prone than others to whims of any kind.

Because conservatives do not feel that humans are in control of their natures, conservatives tend to be somewhat pessimistic as a rule, but they also don't except a lot of humankind in general. They generally feel that people are left best to their own devices, but they are not anarchists or libertarians, as they believe that order is necessary and a good.

To give a few examples of recent, more or less, conservatives, we have the following.  Probably, William F. Buckley is the supreme example of a post World War Two conservatives.  George F. Will would be a close second. George Weigel, must less well known, would be a third.

In terms of politicians, we have, currently, Mitt Romney.  Ronald Reagan was a conservative, but imperfectly so.  Margaret Thatcher was another.  Herbert Hoover, who was a much better President than he is credited as being, was a conservative.  Winston Churchill was a conservative, as was his nemesis Éamon de Valera.

To look at some illustrative issues, in the abstract, as politicians and individuals both vary and compromise, we'll take some more or less contemporary examples, and carry them through.

Abortion.  Conservatives oppose abortion as they believe in an external, and therefore don't have the right to destroy a human life without just cause.  This view, I'd note, is not limited to religious conservatives.

Death Penalty.  As a rule, conservatives have tended to support the death penalty, as it's always existed. They are clearly capable of having their minds changed on the topic, slowly.

Gender issues.  I'm lumping this all into one category, but conservatives as a rule feel that homosexuality is a person's own business, but it shouldn't change institutions like marriage.  They don't believe transgenderism is real, as the science isn't there.

Climate Change.  Early on a lot of conservatives were skeptical on climate change, but few would outright dismiss it.  Many were cautious in accepting it, however, consistent with their general reluctance to immediately accept something new.

Economics.  As a rule, conservatives tend to be in favor of a free market, with as little government interference in the economy as possible, basically taking the view that the best economy is one in which people get to decide things for themselves and that overall, the economy is really too complicated for human micromanaging.

Immigration.  Conservatives have been for restricted immigration, believing that excessive rates damage the economy, impact national culture too rapidly, and impact sovereignty.

Defense.  Conservatives are for a strong national defense, as they support sovereignty.  Prior to World War Two they were opposed to that extending overseas, but since the war they've applied the lessons of history and are very much in favor of extending defense beyond the seas, if not necessarily always intervening in foreign wars.  Two give to contemporary examples of this:

• The Russo Ukrainian War.  Conservatives are for supplying aid, and a lot of it, to Ukraine as Russia is a demonstrated enemy of the West and if not addressed will have to be at some point.
• Hamas Israeli War.  While conservatives were actually very reluctant to support Israel in 1948 when it became independent, they've come around to it as it's the only substantial democracy in the Middle East and, accordingly, they feel it should be given the ability to defend itself.

William F. Buckley, who intellectually defined the modern conservative movement.

What, then, are liberals?

What is a liberal?

Logo of the former British Liberal Party, with its color expressing its middle of the road nature.

We don't hear much about liberals anymore.  Progressives, which we will deal with below, have sort of taken over the political "left" in recent years, and liberalism, in a modern context, has weakened, which is a tragedy.

Liberals actually hold the essential core value that conservatives do, that being that there is an existential external that has set human nature. They believe, however, that human nature can be improved, and that it requires collective effort to do that.  Unlike conservatives, who hope we all do as well as we can, liberals feel that we can all be made better.  That's the real difference between traditional conservatives and traditional liberals.

Liberals see the world much the way that conservatives do, but have a very optimistic view of human nature and are certain that it can be improved. The early GOP was a liberal party and therefore, when you consider that, Lincoln appealing to "the better angels of our mercy" makes a lot of sense.  Conservatives would appeal to angels as well, but not "ours", and for help.

Because liberals believe that human nature can be improved, they see government, and the organs of government, as vehicles that can do it.  Therefore, liberals have a lot of faith in the organs of government to basically drag the mass along into an improved state, as they see it.

Right now, however, real liberals and real conservatives are few and far between. That's because we have populists and progressives dominating the field.

