metastatic limousine leftism

and the path away from authoritarianism

if i were seeking to pick a perfect allegory for modern impositional leftism, it would be difficult to improve upon barack obama and stephen colbert, two men of enormous wealth and privilege, speaking on camera in a gleaming studio, chuckling with knowing smugness to one another about how the future of the left lies with unabashedly communist leaders like mamdani as they smooth their $12,000 bespoke suits and settle in to speak about how “the GOP needs to become a loyal opposition.”

it’s like watching the pigs from "animal farm” get cast as newscasters for the hunger games.

go ahead, tell me that i’m wrong.

colbert tells us about how his kids think he is not far left enough.

BO wants a “loyal opposition” that “believes in the rule of law and judicial independence.”

this is rich fare from the guy whose movement broke DC and turned it into the rancorous gang war of partisan horror it has become. before obama, this is literally how DC worked. donkeys and elephants, both far from perfect, at least talked. they played politics and argued on the hill then their staffers all went to the same bars and got drunk. the cross dated by party. a tip o’neilian could pal around with a reaganite. no one was calling one another evil. this was true under bush, clinton, and shrub. the staffers and parties had bonds, back channels, saw one another as humans. they could hash out “what do you really need here?” and get stuff done in collegial and collaborative fashion.

obambi literally destroyed that. the whole place went “crips and bloods” because his people would not speak to republicans. they burned the bridges and now demand that the other side rebuild them. it’s projection and provocation hidden in a slick package of pretend professorialism to hide just how radical he is and always was.

the pattern is familiar:

they play at lawfare then accuse you of not supporting the system they subvert to attack you.

the hijacking of science is declared “the science™” and settled and gets called normal and opposing it called “assault.”

it all boils down to “any opinion but ours makes you evil and a danger to democracy” and the fix for it is always more collectivist authoritarianism, gay race communism, and the ceding of control and privilege to us so we can rule you for your own good (and steal ourselves rich).

note that he never seems to mention “democrats as loyal opposition.” that strikes me as telling: they cannot imagine a world in which they are not in power. if they win, you need to play the loyal oppo, but if you win, watch how disloyal they get to the system and how “disobedience” becomes a virtue. there is a name for that, but “respecting the republic” ain’t it.

i feel sort of stupid. for ages i’ve been puzzling with something and trying to figure it out: from soros to BO to biden to hil-dog and the WEF, the UN, IPCC, WHO, from groovy gavin to horrible hochul, these people seem like wreckers. they are bent on undermining and destroying systems that work from the electorate to elections to the economy, property rights, taxes, energy, public health, public services, the social contract, and the public purse.

you can see the flight from their cities and states, the damage done, and the virtue claimed for it. they stand proudly in front of 17 time felons who just killed again and tell you it’s simply unjust to keep them in prison. they swear no illegal gets welfare and medicaid, then pay to teach border jumpers to steal it. it’s so obviously, ostentatiously, dystopia wept wrong. and these people are not stupid. they must understand, must be able to think in second and third order systems. so what gives?

and i finally think i get it and it’s so fricking simple and so large and nose on your face obvious that i’ve been staring right at it and not quite seeing it:

they are deliberately wrecking things. the wreckage is not a bug, it’s the feature. they want to destroy the high function systems of the west because they want to rule the west in authoritarian fashion. that’s the only goal. and successful systems cannot be so ruled. they resist. they do not want or need such rulers. things are good. people want good things to continue. they are optimistic and replete.

so you need to create a problem for which the only answer is dictatorship and then get people to give such power to you out of desperation.

you need them poor, hungry, hurting, angry, unsafe, threatened, and envious of anyone better off.

you need to break their belief in a better future because people who believe in better futures do not accede republics to dictators.

so you must not only create problems that make life unpleasant, you must undermine belief that individuals can solve these problems for themselves. if you can do that, then all you need is an external enemy to unify them against and voila, you’ve got control and people will thank you for it.

