I think I first saw the image that contains the title phrase in Kurt Vonnegut’s early novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It speaks of a Money River known only to a privileged few. Those privileged are entitled to slurp from it. When a candidate for entitlement is approved, those already along the bank make a spot for him. He thus becomes entitled to slurp from the river, but is given a caveat: “Keep the racket down.”

     "It's still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own."
     "Sure -- provided somebody tells him when he's young enough that there is a Money River, that there's nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. 'Go where the rich and the powerful are,' I'd tell him, 'and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You'll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.'"

     Vonnegut, be it plainly said, was no fan of capitalism. Nevertheless, his image has an important application. For Vonnegut’s Money River, substitute “government.” As the Birchites have told us, there are “insiders” who collaborate to keep themselves in power, and therefore with the wealth and other perquisites that power can bring. These days, we usually call them “the Establishment.” They’ve made arrangements to protect themselves and their places along the Riverbank.

     No one is permitted to rise to power without methods being put in place to keep other powerful men safe from him. There will be levers that can bend him; other powerful men will know what they are. Such levers would only be used in extremis, should a maverick threaten to upset The System, and only if nothing else could curb him. They constitute politicians’ variety of “mutual assured destruction.”

     Among the reasons Establishmentarians feared Donald Trump is they could not find a lever that could daunt him. He, wealthy by his own efforts and widely admired for his accomplishments, is a maverick they could not threaten. Note how many attempts, of how many different kinds, have been made to bring him down. All have failed. With each failure, the anxiety among the Establishment has increased.

     But the protective mechanisms do protect Establishmentarians from one another. Sundance’s excellent article “DC Corruption on Scale” provides a look at the way some of them have functioned.

     Places along the Riverbank are sacrosanct. No one shall be permitted to endanger them. Especially not an elected upstart like Donald Trump. Or so the Establishmentarians believed.

     When I wrote Shadow of a Sword:

     “Have you ever heard the name William Graham Sumner, Miss Weatherly?”
     She shook her head. “A relative of yours?”
“An ancestor. Distant in time, but not in convictions. Among the things my ancestor wrote–his writings were rather well known, at one time–was that the concentrating tendencies of power will, over time, bring to the seats of power men ever less suited for them. Recent years have proved him correct. We have raised to high office men of ever more dubious skills and character. Men whose principal talent has been assembling coalitions of special interests, who would bankroll their campaigns and maneuver them into office, and subsequently expect them to steer the ship of state as their thralls. Men and interests entirely unconcerned with the Constitution’s quite explicit limits on federal power. In consequence,” he said, “today America is nearly twenty trillion dollars in debt. Our economy is faltering. Our military is no longer feared by other nations. Our extra-territorial possessions are under assault. Our dollar has ceased to be the world’s reserve currency. Our constitutionally guaranteed rights as individuals are treated as being suspensible at the whims of judges, policemen, and unelected bureaucrats. Washington and the state capitals take six of every ten dollars we earn to spend as they please. Our inner cities resemble nothing so much as free-fire zones. Our society has been shattered into competing interest groups that strive ceaselessly to out-thieve one another in an unending game of beggar-thy-neighbor. And our national identity and confidence are weaker than ever before in history.”
     Sumner had ticked his points off on his fingers. As he concluded, all ten of his fingers stood raised before the cameras.
     “That, Miss Weatherly, is what comes from the dynamic my ancestor perceived: the forces that elevate wealth, privilege, family prestige, and the backing of other powerful men and their little clubs to qualifications for high office. The pattern of devolution it has brought us can be broken in only one way: outsiders must force their way into the halls of power. But the major parties are part of the pattern. They have little interest in fixing what I and, hopefully, you and your audience see as severe problems that urgently require redress. So one who would oppose the devolutionary dynamic must operate outside them as well.”

     ...Stephen Graham Sumner was only a fictional character. I had no idea that a maverick would arise whom the Establishment could not control. I would not have guessed that that maverick would be a real estate mogul from Queens. Nor would I have guessed that he would succeed in bending a major party, a huge contributor to the Establishment, to his will.

     Donald Trump didn’t need nor want a place along the Riverbank. He holds those who line it in contempt. He has defied them more effectively than any president since Grover Cleveland. Which is why the big guns of Establishmentarian privilege have been blasting him from the Left, and working to undermine him from the Right.

     Sundance’s article provides a look at some of the details. Give it some of your time and attention.

     This will probably be the last thing I post at Liberty’s Torch until Election Day is behind us. My thoughts this morning center on conceptions of continuity and upheaval, and what they mean within the nominal political order of these United States.

     We who comment on current affairs are prone to overusing dramatic words and phrases. We want to have an impact, you see. We seek to rivet you to our emissions, to make you think you’re reading something that could be massively consequential. So we’re prone to “overstating the case,” whatever the case may be.

     One of the words we tend to use inappropriately is revolution. “A revolution in federal budgetary management.” “A revolution in regulatory policy.” “A revolution in American foreign policy.” “A revolution in Americans’ attitudes.” With so many revolutions being bruited about, you really have to wonder why you can’t hear the gunfire.

     If we were compelled to be accurate in speaking of the events we style “revolutions” or “revolutionary,” those words would be almost completely absent from our lexicon. Revolutions are the stuff of Third World countries ruled by dictators and juntas. That’s because there’s no other way for the order of things to change in such places. And even in such benighted lands, the word “revolution” is often less appropriate than “coup.”

     The United States hasn’t had a revolution since the one that gave birth to the country. We’ve had a number of disturbances to the continuity of our affairs, the Civil War / War Between The States / Late Unpleasantness being the most dramatic. But a true revolution, in which the Constitutional order is completely destroyed in favor of some wholly alien arrangement, has not occurred here.

     What Americans suffer is something less easily discerned and therefore far more insidious. It’s called gradualism. Small changes to our political arrangements at the margins, insufficiently resisted when proposed even when openly antithetical to the Constitution’s guarantees, accumulate over time. The wheel turns by such small increments that we can hardly detect its motion. But given time enough, the tiny changes – an infringement on freedom of speech here; a restriction of the right to acquire weapons there; an arrogation of power over some longstanding social arrangement; a “tax” or regulation imposed not for revenue generation but to engineer compliance with an illegitimate but noble-sounding aim – sum to a complete transformation of the Land of the Free into something utterly alien.

     Revolution? No. Slow, incremental transformation? Yes.

     In the first paragraph of the previous segment, I spoke of the nominal political order of the U.S. “Nominal,” of course, means “in name:” the Constitutional order we speak of when asked about it. It’s been clear to me for some time that that order has been thoroughly subverted. If it’s been clear to you as well, congratulations. You’re one of a clear-eyed few.

     The “big reveal” took place during the House of Representatives’ ditherings over ObamaCare. Someone – I forget who – asked the odious Nancy Pelosi where in the Constitution Congress was granted the power to legislate on such matters. She indignantly said “That is not a serious question” and stalked away. Later on, she cited the “Necessary and Proper” clause and said, quite plainly, that it “gives us [Congress] the power to do anything.”

     I shall refrain from analyzing the Necessary and Proper clause here. Rather, I shall ask a deeper question: If Congress has a legitimate power to do anything by Constitutional decree, then why does Article I, Section 8 enumerate seventeen explicit powers? Indeed, if the aim was to erect a federal government with unlimited powers over all things without exception, why have a Constitution at all?

     But Pelosi’s arrogation of unbounded power to Congress passed the public with hardly a whisper of protest. Shortly thereafter Congress passed ObamaCare in its entirety, and Barack Hussein Obama signed it into law. It was the victory parade of gradualism, and as such went almost unremarked by the national media.

     We had no idea that the United States was headed for an upheaval only a few years later.

     Donald Trump’s 2015 declaration of his candidacy for the presidency didn’t seem all that threatening to the existing political order at first. After all, it was his second time – he’d campaigned for the nomination of the Reform Party in 2000 – and his previous foray into presidential politics sank without a trace. But in 2016 Trump was serious, determined, and energized. He won “going away,” with an Electoral College margin far larger than even his most optimistic backers expected.

     It was an upheaval...by the standards of the political Establishment. Its members were unanimous in denouncing the “upstart” as a danger to the nation, a threat to the “rule of law.” But President Trump’s actions in office made it appear somewhat different to the citizenry. To us, it looked more like a restoration: a return to the American norms and standards that preceded the “progressive” Establishment’s accession and its gradualist campaign.

