Unachievable In The Present

     “[I]t is not real, you know. It is not stable, not solid—nothing is. Things change, change. You cannot have anything. . . . And least of all can you have the present, unless you accept with it the past and the future. Not only the past but also the future, not only the future but also the past! Because they are real: only their reality makes the present real.” [Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed]

     Probably the most important fact, in a space-time continuum filled with facts of every kind, is that things change. Everything. Le Guin’s insight above is fundamental to all kinds of thinking. The past is real; we experienced it, we remember it, and we can see its consequences around us. The future, too, is real; we plan for it, however ineptly, and work to achieve it according to our values, priorities, and understanding of cause and effect. But the present is more ephemeral than the mayfly. It’s gone before we can finish pronouncing its name.

     (I’m not endorsing the Anarrestis’ hostility to property here. That was Le Guin’s fictional device to create the contrasts and clashes that animated the novel. It’s a fine tale, but an anarcho-syndicalist society in which property is completely abjured would be less stable than communist egalitarianism. History has spoken on this subject. So have I.)

     Yet everyone seeks stability. Stable homes, stable incomes, stable relationships, and stable societies with stable laws and customs. It seems to be a consequence of Man’s nature as a “project pursuer.” (Cf. Loren Lomasky.) For every project aims at an end state, with all that implies. Yet upon the instant that end state is achieved, it begins to change. There’s no escaping it.

     If any kind of stability is achievable, it must be one in which the dynamics of time and change actually work to preserve it. However, while we can theorize about such a dynamic stability, we haven’t any idea about how to produce it. Among other things, we cannot answer the question “Just what would that variety of ‘stability’ actually stabilize? What aspects of it would not change?”

     The freedom advocate faces an unpleasant reality:

Free Societies Don’t Remain Free For Long.

     Freedom in these United States lasted roughly until 1900. For the century-plus from the Founding to the Oklahoma Land Rush, there was a frontier to which people unsatisfied with the constraints of “civilization” could escape. The availability of that frontier was critical to freedom elsewhere, for politicians and their hangers-on had to remain aware that they were escapable. Once America’s land frontier was closed, the State could advance upon us, gradually whittling away our supposedly guaranteed rights.

     Today, freedom is only a memory. All human action is hemmed in by laws, regulations, taxes, and the efforts of busybodies everywhere to compel us to conform. As C. S. Lewis put it in Screwtape Proposes a Toast:

     Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, you remember, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side) we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a tool-shed in his own garden.

     Do not imagine that any society, however organized, can escape the State’s best friend: the busybody.

     A means of escaping the busybody is the best guarantor of a tolerable degree of freedom. It is not permanently stable; nothing is. But it’s the best-enduring chance we have. That implies that until we regain a frontier:

• That’s reachable by common men;
• That provides access to places where the State does not rule;
• Such places being habitable, perhaps with technological help, by those who go there;

     ...freedom will only be a sound we make from time to time. A word in the dictionary whose meaning has no referents in objective reality.

     Just now, that frontier does not exist. Yet it existed in the past. It might exist again in the future. But whereas its past form was a feature of terrestrial geography, its future form will be harder to bring about, and for a time will be accessible only to a fortunate few. Elon Musk had better find some inheritors who share both his vision and his passion for it.

Quickies: Success’s Descendants

     I have written both of the following:

     Success breeds emulation. If there are advantages to be had from the ruthless exploitation of a class privilege, over time more and more members of the class will be drawn into doing so. Thus, the coloration given to the class by its privileges will become stronger and more inclusive over time. [From here.]

     And also:

     She scowled. “My mentor liked to say that success breeds failure. You tend to repeat your old, successful moves because they worked, while your enemy is developing a new one to clobber you with.” [From here.]

     Both are true. The successful are attractive. People will tend (if not prevented) to emulate the behavior that made them successful. Initially, that means an increasing number of people doing the “successful thing.” But the more people do so, the greater the pressure becomes for a countermeasure. Eventually a countermeasure will emerge that thwarts the earlier behavior and establishes a new pattern for success. As has been said entirely too often: lather, rinse, repeat.

     Which explains how both “The trend is your friend” and “Contrarians always make money” are both true as well.