In most societies, liberals are the majority.  To some extent, that's because they are optimistic, and tend to believe they can make everything better than it currently is.

Looking at our issues, we have the following.

Abortion.  Liberals generally support allowing abortion up to a certain number of weeks, although this isn't universally true. The intellectual underpinning of this is weak, but is based on the concept that by doing this they're supporting the rights of women.

Death Penalty.  Liberals are pretty uniformly opposed to the death penalty, believing that it achieves no real purpose and is inherently barbaric.

Gender issues.  Liberals, like conservatives, generally used to hold that homosexuality was a person's own matter, if they were subject to it.  They've come to support regarding homosexuality as equating with heterosexuality in recent years on the belief that this improves the living standards of everyone.

Transgenderism is a new thing, but generally liberals lean towards supporting transgender "rights" on the concept that as it seems to occur, it must be natural, and society shouldn't hurt people who express it.

Climate Change.  Liberals fully accept that this is occurring and is a grave crisis, and they want governmental action on it.

Economics.  Contrary to what people like to imagine, conservatives and liberals really have very similar views of the economy.  The difference is really at the margin in how much governmental action there should be in the economy, and what the tax rates are.  If viewed from the abstract, however, tehir views are essentially the same.

Immigration.  Liberals generally believe that all people are the same or can be the same, so they dismiss cultural issues regarding immigration.  They are for controls, but having a desire to improve things for everyone, they're generally in support of a much higher immigration rate than conservatives.

Defense.  Traditionally, contrary to what people like to imagine, liberals have been in favor of a strong defense and also have been quite interventionist.  There are exceptions, but the "improve things for everyone" viewpoint resulted, throughout the 20th Century, in a much higher inclination by liberals to intervene in foreign wars than conservatives have had.  Since Vietnam, this has been much less the case, however.

• The Russo Ukrainian War.  Liberals are very much in favor of aiding Ukraine for the same reason that conservatives are, and also as Ukraine leans towards the west in culture and values.
• Hamas Israeli War.  Most real liberals support aiding Israel, as they've always had a strong desire to support the Jewish state since the end of World War Two.

In terms, again, of recent examples, Robert Reich, who teeters on the edge of progressivism, is one.  Bill Clinton was another.  Nancy Pelosi is another example, as is Chuck Schumer.  Going back a bit further, both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were liberals.  Frankly, Richard Nixon was as well.

A controversial example would be Theodore Roosevelt.  While his breakaway political party was The Progressives, he was a pretty far left political liberal, as was his cousin Franklin Roosevelt.

Franklin Roosevelt, arguably the most clearly Liberal of American Presidents.

What is a populist?

Emblem of the former Populist, or People's Party.

This has certainly been the Age of Populism.

Populists believe that the good is determined by the collective wisdom of the masses.  So unlike conservatism and liberalism which believe that an existential external had defined what human nature is, populists believe that the collective common sense of the people defines that, and that's an existential collective internal.

Because populists believe that, it's a particularly shallow political theory and particularly subject to the storms of the time.  Populist can be, and have been, on the radical "left" and the radical "right".  Indeed, when Trump was coming up in 2016 so was Bernie Sanders, and they both appealed equally to populists.  A lot of the same people who now worship Trump, worshiped Sanders.

Right now, people confuse populism with conservatism as populism in the US stands, as it often has in the past, for an Evangelical variant of the American Civil Religion.  Protestant in its view, it basically holds a very shallow version of Christianity which is mostly focused on sex, and mostly focused on homosexual sex being bad.  Beyond that, it longs, just as it had in the mid to late 20th Century in the South, for a mythic version of American history in which everyone supposedly did really well economically and there were no problems (no drugs, no alcoholics, no mentally ill, no violence, etc.).

Populism has been an occasionally strong current in the American political stream from time to time.  There was, at the turn of the prior century, a Populist Party that existed from 1892 until 1909, and which we should note did very well in Wyoming's elections of the period.  It was, we might note, regarded as a left wing party.