     Granted, it hasn’t been a “perfect” four years, whatever that might mean. Yet President Trump has been remarkably consistent and effective in carrying out his campaign pledges, and the nation has benefited hugely as a result. It took two utterly contrived “scandals,” a Chinese-engineered pandemic, and all the hatred and fear-mongering a Left-dominated press could conjure up to impede the Trump agenda. Despite all that, the Trump economy is already roaring back from the unwise and unnecessary “lockdowns” urged upon us by an irresponsible medical Establishment that will never pay a cost for its “mistakes.”

     Tomorrow is Election Day. Tomorrow or hopefully, very shortly thereafter, we will learn whether the four years just behind us constitute a brief interregnum, a mere interruption in the march of anti-Constitutional, anti-American “progressive” socialism, or whether they’re the opening of an ongoing period of American restoration. The voting and all the phenomena surrounding it will decide.

     There will be vote fraud and voter intimidation. There will be ballot harvesting. There will be fabricated votes and voting by non-citizens. There will be shenanigans in the media’s coverage of events, both while the balloting is in progress and afterward...perhaps long afterward. Despite our most ardent efforts, we could be bitterly disappointed. But we can only do what we can do.

     Vote Trump. And pray.

     “A managed democracy is a wonderful thing, Manuel, for the managers...and its greatest strength is a free press when ‘free’ is defined as ‘responsible’ and the managers define what is ‘irresponsible.’” – Professor Bernardo de la Paz, in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

     In his masterwork The American Tradition, Dr. Clarence Carson wrote:

     [W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one's spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the "democratic process." A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.

     Whereupon I commented:

     Dr. Carson was quite as incisive as Rand. Yet he might not have anticipated that once freedom of speech became dangerous to the Left, it would strive to eliminate that vestige of American liberty just as it had striven to eliminate all the previous ones. Note also how Leftists have striven to corrupt the electoral system. They can’t abide that any longer, either; after all, it rejected their anointed candidate in favor of a real estate magnate from Queens!

     There’s a moral here, and it shouldn’t take a lot of skull sweat to divine it.

     Action to suppress freedom of expression, Constitutionally forbidden to the federal government, has been “delegated” to Big Tech. This is not news. But consider afresh, please, how the suppression of important stories dovetails with the ongoing campaign to install a corrupt, senile puppet in the White House by any means necessary.

     If this isn’t clear evidence that the Republic is tottering, I can’t imagine what would qualify.

     In John Brunner’s early novel The Squares of the City, he depicted the attitude of the managers to their “managed democracy:”

     "Senor Hakluyt, you are a stranger in Aguazul. You will therefore be inclined to dispute the dogmatic assertion that this is the most governed country in the world."
     Again that air of throwing down a gauntlet in debate, again that cocking of the head to imply a challenge. I said, "All right—I dispute it. Demonstrate."
     "The demonstration is all about you. We make it our business, first, to know what people think; we make it our business, next, to direct that thinking. We are not ashamed of that, senor, incidentally. Shall we say that—just as specific factors influence the flow of traffic, and you understand the factors and can gauge their relative importance—we now understand many of the factors that shape and direct public opinion? What is a man, considered socially? He is a complex of reactions; he takes the line of least resistance. We govern not by barring socially unhealthy paths, but by opening most wide those paths which are desirable. That is why you are here."
     "Go on," I invited after a pause.
     He blinked at me. "Say rather what is your view. Why is it we have adopted this round-and-round policy of inviting an expensive expert to solve our problems subtly, instead of saying, 'Do this!' and seeing it done?"
     I hesitated, then counter-questioned. "Is this, then, the extension of an existing policy rather than a compromise between opposed personal interests?"
     He threw up his hands. "But naturally!" he exclaimed, as though surprised to find me so obtuse. "Oh, it is ostensibly that there is conflict between one faction and another—but we create factions in this country! Conformism is a slow death; anarchy is a rapid one. Between the two lies a control which"—he chuckled—"like a lady's corset in an advertisement, constricts and yet bestows a sense of freedom. We govern our country with a precision that would amaze you, I believe."

     This tool of “managed democracy” – specifically, the control of information and its dissemination – is half of The Fix. The other half is the control of elections: making sure “the right people” win and “the wrong people” are cast into the darkness. For as we saw in 2016, the control of information alone cannot guarantee such a result. To ensure victory only by “the right people,” the managers employ:

1. Fictitious polls, including exit polls;
2. Multiple voting and voting by noncitizens;
3. Voter intimidation and control of polling places and hours;
4. Deliberate loss of “unfriendly” votes and the manufacture of others.

     In combination, those tactics can ensure that the hoi polloi are kept ignorant of how they’ve been fettered, and incapable of throwing off their fetters by nonviolent means.

     Quite a lot of people would like to get in on The Fix. There’s obviously money in it. (Just ask Hunter Biden.) But it’s not a club that just anyone can join.

     To be a participant in The Fix, you must possess one of the following two qualifications:

• Control of an information-dissemination chokepoint; or:
• Leverage over persons in power, and the willingness to use it. (“It’s not who you know; it’s what you’ve got on ‘em.” – Lawrence Block)

     Note how nicely those qualifications fit the visible participants in today’s Fix. Note also how remorselessly they act against others who dare attempt to break their stranglehold. Andrew Torba could tell you all about that.

     The point of The Fix is, of course, the reservation of power to a select group, whose members share certain attitudes and interests. The most important of the attitudes is that If you’re in, you can do as you please. The only crime is acting against another member. The most important of the common interests is in maintaining the exclusivity of The Fix.

     Members of The Fix are expected to take part in the suppression and disparagement of non-members who dare to offer disapproved information to a general audience:

     Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explained with an eerie calm that The Post can regain access to its Twitter account anytime it wants — once it deletes a tweet with an image his company has decided violates its standards.

     Dorsey’s words echo the ­assurances offered writers in authoritarian states that they will be allowed to publish their other scribblings . . . just so long as they burn the manuscripts the censors find offensive in front of the censors.

     Such an insistence would once have resulted in screams of outrage and professions of solidarity by other journalists. But now we see reactions like this on Twitter, from New York Times opinion staffer Charlie Warzel:

     “The NY Post leaving a violating tweet up in order to stay locked out of an account in order to use it as a political cudgel is a classic tactic, but it’s usually one you see from individual MAGA influencers.”

     Thus did a key employee at the Times suggest it was perfectly reasonable for Twitter to demand that another newspaper send its wares down a memory hole.

     Failure to collaborate in such operations would indicate a lack of commitment to The Fix and the common interests of its membership. Can’t have that.

     Plainly, as power dispersed is power reduced, the number of The Fix’s members must be tightly controlled. Don’t bother to ask for an application.

     So there’s no way to “get in on it.” Either you’re already on the inside, or you must languish forever in the cold and the dark. Establishments are like that; their members prize their membership status because it’s shared by so few. They preen about being “among the elite,” “the best people of the nation,” but in truth their one true distinguishing feature is being one of the few who are in on The Fix.

     Andrew Torba has scored a remarkable success with Gab. He’s surmounted innumerable obstacles, many of which were deliberately placed in his path by The Fix. In time, Gab could rise in size and importance to eclipse Twitter. But he will never be invited into The Fix, for he does not share the existing members’ interests. Indeed, his presence among them would be massively disrupting. What’s this about free speech? Are you seriously proposing that we not control the information flow, Andrew?

     May God grant His protection to such mavericks. Only they who are willing to challenge The Fix on its own turf stand between us and the loss of all freedom of expression. And they who would applaud that loss are only one potentially stolen election away from their dream.

     I’ve been trying to minimize my rantings on political and current-events subjects recently. I’ve needed to distance myself from them, lest they swallow me whole. If you come here for such fulminations, I can only hope that the offerings from Linda and the Colonel have satisfied you. I’ve had to refocus on other topics, probably temporarily, for the sake of my sanity.

     A couple of things from my morning reading have me thinking about a peculiar coin, one that philosophers will recognize at once. On one face of that coin is engraved:

     ...while the reverse face is inscribed with:

     The rim of this coin is milled as is the rim of a quarter, such that one cannot help but feel the ridges. Indeed, you might want to keep a quarter in your hand as you read this. Run your thumb along the edge from time to time. It will remind you that there can never be a coin with only one face.

