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The Culture of Revolution, Baby
I’m coming to believe that the current moment is a replay of the Sixties “Revoluton, Baby” vibe. Grok says:
The phrase “revolution, baby” encapsulates this heady mix of optimism and defiance, where young people believed they could remake the world.
It involved:
Counterculture and Hippies
Civil Rights and Social Justice
Music as a Catalyst
Political Radicalism
Cultural Experimentation
Then there is Eric Hoffer as his dictum that mass movements usually end up as rackets. But I would say that the “revolution” of the Sixties was already a racket, a movement of, by, and for the privileged children of the educated class.
In the Year of our Lord 2025 what are we to think of today’s revolutionary vibe? As in:
No Kings protests
Rep. Pelosi threatens to arrest ICE agents
Lefty “mass economic blackout”
Gov. Pritzker’s Illinois Accountability Commission to review “federal law enforcement operations” in his state.
And so on.
What I wonder is what our Democratic friends think they are doing with all this.
Do they think that Trump is ending democracy as we know it?
Do they think that politics must always include “protest?”
Do they think that Trump is wrecking their corruption culture?
Is this just part of their secular religious faith in politics and “change?”
Do the leaders think that they have to rile up their rank-and-file to make them think that they are “fighting Trump?”
Are they just doing Revolution “cosplay” because that’s what they learned from the teacher in Protest 101?
Is this end-of-an-era to-ing and fro-ing by a failing ruling class and its supporters on the way out the door?
One of my theories is that the faith of the educated class is in being “creative,” stepping outside the ordinary to make a difference. This, to me explains things from creativity in the arts and creativity in sex and lifestyle. But I think that the educated class does not understand that “many are called but few are chosen.” That goes for everything from business startups to experiments in unconventional lifestyle. Problem is that our liberal friends believe that if their creative efforts are not successful then it must be because of injustice or bigotry rather than just the normal operation living things within nature.
Whereas we racist-sexist-homophobes normies just want our chance to live in the world and maybe make a difference. But we don’t expect to blaze across the sky like a meteor.
Or maybe the problem is just that the Democrats lost in 2024 and they “cain’t stand it.”
| perm | 10/24/25 10:42 pm ET | comments |
Of Course: Ending Liberal Hegemony Ain't Easy
A couple of days ago I wrote about how the No Kings protesters don’t get it. They are all riled up but they don’t realize that there’s a reason why the political center is moving away from them. They don’t understand that all the glorious political programs that were going to save the world didn’t, and they never will.
But “Should Republicans Take the ‘No Kings’ Movement Seriously?” Mike Miller writes that
The “No Kings” rhetoric, which bastardizes patriotic language to attack Trump by absurdly arguing that America’s duly elected president is actually a wannabe “king,” is charged, theatrical propaganda — not a serious constitutional critique.
But Newt Gingrich says not so fast.
The fact that millions of Americans spent part of Saturday in an ideologically driven political event is sobering.
No matter that it was organized by the NGO Industrial Complex and funded by lefty billionaires. The fact is that a lot of people showed up.
What do we want, we racist-sexist-homophobes that the left never tires of linking to another pejorative?
I think that what we want is to deflate and fold up the Age of the Educated Class slowly and gently so that there is no butcher’s bill to pay at the end of it.
For me, I understand the rage of our liberal friends. To an educated liberal, raised to the faith, it is truly “inconceivable,” just as Vizzini, played by Wallace Shawn, says, over and over in The Princess Bride. And it is particularly appropriate that Shawn is the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn.
Secular liberalism, progressivism, whatever, is a religion, just like Christianity. And just as Christianity has its Second Coming of Christ, secular liberals are taught to believe that the day of justice is just around the corner, just a couple of social programs away from Heaven on Earth.
Of course our liberal friends think that Trump is the worst thing ever — since the last Republican President — and a “king” and an “authoritarian” and “tyrannical” and “fascist” and whatever other pejorative comes to mind. Of course they do, because our liberal friends are used to being in the political and cultural driver’s seat and cannot really conceive of an orchestra where they are demoted from the first violins to the second violins.
So how do we do it? I’d say we should learn from the miscues of our Democratic friends, and remember what not to do.
Don’t weaponize the government like Barack Obama did with the Russia Hoax and the fake narrative that January 6 was an armed insurrection and that Trump should be put in jail for mis-valuing his real estate or sexually molesting poor innocent liberal women.
Don’t short-cut the legal process. Let the liberal judges continue with their ridiculous efforts to stop the Trump train, and deal with their injunctions in regular legal process.
Don’t fake up lawfare against Democratic headliners. For sure, prosecute the Brennans and the Comeys and the Boltons. But make sure they are prosecuted for real and serious violations of law. We need to do that anyway, because we need to reel in the out-of-control foreign policy and intelligence community establishments.
Don’t sail too close to the wind. We want to change the rules, and the best way to do that is to respect the new rules we want, and make fools of Democrats that change the rules with a change in the weather.
Fact is, we have bigger fish to fry than just hooking the Democrats in their corruption and lawlessness and ridiculous faith in the ability of politics to create a just society.
We want to make a society where big government and big programs and 40 percent of GDP spent in government is regarded as a pathetic superstition that only ignorant and bigoted people believe in. That doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s something to work on. We want to advance ideas like my Four Laws:
Socialism can’t work because prices.
Administrative government can’t work because bandwidth.
Regulatory government can’t work because “regulatory capture.”
Big programs cannot work because they can’t be reformed.
We need to create an America where every school kid is raised to believe the Four Laws as just common sense. Hey! That shouldn’t be hard, because the Four Laws are just common sense.
And then we want to teach people that human society is far too big and complex and miraculous to trust to a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats and activists.
Yes. The miraculous: how was it possible for humans to come to be, for capitalism to actually work and create unimaginable prosperity, and for humans to live nearly all the time in peace and tranquillity?
But we should understand that the current crop of adult liberals will never abandon the faith they were confirmed in. So we should be patient with them, and understanding.
Because we are the good guys.
| perm | 10/24/25 12:15 am ET | comments |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
The more politics, the more injustice.
[T]he most fundamental problem of politics... is not the control of wickedness, but the limitation of righteousness. — Henry A. Kissinger
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Confronting the Left's Pejorative Politics
