Everything All the Time

The Covington Catholic ordeal demonstrates two aspects of The Cult. (1) They have extraordinary institutional power, and (2) they are extraordinarily reckless. Their power is demonstrated in their ability to take an incident where some high school kids were subjected to unambiguously racist and homophobic slurs, and transform it into a media frenzy where the boys - waiting for their bus - are roving bands of oppressive racial overlords. It's the same phenomenon as with the leaked Hillary emails. They documented actual crimes, and were transformed into a story about Trump committing treason to rig the election by helping - somehow - Russia hack the servers. Perhaps it seemed a bit too abstract or distant for some to get very concerned, but this is a case where the civil libertarians are correct. If our rulers are permitted unlimited power to invert the truth, it is only a matter of time before their tyrannical powers are applied to normal people. It is clear to anyone who is remotely clear-headed that no one is safe.

No one, at least, with a light enough complexion. Everyone now can see that the racists were ignored because they are black and the victims vilified because they are white. We can scream until we're red in the face that this political environment is becoming dangerously racist against whites, but we don't hold a fraction of a fraction of the attention that a social media rage fest generates. They just interrupted the regular broadcasting for a full 3-day weekend to demonstrate to the entire nation that, if white Christians are subjected to racism, they should then be punished by banishing them to a caste of untouchables that can't even attain lowly employment. Think America is becoming a 3rd-world nation? We're already there. Punishing victims is the realm of barbarians. In Arabia, they stone rape victims. In America, they destroy the lives of anyone who draws the ire of the virtual lynch mobs. At the level of national politics, we are post-civilized.

The big question that everyone forgets about, because we're accustomed to the endless drama, is why we are talking about this at all. Whether the story is the fictional one - that the Covington Boys were using racial slurs - or the reality - that the Covington Boys were the recipients of racial slurs - who cares? Who cares what name someone a thousand miles away called someone else on the street? It shouldn't even register on the local news. Perhaps a "facebook-worthy" incident for someone's personal feed, at best. Instead, the incident has fully captured the media cycle. Why? Why are trivial incidents and opinions matters of fierce national debates, constantly? And how can we fix it?

The toxic national-level discourse is a consequence of our form of government, and it can't be fixed. The major flaws are universal suffrage and the death of federalism. The death of federalism means that all issues are national issues. The recent post Why Aristocracy Preserves Real Freedom, and Why Democracy Does Not describes how feudal systems based on balance of real power insulated the people from the central government, whereas modern democracy and its balance of paper power does not. The states have no real power because the federal central government taxes the citizenry directly and uses the funds to bribe the states for obedience. The state capitals are mere field offices of the District, and city hall little more than a service provider. All the real power is in Washington, and accessing that power means farming votes from the general public. Thus, everything is a matter of national referendum, and a swing in public opinion translates into a swing in public policy. The only buttress to all this is the deep state, now a converged institution. Conservatives are caught between a deranged mob on one hand and a managerial class that despises us on the other.

Everything becomes a morality play because half the electorate isn't that bright and votes on emotions, and a sizable chunk of the smart half does so as well. Power goes to whoever can stoke the most outrage. The Covington Catholic event seems like a massive disaster for the left, but I'm not so sure. It succeeded in generating the greatest surge of fury since the Kavanaugh tribunals. When the facts surfaced the cultists got bored and moved on in search of the next rage fix. It's hard to call that a failure. Sure, the outlets lost credibility, but they have none anyway, so who cares? The upshot for us is that the fake-right news got so exposed on this one. Hopefully it clips the wings of Ben Shapiro and drives the last nail into the coffin of the National Review. (Which has not fired Nicholas Frankovich and had the audacity to run this article today.) To his credit, Shapiro's latest piece sounds like it could have been penned here, so hopefully the incident has compelled him to re-examine his loyalties. He is still, at best, leading from the rear.

As long as Washington consolidates all power and all issues require a "national conversation", then it's going to be everything all the time. Constant cacophony is not a graceful existence, and emotional appeals to the lowest-common denominator is no way to steer the ship of state. It will eventually be run onto the rocks. Reform is hopeless. Our fight is to best entrench ourselves to be well positioned for the inevitable. At least this latest episode demonstrated who our friends are. Anyone unconvinced of the secular inquisition after this will likely never be reached through argument or evidence.