     This morning, our favorite Bookworm declaims thus:

     Andrew Klavan often talks about the fact that the Republican reverence for the free market beginning in the 1980s had within it the seeds of the Republicans’ downfall because they forgot that capitalism works only when tempered with morality.

     Indeed! Bravo! Unfortunately, Bookworm immediately drives into the weeds:

     China is the ne plus ultra of capitalism without morality. (By the way, another word for what China is now is fascist. That’s what happens when you allow private ownership and a “free” market, but the government maintains complete control.)

     This distorts the meanings of its key words. “Capitalism” and “free market” are synonyms, though one has connotations the other does not. Fascism is not capitalist; it is socialist. In a fascist economy just as in an explicitly socialist one, production and distribution are totally dictated by the State, with a few meaningless property deeds for camouflage and decoration. (Look up the meaning of the German word Betriebsführer and its significance in the Third Reich if this eludes you.)

     However, it’s the first of the two cited passages that really caught my eye. The reason is a single, seemingly innocuous word: “works.”

     To say that something “works” – or doesn't – implies an objective to be pursued and a standard for evaluation, and such objectives and standards are seldom explicitly stated. Just now, for example, we have out-of-control riots, violence, and vandalism in several major cities, while local and state authorities alternate between wringing their hands and sitting on them. Yet I have no doubt that some persons are viewing that chaos and saying to one another “It's working.” That is: they believe it’s bringing them nearer to their objective.

     The objective being pursued, and the existence or nonexistence of moral and ethical constraints, are what really matter to the applicability of the word “works.”

     A people who commonly subscribe to the moral and ethical codes of the Judeo-Christian tradition will understand one another reasonably well when one of them says “this works” or “that won’t work.” They’ve agreed on the objective at issue and tacitly accept the same constraints. But if there are among them persons who don’t subscribe to that moral-ethical code, they can use the others’ fallacious assumption to work a great betrayal.

     For example: When the modern American welfare system was established in the early Sixties, it was sold to the public not as a way of life but as “a hand up” for those who became its beneficiaries. That is, it was represented as a way to reduce avoidable privation, particularly among minor children, while the beneficiaries “get back on their feet.” But the welfare system did become a way of life for a steadily expanding population of beneficiaries who remained dependent on the system lifelong. The percentage of persons who accepted welfare support and later became self-supporting was dwarfed by the percentage that remained on it permanently. So if the objective was “a hand up,” the programs failed. However, if the objective was to produce a steadily expanding population of dependents, the programs worked very well indeed.

     But decent people – that is, people who sincerely subscribe to the Judeo-Christian ethic – could not believe that anyone would have inducing helpless dependency in millions of others as his objective. It would be wrong, barely distant from mass enslavement. The idea that persons in government, whether elected, appointed, or Civil Service, would think it acceptable, much less desirable, baffled many good-hearted Americans.

     The objective pursued and the moral-ethical standard that constrained the pursuer clearly mattered. Run your thumb along your quarter’s edge and ponder awhile.

     The aim of the High is to remain where they are. -- George Orwell

     We’ve talked a lot about the political Establishment, here and elsewhere. Since the election of President Trump, that category of persons has chafed over being ejected en masse from federal power. Returning to their previous state of hegemony is their primary objective. They see Trump as the principal obstacle to that aim. Therefore, they seek to depose him, by any expedient means.

     The events of the four years behind us have made it plain that in that campaign, the Establishment recognizes no moral constraints of importance. They will lie, cheat, steal, betray the interests of the country, and possibly even arm America’s enemies if it will get them where they want to go. The revelations about what lies behind the “Russian collusion” hoax have made both their objective and their lack of moral scruple ever more obvious to decent Americans.

     Would these people ever admit openly to their objective? Doubtful. Would they ever admit to their lack of moral constraint? Really, now! They progress entirely because most Americans are good-hearted, naive believers in the good will of all their countrymen. They assume as a matter of course that we’re all decent sorts who want the same things and respect the same moral-ethical rules. It falls to us who see more clearly to make matters plain.

     Which brings me to this excellent piece from Sundance at The Last Refuge. In his exposition on Cold Anger, Sundance expresses our objective with maximum clarity and precision:

     You know why the entire apparatus is united against President Trump. You know why the corrupt Wall Street financial apparatus is united against President Trump. You know why every institutional department, every lobbyist, every K-Street dweller, every career legislative member, staffer, and the various downstream economic benefactors, including the corporate media, all of it – all the above, are united against Donald Trump.

     Donald Trump is an existential threat to the existence of a corrupt DC system we have exposed to his disinfecting sunlight. Donald Trump is the existential threat to every entity and institution who benefits from that corrupt and vile system.

     They too have nothing to lose; their desperation becomes visible within their apoplexy; and they’re damn sure displaying it.

     Do not look away.

     Throw aside the sense of discomfort and bear witness to the evil we oppose. Do not turn your eyes from the hatred focused in our direction. Stand firm amid the solace of our number and resolve to the task at hand.

     Leftists who oppose our efforts hold positions that are weak, push back against them. They rely on fear…. they relish misery and despair… do not give it to them. Let them stare into the Cold Anger furnace.

     Our constraint? It is the same as our objective: justice, nothing else. If the existing institutions will not grant us justice, we will make it for ourselves, with our own hands.

     We must.

     [This is a repost of a column I wrote three years ago. It seems to me to capture the essential tragedy of Memorial Day better than anything I’ve written before or since. I find that I cannot improve on it. In our time of wholly artificial, politically useful fear and widespread, ever intensifying animosity between private citizens and political Establishments, it strikes me as uniquely appropriate. – FWP]

     Over the past two decades there have been a number of articles, whether scholarly or written for a lay audience, to the effect that the end is in sight for the Westphalian nation-state. Some analysts have treated the subject with alarm, others with glee. Some focused upon specific enemies of the nation-state, such as creedal or ethnic particularism or “non-state-actor” terrorism. A few have attempted to predict what forms of political organization (if any) would follow. And occasionally a visionary has speculated upon the possibility that political organization itself might vanish.

     Yet few of those who spent their efforts on the matter could cope with the two questions that loom above all the others:

1. Why do nation-states exist at all?
2. Why do some nation-states appear endangered while others do not?

     More grist for a Curmudgeon Emeritus’s mill.

     The emergence of the political entities we recognize today as nation-states was a drawn-out process. The 1648 Treaties of Westphalia, though widely regarded as seminal, was really the start of a gestational process that continued through the 1713 Treaties of Utrecht, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the politically neglected Napoleonic Wars, and the Congress of Vienna. Each of those things had a role to play in the birth of the nation-state as we’ve come to understand it.

     Whereas the Treaties of Westphalia were largely concerned with established religions, the subsequent events addressed a supremely practical issue: the desire for an enduring conception of sovereignty, including a sovereign’s authority to determine and enforce the law in his domain. During those tumultuous decades the question of who should have the power to make law, and by what mechanisms and upon what terms it should be enforced, was paramount in the minds of many Europeans. Revolutions had toppled regimes in England, France, and America. Innovative concepts such as individual rights, freedom of speech and religion, and the consent of the governed appeared to threaten sovereigns worldwide. Above all, the unbridled war-making power the Treaties of Westphalia had reserved to the sovereign appeared to threaten the basis of human society.

     Power itself needed a new basis. Sovereign absolutism would no longer serve the purposes of the West. But to proceed from that point required that those purposes be enunciated and clarified. Moreover, the royalty of Europe could no longer reserve those purposes to themselves.

     The major desideratum that powered the emergence of the nation-state was stability. The economy of Europe had been ravaged by endless wars and struggles over jurisdiction among monarchs and nobles. The further advancement of civilization, a foretaste of which was visible in Eighteenth Century England, required that the quarreling cease. The accelerating assertiveness of the common man suggested that the old basis of absolute monarchs and nobles sworn to fealty would no longer do the job.

     I don’t mean to suggest that the movers of the development of the modern nation-state were animated by a sense of civic responsibility or anything comparable to it. They merely wanted to enjoy their positions and the pleasures and conveniences made available by an advancing economy. They realized that they couldn’t have those things if Europe were to remain an eternal battlefield. The defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo opened the possibility of putting an end to the strife.

