It’s long. I always wish people simply published their thoughts in written form rather than asking to sit and listen to them talk. But this one is definitely worth the trouble. I don’t think you’ll find a better explanation of what happened, why this election is questionable, and where we are.
Andrew Bacevich, in the London Spectator, offers some home truth.
[T]he continued ability of the mainstream media to craft a powerful anti-Republican narrative that reaches too many Americans still is too dominant. As I’ve noted before, imagine what the outcome of the election would have looked like if the media coverage of Trump was just 60 percent percent negative instead of the 90 percent negative coverage it has been for four years. Frankly, it is stunning the presidential election was as close as it was given the non-stop hits Trump took for four years.
From the false Russia collusion to the baseless racism allegations, no candidate in the history of America has had to deal with such a persistently opposition media. If Republicans want to change things, their donors should invest billions in starting legitimate, fully-funded competing news outlets tailored to Trump supporters and, equally critical, Republicans should stop giving interviews to CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and every other media outlet that slants coverage so heavily towards the Democrats. No Republican wins because they appeared on or in any of those outlets. Republicans need to cut-off all media entities who simply can’t be fair.
RPS ORDERS
No. 47 (Series 1921)
HEADQUARTERS U.S. MARINE CORPS
Washington, November 1, 1921
759. The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not be received by the 10th of November, 1921, it will be read upon receipt.
(1) On November 10, 1775, a Corps of Marines was created by a resolution of Continental Congress. Since that date many thousand men have borne the name “Marine”. In memory of them it is fitting that we who are Marines should commemorate the birthday of our corps by calling to mind the glories of its long and illustrious history.
(2) The record of our corps is one which will bear comparison with that of the most famous military organizations in the world’s history. During 90 of the 146 years of its existence the Marine Corps has been in action against the Nation’s foes. From the Battle of Trenton to the Argonne, Marines have won foremost honors in war, and is the long eras of tranquility at home, generation after generation of Marines have grown gray in war in both hemispheres and in every corner of the seven seas, that our country and its citizens might enjoy peace and security.
(3) In every battle and skirmish since the birth of our corps, Marines have acquitted themselves with the greatest distinction, winning new honors on each occasion until the term “Marine” has come to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue.
(4) This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as “Soldiers of the Sea” since the founding of the Corps.
Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 10th 1775
Captains Nicholas and Mullens, having been tasked by the 2nd Continental Congress to form 2 battalions of Marines, set up the Corps’ first recruiting station in the tavern.
The first likely prospect was, in typical recruiters fashion, promised a “life of high adventure in service to Country and Corps”. And, as an extra bonus: If he enlisted now he would receive a free tankard of ale….
The recruit gladly accepted the challenge and, receiving the free tankard of ale, was told to wait at the corner table for orders.
The first Marine sat quietly at the table sipping the ale when he was joined by another young man, who had two tankards of ale.
The first Marine looked at the lad and asked where he had gotten the two tankards of ale?
The lad replied that he had just joined this new outfit called the Continental Marines, and as an enlistment bonus was given two tankards of ale.
The first Marine took a long hard look at the second Marine and said, ” It wasn’t like that in the old Corps.”
Himalaya Australia was one of a number of sources applying Benford’s Law to the 2020 Election results.
Facebook has banned references to Benford’s Law.
As the vote counting for the 2020 Presidential Election continues, various facts suggest rampant frauds in Joe Biden’s votes. So does mathematics in terms of the votes from precincts.
Benford’s law or the first-digit law, is used to check if a set of numbers are naturally occurring or manually fabricated. It has been applied to detect the voting frauds in Iranian 2009 election and various other applications including forensic investigations.
This is what described by Wikipedia:
“Benford’s law, or the first-digit law, is an observation about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many real-life sets of numerical data. The law states that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers, the leading digit is likely to be small.
For example, in sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. If the digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford’s law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.â€
…
Home
Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law (Mathematics)
Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law (Mathematics)
2020 Presidential ElectionDonald TrumpJoe BidenVoter fraud
Himalaya Australia
Himalaya Australia Nov. 07
Source of image: Twitter
As the vote counting for the 2020 Presidential Election continues, various facts suggest rampant frauds in Joe Biden’s votes. So does mathematics in terms of the votes from precincts.
