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There is a perverse circularity to modern power. In some cases it’s tactical. In others, it’s evolved. The idea: Cause the problem for which you are the solution. When the powerful set themselves up this way, they serve as the arsonist and firefighter or the dragon and the knight.
A credulous media emphasizes the part of the equation that is the hero bestride a white horse, even if the solutions are garbage and the original problems obscured.
Consider the following handful of examples:
- Public health bureaucrats and their supplicants skirt bans on dangerous virus research, then preside over the pandemic response they likely created.
- Federal agents and their informants plant themselves among January 6 protestors and encourage said protestors to enter the Capitol building, then arrest and imprison “insurrectionists” they could link to a sitting president and political rival they despise.
- Pour more resources every year into a failing government education system, incentivizing administrative bloat and more of the same failed approaches, then claim the system is underfunded. (Lather, rinse, repeat.)
- Concoct false stories (such as Russian disinformation) then blame an undesired outcome on said disinformation, which in turn requires federal agencies to censor and silence ordinary citizens to manage said disinformation.
- Use draconian lockdowns to wreck the economy, cut “stimulus” checks to every American, which requires the Fed to print money to cover the federal debt, creating high inflation that must be controlled through an Inflation Reduction Act that spends more federal money.
We could go on and on about the Iraq War, the Ukraine proxy war, and other justifications for the growth of the military-industrial complex. But you get the idea.
Notice that some of the points above are interconnected. If each example is circular, the interconnections mean the process cycles through time, allowing power to accrete like a disc around a black hole that sucks more and more into its maw.
The excellent Matthew B. Crawford has a powerful new series out. The opening diagnosis is on point:
We are watching an ongoing transformation of our political regime, in which sovereignty (that is, the authority to decide) has gradually been relocated from its constitutionally prescribed setting, which granted a presumptive deference to the majority, to a set of mutually supporting technical and moral clerisies. These staff a state-like entity that expands its dominion on two fronts: the “woke” revolution and the colonization of ordinary life by technical expertise.
It's social justice plus the managerial state. But Crawford deepens the analysis.
These appear unrelated, but share an underlying logic. Both displace and delegitimize vernacular practices, as well as the understandings that support them. On both fronts, the legitimacy of the ruling entity rests on an anthropology that posits a particular kind of self—a vulnerable one, which the governing entity then positions itself to protect. Both developments expand the reach of managerial authority, generate new bureaucratic constituencies, and disqualify common sense as a guide to reality. On both fronts, the entity expands through claims of special knowledge. (Emphasis mine.)
Notice another important phrase, though: an anthropology that posits a particular kind of self—a vulnerable one. V-words such as vulnerability and victimhood are the watchwords of a generation. Millions have been programmed variously with the idea that they are helpless and that their only salvation is to pledge their allegiance to these “mutually supporting technical and moral clerisies.”
But there are a few, a remnant, even among the young, who refuse to be victims. We have identified them as self-sovereigns who take life’s obstacles as a given and understand that freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same proverbial coin.
But those who cause the problems for which they are the solution—social justice advocates cum technocrats of the managerial state—are a destructive force. That force tears society apart and burdens ordinary people more and more every day. I’m reminded of the real victims of this unholy union with its unseemly logic: the forgotten man.
As William Graham Sumner wrote in 1883:
Whenever A and B put their heads together and decide what A, B, and C must do for D, there is never any pressure on A and B. They consent to it and like it. There is rarely any pressure on D because he does not like it and contrives to evade it. The pressure all comes on C. Now, who is C? He is always the man who, if let alone, would make a reasonable use of his liberty without abusing it. He would not constitute any social problem at all and would not need any regulation. He is the Forgotten Man….
Despite being a victim of the vulnerability-industrial complex, self-sovereigns will not allow this parasite class to grow on their backs forever. They will soon rise up, though we should all pray not in violence. Instead, self-sovereigns are learning to expand their sovereignty. Their creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation will be the coins of a new realm–one that runs not on compulsion, but rather consent.
Max Borders is a senior advisor to The Advocates. Find more of his work at Underthrow.org.
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