     Consensus emerged, albeit tacitly, that the aggressive Continental imperialism of the two centuries past, most recently represented by Napoleon, must end. Borders must be stabilized; ruling powers must agree to respect them. Diplomatic intercourse must replace warfare in all but the most serious disputes between sovereigns. More – and ultimately far more significant – the possibility of provoking a bottom-up revolution must be kept in mind in all political operations.

     None of these things were explicit parts of the treaties made during those years. Yet they loomed behind most of the maneuverings of Metternich, Talleyrand, Wellington, Tsar Alexander I, and the rest. Though it appeared that the rise of republicanism had been dealt a setback, the hundred years of relative peace that followed allowed the common man to rise to a stature that would ultimately make it impossible for a European ruler ever again to assert overt, absolute, and unbounded authority.

     The nation-state as the principal guarantor of peace, stability, and orderly commerce had emerged.

     Shortly before he died, the great Herbert Spencer, aghast at the return of social invidiousness and national animosities that characterized the currents of the close of the Nineteenth Century, predicted that the Twentieth would be “a century of socialism and war.” Twentieth Century Europe would prove him correct. National governments, both hereditary and elective, turned once again to warfare to “get what’s rightfully ours.”

     In a way, the famous remark of German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg:

     "The world will be plunged into the most terrible of wars...all for a word -- 'neutrality'...all for a scrap of paper." -- Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Chancellor of the German Empire, referring to Britain's decision to go to war over Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality, which had been guaranteed by Britain, France and Germany in an 1832 treaty.

     ...revealed the cause of the failure of the Hundred Years’ Peace. That peace had been held together by nothing but “scraps of paper:” the treaties and less formal agreements of the Westphalian, Utrechtan, and Viennese periods. The nations hadn’t renounced their arms; indeed, they’d amassed them to a greater height than ever before. What brought about World War I was the dismissal of the peace made possible at Westphalia, Utrecht, and Vienna as supreme above all other considerations.

     Governments, both hereditary and elective, gave notice that peace, stability, and orderly commerce aren’t their major goals after all.

     Once the Great War was over, it became clear that the ascent of the common man to economic potency ultimately made the Viennese system of 1814-15 untenable by the standards of the European political elite. The collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires underscored the danger to ruling elites. A dramatic revision of the political basis of the nation-state became inevitable. Sovereignty must descend to the proletariat at least in appearance, else the commoners would displace the elites once and for all.

     Great Britain and France were already sailing that course. In the wake of the Treaty of Versailles, the other nations of Europe embarked on it in various ways. However, the seeds of popular dissatisfaction with government generally had been planted deep. Watered by the acceleration of the socialist movement and the three great exploiters thereof – Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin – the shoots would overturn European stability again only twenty years later.

     Over the century since the Great War, it has become appallingly clear to ordinary private citizens that no matter their representations or the formal structures of their governments, the ruling elites of nation-states are in business for themselves. Their interest in the peace, legal stability, and orderly commerce common men so enjoy is secondary to their interest in maintaining their power, stature, and perquisites. They will provide true service to those things only insofar as it serves to support and maintain their positions. At other times, lip service will suffice.

     Scant wonder that the nation-state as an institution is under attack from all sides. The common man, now empowered beyond all the emperors of old taken together, has become dissatisfied with it. Whether his principal allegiance goes to a neighborhood, a race, an ethnicity, a religion, or his own wallet, he’s no longer willing to support the political status quo without reservation. Indeed, he’s actively interested in possible alternatives. Could the best of us, the young men who enlist in their nations’ armed forces knowing that it puts their lives at risk – knowing that their fathers and grandfathers were sent forth to bleed on foreign soil for causes many of which have proved futile at best, evil at worst – be far behind?

     The dynamics of the thing deserve further study. Remember the fallen.

     First, a few links:

• The Hounding of Michael Flynn
• Rat Bastards Outraged
• Schiff in a Panic

     Now, a brief video:

     Savor that video. We haven’t seen anything like it in a century of Establishmentarian rule…and should we lose President Trump, we may not see anything like it ever again.

     After reading the above-linked articles, my first thought was “what will President Trump say about this?” After seeing the little video, I said to myself that “I should have known.”

     Establishmentarians have lived by the rule that Thou shalt speak no ill of a member of our little club. Note that even Barack Hussein Obama, who castigated the Bush II Administration for many things – unjustly, in most cases – never criticized Dubya himself. Obama knew the rule. Establishmentarians know that the public has come to see them without party labels: “the politicians,” or “the government.” To denigrate or condemn one, regardless of party affiliation, would cast doubt upon the whole of our Ruling Elite – and the paramount need of any Establishment is to remain Established. “The aim of the High is to remain where they are.”

     President Donald Trump is from outside the Establishment. His possession of great wealth is irrelevant; as the saying goes, they wouldn’t have him on toast. He’s too candid, too outspoken, and too resolved upon doing what he thinks best. That’s three mortal sins against the Established Order, and for those there can never be adequate penance…not that Trump would ever agree to kowtow to them.

     Treason is defined in the Constitution of the United States:

     Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. [Article III, Section 3, first paragraph.]

     …so according to the definition above, they who have striven with all their forces to destroy President Trump have not committed treason. But Trump has a bombastic style; he tends to overstate his case. What they are guilty of is difficult to define, but their intent – to remove President Trump from the office to which he was elected, or failing that to obstruct the use of his powers of office – is not.

     At the very least, such persons ought to be expelled from the federal government and forbidden ever again to work in it. It will be up to the Attorney-General to determine whether they’re guilty of prosecutable offenses.

     For many years thinkers have debated whether a great man seizes the times, or the times create and elevate the man. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. The United States was near to losing its way completely. The continuation of the Obamunist agenda by a President Hillary Clinton would have nullified our Constitution and the rights it guarantees in toto. We came that close to losing everything.

     We’re still teetering, for reasons I need not recapitulate here. But we have a chance to recover, and the reason is President Donald J. Trump.

     I, for one, am grateful.

     Quoth Roger Simon:

     We all know why impeachment is really happening -- and when I say all, I include especially the Democrats and their devoted media allies/leaders. They know because they live in fear of what they wrought and desperately want to hide it or bury it (under impeachment) before it is laid out before the public.

     I refer, of course, to the imminent exposure -- at least we hope it is coming -- of the predicates of the Russia probe, easily the most despicable and seditious attempt to unseat a president in American history. This attempt to impeach or, at that point, to interdict began on or not long after June 16, 2015, the day Donald Trump announced his candidacy.

     Concealing the mechanics of the “Russian collusion” narrative is the immediate reason – i.e., the object most imperative at the moment. But the last sentence in the above is what intrigues me: the immediate perception, from June of 2015, by the “better sort” that the upstart might succeed at gaining entry to the corridors of power. How did they know?

     Political establishments have always been hostile to persons they deem “not a member.” Nor is the reaction peculiar to the United States. However, only in a nation where a popular vote has the potential to break through the elite’s defenses is the ascendance of a populist in such a dramatic fashion a possibility.

     Establishments don’t need to be “respectable.” Indeed, those outside North America and Western Europe seldom are. Consider the regimes of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines as recent cases. From my own survey of establishments over the past millennium, I would conclude that “respectability” is a recent innovation. At least that seems to be the case.

     “This is the way things are done around here,” a superficially conservative attitude, has been the reflexive defense of establishments of all kinds. It couples nicely with the notion that only those who have “been around” should be trusted with the reins. They who prattle about “qualifications,” in speaking of a political candidate, are quietly invoking that idea. By triumphing over “the most qualified candidate in history,” Donald Trump smashed that precept to flinders. But the most interesting aspect of the matter was that our political establishment sensed the threat from “unqualified outsider” Trump in mid-2015, well before his popular support could materialize.

     Yet it wasn’t Trump’s first sally toward the presidency. He’d stepped forward in the 2000 presidential campaign season, though the seriousness of that earlier effort is open to dispute. His 2000 gesture might have served to reassure the establishmentarians. “The dilettante merely wants a new arena in which to test his mettle,” they might have said to one another. They didn’t; they took his candidacy seriously from its first days, arguably before anyone outside their number did so. How did they know of the threat he posed them?