Populism is only popular in a society during times of extreme economic or social distress.  Massively pessimistic in its outlook, Populist always have the belief that they are under siege and are therefore extremely given to conspiracy theories of all type.  They are, accordingly, very easy to manipulate.  They also tend to be given to ignorance, which plays into this, as they believe folk wisdom is the ultimate source of knowledge on everything.  And what it says, is that they're swimming in the shallow end of the pool, quite frankly.

The strength of populists is mass.  They tend to be numerous, when conditions give rise to them.  They also tend to be extremely strong-willed in their beliefs, even fanatically so.

Indeed, that's a weakness.

More than any other group, populists are prone to raging hatred.  As their beliefs arise from a collective mass, anyone contesting them is regarded as a lunatic enemy of the people.  Populists are, therefore, highly prone to tribalism and fanaticism

An additional weakness is that they're highly prone to being led by others.  In Weimar Germany, for example, populists sentiments were heavily reflected in the German Communist Party and the Nazi Party, with some people whipping back and forth between the two.  Rank and file Nazis were essentially populists, even if the leaders were not. The same is true of rank and file Reds during the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, as well as with the Greens.  Communism and Anarchy were mass movements as they were shallow, and made up of "common sense".

As this demonstrates, populists generally actually lack a philosophy, but don't realize it.  They "sense" or "feel" rather than think, and therefore are easily led by those who can tap into that.

A good example of how populist can be easily manipulated into something extreme.  We never "treated" viruses with soup, and we aren't treating them now with "communism".  But the anti-scientific anti-vax movement has attracted populist with the concept of a pass that looked like this, that never existed.

Because of this populists are very easily led by other movements, when a savvy leader comes along and can manipulate them.  And often, but not always, those leaders are quasi populists themselves. Both Lenin and Hitler were.  Franco was not.  Nor was Mussolini.  All were able to lead the masses.

Turning to our set of issues, we have the following.

Abortion.  This is actually hard to say as Populists vary on this to a fair degree.  They all, right now, oppose abortion, but are prepared to compromise on some vague number of weeks if for no other reason that makes it easy.

Death Penalty.  Populists are for it, as its always existed, and for its extension, as the people who get executed seem to be part of an evil "them".

Gender issues.  Populists are very much opposed to homosexuality and transgenderism as they sense its not party of the collective norm.  They share this view with Conservatives, but tend to be nasty and virulent about it, rather than thoughtful.

Climate Change.  Populists just don't believe its real.  The collective group of them doesn't, and therefore individual ones don't, evidence to the contrary aside.  As populists engage in a sort of group think, that's what they think.

Economics.  Populists say they are for a free market economy but have no real understanding of economic issues. They're for protectionism as that protects us against a foreign them.

Immigration.  Populists are radically opposed to immigration as the people who come in are part of a foreign them, and are not part of us. They believe that immigration problems are the result, in some instances, of a conspiracy.

Defense.  Populists support our troops, but appear to have the old William Jennings Bryan view of things, and he was a populist, that troops shouldn't leave our shores.  They are radically opposed to intervention in any war overseas in the belief that none of them matter to us, almost.

• The Russo Ukrainian War.  Populist oppose aiding Ukraine.  Being prone to be led around, some of them oppose the war as Donald Trump is a fan of Putin, and therefore they are too.  Others oppose it as its overseas and they don't think it matters.
• Hamas Israeli War.  Populist are oddly in favor of Israel, which is contrary to their general political alignment. This is for an odd reason, which is that a lot of populists are Evangelical Christians who have an apocalyptic view of the Jewish state, so they tend to believe that God has commanded us to support Israel.

Giving really outstanding example of populists is a bit hard to do, to some extent, as they tend to fail over time, and then be forgotten.  But there are some notable examples.  Louisiana's Huey Long was a populist.  Fr. Charles Coughlin was as well.  George Wallace was for much of his life, but he became a conservative in his final years.  

Huey P. Long, Depression Era populist.

What is a progressive.

Poster of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party.

Like populism, progressivism has existed in the United States for a long time, and perhaps just about as long as populism.

