He who would be Cringe
I am a realist first and foremost. This means, in the tradition of Aristotle, I am concerned with the world as it is and not how I wish it to be. The combination of political realism and rightwing politics is often depressing. Our side of things has been on a losing streak for some 70 years. The future seems grim as well. Replacement migration, cultural degradation, and the competency crisis are all becoming more and more severe. In the face of these issues, our elite institutions have no solutions to offer us. Despite all of this, I contend that there is a reason to be optimistic.
Our enemies are profoundly embarrassing people.
Look at the great men of the left. I do mean great (not good). Stalin may have been a monster, but he was a capable ruler and master manipulator. Lenin, his predecessor, was perhaps the greatest political mind of his century. Each of these men was at the absolute top of their field as leaders and theorists.
If we look at their progeny we find no excellence at all.
I’m well known for picking out lol-cows. For those unfamiliar with the term it is a portmanteau of the abbreviation LOL ( laugh out loud) and cow. It means someone who can reliably be milked for laughs. In short, this term describes someone who repeatedly and publicly engages in embarrassing behavior.
Our regime is packed with lol-cows. At every level of government, we find goblins like Lightfoot, Levine, and Jean-Pierre. The regime loves to promote fools. Conservatives, often point this out as a mistake or sign of stupidity. They are incorrect. This is a logical decision.
Why is this the case? Spandrell, one of the original NRx bloggers describes how these incompetent freaks are the most ardent supporters of power.
In Communist countries pedigree was very important. You couldn't get far in the party if you had any little kulak, noble or landowner ancestry. Only peasants and workers were trusted.
Why? Because only peasants and workers could be trusted to be loyal. Rich people, or people with the inborn traits which lead to being rich, will always have status in any natural society. They will always do alright. That's why they can't be trusted; the stakes are never high for them. If anything they'd rather have more freedom to realize their talents. People of peasant stock though, they came from the dregs of society. They know very well that all they have was given to them by the party. And so they will be loyal to the death, because they know it, if the Communist regime falls, their status will fall as fast as a hammer in a well…Those people may be very high performers individually, but in a natural society ruled by its core of high performers … they wouldn't have very high status. So if you promise them high status for being loyal to you; you bet they're gonna join your team. They have much to gain, little to lose. The Coalition of the Fringes, Sailer calls it. It's worse than that really. It's the coalition of everyone who would lose status the better society were run. It's the coalition of the bad.
This quote explains how the Left uses social position to motivate loyalty. Competent people don’t need the regime. These men have other options. Equality, the end goal of the Left, can only hold them back. The dregs of society see equality as a coup. They know that in a fair hierarchy, they would be lowly, and they have only been raised to their current station artificially.
This strategy has obvious electoral advantages. There are more low-status people than high-status ones. When your nation is organized around popularity contests, it makes sense to play for the widest audience possible. This is why the Cathedral, offers high-status positions within its organization to undeserving people. This technique produces loyal soldiers and wins elections. It is a winning short-term strategy.
Yet, this corruption damages the very fabric of the regime. Our civilization is complex. It requires competence at every level. Eventually, simply due to age, and elite will need to induct younger members. But when our institutions are stuffed with loyal freaks, they have a limited pool to select from. Bringing these cronies into the elite reduces the average quality of the ruling class.
Arnold Toynbee, the British author, outlined how the ruling caste of society decays over time. Initially, an elite is formed by answering a great civilizational problem. These problem solvers are what he calls an elite creative minority. This minority comes into power by solving the problem and uses this fact as a justification to rule. These men are indeed elite and are well suited to rule. Because they are suited to rule, the elite creative minority enjoys spiritual and moral unity with their subjects. However, over time, the quality of these men decays. The creative minority becomes a mere dominant minority. The elite nature is lost and with it any semblance of creativity. As the ruled sense the lack of creativity, they withdraw their assent, and moral unity fades away. When a new problem arises, the rulers are too incompetent to address it.
This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in. Our ruling class is a shadow of its former self. Where there were once component, if morally dubious, men at the helm there are now LOL-cows of all stripes. Our elites are no longer creative and simply are dominant. Problems beset the empire on all sides, and none of our elites have any real answers. Clearly, there is no moral unity between the rulers and the ruled.
I for one am glad. These people are embarrassing and deserve to fall. My hope in all of this is that our next rulers are more competent and more creative. There are plenty of civilizational problems that must be answered. At the very least I hope they’re less embarrassing.