     I hadn’t intended to write anything today. I’m on a retreat from political commentary just now, for the sake of my equanimity. But Roger Simon’s brief article got my engine turning. Call it Porretto’s First Law of Motion: once I’m in motion I tend to keep going. (“He’s like the lazy preacher who wrote long sermons. He got to writin’ and was too lazy to stop.”)

     I distrust simple explanations for complex political phenomena. They can be correct, but when something so unexpected is the subject – and the overturning of every political applecart in the District of Columbia came as a considerable surprise – I tend to look for connecting threads. One that’s been much on my mind recently is the swelling support for a literal interpretation of the Second Amendment.

     In truth, there’s never been a good case that the Founding Fathers “didn’t really mean it,” as many commentators hostile to the right to keep and bear arms have claimed. After all, they were the survivors of a revolution in which the American colonists defeated the Western world’s preeminent military power. Had the British succeeded in disarming the colonists before hostilities could erupt, what chance would they have had?

     President Trump is the most ardent defender of that right to reach the Oval Office in a century. No, he’s not perfect; the bump-stock ban should put that notion to rest. But he’s criticized restrictive concealed-carry laws and supported national concealed-carry reciprocity. Which of his predecessors could say the same?

     That the citizen has a God-given right to keep and bear arms is the most populist imaginable stance...and it’s being more widely, openly, and vibrantly asserted than since before the Civil War. The various arguments against it are all falling in the face of the evidence that an armed citizenry is safer, in aggregate, than a disarmed one – and not just against the “private” predator. The issue is a perfect match to the rise of Trump the Disruptor.

     I can’t say of my own knowledge whether Donald Trump was as open and vigorous a supporter of the armed citizen before he announced his candidacy in June of 2015. But the stance dovetails beautifully with the unprecedented swelling of support for him, virtually from the moment he stepped off the Trump Tower escalator.

     Was that what alerted the political elite to the threat to their bastion, or was it merely one ingredient in a larger stew?

     Trump in 2020, and damn the weeping and the gnashing of teeth from the mandarins of “the way things are done around here.” Their machinations have failed them. God willing, they will fall as well. It’s long past time.

     Establishments have a unifying characteristic: they want to remain Established. (“The aim of the High is to remain where they are.” – Orwell) Control of the entertainment media is essential to the hegemony of the sociocultural Establishment. The power of story in popularizing an idea eclipses every other form of communication. Stories are, in large measure, how the young are taught. To a large measure, such stories determine how adults think.

     Say what you will about Amazon, when it opened its doors to independent creators of fiction and music via CreateSpace (since folded into Kindle Direct Publishing), it allowed non-Establishment and anti-Establishment voices to find a substantial audience for the first time. And yes, I’m one of the beneficiaries.

     However, not everyone approves:

     BUYER BEWARE! Please realize that anyone can publish a book these days. The only way to protect yourself from wasting your time and money is to buy books from traditional publishers. Books published by the author are seldom a good bargain....Join me in urging Amazon not to dump self-published books in with real books. Thanks.

     The woman who penned the above attached it to a one-star review of an independently published SF novel. I have not read that novel...but has she? Somehow I doubt it. She left no review under her own name. To judge from the other material attached to her Amazon profile, she’s outrightly hostile to self-published writers.

     Why? Is someone paying her to emit such sentiments? If so, who? And to what end? If “traditionally published” fiction were so clearly superior to independently published work, why would self-pubbed writers be of any concern to the barons of Pub World?

     Are we about to suffer a plague of such defamations, simply because channels have been opened for us whom “traditional publishers” have scorned? Do they detest us so greatly? What interpretation would such a campaign support? Could it be anything but rampant fear among the potentates of Pub World? Are they so greatly threatened by low-priced competition not beholden to their prejudices and preconceptions about what will “sell?”

     You don’t have to be a gypsy fortune-teller to read these tea leaves.

     The above title both expresses my fondest wish for the coming week, and is coupled to a prediction that, sadly, strikes me as a sure bet.

     The New York Metropolitan Area, which includes (unfortunately) Long Island where the Fortress is situated, has been getting soaked this spring. It’s caused the usual train of inconveniences and irritations: dampness in the basement, grass that grows faster than I can cut it, and worst of all, the postponement of Yankee games. Fortunately, we’ve just had a spot of waterproofing done where the worst of the moisture used to seep into our abode, plus new and better gutters for the whole house. However, that does nothing for the lawn, and the Yankees haven’t suffered this many postponements in thirty years. So I and my neighbors are all praying (it’s a Catholic neighborhood) – for a nice long stretch of dry, sunny weather so we can scrape the moss off our north sides and keep it off.

     But there’s one area of current interest where a good “hard rain” would be my fondest wish:

     The skies are growing dark and increasingly ominous for dirty officials at the top of Obama-era law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Leading the “I’m really worried” list are James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch, and their senior aides, all political appointees. They expected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016 and bury any traces of malfeasance, just as they had buried hers. It didn’t work out that way.

     Now they need protection themselves. House Democrats and anonymous leakers are busy providing it. Many are delicately called “current and former senior officials” by the New York Times, Washington Post, and other legacy media. Gee, I wonder who they are?

     These defenders of the old guard are sliming Attorney General Bill Barr, who heads the investigation into their actions. They have good reasons, if not clean hands, for their attack. First, they want to keep as much secret as they can. Exposure can only harm them. Their main argument is that any disclosures will damage U.S. national security. Second, they want to paint the disclosures and forthcoming indictments as President Trump’s revenge, the illegitimate use of powerful agencies that should be nonpartisan. That, of course, is precisely what they are accused of doing.

     Barr won’t be deterred. He did not return for a second stint as AG to pad his résumé or protect Donald Trump. He returned to clean out the Augean Stables. He needs to muck out the mess left by his predecessors and find the horses that left it.

     If only. There are at least two reasons why the malefactors that ignited the “Russian collusion” hoax against newly elected President Trump will face no penalties. First comes the “collegiality” armor worn by every member of the Washington Establishment. (Britons would call this the “a member of my club” defense.) Damned few Republicans and no Democrats will agree to the prosecution of these people. Virtually everyone in Federal office is guilty of some abuse of power and position. Thus, to see their former colleagues and cocktail party guests in orange jumpsuits would strike too close to home. The pressure they’ll put on Attorney-General Barr to refrain from pursuing criminal indictments would turn coal into diamonds.

     Second, and even more potent a deterrent, is the array of mechanisms these formerly prominent Federal officials could use to take revenge. They range from revealing secrets their tormentors cannot afford to have revealed to the incitement of FBI, CIA, and NSA campaigns of harassment against them, their loved ones, and their professional associates. Those three agencies have been shown to be above the law de facto. Their middle managers and low-level workers can get away with virtually anything. If Ruby Ridge and Waco may be admitted as data points, the mass murder of innocents is entirely within the spectrum of possibilities. And while Comey, Brennan, Clapper and the rest are no longer in high office, they continue to command the loyalty of many within their former demesnes…in some cases for the same reasons their nominal enemies fear them.

     An organization that stands “above the law” is an unstoppable weapon in the hands of whoever controls it. The best known such agencies are state and county-level “child protective services” and “family courts.” These answer to no one, can treat their targets as guilty until proven innocent – yes, really – and are unbound by any of the strictures the Constitution and Anglo-American legal tradition place upon normal jurisprudence. The IRS looks upon the power they wield with envious eyes – again: yes, really.

     During the “Red Scare” years, the FBI often harassed persons who declined to testify to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, as was their right, out of jobs, homes, and marriages. Employers feared what the Feebs could do to them far too much not to bow to the threat implied by an FBI visit to their places of business. It was a grotesque abuse of power – and the FBI got cleanly away with it in every case. Today, with the legal cover of the PATRIOT Act and the information-gathering power of the CIA and NSA at its disposal, there is no doubt in my mind that the FBI could arrange for the incarceration without trial of any American it might choose to target.

     Therefore, my money is on there being no penalties for any degree of involvement in the “Russian collusion” hoax, the pervasive and totally unwarranted spying on the Trump campaign, or the various acts of fraud and deceit under oath the involved persons have committed in the defense of their positions and reputations. I could be wrong. Indeed, I hope I am. But if so, I also hope that Bill Barr and everyone else in the Trump Administration are braced for impact. Any “hard rain” they drop on the anti-Trump conspirators could fall just as hard, though undeservedly, on them as well.

