The ruling class are not the right people

But they are, you know, "the right people," as determined by themselves. The Ivy degrees, the social connections, the families that intermarry. Angelo M. Codevilla describes some of what's going on in America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution. Jerry Pournelle says the article is important, and goes on to say,

There have always been elites in America, and there have always been local ruling classes and aristocracies; but it is only comparatively recently that there has been "a ruling class" of the kind we have now. Codevilla traces its development and some of the consequences.

This development was predictable and predicted. The authors of The Bell Curve understood the phenomenon, and postulated some of the causes; of course the development of the ruling class was well under way when The Bell Curve was published, and interestingly enough the establishment, although created in large part by the process described in The Bell Curve, soundly and roundly rejected the book, its principles. and everything about it. That's because the authors of The Bell Curve were not part of the ruling class and never could be; and besides, part of their thesis was wrong. The US hasn't become a meritocracy; but the pretense of creating one did bring together the elements of the ruling class.

Some of this development was, if not predicted, at least strongly implied in some of my earlier papers on The Voodoo Sciences, all written long before the current crisis or indeed before "the global warming consensus." And of course there's The Iron Law. Codevilla's thesis isn't all that new (nor does he claim it to be) but this presentation is done well. It's particularly relevant on what has to be done.

The main thesis of Codevilla's article is that America's majority -- an overwhelming majority -- is not represented by the Ruling Class and is increasingly unhappy with it -- and the remedy is not merely turning the Democrats out in November. The storm clouds are gathering.

Important as they are, our political divisions are the iceberg's tip. When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences "undecided," "none of the above," or "tea party," these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well.

Sooner or later, well or badly, [the national] majority's demand for representation will be filled. Whereas in 1968 Governor George Wallace's taunt "there ain't a dime's worth of difference" between the Republican and Democratic parties resonated with only 13.5 percent of the American people, in 1992 Ross Perot became a serious contender for the presidency (at one point he was favored by 39 percent of Americans vs. 31 percent for G.H.W. Bush and 25 percent for Clinton) simply by speaking ill of the ruling class. Today, few speak well of the ruling class. Not only has it burgeoned in size and pretense, but it also has undertaken wars it has not won, presided over a declining economy and mushrooming debt, made life more expensive, raised taxes, and talked down to the American people. Americans' conviction that the ruling class is as hostile as it is incompetent has solidified. The polls tell us that only about a fifth of Americans trust the government to do the right thing. The rest expect that it will do more harm than good and are no longer afraid to say so.

Codevilla also agues that the ruling class is busily dumbing itself down. Having been created in theory as a meritocracy, it never really was that, and is less so now than ever. I might note that the collapse of the public school system works toward that end. We've discussed this in previous essays, and coincidentally there's relevant mail today. As to the consequences:

Beyond patronage, picking economic winners and losers redirects the American people's energies to tasks that the political class deems more worthy than what Americans choose for themselves. John Kenneth Galbraith's characterization of America as "private wealth amidst public squalor" (The Affluent Society, 1958) has ever encapsulated our best and brightest's complaint: left to themselves, Americans use land inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs, making it necessary to use energy to transport them to jobs and shopping. Americans drive big cars, eat lots of meat as well as other unhealthy things, and go to the doctor whenever they feel like it. Americans think it justice to spend the money they earn to satisfy their private desires even though the ruling class knows that justice lies in improving the community and the planet. The ruling class knows that Americans must learn to live more densely and close to work, that they must drive smaller cars and change their lives to use less energy, that their dietary habits must improve, that they must accept limits in how much medical care they get, that they must divert more of their money to support people, cultural enterprises, and plans for the planet that the ruling class deems worthier. So, ever-greater taxes and intrusive regulations are the main wrenches by which the American people can be improved (and, yes, by which the ruling class feeds and grows).

There's a lot more, some of which you will have encountered here, such as Adorno's influential book that few have ever heard of, and other stuff from the Voodoo sciences, or our discussions of education.