Progressives believe, like populists, that human nature is controlled by an internal existential, but in their case they radically believe that it's controlled by an internal individual existential.  So, unlike progressives who believe in a sort of mystical will of the people, progressives believe that each and every individual has a radically individual reality that's a supreme existential good.  

Progressives are convinced of radical individualism while at the same time having very low faith in people in general.

Because of their world outlook, progressives tend to share some odd traits with populists, and indeed historically they are both left wing in their political, and they tend to exist at the same time.  Progressives tend to be radically opposed to human nature, and therefore given to conspiracy theories of a type.  They tend to be anarchic in their expressed views, just as populists tend to be, but they favor autocracy in reality, just as populists ultimately tend to be.  Societies that essentially degrade to a struggle between populism and progressivism, usually spectacularly fail, with late Republican Spain and late Weimar Germany being distressing examples.

In terms of Progressives, for reasons that we'll explain below, popular examples are often associated with other movements.  Having said that, figures like Noam Chomsky, AoC, Henry Wallace, are good examples.  Much of current academia, for peculiar reasons, is made up of Progressives.  There aren't, however, any countries current governed by them, unlike Populists.  

Progressives in recent decades have tended to lurk under the surface of liberals, so they don't erupt into existence the way Populists do.  Being opportunistic, however, they've done so very much since the Obergefell decision, and then in reaction to Trump.

On our issues, we find the following:

Abortion.  Progressives are radically in favor of abortion as they are radically in favor of any one human deciding their own fate, and the fate of an unborn person doesn't matter, as they are not yet born.

Death Penalty.  Progressives are opposed to it, but mostly on a knee-jerk level. This is borrowed from the Liberals, and it's been adopted without much thinking.  Having said that, termination of a life does radically end that person's ability to decide anything, so this is overall consistent with their views.

Gender issues.  Progressives believe that this can and should be radically determined by the individuals, so basically they don't really believe that genders, science notwithstanding, really exist.

Climate Change.  Climate Change impacts everyone, so Progressives are for immediate government action to address it.

Economics.  Progressives lean towards radical economics, so concepts like Universal Basic Income and whatnot, that seem to be capable of individual use, are heavily favored. They like state intervention in the economy and society, to the extent it seems to free up anyone individual.

Immigration.  Progressives, like liberals, don't believe that culture really matters, so they're heavily opposed to restrictions of significance.

Defense.  Prior to the recent wars it would have been hard to say what a Progressive position was on defense, other than that Progressives like to use the Armed Forces as a petrie dish for social change.  Given the various world crises right now, however, things have become clearer.

• The Russo Ukrainian War.  Progressives favor aiding Ukraine as Ukraine is a western nation in culture, and Russia is not.
• Hamas Israeli War.  Progressives want the war to end, as probably everybody does, but have an odd belief that we can decree this to be so.  Younger Progressives tend to support Hamas as it seems like it involves the rights of more people than the Israeli cause does.  Not really believing in anything externally existential, the rapes and murders committed by Hamas don't really matter to them.

Robert LaFollette, Progressive of the early 20th Century.

How these categories bleed into each other, creating confusion.

In no small part due to the adoption of the French Revolution "right wing/left wing" political map, we tend to think of all political categories as existing as a scaled line, when in fact their world more closely resembles a box, or perhaps intersecting circles. This confuses people in general, including those who fit any one category.  For example, a lot of populists right now genuinely believe that they are conservatives, when in fact they are anything but.  Put another way, a lot of members of the Freedom Caucus would actually feel a lot more comfortable at a Bernie Sanders Coffee Klatch than they would at a William F. Buckley Society cocktail party, and by leagues.

To start with conservatives again, as conservatives apply Chesterton's Fence to all sorts of things as a philosophical principle, they may see populists who arise due to social stress as members of the same group.  To give an example, conservatives are rightly horrified by the gender nonsense that's going on right now, and more than that look back to male/female social roles that seem more solidly grounded in an existential other.  Populists take the same outward approach, but that's because the collective mass of them tells them that what is going on is weird.  Conservatives tend to support strong border and immigration policies as they believe in the principal of sovereignty, which has long existed, and they fear they value national culture and fear that uncontrolled immigration can damage it.  Populists tend to support the same, but because the people coming across the border are part of some mysterious other, who are almost not real people, or at least not equal people.