     Before I get started on the morning’s serious topic, I have a request for my Gentle Readers and anyone else who enjoys reading Web punditry:

     I don’t mean monetarily. Donations do constitute a form of approbation, but there are other kinds that are arguably more important. Express your appreciation of those whose emissions you admire and enjoy. There aren’t many of us left. That’s largely due to the rise of “social media,” which are proving to be about as social as the Black Death. So we greatly appreciate comments, emails, crosslinks, and other sorts of feedback that let us know that we have an audience, and that that audience would miss us were we to depart from our posts.

     Any expression of your appreciation, however you might choose to phrase it, will help to energize the recipient to “keep on keepin’ on.” Don’t excuse yourself on the specious grounds that “He gets enough of that already” or “Somebody else will do it.” Do your part; never mind what others might do or not do. (I could launch into a lecture on renormalized rationality at this point, but I’ll spare you.)

     This morning at Ace of Spades HQ the proprietor himself declaims thus:

     [Sean Trende] talked about the break-up of the [Republican] party being about the "Senior Partners" in the coalition -- the Establishment, which actually had a relatively small popular base of support but was closer to power, as they ran magazines and lived in DC -- not being willing to cede any amount of power-sharing to the "Junior Partners" in the coalition -- religious cons, real conservatives -- despite the fact that the Junior Partners were not willing to be mere Junior Partners any longer.

     Please, please read it all, including the embedded tweet series. It illustrates an important aspect of group dynamics, about which I’m about to wax eloquent...well, as eloquent as I can get this early on a Saturday morning. I’ll wait here.

     There’s an old pseudo-paradox, which I’ve seen discussed by Gregory Benford among others, about the emergence of a power center within a body that makes decisions by majority vote. Let’s take a simple case that can easily be generalized. Given a committee of nine, any group of five members who agree to vote concordantly can control the committee’s decisions. But that group itself constitutes a committee of five. Therefore any group of three within the five could take command of the five by the same sort of concerted voting, and thereby control the larger committee of nine. But that makes the group of three a committee in its own right, and therefore...

     Got the idea? Good. Now answer this question: Why doesn’t it work that way? It doesn’t, you know. The “cabal within a cabal within a cabal” approach to dominating a decision-making body has been tried innumerable times, and has always come apart. What’s the element that undoes the seams?

     All right, you’ve had long enough to think about it, and I can’t bring myself to be cruel on a Saturday. The answer is time.

     Time gives rise to change: in positions, in priorities, and in the relations, whether personal or political, among committee members. Sometimes those things interact to change one another. Smith might have been “solid” with the cabal until now, but then some new issue arises about which he differs with the others. Or his opinion of the relative importance of various issues might undergo a change. Or he might oppose the initiatives of dominant voice Jones out of pique, or envy, or personal ambition, even at a cost to some interest Smith once held sacrosanct. People change over time, and in unpredictable ways, at that.

     Long-term dominance of a voluntarily constituted body by a subgroup is rare, almost unknown. What’s been called here and elsewhere the “Republican Establishment” or “Conservatism, Inc.” has learned this to its sorrow. Unfortunately for those persons, they have largely failed to accept the lesson as valid.

     The application to Republican politics could hardly be clearer. Establishment figures’ acquiescence to the left-liberal / big-government status quo over the past three decades has cost them their previous dominance of conservative-leaning voters. The voters rebelled, chose to support an insurgent figure who challenged the Establishment’s dogma, and overturned the existing hierarchy in the GOP. The “NeverTrumpers” discovered, quite painfully, that the electorate was willing to see them “take their ball and bat and go home.” What remains is to trace out the specific changes that brought this about.

     We can observe a number of significant changes in the American legal and political milieu over the thirty years just behind us. Recall the executive timeline:

• 1989 – 1992: George Bush the Elder.
• 1993 – 2000: Bill Clinton.
• 2001 – 2008: George Bush the Younger.
• 2009 - 2016: Barack Hussein Obama.
• 2017 – present: Donald Trump.

     Twelve years of Establishment Republican dominance interleaved with sixteen years of Leftists in power, followed by two years of the Upstart. Who performed, and how well?

• George Bush the Elder: Gulf War I, several broken promises, especially on taxes. environmentalism, and gun rights.
• Bill Clinton: Further tax increases, first thrusts at nationalizing the medical-care system, several scandals.
• George Bush the Younger: A modest tax reduction, Gulf War II, no progress on abortion, gun rights, or restraining the power of the alphabet agencies.
• Barack Hussein Obama: Nationalization of medical insurance, sharply increased taxes and regulations, hobbling of the energy industry, emasculation of the military, encouragement for illegal immigration, heightened racial / ethnic tensions, reduction of America’s international influence, high unemployment and low growth, innumerable scandals. “America in decline.”
• Donald Trump: Reassertion of America’s international pre-eminence, lessening of foreign military involvements, reduced tax rates and simplified tax code, sharp reduction in regulations, unleashing of the American energy industry, economic boom, first thrusts against abortion and illegal immigration.

     The Upstart has discarded the Establishment’s “go along to get along” policy of accommodating the Left’s demands for ever larger government at the expense of Americans’ rights and interests. He seems prepared to go even further in the name of a national renewal of promise and purpose. He’s upstaging the Establishment, made them look irrelevant, and they don’t like it one little bit. It’s no wonder they bear ill will against him personally.

     There are several factors involved in the “NeverTrumpers’” ongoing opposition to the Upstart’s reign. For one, it has laid bare their highest priority: the maintenance of their positions among Those Who Matter, a.k.a. the Washington cocktail-party circuit. For another, performance beats bullshit, anywhere and anywhen, and it always makes the bullshitters hate you. For a third, the “NeverTrumpers’” tantrums and sour-grapes act have made them look petty – which they are – and have caused many who once respected their opinions to turn away from them as sources of information and political guidance.

     Thus, a hierarchy that once looked to endure indefinitely has been revealed to have been built on a foundation of sand. All it took was an Upstart, who spoke to the disappointed and demoralized in a tone of respect for them and their interests...and who meant what he said.

     I have in mind a passage from early in Atlas Shrugged:

     He did not know why he suddenly thought of the oak tree. Nothing had recalled it. But he thought of it—and of his childhood summers on the Taggart estate. He had spent most of his childhood with the Taggart children, and now he worked for them, as his father and grandfather had worked for their father and grandfather.
     The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree’s presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.
     One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside—just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.

     A thing which has lost its connection to its animating purpose will always rot from within. The desire to perpetuate oneself and one’s privileges and perquisites is insufficient of itself. Or as a character of mine once said:

     “Malcolm, you know far too much to have learned it all in one normal lifetime. Combat. Warfare. History. Sociology. Philosophy. Economics. Politics. Ethics. I've put my heart and soul into it, but I've only glimpsed the edges of what you know. You've lived several centuries at least....So you have to have some kind of purpose. A man dies without a purpose. A purpose strong enough to keep you alive that long must be as vivid and powerful as the sun.”

     As with individuals, so also with Establishments and the hierarchies over which they claim to preside. But don’t expect the deposed members of “Conservatism, Inc.” to admit that any time soon. They have a lot more denial to get through.

     The aim of the High is to remain where they are. -- George Orwell

     It is inherent in the nature of things that he who feels what he most values slipping from his grasp will intensify his efforts to retain it. It shouldn’t surprise us, nor does it. That having been said, Americans have expected that in political contests over who shall direct the future of the nation, regardless of the perceived magnitude of the stakes certain boundaries will be observed. So a video clip like the one I embedded in this piece tends to disturb even those who differ with President Trump, whether about substantive matters or notions of personal style. Yet it will not abate.

     The Establishment’s attempt to claw back the power taken from it by Trump’s ascendancy operates mainly through the press. The Legacy Media, which are almost unanimously aligned with the Democrat Party, have been tireless in assailing the president. Stories that would confirm the success of his policies are covered lightly if at all. Any sort of calamity, regardless of its nature or genesis, is tied to him, however fancifully. And as we have seen, opinion-mongers with Legacy Media platforms denounce him in terms and tones seldom directed at a mass murderer.

