Episode 54 of my podcast is now posted here (with copious links) and on YouTube. Apologies for the recent disappearance of these introductions to Grace & Steel. In my defense, I will point out that I own three computers; two are dead, and the one that isn’t (the oldest) is as sick as Hillary Clinton.
The subject of my discussion with Kevin Steel is our effete elite. The original meaning of the word “effete” is “exhausted by childbirth.” And our elite, having spawned the liberal-democratic-capitalist order under which we live, has no ideas as to how it might be improved or reformed. The best they can come up with is how to keep it ticking over until they have feathered their nests to their own satisfaction.
Consider the exhausted Mrs. Clinton. Of relatively humble origins, she has ascended to, via Wellesley, Yale Law, the staff of Congress and her work as wife (and consigliere to) the Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, to the very top of the heap. She was carpetbagged into New York as a senator and later appointed Secretary of State after a near-miss presidential bid. By her own account (and through the Clinton Foundation), she knows everyone and everything worth knowing.
But what is the nature of Hillary’s knowledge? The sum total of it appears to be that America is “stronger together” and that it is high time a woman (specifically, H. Rodham Clinton) became POTUS. That’s all, folks!
Of policy, Hillary has none. Except that the super-rich (of which she is now a member) should continue to control our economic future while continuing to enjoy legal immunity from their crimes, that America should continue to invite the world, invade the world and immiserate the world and that the fractious minorities that form the bulk of her electoral coalition should be awarded additional perks and privileges.
Hillary is sincerely angry that she is not 50 points ahead of her Republican rival. It has not occurred to her that the popular success of garish outsider Donald J. Trump is persuasive evidence that the elite consensus no longer enjoys popular approval.
The irruption of Trump would have been unthinkable had an alternative elite been available to seize the reins of power from the enfeebled leadership class of which Hillary is an exemplar. But no such alternative exists because the reigning elite has not permitted one to exist since 1945, when it was decided that politics led to world war and genocide and were best abolished. The curious thing about the post-war West is that the so-called struggles for various freedoms (sexual, genital and expressionist) were not really struggles at all. The elite decided that women should be liberated, that the State had no place in the bedrooms of the nations and that “community standards” were risible atavisms to be swept aside; and everyone fell into line. Along the way, the elite also decided that native-born workers earned too much and Masters of the Universe too little; and once the super-rich joined the leading cadre of the progressives, Wall Street declared war on Main Street and then reaped the spoils of its victory.
Nothing seems to work anymore, and in response the elite produces juked statistics demonstrating that all is well (and getting better real soon now). And so it regards resistance to its hegemony as proof of stupidity or malice. The Alt-Right has made much sport of the anguish of the Never Trumpers of both parties, but it is real; and they are terrified. A world that they do not control is beyond their imagination. The Man on the White Horse will soon be watering it at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I should mention that episodes 53 and 52 of Grace & Steel are still available (and still as relevant as all get out). Finally, I beg the indulgence of VDARE readers and direct them to what I hope will be a happy conclusion to the fundraising drive marking the first anniversary of our podcast. All contributions will be gratefully received (at 2Kevins.com) and acknowledged.