Benford’s law or the first-digit law, is used to check if a set of numbers are naturally occurring or manually fabricated. It has been applied to detect the voting frauds in Iranian 2009 election and various other applications including forensic investigations.
This is what described by Wikipedia:
“Benford’s law, or the first-digit law, is an observation about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many real-life sets of numerical data. The law states that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers, the leading digit is likely to be small.
For example, in sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. If the digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford’s law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.â€
One of the examples is the population of the world, which are naturally occurring numbers.
Distribution of first-digit (in %) of population numbers in 237 countries in 2010.
Source: wikipedia.org
A number of people on the internet have checked the votes (precinct by precinct) of Joe Biden, Donald Trump as well as other candidates for their legitimacy in terms of the Benford’s Law.
According a Reddit user, r/dataisbeautiful’s calculation, the ‘normal’ distribution of first digits for the different candidates based on Benford’s law is illustrated below.
Source of image: https://bit.ly/3l7mUE5
Youtuber Nyar has shared the observations on a number of counties, concluding that Trump and others’ votes have natural distribution but not for Joe Biden’s.
In Fulton County, Georgia, which overlaps with the Atlantic metropolitan where Joe Biden is expected to win, all of the three candidates have normal distributions for their votes. (Joe Biden 72.6%, Donald Trump 26.2%, Jo Jorgensen 1.2%. Source: .theguardian.com)
In Miami-Dade County of Florida, which includes the Miami metropolitan where Joe Biden is expected to win, all candidates’ votes obey Benford’s Law. (Joe Biden 53.4%, Donald Trump 46.1%, Jo Jorgensen 0.3%. Source: theguardian.com)
However, in the Milwaukee County of Wisconsin, which is in one of the key swing states, Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law while other candidates’ don’t. (Joe Biden 69.4%, Donald Trump 29.4%, Jo Jorgensen 0.9%. Source: theguardian.com)
Home
Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law (Mathematics)
Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law (Mathematics)
2020 Presidential ElectionDonald TrumpJoe BidenVoter fraud
Himalaya Australia
Himalaya Australia Nov. 07
Source of image: Twitter
As the vote counting for the 2020 Presidential Election continues, various facts suggest rampant frauds in Joe Biden’s votes. So does mathematics in terms of the votes from precincts.
Benford’s law or the first-digit law, is used to check if a set of numbers are naturally occurring or manually fabricated. It has been applied to detect the voting frauds in Iranian 2009 election and various other applications including forensic investigations.
“Benford’s law, or the first-digit law, is an observation about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many real-life sets of numerical data. The law states that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers, the leading digit is likely to be small.
For example, in sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. If the digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford’s law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.â€
One of the examples is the population of the world, which are naturally occurring numbers.
Distribution of first-digit (in %) of population numbers in 237 countries in 2010.
Source: wikipedia.org
A number of people on the internet have checked the votes (precinct by precinct) of Joe Biden, Donald Trump as well as other candidates for their legitimacy in terms of the Benford’s Law.
According a Reddit user, r/dataisbeautiful’s calculation, the ‘normal’ distribution of first digits for the different candidates based on Benford’s law is illustrated below.
Source of image: https://bit.ly/3l7mUE5
Youtuber Nyar has shared the observations on a number of counties, concluding that Trump and others’ votes have natural distribution but not for Joe Biden’s.
In Fulton County, Georgia, which overlaps with the Atlantic metropolitan where Joe Biden is expected to win, all of the three candidates have normal distributions for their votes. (Joe Biden 72.6%, Donald Trump 26.2%, Jo Jorgensen 1.2%. Source: .theguardian.com)
Image from github.com/ (https://bit.ly/2GGTXjq)
In Miami-Dade County of Florida, which includes the Miami metropolitan where Joe Biden is expected to win, all candidates’ votes obey Benford’s Law. (Joe Biden 53.4%, Donald Trump 46.1%, Jo Jorgensen 0.3%. Source: theguardian.com)
Image from github.com/ (https://bit.ly/2GGTXjq)
However, in the Milwaukee County of Wisconsin, which is in one of the key swing states, Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law while other candidates’ don’t. (Joe Biden 69.4%, Donald Trump 29.4%, Jo Jorgensen 0.9%. Source: theguardian.com)
Image from github.com/ (https://bit.ly/2GGTXjq)
And in Chicago of Illinois, Joe Biden’s votes are abnormal.
