I recently began reading
The Managerial Revolution which opens with the presentation of a 'problem'. It would I think fit with your comment about 'statism'. Though it is a somewhat reductionist assertion, not that reductions are bad in themselves if they help to visualize a problem, the idea of a revolution in how society is managed and the rise of a manager-class is interesting.
I guess it all depends on what information current one follows, or which ones one does not follow, but I have been focused on getting a grasp of the writing and ideas of
America's Ultra-RightWing Critics of American Conservatism because it seems to me that over the last fews years, for reasons that need to be defined, there has arisen a movement of opposition to Liberalism. I see this reaction as 'arising out of the social body' and, as such, in
raw form.
I think that we encountered some of this when I seemed to *defend* Chris Cantwell. This was not really my point though. What I find fascinating is to research the home-grown varieties of Ultra-Right Wing American Dissidence. The reason is because, there, one finds (I think) the *real* America. In any case a truer version of it. Now, in our Postwar modernity, we live within a contrived structure of 'progressivism' which is, as I have been able to discern, a top-down phenomenon. This *ideology*, tinged in one degree or another with so-called Cultural Marxism (I accept the terms with special qualifications) was *imposed* from above and was not, and is not now, organic to the population. There is now, as there always has been, a reaction against the Overlords of Culture and the formed or forming managerial-ideological structures.
The 'liberalism that has rotten the soul of the West' (which I think is attributed to Tomislav Sunic) definitely requires research, as does the emerging assertion that it needs to be challenged, modified. It is a view that is shared in varying degrees by a wide range of different -- and all non-Leftist, non-Progressive -- thinkers. As I said months back (that is in a later phase of the original Solway-Quinn thread, after I had been
un-banned by your fine, web-weaving self!), it was very surprising to me that Quinn's defense would have been of liberal culture and the status quo when his beloved ideals were, in essence, rigorous, demanding and 'fascistic' (I see acute spiritual discipline as a form of self-imposed 'fascism').
So, it would seem that our present is really a 'managed' present, and this is true even when it comes to an intellectual manager-class installed, as it were, in the Academy. But the manager and the ideology of the manager are less ideological in the traditional sense but reflect and express what is in essence business management. So, the great leveler, and the great unifier, is a sort of managerialist's ideology. The enterprise of America and of Americanism in
The Americanopolis is a giant management strategy applied to the rulership of the whole world.
Chomsky speaks of those national security documents and the careful, rational planning behind them:
- "Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history. Britain could only aspire to be its junior partner as the British foreign office ruefully recognized. At that point, 1945, the United States had literally half the world’s wealth, incredible security, controlled the entire Western Hemisphere, both oceans, the opposite sides of both oceans. There’s nothing — there hasn’t ever been anything like that in history.
"And planners understood it. Roosevelt’s planners were meeting right through the Second World War, designing the post-war world. They were quite sophisticated about it, and their plans were pretty much implemented. They wanted to make sure that the United States would control what they called a “grand area,” which would include, routinely, the entire Western Hemisphere, the entire Far East, the former British Empire, which the U.S. would be taking over, and as much of Eurasia as possible — crucially, its commercial and industrial centers in Western Europe. And within this region, they said, the United States should hold unquestioned power with military and economic supremacy, while ensuring the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that might interfere with these global designs."
My theory about the present crisis in the United States -- which must appear really
really strange to foreigners -- is that the original demographic, which is to say the white demographic as it represents the 'social body', is in the first phases of a sort of uprising or reaction against the machinations of, in essence, the ruling elite as enacted by its social and industrial managers. I predict that the State will use all the tools at its disposal to 'turn back the tide' that is rising threateningly to disturb the 'global' scheme, that is, the
Grand Area that Chomsky writes about. However, I suggest that *they* do not really have a true sense or understanding of what, exactly, they are rebelling against. But if it is based in the encroachments against their white demographic hegemony, well, that is at least a place to start. But I further suggest that when they come to see and understand the levels of 'social engineering' they have been subject to (as all classes have been subjected to it), their ideological notions will have to mature significantly. Yet a whole apparatus (of the State, of 'statism') will I think be brought out against them, as this is not part of the Grand Plan.
What I also find very interesting is the question and the problem of
Interpretation. Interpretation of our present, of *this reality*, of history, of larger meanings, of the trajectory of the present. Obviously I refer to the mythological or the prophetical notions that underpin the Occidental person. When one studies the Ultra-Right groups one finds that they organize their understanding through prophetic metaphysics. The more recent examples of Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City clearly point this up. People need hermeneutical tools and they take what is at hand (and
employ them). These *tools* are also self-defense equipage against, shall I say, the State and its statism. And this, in rural politics and among *rustics*, extends back to the Civil War crisis and the rise of the American national government with all its designs, now grown large.
So, I think that one can easily understand that the Solway-Quinn spat which was framed by Quinn as a guilt-trip of Kevin's *reactionism* (which was hardly such given that he defines himself as in the very center of progressivism and liberal-left values and politics), is still a rich area for philosophical, political and spiritual research and consideration.
My One-And-Only Spider God! wrote:The book outlines some detailed causes of the American switch to Big Government, digging into the transference of Protestant theology, away from classical theology into postmillennial Christianity (with or without God), helped by "Yankee Women Progressives", to demand and realize a controlled and maintained society with pious values as equality (equal before God and men) and caring for the ill and poor (main Christian value historically) as government tasks; the new Kingdom came.
Did he use the term 'Yankee Women Progressives"? :^)
It is interesting to see the Social Justice Warrior as a feminine and female manifestation. If only because so much in it is 'emoted' and 'sentimental', but furiously so, hysterically so. It is a scary and a strange image: the Postmillennial Christian Swamp where the various Zombies are called forth by the Moon and battle each other, each referring to the same millennial interpretive structure! A plethora of
Christs as various as
Vishnu in His universal manifestation.
I was very intrigued that in one deconstructing presentation on 9/11 in which a man described his *process* in coming to face the mega-event of 9/11 deception -- and it was really quite a good presentation and revealed all the inconsistencies in the *official narrative* -- that the end titles included a quote from Ephesians: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
His presentation, I thought, was honest, and so was what for him amounted to a spiritual conversion as a result of confrontation with the Dark World. For him, I gathered, it turned his focus back to his spiritual self, his spiritual body as it were, as well as that of his family, his community, his personhood really independent of 'the State' and its 'statism'. It made a good deal of sense to me that he would have made this
turning, as it were.
So, and perhaps again, one requires an interpretive lens -- hermeneutical tools -- to make sense not only of the immediate, contingent and mutable present, but of existence and one's presence here.
Within this entire context I find it interesting to examine, and to question, your postmodern non-position. That is really what it is (in my excessively humble estimate). You have only ever said, but in millions and millions of words
- I have no idea where I am, what I am doing here, what to do, where to go, I have no map and 'sniff my way to Dover' ...
Nicely put! May I quote you? (with attribution of course!)
You were, I sense, expecting this quote from Milton?
Code: Select all
From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire; or, if they list to
Conjecture, he his fabrick of the Heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter; when they come to model Heaven
And calculate the stars, how they will wield
The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centrick and eccentrick scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.