The question is, what to do about it. A large majority of Americans rejects the current ruling class. Codevilla (who came to America from Italy unable to speak English as a youngster, and was thoroughly assimilated by the time he was a graduate student) summarizes the task for Americans this way:

[The] greatest difficulty will be to enable a revolution to take place without imposing it. America has been imposed on enough.

Amen.

Ever-greater taxes and intrusive regulations are signs that the rulers fear and mistrust the people. The occasional victory for liberty, e.g. the Heller case, shines like a lantern in the darkness. And of course all the usual ruling class suspects are trying to extinguish that.

The story of John Kerry's failed attempt to dodge some Massachusetts taxes on his boat nicely illustrates the point that the ruling class is not a meritocracy. It only pretends to be one. Glenn Reynolds says:

TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): Sen. John Kerry Docks Luxury Yacht In Rhode Island To Avoid High Massachusetts Taxes. A reader calls it “not-so-swift” boating. Yeah, you have to be grateful for John Kerry, who illustrates the problems with his class so well, and who isn’t bright enough to hide it.

UPDATE: Check out the Boston Herald front page, which is giving it the full Thurston Howell treatment.

There's more at the WBZ-TV website, with videos and comments. Kerry is doing that thing Obama does, where he says "It's not an issue." and expects that all who hear will obey.

By the way: in case you have not clicked those links yet, that's a $7 million yacht, making the Senator liable for close to half a million dollars in Massachusetts use tax. Will he pay the $70,000 annual property excise? I suspect not.

I wonder why a Massachusetts Senator would have a yacht designed in Rhode Island and built in New Zealand? Are there no yacht builders in Massachusetts or any nearby states? Has he been in Washington so long that he has forgotten that seven million dollars might make a difference to the economy of the state he represents? Represents in some sense. Local boosterism is so déclassé, isn't it. And it's all about the class. Ruling class, that is.

Memory and reminiscence

A few days ago I mentioned an article about the tricks memory plays. Here's a reminiscence of Navy days from Ron at Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta. The first paragraph is relevant to the memory tricks topic:

Before you get all up in my face 'bout what I'm 'bout to ramble on about, lemme first say that I know the human memory tends to heavily discriminate the stuff it stores, cataloguing things the way it wants to and reserving special places for certain select events, sounds, sights, smells, and scenes. And not only does it selectively edit things in and out, but it tends to embellish events with its individualized set of filters, ethics, morals, priorities, and tastes, magnifying some episodes and minimizing others.

Read the whole thing for comparisons of the Navy of fifty years ago with the Navy of today. Via Glenn Reynolds, who says, "Nostalgia aside, though, the new Navy seems awfully good at its job."

Paul Watson picks a fight, gets his name in the paper

Andrew Revkin put up a short post at Dot Earth on the collision between a Japanese whaler and a Sea Shepherd speedboat. It has garnered over 200 comments at this posting, many of them illuminating. Speaking of illumination, what are the Sea Shepherds doing with these green lasers?

Revkin seems to think that the Japanese ship was responsible for the collision. Some commenters wiser in the ways of the sea have endeavored to, ah, illuminate his thinking, but the main post still says "Sea Shepherd has released video from a distant vantage point that clearly shows the Japanese ship veering to starboard to close with the smaller protest craft."

Here's a video of a Sea Shepherd ship veering to starboard to close with another craft. What are they doing? Trying to capsize it?



That video comes from Sea Shepherd. They are proud of that. Sea Shepherd's tactics are reprehensible and criminal. But what could one expect from a group that uses this as an emblem?


I don't like whaling, but I like Paul Watson (and by extension his group, Sea Shepherd) even less. "We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion." That's going to leave a lot of corpses.

A newish site on the subject: Lies of the Sea Shepherd.

At The New Yorker: Street Fight on the High Seas. The comments are better than the article, which is mostly an interview with Watson.