On other issues, however the differences begin to become more apparent.  Conservatives have always tended to support a strong national defense on sovereignty grounds, although that doesn't always take the same expression. Therefore, while conservatives of the 1930s were isolationist, they were also more than willing to build a strong Navy that projected power well beyond the United States.  In recent years, they've been strong proponents of collective security, often aggravating liberals by being willing to see authoritarian regimes as potential defense partners.  Populists are universally strict isolationist, as they feel anything beyond our borders doesn't matter.

Economically, conservatives generally tend to be fiscally restrained, but not unwilling to apply the American system where it will seem to work.  They believe in balanced finances.  Populists believe in balanced finances, but take a hyper stingy view of expenditures, virtually never seeing any expenditure as benefiting the populist mass. Therefore, funding for schools, something conservatives have long supported, becomes sort of an anathema to some populists.  Strong education in science, math and history as a conservative position degrades into limited education on the populist end, as they have watched populist raised children evolve into conservatives, liberals or progressives.

Western conservatives (but not European conservatives) had tended to be in favor of limiting government, as they basically feel, in a pessimistic sort of way, that people are generally better off figuring out things for themselves rather than having the government do it, or do things for them.  Populists are for a limited government as they hate the government, seeing it as the conspiratorial "they" that's out to destroy them and the culture they believe in.

For this reason, conservatives and populists confuse each other as being part of their ranks.  Populists continually claim they are conservatives, when in fact they are not.  Populists have been told that the Republican Party is the home of conservatives, which after 1912 it came to be, and as they believe that they are conservative, they believe anyone in the GOP who doesn't think the way they do is a Republican In Name Only.  Ironically, populists were in the Populist Party at the turn of the last century in the US, and then in the Democratic Party for decades.  What they are complaining about is the traditional positions of the Republican Party.

The same is true of liberals and progressives.

Liberals tend to be basically in favor of social liberty for the same reason that conservatives are in favor of limited government, they feel that people are best left to figure those things out for themselves and will ultimately figure the right thing out.  Progressives want to force a brave new social world view on everyone.  Liberals are more willing to use the government and government money for what they think the common good is than conservatives are, but progressives are willing to use both to force their view on what the good is on people who disagree with it.  Liberals (like many conservatives) are supportive of preservation of the common good, through public and environmental policies.  Progressives are as well, but they're more much willing to dictate an extra view on how people should generally behave.  Liberals, like conservatives, have traditionally been in favor of a strong national defense, but have been, since the Vietnam War, very careful about using it beyond our shores unless absolutely necessary.  Progressives, like populists, never see it as necessary as a rule.

Because liberals and progressives overlap, they confuse each other as being on the same scale on the left, which in fact, they're in different circles or boxes.  Liberal inability to see the distinction has been to the benefit of Progressives, who have come to increasingly dominate the Democratic Party in recent years.

Liberals and conservatives tend to have a lot in common, but not be able to realize it, in part because liberals feel they need to make camp with the progressives, and the conservatives do make camp with the progressives.

A warning

And here we get, in a way, to where we are now.

Conservatives in the modern West, and always in the English-speaking West, have democracy as a primary virtue, in spite of being aware that they're never in the majority, although the National Conservative movement, which is reactionary in the true sense of the word (it's reacting to something) is weakening that and looking to a pre Second World War model of European conservatism.

Liberals are always in favor of democracy.

Progressives and Populists really aren't quite often. Sometimes they are, but often they are not.

And Progressives and Populists only are in the forefront of politics in odd, and dangerous, times.

We are in odd and dangerous times.

Footnotes:

1.  Hindu conservatives, and there are millions, would say "gods", or some variant of it, we should note.

2. Evolutionary biology is almost an elemental fixture of conservatism.  Indeed, scientists who are evolutioanry biologist have been rebuked, in recent years, by progressives simply for stating scientific truths.