     And we have a critical election scheduled for the day after tomorrow: an election that will be in large measure a referendum on President Donald Trump.

     The unbridled slanders and condemnations should disturb both President Trump’s supporters and his opponents. They indict those of us who voted for him of having committed, at minimum, a terrible error in judgment. Several of the president’s high-profile detractors have made that indictment explicit. Apparently, for having elected the candidate they disdained, we’re the Twenty-First Century’s equivalent of Nazis. We deserve to go about in sackcloth and ashes, ritually flagellating ourselves, for the remainder of our lives. Here’s what soi disant “conservative” columnist Jennifer Rubin had to say about one of the president’s employees, Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

     “We’re not going to let these people go through life unscathed. Sarah Huckabee has no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press – after inciting against the press. These people should be made uncomfortable, and I think that’s a life sentence frankly.”

     What had Sanders done to deserve such a sentence? What? You have to ask? She works for the Trump Administration. She speaks on behalf of the president, and that makes her bad, don’t you see? So according to Jennifer Rubin, she deserves to be sentenced to a life of harassment without parole. And the press has been unanimous, whether openly or covertly, in ratifying Rubin’s proclamation.

     Sanders has maintained her reserve and her aplomb with near-perfect dignity. Only on one occasion has she allowed any of her feelings to show through:

     The catalogue of calumnies and condemnations that Sanders cited in that clip would have enraged a saint to violence. But that doesn’t matter to Jim Acosta. He didn’t get Sanders to kowtow. He didn’t get her to distance herself from her boss. He scored no points for his political masters and enablers. To the Establishment and its lackeys, that’s the only thing that matters.

     Note Acosta’s mealymouthed attempt to distance himself from his trade’s assault on every norm of decency toward an employee of a political opponent:

     “You did not say in the course of those remarks that you just made that the press is not the enemy of the people,” Acosta replied. “Are we to take it from what you just said, we all get put through the wringer, we all get put through the meat grinder in this town and you’re not an exception and I’m sorry that happened to you. I wish that did not happen.”

     “For the sake of this room, for the people in this room, this democracy, this country, all the people around the world are watching what you are saying and the White House for the United States of America, the president of the United States should not refer to us as enemy of the people? His own daughter acknowledges that and all I’m asking is you acknowledge that right here and right now.”

     Sanders replied with a curt dismissal of Acosta’s melodramatic demand: “I’m here to speak on behalf of the president. He’s made his statements clear.” Or in the vernacular of our time, “fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

     The above are reasons for both anger and hope.

     While the Trump Administration has known considerable turnover, it appears that it is now populated with persons who are prepared to weather the fusillades of accusation and denunciation the press has poured over their boss. Sarah Sanders is a good example.

     The GOP has taken a lot of heat in recent years for milquetoastedness: the sin of not standing foursquare for its principles and its platform. Republicans have repeatedly sought to mollify their opponents and detractors in the press by qualifying their positions in a fashion displeasing to the Republican base. The late John McCain was particularly notorious for this. Others almost as spineless retain seats on Capitol Hill, though in some cases not for much longer.

     In recent weeks there’s been a dramatic change. Perhaps it was kicked off by Senator Lindsey Graham’s righteous tirade over the pillorying of Brett Kavanaugh with completely unsubstantiated accusations of sexual misconduct. At any rate, Congressional Republicans are doing a lot less mincing lately – and the electorate seems to prefer them that way.

     Tuesday will be the next joust over federal power. The Establishment’s claw-back campaign will receive an important diagnosis then. The Democrats and their press handmaidens have been predicting a “blue wave” that will sweep them back to power. However, recent polls suggest that no such transformation of Congress is likely. How the Democrats, the press, and their street activists will react to having their hopes of such a wave dashed cannot be predicted...but I have an uncanny suspicion that it will be fun to watch. Stay tuned.

     The defining characteristic of an aristocracy, a.k.a. “the elite” or “the Establishment,” is the arrogation of one or more privileges that persons outside that group are legally forbidden to exercise. For example, for many decades the legal privilege of owning real estate was reserved to members of the English nobility. In medieval Europe, only a noble or a knight in service to a noble was permitted to own a sword. Aristocracies have often been favored by sumptuary laws. In societies with a legally defined aristocracy, a commoner who attempts to exercise a privilege reserved to the aristocracy will be punished for it. Sometimes the penalty has been execution.

     In societies without a recognized aristocracy, a group whose members seek to be thought of as “superior,” in whatever sense, will often behave like an aristocracy. The symptom is often verbal: “talking down” to the rest of us, or arguing for positions that would imply a privilege reserved to them.

     There’s no ideological dividing line that separates aristocrats, legally recognized or not, from us of the Great Unwashed.

     Just now, a number of “conservatives” – I remember when what they were striving to conserve was freedom — are arguing strenuously against a Constitutionally protected right:

     I’m not personally acquainted with any of these...persons. I know them only as three commentators deemed right-of-center. I have no idea whether any of them own a weapon of any sort. But I’m perfectly willing to call them aspiring aristocrats. And I’d bet you the mortgage money that they’d have no qualms about hiring armed bodyguards were they to feel threatened.

     (Hm. A quick Googling reveals that all three are NeverTrumpers. More than coincidence? Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.)

     I wrote, back at Eternity Road, about the phenomenon of eminent conservative figures who find abridgements of Americans’ right to keep and bear arms perfectly acceptable. Such persons tend to share quite a few “cultural markers” with left-liberal enemies of Americans’ Second Amendment rights. They live along the coasts, usually in or near large cities. They’re well to do if not wealthy. They work in one of the communications trades, often as writers or opinion-mongers. And their social circles overlap heavily with their supposed ideological opponents.

     Such persons tend to be conservative in the original sense: i.e., the sense expressed by this lapel-button joke:

     Such “conservatives” are hardly of the classical-liberal / Constitutionalist / Americanist bent. They’re concerned with preserving the status quo, most particularly their piece of the status quo. Their sort largely goes unarmed. If there are firearms near to them, they’re in the possession of the hired security guards at the apartment tower doors or the villa’s wrought-iron gates. Their left-liberal friends and party guests are quite all right with those. They’re less a means of defense or security than a token of having been accepted into America’s aristocracy: the “opinion leaders,” the “people who matter.” They have nothing in common with the guns of the hoi polloi.

     When a Max Boot, a David Frum, or a Tom Nichols “comes out” as those persons did in the tweets reproduced above, they’re telling you a great deal more than they might realize. It’s valuable information – and it should be factored into everything else they say, on any topic in the national discourse.

     The above is probably Donald Trump’s most famous campaign moment. The people at his rallies loved it – and they loved him for it. He had proclaimed a standard by which to judge whether America was advancing that they could understand. It was one that included them, their families, their communities, and the futures of their children.

     Yes, it was extravagant. Yes, it was bombastic. It’s Trump’s rhetorical style...and much to the dismay of his opponents in the Democrat and Republican Parties, the public didn’t turn up its collective nose at his “vulgarity.” Rather, it installed him in the White House.

     Trump had accomplished something that had eluded a great many career politicians: he had tapped the national spirit and embraced it. He had told the voters, “I see winning the way you do, and I’m committed to it.”

     The political class’s media handmaidens were massively unwilling to show the public the excitement Trump had generated:

     Those rallies were a refutation of all their political masters held dear. They could not bear it. More, they could not understand it.

     Trump didn’t have a record of failure for his opponents to run against. He had a record of doing what he said he’d do. He had scored repeated successes in one of the most difficult real-estate markets in the world. Yes, he had suffered losses, but he’d always recovered from them. He was able to make big promises and be believed. That, coupled with his embrace of what the voters hold to be winning, was the fuel that propelled him to the Oval Office. Since he got there, he’s been doing just about exactly as he promised, despite the contrary prognostications of the Establishment.

     In reflecting on the above, please remember that I was dubious about Trump.

     As everyone has his own values, goals, and priorities, everyone has his own definition of winning. Each of us knows pretty well:

• What matters to him,
• What he wants that he doesn’t yet have,
• What he has that he wants to be rid of,
• And what he’s willing to do, to pay, and to sacrifice to advance toward those goals.

     That’s the nature of individuality. Regardless of what Most People might say, we really are individually motivated and actuated. Yet our commonalities are pretty common.