So does that of Allegheny of Pennsylvania which includes Pittsburg. (Joe Biden 59.0%, Donald Trump 39.9%, Jo Jorgensen 1.2%. Source: theguardian.com)
It looks like maybe Biden had lost big cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh, which is why the fraudulent votes need to be brought in, which skew his curve away from a normal looking one.
And just like that the rioting and looting has ceased overnight. And now the half of the country that pummeled America like a battered wife is telling her to put on sunglasses, hide her black eye, be a good girl, and “come together as one.†Her answer? “Go fuck yourself.â€
Curtis aka Mencius Moldbug remains as brilliant, off-the-page original, and prolix as always.
One would post a quotation and a link, but he’s only sending these as emails currently, and he encourages re-posting the Whole Thing (which is the only way of sharing access).
So here are a few sample high points, followed by the whole thing.
Progressives see power as an end; conservatives see power as a means to an end. As soon as conservatives get even a sliver of power, they start trying to use this power to create good outcomes. This is irrational.
The rational way to use power is the progressive way: to make more power. Your power grows exponentially. Eventually you have all the power, and can get all the outcomes you want.
There is not one progressive idea which does not yield a power dividend. I cannot think of a conservative idea that does. If one did, the progressives would steal it. Then the conservatives would persuade themselves to oppose it, and all would be well.
This is not a coincidence. The great flaw of the American right is that, besides not being able to get any real power, they do not want any real power, and have no idea what they would do with any real power.
As I write, the path remains entirely open for Republicans, if they can operate as a coherent unit, to take all the power they want. They cannot, and they will not. Their fault is not in their stars, but themselves.
———————-
Trump and the Republicans will lose—even though they could win, right now, just by marching straight forward and not stopping until Rome. Their first step would be to legally steal the election back. If they try this they will not try hard, and they will almost certainly fail. And if they succeed, their first step will be their last; and once they stop advancing, they will be rapidly destroyed.
Historians are often puzzled by these moments of inexplicable incompetence. If the Confederates, after the Battle of Bull Run, march straight forward and don’t stop until they reach the Canadian border, the war is over and the Confederates win. The Union, despite superior population size and industrial power, is not yet ready to fight and has no organized forces in front of Washington. If Japan, upon Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, invades Siberia from the other end, the war is over and the Axis take the Old World. Instead Japan raids Hawaii, which is the worst possible move for both Japan and the Axis. Worst, it is very difficult to see why the correct decisions were not obvious at the time.
To understand the people who made those mistakes is to understand their causes. It would have been hard for those leaders, with the goals and perspectives they had, to avoid these particular errors. Nonetheless, hindsight is merciless in exposing the fact that their leaders had an obvious opportunity for total victory, and failed to take it.
We know our own side, and its reasons for failure are obvious. To win a war you need an army, a general, and a plan. Trump is always ready to fight a battle, and never ready to fight a war; the staff of his party are not soldiers, but lobbyists; and not even the biggest of our brains has anything remotely like a plan.
We cannot cross the Rubicon, then march until we reach Rome. We would not even know where we were going. We have no army, no general, not even a map. We have no idea where Rome even is. While we flatter ourselves as historical sophisticates, we are in reality political children—not just the politicians, also the philosophers.
———————-
What stops the Republicans from ruling is that they do not feel they have a right to rule. Worse, they are right. They have no right to power, because that right is created only by the capacity to exercise power capably. It is unfortunate that the Democrats have no such right either—arguably, they have much less right. But the Democrats will always win and always rule, because they are the ruling class—and they feel that right to rule—and none of their bad outcomes will ever change their minds about that.
There is only one way to give the enemies of power the feeling that we have the right to rule: create the capacity to rule. They don’t need that capacity to win. But we do. And we would want it after we won, anyway.
Indeed, no one today can imagine how much popularity any such competence, and the confidence that would come with it, is capable of generating. Winning an election in any other way is a waste of time at best. The public is a woman. Women like nothing so much as confidence.