(at least for a minute until they glean your true nature by which time it’s too late.)

this is a task tailor made for marxism and even that augustly awful institution can be further bespoked to suit the times. this is the specific and explicit goal of “gay race communism” the divisive DEI doggerel that BO brought to prominence back when it could still be masked behind exclamations of “stunning and brave.”

you tell people: you are downtrodden, held down by an upperclass. they do this not just because they are an upper class (this one was tried and failed) but because they hate you and discriminate against you because of your race or creed or sexual identity. you are the victim of “structual ism” and your failures are not your fault. this was done to you.

the flipside of “done to you” is the embedded perception that the game is not fair and that you cannot succeed in such a rigged contest. you need the state to put things right. you are dependent. that’s the back edge of the grievance blade and it’s bonecutter sharp.

then you just keep making the world get worse, less fair, more oppressive, less safe, stifle opportunity, and promote pessimism regarding the idea that people can, through merit and labor, elevate themselves.

you cannot lift yourself, we must lift you. see how it gets worse? they did this to you. “let’s get them!”

it makes violence and thievery look like self defense. it makes building a business that people like to buy products from because they offer low prices for high quality look like oppression. “damn that bezos, how dare he have cat food delivered to your home for less than you would pay at the store! oppressor!”

those who seek to lead this parade are always rich and connected, the henchpeople and children of vast privilege and prerogative.

marx and engels were children of success. marx’s father was a lawyer back when such careers were rare. marx never amounted to much. classic over educated failure to launch. engels was the son of literal industrialists who ran textile mills. he was retired at 49 with enough of a nest egg to support itinerant communists.

it’s always like this.

if you think about it, it’s no surprise that the metastatic form of limousine liberalism is always marxism and that as such, this is predominantly a disease of the upper classes and not the workers.

it’s simple psychology:

marxism is the modal outcome of the super privileged who hate their dad.

to subscribe requires both the wealth to hold outlandishly expensive luxury beliefs and a simmering resentment against the fact that your useless life depends upon the largesse of your parents.

and this cartier communism group has both in spades.

you produce little and demand much. what other system provides a justification to lay claim to that as justice?

you crave the station into which you were born, but lack the talent and application to earn it for yourself so you go for “next best thing” which is “demanding to be given power and privilege for your ideology instead of your accomplishments.”

marxism is the opiate of the shiftlessly entitled.

it’s just the rich children of VC’s who cribbed a bad business plan demanding to be rewarded as though they had built a thriving business.

how seductive that must be for those who seek to have the kind of success and authority of their parents but know that, in a free market, they never could. it collects those who cannot do but badly want.

and they all go political.

and this is where the current, increasingly overt, marxist/communist/collectivist movement comes from.

at the top you have the power hungry. they need a song and dance to make the taking of power look justified and laudable.

under them, you have the connected and the flailure scions of wealth and privilege brined in years of midwit over-education in academia and simmering in daddy hate because they know they cannot measure up. (people will say “oh yeah, how is that not projection?” but let me ask you: how many of these marxists have you met who are actually good at anything other than politics? where are their businesses, their careers? what did they build? ill wait…)

and under them, you have the populace that they need for support, the victims of the wrecker games played against them who mistake the hand of the abuser for the hand of the helper. they are the ones who get lied to and who wind up getting their faces eaten by the leopards eating people’s faces party who swore to them “but not your face, comrade! solidarity!”

and the path to infection is breaking everything so that certain someones can be kings, queens, and non-gendered suzerains of the ashes.

the praxis is to make circumstances so intolerable that dictatorship becomes the only path out of it.

this is why every sufficiently advanced communist insurrection/long march eventually comes to a violent fork:

you get a violent communist/collectivist takeover or you get a violent populist fascist movement that rises to put the communists down and clean up the mess they made. you get lenin or bukele, mao or pinochet.

and until you do, they just keep making it worse until they can bring it to a head.

that’s where we are right now.

this is the wrestling match for the controls to try to regain altitude and societal trust and function from the folks who want to crash the plane and become rulers of the crash site.

people ask “how can you stay optimistic in the face of all this?”

it’s a good question.

i’ll offer a sort of pascat’s wager in response:

“consider the alternative.”

you blackpill and say “it’s so over.” you succumb to pessimism.

you have basically admitted that we’re going to keep getting worse until one form of authoritarian or another has to take over.

how is that not conceding the game?

your only choices are frying pan or fire.

unless you’re ready to step up and say “it’s time for our king to grab the crown and kill the followers of the pretender” to concede such is cowardice and fakery. it’s just an excuse to do nothing while things get worse and the self-fulfillment of the “things are going to get worse” prophecy.

where are the odds and where is the future in that?

if you want better, believe better.

embrace the audacity and promise of optimism.

remember who you are and what you are capable of.

LFG.