A Place Along The Riverbank

     I think I first saw the image that contains the title phrase in Kurt Vonnegut’s early novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It speaks of a Money River known only to a privileged few. Those privileged are entitled to slurp from it. When a candidate for entitlement is approved, those already along the bank make a spot for him. He thus becomes entitled to slurp from the river, but is given a caveat: “Keep the racket down.”

     "It's still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own."
     "Sure -- provided somebody tells him when he's young enough that there is a Money River, that there's nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. 'Go where the rich and the powerful are,' I'd tell him, 'and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You'll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.'"

     Vonnegut, be it plainly said, was no fan of capitalism. Nevertheless, his image has an important application. For Vonnegut’s Money River, substitute “government.” As the Birchites have told us, there are “insiders” who collaborate to keep themselves in power, and therefore with the wealth and other perquisites that power can bring. These days, we usually call them “the Establishment.” They’ve made arrangements to protect themselves and their places along the Riverbank.

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     No one is permitted to rise to power without methods being put in place to keep other powerful men safe from him. There will be levers that can bend him; other powerful men will know what they are. Such levers would only be used in extremis, should a maverick threaten to upset The System, and only if nothing else could curb him. They constitute politicians’ variety of “mutual assured destruction.”

     Among the reasons Establishmentarians feared Donald Trump is they could not find a lever that could daunt him. He, wealthy by his own efforts and widely admired for his accomplishments, is a maverick they could not threaten. Note how many attempts, of how many different kinds, have been made to bring him down. All have failed. With each failure, the anxiety among the Establishment has increased.

     But the protective mechanisms do protect Establishmentarians from one another. Sundance’s excellent article “DC Corruption on Scale” provides a look at the way some of them have functioned.

     Places along the Riverbank are sacrosanct. No one shall be permitted to endanger them. Especially not an elected upstart like Donald Trump. Or so the Establishmentarians believed.

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     When I wrote Shadow of a Sword:

     “Have you ever heard the name William Graham Sumner, Miss Weatherly?”
     She shook her head. “A relative of yours?”
“An ancestor. Distant in time, but not in convictions. Among the things my ancestor wrote–his writings were rather well known, at one time–was that the concentrating tendencies of power will, over time, bring to the seats of power men ever less suited for them. Recent years have proved him correct. We have raised to high office men of ever more dubious skills and character. Men whose principal talent has been assembling coalitions of special interests, who would bankroll their campaigns and maneuver them into office, and subsequently expect them to steer the ship of state as their thralls. Men and interests entirely unconcerned with the Constitution’s quite explicit limits on federal power. In consequence,” he said, “today America is nearly twenty trillion dollars in debt. Our economy is faltering. Our military is no longer feared by other nations. Our extra-territorial possessions are under assault. Our dollar has ceased to be the world’s reserve currency. Our constitutionally guaranteed rights as individuals are treated as being suspensible at the whims of judges, policemen, and unelected bureaucrats. Washington and the state capitals take six of every ten dollars we earn to spend as they please. Our inner cities resemble nothing so much as free-fire zones. Our society has been shattered into competing interest groups that strive ceaselessly to out-thieve one another in an unending game of beggar-thy-neighbor. And our national identity and confidence are weaker than ever before in history.”
     Sumner had ticked his points off on his fingers. As he concluded, all ten of his fingers stood raised before the cameras.
     “That, Miss Weatherly, is what comes from the dynamic my ancestor perceived: the forces that elevate wealth, privilege, family prestige, and the backing of other powerful men and their little clubs to qualifications for high office. The pattern of devolution it has brought us can be broken in only one way: outsiders must force their way into the halls of power. But the major parties are part of the pattern. They have little interest in fixing what I and, hopefully, you and your audience see as severe problems that urgently require redress. So one who would oppose the devolutionary dynamic must operate outside them as well.”

     ...Stephen Graham Sumner was only a fictional character. I had no idea that a maverick would arise whom the Establishment could not control. I would not have guessed that that maverick would be a real estate mogul from Queens. Nor would I have guessed that he would succeed in bending a major party, a huge contributor to the Establishment, to his will.

     Donald Trump didn’t need nor want a place along the Riverbank. He holds those who line it in contempt. He has defied them more effectively than any president since Grover Cleveland. Which is why the big guns of Establishmentarian privilege have been blasting him from the Left, and working to undermine him from the Right.

     Sundance’s article provides a look at some of the details. Give it some of your time and attention.