Instead: as none other than Newton L. Gingrich has said, “You have a group of corrupt people who have absolute contempt for the American people, who believe we are so spineless, so cowardly, so unwilling to stand up for ourselves, that they can steal the presidency.†Newt is right. So is the group of corrupt people, unfortunately.
———————-
By March or April, America’s ruling class will feel like Hunter Biden on a Tuesday morning. Hunter reflects. He knows he left his pipe somewhere. He’s not sure where. What he knows is that this world, which as recently as mimosa brunch on Sunday was still burning with the rainbow fire of a hundred suns exploding in H-bomb supernova pornstar orgasms while galaxies collide, is an ugly, boring place. A sterile promontory. A foul and pestilent congregation of vapors… also, something sticky is stuck to his ass. He’ll get to it in a minute… oh, man…
Ann Althouse read the transcript of Joe Biden’s press conference statement and the dear girl went up like a bottle rocket.
[Quote Biden:]
[W]hat’s becoming clear each hour is that a record number of Americans of all races, faiths religions chose change over more of the same. They’ve given us a mandate for action on COVID, the economy, climate change, systemic racism.
Oh, now that’s a stretch. He’s barely won, if indeed he’s won. We still don’t know. But if he’s won, he wants you to know, that there’s the mysterious thing called “a mandate.” And he specifies the components of the mandate — “a mandate for action on COVID, the economy, climate change, systemic racism.” Wasn’t it more of a vote just to be rid of Donald Trump? But that’s the claim, the 4 elements of what we supposedly want — do something about COVID, the economy, climate change, and systemic racism. …
The people spoke, more than 74 million Americans and they spoke loudly for our ticket….
It was so loud we’re still straining to hear it after 4 days.
Look, we both know tensions are high, they can be high after a tough election, the one like we’ve had but we need to remember we have to remain calm, patient. Let the process work out as we count all the votes… In America, we hold strong views, we have strong disagreements and that’s okay. Strong disagreements are inevitable in a democracy and strong disagreements are healthy, they’re a sign of a vigorous debate of deeply held views. But we have to remember the purpose of our politics isn’t total, unrelenting, unending warfare, no. The purpose of our politics, the work of the nation isn’t to fan the flames of conflict but to solve problems, to guarantee justice, to get to improve the lives of our people. We may be opponents but we’re not enemies, we’re Americans. No matter who you voted for I’m certain of one thing, the vast majority of them, almost 150 million Americans who voted they want to get the vitriol out of our politics.
That would sit better with me if he hadn’t begun and ended his campaign by portraying President Trump as a racist. I think Biden fanned the flames and relied on dividing us. All winners claim to represent all of the people. It’s a convention to say that after you’ve won… or after the votes are in and you’re perceiving victory just out there in the near future. But I have no confidence that the Democratic Party will use whatever power it’s managed to scrape together to unite this country. Let them prove it… with clear and convincing evidence.
We’re certainly not going to agree on a lot of issues but at least we can agree to be civil with one another.
And that’s where you get my “civility bullshit” tag. You’re only calling for civility to get your opponents to stand down. “Civility” is a value that comes and goes.
We have to put the anger and the demonization behind us.
Now that you’ve been successful at demonizing Trump, you want the demonization to stop. We “have” to do it. You should have set an example when you risked something in declining to demonize. Now, it’s in your interest to put demonization off limits. Talk about things that are predictable.
It’s time for us to come together as a nation to heal…. We don’t have any more time to waste on partisan warfare.
You haven’t won yet, and I think there’s some partisan warfare left. You’re not nonpartisan for saying let’s stop fighting at the point when you are ahead.
Frank Miele identifies the two possible ways of preventing a stolen presidential election.
There are only two avenues for a candidate who thinks he has been cheated out of a rightful victory, and both of them have the potential to make him look like (as Jim Acosta accused Trump of being) a “sore loser.†One is the judicial process, which is where we are now, and the other is a constitutional process, about which I will say more in a minute.
The judicial process allows a candidate to go to court to present evidence of fraud or violations of law in the casting or counting of ballots, but then what? Trump’s lawyers have already proven that their election observers were illegally blocked from watching vote counting in Philadelphia. They are also making the case that illegal votes have been cast in Nevada, and raising serious concerns about why vote counting halted mysteriously in big Democrat-run cities during the small hours of the morning the day after the election. But if Republicans prove wrongdoing, what exactly is the solution? Remember, you can’t distinguish a legal vote from an illegal vote once they have been counted, so what can a judge do? What could the Supreme Court do?