Lex Anteinternet: Really Missing The Point

Lex Anteinternet: Really Missing The Point: 

Really Missing The Point

Annaba, Algeria, late 19th Century.  Why?  Well, read below.

We must be clear that the modernization of the Church on the great anthropological questions comes through Europe. In the West, there is greater sensitivity towards certain issues such as gender or homosexuality than in Asia or Africa. Although in Europe and the United States the Church is in decline, paradoxically the young Churches that are growing in Asia or Africa are the most conservative. Western societies are moving towards a new idea of mankind, and that game is undoubtedly being played in Europe, which is why there are so many European cardinals in this consistory

Piero Schiavazzi, professor of Vatican Geopolitics at Link University in Rome.

Wow, talk about missing the point.

I don't know why the Pope picks the Cardinals that he does, but if this is the reason, it shows a real misappreciation of the evidence.

The church is on the rise in Asia and Africa, where the parishioners are conservative.

It's in decline in Europe, although that decline tends to be misunderstood and to some degree exaggerated, where contemplating "anthropological questions" is the rage.  It really isn't in decline in the US in the way that's asserted, as overall numbers remain steady, but partially due to immigration.  And not noted by Signore Schiavazzi, conservatism is on the rise in younger American Catholics.

Indeed, also in the West, a recent survey showed that amongst Australian Catholic women, younger women were noticeably more conservative than older ones. 

So appoint European Cardinals who are sensitive to the issues where the Church is failing?

Eh?

The old maxim is that nothing succeeds like success, to which we must presume that nothing fails like failure.

All over the globe, and not just in religion, the older generations that advanced the liberalism of the 70s, 80s, and 90s continue to remain in power in significant ways and don't seem to grasp that the failed legacy of that is not something that younger generations, heavily impacted by it, wish to advance further.

The impact of Cardinal appointments is much like that of Supreme Court Justices.  It's difficult to tell what they'll really do and even more difficult to tell what a Pope will do at first.  But if Signore Schiavazzi is correct, this is a bad sign.  Once again, the Papacy will not make major doctrinal changes, because it cannot, but there have been historic periods of Church failure (some involving laxity) that resulted in large departures from the Church.  History, we're told, doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.  A sort of small Counter Reformation of sorts is going on amongst the young, while at higher levels the necessity for that seems to be not only not appreciated, but perhaps not even grasped.

Also not grasped, seemingly, anywhere in the West is that the colonial era is over.  We apparently have never understood that wind the "winds of change" swept colonial powers out of Africa and Asia, it also swept the cultural balance of the world.

Europe's impact on the world was enormous culturally.  Indeed, it triumphed. But that culture was a Christian one, no matter how poorly grasped that was and no matter how poorly expressed.  Much of what we take for granted, indeed liberalism itself, about "modern culture" is Christian, and pretty much exclusively Christian, in origin.  It's no accident that cultural decay has set in, in the West, as the Christian roots have is culture have been strained by a long competing culture, that of consumerism, of which both advanced consumer society and socialism are expressions.

St. Augustine.  He was a Berber.

But Christianity itself, at least Apostolic Christianity in the form of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, has never been a European thing.  Indeed, the fundamental event of European culture was the spread of (Apostolic/Catholic) Christianity within it, which forever changed it. But Christianity didn't come out of Europe, and indeed it took the rise of Islam to cause there to be a temporary hiatus in it having a major African expression.  St. Augustine of Hippo was a Berber, not a European, and the Bishop of Hippo Regius, which is modern Annaba, Algeria.

Of course, all of the Apostles were Jews from the Middle East. The first Pope, Peter, was from modern Israel. St. Paul, who dealt with what Signore Schiavazzi calls a "new idea of mankind", as there are no new ideas really, and dismissed the conduct that we now are re contemplating as, well whatever we're re contemplating, was from Tarsus, in what is modern Turkey and which was then part of the Greco Roman world. Pope Victor I, who died in 199, was a Berber. Pope Miltiades was also a North African, as was Pope Gelasius (who was for strict Catholic orthodoxy). Pope Saint Anicetus was a Syrian as was Pope Sisinnius, Pope Constantine, and Pope Gregory III.

