Zero-D Chess
27th October 2018
ZMan turns over a rock.
The old paleocons were right about most things, particularly about the growth of the managerial state, but they were not right about everything. There were things they simply could not imagine, much in the same way sci-fi writers cannot imagine the cultural implications of technology. No matter how smart you are, you can only think so many moves ahead. One thing the paleocons got wrong about the managerial state is just how corrosive it was to the people inside the managerial class. It makes them weak and stupid.
One of the insights that ZMan brings to the current state of the nation is the realization that the current setup in Washington is a house of cards. Like the court of Louis XIV, the people inside the Beltway have different values than those who live in Real America and the expectation that everyone who sets foot in D.C. will either share or adopt those values. Therefore, those who are adept at Maneuvering At Court will have an advantage. When somebody like Trump comes along who recognizes the artificial, ephemeral nature of those values, and declines to play their silly games, the best they can do is hyperventilate and wring their hands — which works on people inside the bubble, but is nothing but an entertaining shadow-play to those who deal with things in the real world. Like being snubbed by Mrs Astor, being called a racist by Maxine Waters is only effective on people who give a shit what Maxine Waters thinks, among whom Donald Trump is not numbered.
This is the corrosive river in which the political Establishment find themselves dissolving — all their mystic hand gestures are ignored, their invincible whisper campaigns are ineffective, their sugar-plum-fairy edifice of comme il faut has been blown into dust. Trump doesn’t follow the traditional Republican dance moves that they could depend on from a Bush or a McCain or a Romney, and they are left without even a fingertip on the levers of power, which Trump and his ever-increasing band of Mongols are using to roto-till what had been their magic garden to prepare it for sowing the seeds of resurgent America.