Wind and solar rescued by oil

Fill in the missing words in the headline: Three men attempting a voyage from England to Greenland and back in a 40-foot yacht powered only by wind and solar power were rescued last week by an oil tanker when their vessel received irreparable storm damage.

This was intended to be an educational voyage: "Carbon Neutral Expeditions, the organisation behind the crossing, is also working with 40 schools to promote climate change education in classrooms. Pupils will be following the team's progress on daily blogs from the ice cap with web broadcasts on www.green.tv.… Raoul, who is based in London, said: 'Expeditions often achieve impressive objectives and carry out vital research, but few take into account their environmental impacts. By making our expedition carbon neutral, we wanted to show that it is possible to visit incredible places and preserve them for future generations.'" It may have turned out to be even more educational than planned.

Somebody tell Jon Wellinghoff about this.

Related: Here, earlier, Windjammer round Cape Horn. "[A] a modern vessel needs far fewer crewmen, and the crewmen are much more likely to come home." And at Chicago Boyz, Oil Tanker Saves Environmentalists.

Via Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner.

Windjammer round Cape Horn

Irving Johnson took a movie camera with him on this voyage from Hamburg to Talcahuano. Bird Dog, at Maggie's Farm, calls it "The Best Video of 1929." I'm inclined to agree. 36 minutes and some seconds, all of it riveting.

This is how cargo shipping with zero carbon footprint was done. When I see Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd setting sail in square-riggers, I might take them a little more seriously.

Update: That bit about cargo shipping with zero carbon footprint reminds me of a song. (Funny, as I get older, everything seems to remind me of a song.) This time, it's Larry Kaplan's "Old Zeb," about Captain Zebulon Tilton of Martha's Vineyard. (Listen to it here.) The verse that's apropos goes like this:

Any fool can work an engine, it takes brains to work a sail,
And I never seen no steamer get much good out of a gale.
You can go and pay your taxes on the rationed gas you get
But at least for me, the wind is free, and they haven't run out yet.

The tradeoff, of course there is a tradeoff, is that a modern vessel needs far fewer crewmen, and the crewmen are much more likely to come home. Note that two men were lost on the voyage around Cape Horn in the video linked above.

Gleanings

More on the Antikythera Mechanism, including a working model. The 76-year cycle sounds like Halley's Comet. Or can you think of something else with that periodicity?

The Modern Drunkard interview with Gary Shteyngart. Lotsa vodka, a little caviar, some reflections on the condition of Russia, literature and the writing life (via).

Frozen bubbles. Via Althouse, who calls it a "cool photography stunt." Cool? Below freezing, I'd say!

Self-handicapping excuse artisans. "I coulda been a contenda." If all the if-only's were laid end to end … (via)

Wreck of the bark Trajan discovered in Newport harbor.

Faggots in the raw. (SFW!)

UFO sighting in Cumbria, UK. Turns out to be Chinese lantern balloons, released at a wedding at this hotel. Nice hotel!

Morris dancing in danger of extinction? Probably not just yet.

Speaking of dancing, in Finland they spell YMCA with a NMKY (via Althouse commenter jdeeripper).

The old salt

There's been altogether too much grumbling around here, and not nearly enough levity. To try to make up for that, here's a joke that came in the email from Gerry:

The Old Salt


There was a ragged, old, retired Submarine Chief who shuffled into a waterfront bar. Stinking of whisky and cigarettes, his hands shook as he took the "Piano Player Wanted" sign from the window and handed it to the bartender. "I'd like to apply for the job," he said.

The barkeep wasn't too sure about this doubtful looking old Squid, but it had been quite a while since he had a piano player and business was falling off. So, the barkeep decided to give him a try.

The old Chief staggered his way over to the piano while several patrons snickered. By the time he was into his third bar of music, every voice was silenced.