What ended the strong influence of North Africa, of course, was the Islamic conquest of the region, although remnant North African Catholic churches held on until the early 1400s.  Even as Christianity has spread around the world, and conquered almost all of non Arab and non Berber Africa, it's been easy to forge that its not a Eurpean religion.

That mistaken impression is about to end, and it can't end soon enough.  Trying to somehow assume that decaying European culture needs to be accommodated, if that's occurring, is a mistake.  It needs to be reformed, and it will be, and a rising Africa and Asia will be part of that.

Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part II. American Fascisti.

Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part II. American Fasc...:  

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 I just posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the...: Rich Men North of Richmond , which is independently produced, I think, had made a big Internet and music scene splash, and frankly, not beca...

This, and it's not a new theme here, took a look at how we got to where we are, where populism has taken over the Republican Party.  How, the question ultimately is, can people who see the plaint truth about Donald Trump and his attempt to subvert American democracy continue to support him?

Most of the comments along these lines never really are able to answer the question.  Indeed, we haven't here. That's because they all assume that most people are rational, and this is at least somewhat true, and that most people will yield to truth in the end, which is also somewhat true.  Indeed, droves of people have left the Republican Party and become independents.  However, and this is important, more than 1 million voters across 43 states switched to the Republican Party from 2021 to 2022, and that trend hasn't stopped. 

That is, while a lot of educated "country club" or middle class conservatives have abandoned the GOP, a lot of people are coming in.  And they're coming in during the current political atmosphere.

Which leads us to this.

What if it isn't the case, deep down, that populist Republicans, who now control the GOP, aren't aware that Donald Trump is lying about losing the election.  What if, at least deep down, and on some level, they know that he's lying.

What would that mean?

Well, what it would mean is that the disaffected class that intends to vote for a Rich Man north of Richmond while complaining about Rich Men North of Richmond have reached to the point where they no longer regard their class as legitimate, and therefore what they are doing and supporting as completely legitimate, because the other view doesn't count.

Consider this Facebook exchange I saw the other day: 

"I almost lost my Corvette and my cat!"

All reactions:

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Their bullshit needs to end through constitional revolt.

Eh?

Or:

Office Hours: Why are Republican voters more willing to believe every sort of lie?

Tonight’s Republican debate and Trump’s discussion with Tucker are likely to be cesspools of lies, but lies don’t turn off Republican voters.

Maybe the first reply answers the second.

Maybe Republican voters aren't really willing to believe every sort of lie, or at least not in the way baffled pundits of all types are baffled by, myself included.

Maybe they know they're lies, but lies that seem, to them, to serve a greater truth, in their view.

And that's what is really scary.

The first comment, boxed in the way some people like to do with Facebook comments, refers to one of Joe Biden's endless blundering statements, which in this case related his bad experience with a house fire to what occured on Maui.  It was a really goofball thing to say.  But the fact of the matter is that there isn't anything Joe Biden says that populists don't hate, even things they would have fully supported if he hadn't said them. And that's because Biden, who started off a centrist, went to the center left, and then went fully to the left, is a representative of Democrats, whom the populists essentially see asn objectively evil.

This is almost impossible for main stream and conventional Americans to grasp, and even though in the populist movement who fairly clearly hold these views would be unwilling to usually admit them in this fashion, but all the signs are there.

Class reduction through objectification is an old and very established thing.

The Communist Parties of the world practiced this extensively.  They represented "the workers" or "the people". Their opponents were exploiters of the people, in their propaganda.  Ultimately, that meant that they could be killed in the millions, as they weren't really people.

The Nazis did this with the Jews, as well as with the Slavs.  Jews and Slavs were lessor, in their propaganda, although bizarrely they were also supposed to be a super crafty opponent.  Never mind that none of that was true or that any rational thinking would dispel such an absurdity, that's what they promoted and that's what the German people adopted, resulting in the death of millions.

