Pseudo-democracies

Do you prefer to be ruled by an omnipotent politician or a faceless machine? Those are the choices we face, according to Mencius Moldbug, who writes that

the 20th-century pseudo-democratic regimes can be separated into two broad categories: oligarchical (communist, impersonal) and despotic (fascist, personal).

It's not just that the Commucaust was ten times bigger than the Holocaust. It's that both are best understood as epiphenomena of the democratic era. Which isn't over yet! At least not when we classify pseudo-democracies among the consequences of democracy. And why wouldn't we? Hitler's Berlin, FDR's Washington, and Stalin's Moscow are each pretending, each in its own way, to be a "genuine democracy." Without the ideal, how could we have the pretense?

Of these three ruthless regimes, the crimes of the first are rigorously investigated and permanently famous; those of the last have been sporadically looked into, a little; and our own in the middle, emerging victorious, remains well cloaked in the usual golden froth of a hagiographic personality cult with a locked archive. Indeed, until the American, British and Soviet archives are fully opened and the inevitable gaps charted, no intelligence-quality history of the 20th century can be written - which means no history worth reading, and certainly none worth believing in.

So, don't believe! You can stop any time, really. Hey, man, it's a new century.

Alas, dear Americans - "progressives," ie, communists, and "constitutionalists," ie, fascists - the both of you, this is your pathetic condition. And you're worried that someone is grepping your emails?

This is what "democracy" means to you: government by permanent civil servants. As for your elected officials, you could dismiss them all tomorrow, and not elect more, and your experience of government would not change in the slightest.

And this is how you come to live in a world where there are these two separate concepts, "politics" and "democracy," with opposite emotional valence. Calling anything "political" is a harsh condemnation. But if it is "democratic," it is good and sweet and true. But what is democracy without politics?

Nothing more than the American system of government - communism, ie, rule by the party of civil service. As Americans, we can at least be thankful that communism has done less damage here than elsewhere. It's great to be an exporter, especially when your product is dioxin. It gives you the comforts you need to worry that someone is grepping your emails.

For a man or for a community of men, the right to rule is a function of the might to rule. If the sound competent Midwest can get itself euchred out of its democratic right to rule by a bunch of slick Harvard men, the sound competent Midwest cannot maintain its authority and will get euchred by someone someday. If it's not Harvard today it'll be Yale tomorrow.