The Hidden Bear

There is obvious and objective evidence our Constitution has been used as a hairy, opaque pelt stretched over a Soviet style collectivist bear.

It is clear why the Deep State is reacting to the presidential power President Trump has put on display. He and Musk cracked open the curtains and let sunshine in – and the vampires are screaming.

Something they didn’t do when their Renfield, Joe Biden, kept the shades drawn.

The greatest danger to America isn’t an incompetent president, it is a weak one.

Weak presidents cannot staunch the worst instincts of their party and the technocratic Deep State. They have no capability to differentiate between what can be done and what should be done. They could never stop the Deep State from indulging in their greatest desires, most of which align with the technocrats’ ascent to complete and total power over the people and those who are supposed to govern.

We may appear to operate as a constitutional republic, but only if you do not look too close. Underneath is the same Soviet style bureaucracy made up of unelected commissars who make decisions completely divorced from the official policies that are created and approved by duly elected officials.

What has been laid bare in the past three weeks is obvious and objective evidence our Constitution has been used as a hairy, opaque pelt stretched over a Marxist, collectivist bear.

Facebook friend Naresh Krishnamoorti reminded me of James Burnham’s 1941 book, “The Managerial Revolution”. In it, Burnham argued the rise of a class of managers and technocrats in modern industrial societies would replace the traditional capitalist class as the rulers of the economic system through mechanisms such as economic planning. Essentially, Burnham was saying that the bureaucracy would eventually come to rule.

George Orwell critiqued it shortly after it was published, putting a twist on Burnham’s ideas, writing:

“Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham, under the name of ‘managers’.”

Orwell was describing a technocracy, a planned, authoritarian, communistic society – just one using different titles for the players. Technocratic rule is based on the edicts of experts, essentially creating a superior class of technocrats controlled by dictators at the top. If the technocrats please their masters, they are awarded with status, influence, power, and position within the technocracy.

The public health “emergencies” of 2020 created new opportunities for implementation of technocratic rule but as the latest reveals from Elon Musk’s teams show, there has been a growing tumor inside the bureaucracy for a long, long time.

Such outright and tacit approval of technocratic Deep State power will eventually destroy any semblance of Lincoln’s “Government of the people, by the people and for the people” because it sanctions the Deep State to operate independently, by its own rules, for its own benefit and protects its members from scrutiny and consequences.

From our position in history, some 75 years after Orwell penned his critique, we can see confirmation of the cyclical nature of history. He describes our current situation in stunning prescience (sorry for the long excerpt, but Orwell says it better than I can):

“For quite fifty years past the general drift has almost certainly been towards oligarchy. The ever-increasing concentration of industrial and financial power; the diminishing importance of the individual capitalist or shareholder, and the growth of the new ‘managerial’ class of scientists, technicians, and bureaucrats; the weakness of the proletariat against the centralised state; the increasing helplessness of small countries against big ones; the decay of representative institutions and the appearance of one-party régimes based on police terrorism, faked plebiscites, etc: all these things seem to point in the same direction. Burnham sees the trend and assumes that it is irresistible, rather as a rabbit fascinated by a boa constrictor might assume that a boa constrictor is the strongest thing in the world. When one looks a little deeper, one sees that all his ideas rest upon two axioms which are taken for granted in the earlier book and made partly explicit in the second one. They are:

1. Politics is essentially the same in all ages.

2. Political behaviour is different from other kinds of behaviour.

To take the second point first. In The Machiavellians, Burnham insists that politics is simply the struggle for power. Every great social movement, every war, every revolution, every political programme, however edifying and Utopian, really has behind it the ambitions of some sectional group which is out to grab power for itself. Power can never be restrained by any ethical or religious code, but only by other power. The nearest possible approach to altruistic behaviour is the perception by a ruling group that it will probably stay in power longer if it behaves decently. But curiously enough, these generalisations only apply to political behaviour, not to any other kind of behaviour. In everyday life, as Burnham sees and admits, one cannot explain every human action by applying the principle of cui bono? Obviously, human beings have impulses which are not selfish. Man, therefore, is an animal that can act morally when he acts as an individual, but becomes immoral when he acts collectively. But even this generalisation only holds good for the higher groups. The masses, it seems, have vague aspirations towards liberty and human brotherhood, which are easily played upon by power-hungry individuals or minorities. So that history consists of a series of swindles, in which the masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of Utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters.

Political activity, therefore, is a special kind of behaviour, characterised by its complete unscrupulousness, and occurring only among small groups of the population, especially among dissatisfied groups whose talents do not get free play under the existing form of society. The great mass of the people — and this is where (2) ties up with (1) — will always be unpolitical. In effect, therefore, humanity is divided into two classes: the self-seeking, hypocritical minority, and the brainless mob whose destiny is always to be led or driven, as one gets a pig back to the sty by kicking it on the bottom or by rattling a stick inside a swill-bucket, according to the needs of the moment. And this beautiful pattern is to continue for ever. Individuals may pass from one category to another, whole classes may destroy other classes and rise to the dominant position, but the division of humanity into rulers and ruled is unalterable. In their capabilities, as in their desires and needs, men are not equal. There is an ‘iron law of oligarchy’, which would operate even if democracy were not impossible for mechanical reasons.”

We do have a chance to beat this. We have control of the government – albeit by the thinnest of margins in the House – and we have a conservative majority in the SCOTUS. President Trump has assembled the most intellectually and ideologically diverse cabinet in modern history – but in this diversity, they all have a singular focus – doing what is best for the American people.