Mr Jones Is Rather Concerned
28th November 2013
Mencius Moldbug does what he does best.
No, obviously no one should ever respond to a journalist. (Or a Stasi-Mann.) It’s a mistake to think these people have opinions. They have careers. They’re paid by the click and not paid well. If you or I had Mr. Jones’ job, we’d write what he writes or lose it – maybe in slightly better English. It’s a mistake to anthropomorphize Mr. Jones. He’s a piece in a machine.
The basic nature of constitutional government is the formalization of power, and democracy is the formalization of mob violence. Why is America’s constitution democratic? Because the Puritan mob drove Charles I (who, like Louis XVI and Nicholas II, was basically just a nice guy) out of London in 1642. In a present world where mob violence is a thing of the past, we wouldn’t expect to see genuine demotic opinion actually matter in the political process – much as we wouldn’t expect to see feudal knights matter in a world that’s invented the musket. For instance, the closest thing America has to a non-astroturf political force is the Tea Party. Which doesn’t even litter. Nor does it matter, and this is not a coincidence.
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(In Rome, I’d be instantly exposed as a ridiculous poser for talking about Ovid when I never even learned Latin. Whereas in Pontus, just the fact that I’ve heard of Ovid makes me sound like a fag.)