The great question of the moment is whether the Trump Revolution is irreversible, or whether our Democratic friends will get their act together and return in clouds of glory to rule over us as they did so magnificently from the days of the New Deal to the Great Society. Far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin in “Barbarians and mandarins” thinks that the barbarian invasion of the Trump hordes will eventually submit to the superior organization of the mandarins of the administrative state.
He has a point. The barbarian invasions of China, from the Mongols to the Manchus, all ended up with the barbarian emperor sitting on top of the eternal mandarin bureaucracy. Until, that is, the foreign invasion of the Marx virus, which blew up the mandarin system and its merit system of examination and replaced it with a purely political administrative caste of the barbarian Communists.
Of course, the mandarin system was incredibly corrupt, if Jianing Chen’s Core of Chinese Classical Fiction is to be believed. And so is our own mandarin administrative state, if DOGE is to be believed.
The distinction between barbarians and mandarins is a constant in human affairs. Here are some more distinctions: disruption vs. stagnation; war vs. peace; famine vs. plenty; chaos vs. stability; creation vs. continuity. And let us not forget the latest distinction: armed insurrection vs. peaceful protest.
I think that we humans are programmed to believe in stability, safety, continuity. Doing things the way we have always done them. I suspect that in the old days of peasant agriculture a rigid observance of tradition was the best way to avoid starvation. Except when it wasn’t.
And then there is the hope, the eternal yearning for release from the yoke of life in this sublunary world. I believe that hope is encoded in the Christian faith of Heaven in the next life, and the socialist faith of heaven on Earth in this life. But the reality of war, famine, revolution, disruption keeps breaking in on the peaceful pastures where sheep may safely graze.
What is to be done?
told them:
We will implement [A.I.] in the Biden administration and in the second term. We are going to make sure that A.I. is going to be a function of two or three large companies. We will directly regulate and control those companies. There will be no start-ups.
And that was when the tech heads decided they were for Trump. They knew that AI would need a whole raft of tech start-ups, a bunch of barbarian kids challenging the status quo of the administrative state mandarins.
So, will the barbarian tech heads get neutralized by the mandarin Deep State? Or will the Association of Venture Capitalists overthrow the corrupt mandarins and usher in a new age, a bro coalition of tech heads and the ordinary middle class?
History is being made as we speak.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
Image: AT via Magic Studio
Jesus Christ is King
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