Lesser fascist movements and near fascist movements held the same view of Communists, and to some extent Socialist, that the Nazi Party did, which hated Communists along with the Jews (and indeed generally assumed that all Communists were Jewish), and therefore felt perfectly justified in suppressing them to the point of death if necessary.  Of course, in many places, the Communists (who weren't majority Jewish by any means) felt the same way about right wing movements. At any rate, therefore, this produced severely repressing governments like that of the Italian fascists or Spanish Francoist, who nonetheless quite frankly enjoyed widespread popularity with large segments of their people.

And notable with all of these movements, they reduced their ideology, at the street level, to a single man.

The Nazis of course reduced it to Hitler.  Indeed, the Führerprinzip held that everything should "work towards the Führer.  People didn't really know what Hitler might want to do on any day to day level, but they generally could grasp it, and that was the thing to do.

Hitler in armor as "The Standard Bearer".  I doubt Hiter ever rode a horse, and certainly not one like this, but goofball uberheroic portraits of autocrats is an autocratic thing. Witness all the portraits of Trump as a Revolutionary War patriot when he was never in the service.

And the Italians did that with Mussolini, 

Typical portrait of Mussolini, focusing on his face with his jaw jutting out defiantly.  To most people, he looks like a jackass, but to true believers, this was his admired visage.

And the Reds in Russia did it twice, first with Lenin, and then with Stalin, before becoming sufficiently entrenched that later leaders didn't need a personality cult.

The PRC did it with Mao, and North Korea has done it with every single one of their leaders.

And all of this is highly instructive.

Reduced to a man, thinking over the complicated failed thesis that these movements put forth was unnecessary.  People didn't read Mein Kampf.  Most Russians at the time of the Revolution could barely read, and they weren't going to sit down a read a pamphlet by a British Library Butt Sitter.  Most Chinese weren't going to bother with Mao's Little Red Book.  People just figured that they weren't doing well, and it was somebody else's fault, and it seemed that the Communist, the Fascists, etc. ,had their back and grasped it, at least right up until the state came for them, or conscripted them, or confiscated everything they had.

Or, by way of another example, it may very well be the case that Southern secessionist grasped that blacks were in fact people and equal people at that.  Their actions clearly demonstrated, that, from entrusting their children to slaves for care to the Jeffersonian expedient to wifely succession.

In each of these instances, it should be noted, the supposed "difference" was emphasized as an excuse for acting with extreme bias towards the other group.  Nazis called their opponents Untermenschen, "below people".  American Southerners certainly portrayed blacks that way.

German propaganda poster, which appears to portray Soviet paratroopers as Untermensch.

Have you listed to the comments of populists?

Hearing random Republicans accuse Democrats of being Marxists and Socialists is common.  Republicans that don't toe the extreme right wing line are "RINOS" or Democrats, with that being said as if being a Democrat meant you were an Untermensch, which pretty much what is meant.  Even run of hte mill Republican conservatives in Congress, who at one time would have "disagreed with my distinguished colleagues" now hurl the invective "Democrat" or accuse somebody of "supporting Biden's radical. . . " as if there's any truth to the accusation.  It's pretty much the same thing as a Communist in Stalin's ear accusing somebody of harboring incorrect views, of a Nazi accusing somebody of being Jewish, or of a pre-1970 Southerner claiming that "somebody has a 'nigga' in the wood pile", without any credit being given, respectively, to 1) harboring different views isn't a criminal act, 2) being Jewish isn't either, and 3) having African American ancestry (which a huge number of Southerners do) isn't shameful, except for the compulsion that ancestry may indicate.

I fear we're here:

And if we are, that answer the question of why criminal activity doesn't phase some Trump supporters.

Now, this doesn't explain it all.  Some of it is the phenomenon of extreme frustration with having been long ignored.  Some of it is a long-running American belief in conspiracy theories.  Some of it is the disbelief that thing could have really gotten so astray, which would mean, in part, that we let them go so badly.  But not all of it, and not all populists.

The question is, therefore, how large is this group, and what does that mean?  If Trump takes the Oval Office a second time, it will be disastrous, although to what extent, cannot yet be told.