What followed was a rhapsody of sound and music, unlike anyone had heard in the bar before. When he finished there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

The bartender took the old Chief a beer and asked him the name of the song he had just played. "It's called 'Drop your Skivvies, Baby, We're Gonna Rock Tonight'," said the old Chief after he took a long pull from the beer.

The bartender and the crowd winced, but the piano player went on with a knee-slapping, hand-clapping bit of ragtime that had the place jumping.

After he finished the Chief acknowledged the applause and told the crowd the song was called, "Big Boobs Make My Anchor Chain Run Out." He then excused himself as he lurched to the head.

When he came out the bartender went over to him and said, "Look Chief, the job is yours, but do you know your fly is open and your pecker is hanging out?"

"Know it?" the old Chief replied, "Hell, I wrote it!"

I think I know that Chief. Or someone a lot like him.

Al Gore's new boat

My word, I'm getting tired of this "Al Gore and the Global Warming" nonsense. It's pretty clear that even Gore does not take his gospel at all seriously, but is just putting one over on the rubes who will bite on his hook. I dare say he'll be trolling for a few fish in the new boat.

B.-S. One. I doubt it will ever leave Center Hill Lake.

It's smaller than David Geffen's yacht, that's true, but for a lake boat, it's pretty darn big. The Mayflower was smaller, and used no diesel fuel, bio- or otherwise.

Big boats, little boats

So David Geffen's yacht is nearly twice the size of Saddam Hussein's? My word. And him a Democrat. He'll really feel the repeal of the tax cuts. Might have to fire a couple of deckhands or stewards. But they will surely be all right. The Democrats are looking out for them, just as in 1990. Remember the tax bill that the first President Bush signed, the one that got him in such trouble for not remembering his own lip-reading remark? Passed by a Democratic congress: House vote, Senate vote. Including the luxury tax on boats costing over $100,000, which led to this:

According to a recent The Wall Street Journal editorial, the Labor Department estimates that in Florida, the nation's leading boat building state, builders laid off 5,000 out of 18,000 laborers by the end of 1990 and these layoffs are not isolated. Retailers, manufacturers, and services aligned to the boating industry are simultaneously affected. To provide even the slightest justification for these job losses, the government should at least be realizing substantial revenue gains. Nevertheless, according to the same editorial, the Joint Committee of Taxation has released collection estimates of which only $3 million were attributable to boats in 1991. Where is the justification?

This brings to mind Barack Obama's remark last night to the effect that the capital gains tax should be raised "for purposes of fairness," without regard to raising revenue. (Full debate transcript here.) The Law of Unintended Consequences will not be flouted.

In other boating news,

A ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court in California could snare boaters in a bureaucratic net of permits and regulations if a consequent court-ordered deadline is not thrown overboard.

… as of Sept. 30, recreational boaters will no longer be exempt from greywater discharges, including normal discharge from marine engines, laundry, shower and galley sink wastes, or any other discharge incidental to the normal operation of a vessel.

Because the court's decision is not limited to vessels with ballast water tanks, the court order could impact motor boats, sailboats, dinghies, kayaks and even canoes.…

Under current regulations, the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) requires that all sea going vessels be registered with the state. That means canoes, kayaks, dinghies and paddleboat owners would all be required to obtain an EPA permit.

Paperwork bonanza on the way.

Boat for sale

Saddam Hussein's "backup" yacht. 82 meters overall, cruises at 18 knots, tanks hold 56,512 gallons of diesel fuel. Hardly used. More at the NY Post and Luxist. A couple more photos and specs at Superyacht Times. Asking price reported to be $34,450,000. Though, really, if you have to ask…

Little Toot, mighty cute

In case you should see this tiny tugboat in the harbor at Greenport, NY, and wonder about it, here's the story.

Captain Nemo, your ship is here

Instapundit links to this, which led me to Google around a bit and find this: Wow, it's the Nautilus! (That's a very large jpg.) Or close enough. More streamlined, with more viewports. Only $80 million or so. I suppose one could install a pipe organ.