Populism terrifies the Establishment

One hillbilly versus Europe’s finest.

JD Vance recently gave a speech in Munich that rattled many of Europe’s political and media elites.

He criticized their cavalier attitudes towards free speech and democratic mandates, illustrated with chilling examples from Germany and Britain where leaders ignored longstanding norms with regards to liberty while gloating about the power they wielded.

Vance reminded everyone the United States and Europe held similar values, and the Europeans were falling short of their own ideals, a situation the citizens of European states are aware of.

The reaction from German officials was predictable; free speech had to be controlled to maintain democracy. We cannot give dangerous demagogues like Vance the freedom to spread hate. Their entire politico-media system scrambled to respond to this hick from America’s hinterlands.

Germany’s panic reflects an out of touch political class and media professionals whose days are numbered. Their irrational response demonstrated once again they live in a different world from the rest of us.

Vance’s examples included overturning democratic elections when the result displeased leaders and jailing people for silently praying at abortion clinics.

These are not isolated events and we can often observe a predictable series of steps that provoke politicians and others into abandoning common values.

A threat to the Establishment appears. This triggers a fear response, so they move swiftly. The threat cannot be accommodated no matter how reasonable (the wrong group democratically elected, people praying in silence etc.) so they default to sophistry and rationalize their feeling of being threatened instead.

Condemnations, elaborate rationales (the Nazi’s exploited free speech to gain power) and endless supporting commentary from shills in the media reflect their panicky thinking. This elaborate process maintains their delusion while attempting to accommodate the changing reality around them.

This is why they seem so out of touch to ordinary people. They are looking inward at the discomfort they feel, not outside at the world.

Reality is broken

The basis of today’s technocratic managers is reality is broken. We eat the wrong foods, we drink alcohol to excess, we use too much energy and do not recycle. We binge watch TV and social media, and we possess incorrect views on everything from multiculturalism to child rearing.

The world around us is damaged and must be fixed. Everyone is a moron and needs controlled even in rudimentary matters. Agency and personal autonomy are dangerous so we must be led like children lest we make the wrong decisions.

This is how signals from the populace become distorted, even when the message is crystal clear to the rest of us. When the stupid peasants vote for Brexit or Trump it does not make the movers and shakers stop and think, it merely reinforces their own self-righteousness. Only they can lead us from temptation. Left to our own devices we do these foolish things. All this from people who lecture the world about the importance of democracy and voting.

These are the mind games of a broken system based on words not actions. This is where sophistry takes us, into mental cul-de-sacs that make no sense.

When we emphasize verbal dexterity over demonstrable skills you can easily talk yourself into nonsensical positions that are held with conviction. This is a sin of the educated not the everyday person going about their business. None of our decline is driven by ordinary people.

A key example is diversity quotas. Words are used to make sentimental arguments unrelated to the job at hand. More women in technology, more minorities in profession X, gender balance is needed even in areas where strength and stamina are dangerous to ignore.

The social engineers were warned focusing on nonsense meant standards would slip, a decline for which the politicians and media professionals are now exemplars. They are themselves striking examples of diminishing quality, easily compared with historical figures and found wanting. These are not the statesmen or journalistic titans of the past. They are clowns managing a circus.

Groupthink

Members of the political and media classes, backed up by their academic friends, embrace unwise fads because they rarely meet anyone who disagrees with them. Their views remain unchallenged by their peer group. This is why Vance’s speech so shocked them.

They represent an urban elite with a cluster of shared beliefs designed to provide meaning and spiritual belief in their otherwise atheistic and empty lives. It is mostly groupthink.

Systemic racism, institutional sexism, anthropogenic climate change. Rooting out white nationalism and even patriotism are on the horizon as are energy reckonings and the banning of cars.

Almost all of it is delusion. Literal fictions that grease the wheels of social interaction with one’s peers.

It is disturbing to watch seemingly accomplished people succumb to ruinous fads, and yet there they are. That is who runs much of the West most of the time.

When anyone is elevated to prominence who holds somewhat normal views they often seem strikingly different. Orban in Hungary is an example. Some of the announcements from Alternative für Deutschland in Germany are the same.

Vance’s level-headed speech is just the most recent example. It reflected the sensibilities of ordinary Americans and Europeans and horrified his handpicked audience who typically can dispense with criticism as extremism. A little harder to do with America’s VP invited to address them at a security conference in a country that saw yet another atrocity committed by an immigrant just the day before.

These are the people telling you they must decide what images you can see and books you can read. These are the people jailing housewives for sharing memes on Facebook. These are the people who increasingly see elections as a danger to democracy.

That is what mental illness looks like, and it is likely what the end of Western Liberalism looks like.

They are becoming unhinged as they increasingly reference only each other and not real life. When an outsider like Vance appears and speaks like a normal person they sit in silence, stunned, completely lost as common-sense observations trigger their hate crime alarms.

Reality is coming for them

The only criticism we could make of Vance is he was perhaps mocking the afflicted.

What he really did was convey reality. Europe’s political elite are agonizing over cosmic justice while Europe declines, a process accelerated by suicidal immigration policies destabilizing what is left of civil society. Throw in climate alarmism and the dismantling of energy sources and we have the makings of collapse.

Vance merely criticized the cause, the belief systems of the university-educated urban elites. Their pet projects are not in the national interest of any country. They are in fact private obsessions of those concerned with demonstrating their moral superiority. This incestuous farce has brought Europe to ruin and Vance made that uncomfortably clear.

The response of the offended leaders was all too predictable. Fascism, anti-democracy and hate; what else would we expect from Vance, the right hand man of Trump who is of course a modern Hitler.

Somewhat comically the Germans reminded us the Nazis used free speech to become established, neatly demonstrating the problem they represent for ordinary people, an out of touch political establishment in cahoots with an unquestioning media, both rattled by the inevitable unfolding of reality.

So they scrambled to limit its effect. This is dangerous, it is hate. Vance is even worse than Trump.

All sophistry, all desperation, all signs of a dying cabal with few places to turn. They have trashed their own backyards and have nowhere to run because no one would have them. At some level they must know this.

All Vance did was show them real life. It doesn’t need any embellishment. They were upset by this intrusion into their carefully maintained bubble.

They are the European establishment. They have abused their positions, their citizens and their heritage. Their days are numbered.

If anything, Vance probably reinforced all they believe such is their delusion. You can’t allow these hillbillies out of their shacks and entering the halls of power with their plain speaking and their hick ideas about common sense. The next thing you know we’ll be listening to the electorate.

Vance triggered their hair-trigger threat management systems because what he was really saying was they are out of touch, that reality itself shocks them, that they squandered their time in power and real life is now asserting itself. He made them briefly face up to the disgust voters feel about being dislodged by unwanted foreigners, being jailed for disagreeing with the powerful, and for being treated with contempt by those elevated to positions of authority.

Vance got through their forcefield because he was standing right in front of them. They had to let him in because he was the VP.

That is how weak they are. They crumble when reality intrudes. No wonder they expend so much energy keeping it at bay.

But no matter how hard they try to convince themselves, Vance reminded them a world exists outside their elite forcefields. And that world is coming for them.

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