     For decades Smith has listened to politicians’ promises, and then has watched them fail at best, go back on their words at worst. He’s grown thick calluses over his credulity. His neighbor Jones feels much the same, even though Smith calls himself a liberal and Jones calls himself a conservative. “You can’t trust ‘em” is their shared conviction about the political class.

     One of the consequences has been the diminution of the fraction of the electorate that bothers to vote:

     The voter unenthused about either of the presidential candidates has a strong chance of staying home. The syndrome is even more pronounced in non-presidential election years, which suggests that the conviction that "they're all thieves" is even stronger at the state, county, and municipal levels.

     What the careerists who make up our political Establishment have banked on is the belief that party alignment matters more than anything – "If you don't elect me, you'll get him." While it does matter somewhat, the perception that the candidate can be trusted to keep his promises and to achieve the results he's promised is far more potent.

     The careerists have come up against a man with a habit of keeping his promises and making good on them, and it dismays and disgusts them. Who does this upstart think he is, anyway?

     For at least a century, the political careerist's definition of winning has been:

• Get elected.
• Get re-elected.

     As long as "everyone plays by the same rules," it kept the careerists in power. When an outsider with a track record of success entered the game and defeated them, the Establishment went to its fallback definition of winning: Thwart Trump and his agenda, so that his "trick" would never be used against them again. When you read something mealy-mouthed about how "senior staff" ought to "control" Trump, that's the key to it.

     The elections of 2018 and 2020 are likely to turn on how well Trump resists the attempts to control, block, and defeat him. The careerists, with their quite different definition of winning, have a lot more to lose than he does. They'll play hard. They'll cheat. Some of them are already doing so. But they're fighting uphill. The electorate likes what it's seen so far from the 45th President.

     They're not yet tired of winning. Not at all.

     No, this won’t be about either sweets or the Girl Scouts. Rather, it pertains to Robert Ehrlich’s recent column about the divide within the GOP:

     It concerns the growing dichotomy between what many observers see as a chaotic White House on the one hand, and a Reaganesque flair for gritty policy calls on the other. Peggy Noonan's most recent Sunday column was devoted to the former as she described how (many) Republican Senators remain at a loss to deal with a free agent president resistant to control – even by senior staff.

     The narrative includes criticisms that have grown familiar during Trump's first year in office. Here, the president is viewed as a shoot-from-the-hip neophyte too undisciplined to govern and quite dangerous in a world populated by despots who wield nuclear weapons.

     Sen. Bob Corker's recent broadsides qualify here. The retiring Republican Senator from Tennessee sees an overmatched executive lacking in "competence" and "stability," albeit surrounded by a competent senior group daily engaged in the task of keeping the leader of the free world from careening off the rails. (Whatever did happen to keeping family disputes within the family?)

     Governor Ehrlich goes on to note that despite all that Establishmentarian disapproval, President Trump has scored several Reaganesque victories:

     In striking contrast are a series of Trump administration policy initiatives that not only define Trump as the anti-Obama, but also as more Reaganesque than a "Never Trumper" could ever have imagined. How else to describe a president willing to buck the status quo, and a powerful establishment press, in pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords and now refusing to recertify a notoriously deficient nuclear deal with the mullahs in Tehran.

     Not all the gates of the Left, nor the Establishment Right, nor the hangdog commentators of the Main Stream Media have dampened Trump’s determination to do as he’s said he would do: i.e., to put the interests of America and Americans above all other considerations, including the approval of anyone. Yet the attempts to characterize the Trump Administration as somehow deficient continue; the usual phrases concern Trump’s “fitness to govern” and his “chaotic White House.” They seem to be everywhere these days.

     It’s more amusing than anything else, really. What evidence can Trump’s detractors present for their superior wisdom and insight? How do their achievements, aggregated over their entire lives – do they have any? – compare to Trump’s achievements over his first nine months as president? Given the overwhelming imbalance in President Trump’s favor, why should an objective observer listen to their plaints?

     No, those questions are not merely rhetorical.

     A good many of us, without regard for political affiliation, are “organization men:” persons whose first priority is to conform, to “follow the rules,” to be and to be seen as “team players.” Of course, that attitude assumes the existence of a team, and rules for the members of the team that have some inherent validity. Those assumptions have governed the operations of the political elite for decades, especially at the federal level.

     But there cannot be a team without team objectives: goals that the team’s members are expected to place above all personal priorities. Moreover, if any of the members have priorities that clash with the supposed team objectives, the conflict can be resolved either of two ways:

• The expulsion of the dissident members;
• The cosmeticization of the supposed team objectives.

     The plaints of such as Senator Corker amount to this: “Trump’s not a team player.” That’s an accurate statement, if viewed in the appropriate light. Senator Corker’s team is the Washington Establishment. President Trump feels no loyalty to that team. Indeed, he exhibits an aversion to it, its priorities, and its ways. The irony arises from the plainly cosmetic nature of Corker’s team’s supposed objectives.

     The members of the Washington Establishment, like members of all establishments, are principally concerned with perpetuating their tenures in power. Their “team objectives” are strictly for show, as we can see from the Republican congressional caucuses’ near to absolute ineffectiveness.

     Donald Trump, the businessman who became president against the opposition of the Establishment and all its media handmaidens, is an existential threat to that Establishment. That’s what powers the ongoing resistance to Trump and the attempts to disparage Trump and his administration.

     Now, none of that is news to any Gentle Reader who’s been attentive to the cut and thrust of national politics. What might be new is the clarity the anti-Trump Establishment’s underlying strategy has attained in recent weeks.

     As it’s objectively impossible to deny Trump’s successes, the Establishment forces are now concentrating on the “chaos” motif. They seek the support of “organization men:” they to whom keeping everything orderly – preserving “the way we’ve always done things around here” – is the paramount consideration.

     But there aren’t many such men who aren’t already Establishmentarians to be found in these United States.

     The concept of the “rugged individualist,” who goes his own way regardless of anyone’s contrary opinion, is deeply embedded in the American psyche. Even those of us for whom the Gray Flannel Suit is our habitual garb like to think of ourselves that way. So appealing to the American electorate by preaching that President Trump “isn’t following the rules” faces a stiff headwind...especially since supporting politicians who “follow the rules” hasn’t done much for us quite a while.

     It’s worth remembering, in light of the above, how very much the Republican Establishment resisted the most successful president of the postwar years: Ronald Reagan. Great effort went into the attempt to deny Reagan the 1980 Republican presidential nomination. When he took office, similar efforts went into surrounding him with Establishment allies. Some of his bolder objectives were thwarted by Republican Congressmen and Senators who found them a threat to “the way we’ve always done things around here,” and therefore to their personal priorities.

     Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan. For one thing, he believes in the soundness of his ideas; he resists suggestions that they’d be “dangerous” or “inappropriate.” For another, he’s considerably more abrasive than Reagan, more inclined to flip you off if you try to restrain him. Those qualities served him well in the business world. Adversaries that took him lightly didn’t do so for long; there were too many opportunities and too much money at stake.

     More Americans are resonating to Trump’s style than are troubled by it. The remainder are concentrated along the coasts, where the pressure to conform to “the rules” and the penalties for not doing so are considerable. These, as we can see from 2016’s Electoral College results, are already in the Establishment’s camp.

     As for the title of this piece, I derived it from an abbreviated version of the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory used by the Advocates for Self-Government in the years when Marshall Fritz, its founder, was at its helm. He reduced the categories to four:

• Green: Idea-centered.
• Red: Action-centered.
• Blue: Emotion-centered.
• Brown: Rule-centered.

     Marshall Fritz used this condensed classification scheme to make various points, among the most memorable of which was the importance of gaining the allegiance of the Blue group, which dominates all the communication-intensive trades. for the cause of freedom. But the Brown group, whose dominance of the majority of organizations is a fact of institutional dynamics, is the one most solidly planted on the other side: the Establishment’s side, the “way we’ve always done things around here” side, the anti-Trump side.

     In focusing their denigrations upon Trump’s style and the “chaos” in the White House – funny how that “chaos” hasn’t impeded Trump very much, isn’t it? – they seek the support of those who, like themselves, regard the preservation of the status quo as more important than anything that could be gained by departing from it. And they’re coming up gratifyingly short.