Well, in one small part, the Supreme Court is actually well-positioned to act. That’s because the court has already heard one case based on the constitutional provision that federal elections are the sole province of state legislatures. The court split 4-4 on a ruling that would have prohibited Pennsylvania from counting ballots received for three days after Election Day because that rule was implemented by a Pennsylvania court, not the Pennsylvania legislature. The federal judges ruled it was too late to change the lower court mandate, but ordered Pennsylvania to keep the late votes segregated in case the matter ripened into a controversy.
Well, controversy it is. So it is expected that the full court — now including Amy Coney Barrett — will revisit the matter of those late ballots and very likely throw them out. There is little doubt that they are unconstitutional.
But that could only reverse one small measure of mischief, and would not necessarily repair all of the errors of the election. For the rest of those — ones involving procedure or illegal ballots that cannot be distinguished from legal ballots — the courts have limited options. In fact, there really is only one certain judicial remedy, and it is so extreme that almost no one would envision it being used — namely, throwing out the results of the election and mandating a new election to be held in a particular state, be that Pennsylvania or elsewhere.
This would obviously have to be done on an expedited basis since the Electoral College vote is scheduled on Dec. 14, but there is no reason why an election could not be held in a timely manner on a date determined by the court and administered by representatives of the court. Or perhaps I should say there is no reason why that could not be accomplished except for the lack of willingness to intervene that we can expect from either district judges or Supreme Court justices. It would be a heavy lift.
So that brings us to the constitutional solution. This one is more elegant, but it still requires a heady dose of chutzpah. As noted, under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the state legislatures are solely responsible for determining how each state’s electors are appointed. If a legislature were convinced that the presidential election in that state was tainted, it could convene and pass an emergency resolution declaring the election null and void and then choose to appoint a slate of electors by fiat. Since the claim of misconduct is being made by Republicans against Democrats, you can assume that it would take Republican-controlled legislatures to make such a bold move.
Fortuitously, Republicans do control both houses of the legislature in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. Nevada alone among the contested states has a Democratic legislature. If legislators are convinced that the presidency has been wrested out of Republican hands through chicanery or corruption, they could set the matter right by exercising their constitutional prerogative. This is a heavy lift also, but if states intend to ever exercise their authority under our federal system of government, there would be no more appropriate time to do so than when one party seeks to arrogate unto itself power that it has not earned through a free and fair election.
Let’s go back a bit to before election day to see why people would be suspicious that the game has been rigged.
Most of the mainstream polls were utter garbage, off by what I believe to be the largest amounts ever in all of American history. Of course, this thing that surely demoralized the right and helped the left raise funds was just an innocent sampling error rather than a purposeful sampling bias… uh huh.
Then in the weeks leading up to the election, Big Tech and the media had a concentrated censorship effort to stop what was probably the juiciest October Surprise in modern history. But them silencing major newspapers and US Senators was just a mistake in their innocent efforts to “fact checkâ€.
Then on election day, states like Florida that were obviously swinging hard for Trump with no possible mathematical way for Biden to come back, the news wouldn’t call for Trump. States where it was still clearly up in the air just based on even the most cursory of statistical analysis (Arizona) they called for Biden ASAP. But that was just innocent mistakes, and not an attempt to set the narrative of inevitable Biden victory by major media.
When Trump pulled ahead in the midwestern swing states by what were starting to appear to be insurmountable amounts, they suddenly threw the brakes on the counts. (my favorite part of this was when it looked like Trump was going to win, the Chinese Yaun crashed, which is pretty telling about just how shitty a candidate Joe Biden is) Okay, suddenly stopping all those counts seemed a little weird, but most of America went to bed thinking that this was a close race, with Trump in the lead in the EC.
Then we woke up in the morning, and everybody saw the 538 graphs showing a massive middle of the night spike for Joe Biden, with almost zilch in corresponding votes for Trump.
Now, one of those got walked back as “typoâ€. (again, funny how all these “mistakes†keep going in one direction) but the damage was already done, and all of a sudden most of America was paying a whole lot more attention to places like Wisconsin and Michigan than we usually do. That’s how flags work. And it turned out that single six figure typo was only one of many statistically improbable Biden vote dumps to come.
Now, all of my liberal acquaintances were quick to dismiss these, with some gas lighting about how it was just deep blue inner cities votes coming in, and of obviously they’re going to vote for Joe Biden… Except that is them deliberately missing the point. It isn’t that Biden won those, it is that he won them with statistically improbable amounts.
I don’t know what the current numbers are now, but as of yesterday morning the Wisconsin Midnight Mystery Dump was something like 98.4% for Joe Biden. That’s better than the bluest of blue cities manage. That’s better than Biden did in DC. I saw one 28k dump yesterday (I want to say it was 538 talking about PA) that was listed as ALL for Biden. That’s basically statistically impossible.
In a small populace, you can get 100% of the vote. However the larger the sample, the more likely there will be dissenting votes. Even in the bluest of blue areas or reddest of red areas, somebody is going to be a cranky dissident, or an old person is going to fill in the wrong circle. When you get into the hundreds or thousands yet maintain that kind of perfect ratio, basically impossible.
Plus we are supposed to believe that Joe Biden, the guy barely campaigned, who got like 12 sad looking people to his rallies, was more popular than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? This election was just that much more special? Uh huh… Except that these few battleground state blue cities vote ratios don’t match up with other blue cities around America, where it appears Trump’s support among every demographic group other than white males went UP.
Then people were quick to dismiss these statistically improbable spikes with “of course the mail in voting favors Biden, republicans vote in person.†Yes, but they don’t favor Biden with these kind of ratios anywhere else in America. The ratios are more like 60-40 or 70-30. But 97-3? Oh fuck no. So either Biden is a better campaigner to the inner cities (though he rarely left his basement) than the eloquent messianic figure of Barack Obama, or there’s something fishy going on here.
Now, as a suspicious auditor type who spent a lot of hours looking for fuckery in complex systems, my gut tells me fake ballots were getting dumped into the system to make up the difference. And oh look, here is a giant pile of red flags indicating that’s the case.
Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Consummation, 1836, The New York Historical Society.
Pedro Gonzalez pessimistically describes the inexorable advance of the credentialed class of sophisters, calculators, and economists whose interests inevitably coincide with the cause of collectivist statism.
Before the storm of steel that was World War I, Robert Nisbet wrote that the federal government, for most Americans, was a stranger—something they mainly encountered only on visits to the post office. This may be hard for us to fathom now, we who have been born and raised long after the chains of industrial and technological conglomeration crushed the social, cultural, and political independence middle America knew just a few generations ago.
Different thinkers gave different names to this revolution of mass and scale in virtually all areas of organized human activity. James Burnham heralded its rise, as a system that would replace capitalism not with socialism but “managerialism.â€
Burnham defined managerialism as the centralization of society in which the distinction between the state and the economy is eliminated, the separation of ownership and control is effected, and, most importantly, power—real power—rests in the hands of “managers.â€
If it seems there is little room for republicanism or constitutionalism in this scheme, that’s because there isn’t. “America still has a written constitution, but it is nearly impossible, theoretically or politically, to comprehend the distinction between the government and the Constitution,†John Marini writes. “The theoretical foundations of social compact theory have been so undermined as to make constitutionalism obsolete as a political theory.â€
Demystified, the “managers†of our post-constitutional cruise through the truculent waters at the end of history are business executives, technicians, bureaucrats, journalists, administrators; the whole host of technically trained experts who constitute the credentialed class which produces nothing and owns little but without whom mass society would not function.
“Agricultural and industrial societies always had their unhappy intellectuals—lawyers, clerks, teachers, radical journalists—men whose profits lay in ideas rather than things, and who were thus in the vanguard of upheavals and demands for reform,†Kevin P. Phillips wrote in Mediacracy. “But the intelligentsia was always a small subclass, influential at times when it could channel public unrest, otherwise subordinate.†Now the managers throttle their enemies with the levers of power and, to a large extent, manage unrest while overseeing the managed deconstruction of the civilization they did not build but inherited.
