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- Apr 20, 2014
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If you live in the world of Facebook, Lyft, Netflix and Airbnb, crowding into airports and shouting, "No Borders, No Nations, Stop The Deportations" makes sense. You don't live in a country. You live in one of a number of interchangeable megacities or their bedroom communities. Patriotism is a foreign concept. You have no more attachment to America than you do to Friendster or Myspace. The nation state is an outdated system of social organization that is being replaced by more efficient systems of global governance. The only reasons anyone would cling to nations and borders are ignorance or racism.
The demographic most opposed to President Trump is not a racial minority, but a cultural elite.
This isn't a revolution. The revolutions happened in June and November. Brexit and Trump were revolutions. The protests against them are a reaction by the overthrown establishment.
Somewhere along the way the political projects of the left ceased to be revolutionary. The left won. It took control of nations and set about dismantling them. Its social and economic agendas became law. It ruled through a vast interconnected system of bureaucracy, media, academia, non-profits and corporations.
In Europe, democracy nearly vanished. In America, there were still elections, but they didn't matter very much. A Republican president could tinker a little, but he couldn't change things. The left would throw its ritualistic tantrums if he limited abortion funding or invaded Iraq. But around the isolated controversies, everything else would go on moving further to the left.
The left had come to envision its victory as inevitable. Its leaders enjoyed a secular right of kings bestowed on them by historical materialism. And so they couldn't see the revolution coming.
The inevitable elites and their power were overthrown. The little people they had been stepping on stormed the castle. All their pseudoscience polls had failed to predict it. Suddenly the future no longer belonged to the City or to Palo Alto. And its denizens poured out into the streets to protest.
The protests are taking place in the name of oppressed minorities, but like any dot com logo, that's branding. They are actually an angry reaction by an overthrown elite to a people's revolution.
This isn't really about Muslims. The angry protesters know as little about Islam as they do about rural Iowa. But borders and airports are an important metaphor. President Trump said, "A nation without borders is not a nation." And that's exactly what the left wanted. No borders and no nations.
If you make tangible goods or have a mortgage, you are more likely to want borders and a nation. If on the other hand you deal in intangibles, in strings of numbers, in data on global servers, in movies and music, then borders are an unreal abstraction. If you get your rides from Uber, your house from Airbnb, your entertainment from Netflix and your dates from Tinder, if you don't actually own anything, and have no plans for a family or anything more permanent than a virtual existence, who needs a nation?
Nations are ideals grounded in real things. Our elites exist in an unreal world filled with unreal things. Their system is based on using communications technology to organize the world in new ways. They have grown so dazzled by the potential of that organization that they ignore what is underneath.
That metaphor became reality with Brexit and Trump. The country rebelled against the city. People who were in the business of making and doing real things rose up against a virtual economy.
The elites are unable to understand the nationalistic and territorial impulses of either their own citizens or Islamic terrorists. Their strange social-plutocratic fusion of Marxism and technocracy sees it as a problem of sharing the wealth. All the popular uprisings can be put down with a bigger welfare state. Redistribute more of the profits from Facebook to Muslims and Trump voters. Problem solved.
But the problem can't be solved by enlarging the welfare class. It's a gaping cultural chasm.
People need meaning. It is meaning that gives them a sense of worth. The angry leftist reactionaries find meaning in their post-everything world. The shattering of this world has driven them into the streets. And yet they can't grasp that it was the shattering of their world that drove so many working people to vote for Brexit or Trump. They refuse to comprehend that nations have meaning to more people than their post-national world order of interchangeable multicultural megacities does or that most people want something tangible to hold on to, including land and family, even if it requires labor and sacrifice.
It was a war between Davos, Conde Nast, GQ, Soros, MSNBC, Hollywood, Facebook and America. And America won.
The "resistance" is a collection of elites, from actors at award shows to fashion magazines to tech billionaires, decrying a popular revolt against their rule. They are not the resistance. They are dictators in exile. They had their chance to impose their vision on the people. And they lost.
The protests aren’t a revolution. They’re a counterrevolutionary reaction by a fallen establishment.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265668/elites-protest-new-revolution-daniel-greenfield
The demographic most opposed to President Trump is not a racial minority, but a cultural elite.
This isn't a revolution. The revolutions happened in June and November. Brexit and Trump were revolutions. The protests against them are a reaction by the overthrown establishment.
Somewhere along the way the political projects of the left ceased to be revolutionary. The left won. It took control of nations and set about dismantling them. Its social and economic agendas became law. It ruled through a vast interconnected system of bureaucracy, media, academia, non-profits and corporations.
In Europe, democracy nearly vanished. In America, there were still elections, but they didn't matter very much. A Republican president could tinker a little, but he couldn't change things. The left would throw its ritualistic tantrums if he limited abortion funding or invaded Iraq. But around the isolated controversies, everything else would go on moving further to the left.
The left had come to envision its victory as inevitable. Its leaders enjoyed a secular right of kings bestowed on them by historical materialism. And so they couldn't see the revolution coming.
The inevitable elites and their power were overthrown. The little people they had been stepping on stormed the castle. All their pseudoscience polls had failed to predict it. Suddenly the future no longer belonged to the City or to Palo Alto. And its denizens poured out into the streets to protest.
The protests are taking place in the name of oppressed minorities, but like any dot com logo, that's branding. They are actually an angry reaction by an overthrown elite to a people's revolution.
This isn't really about Muslims. The angry protesters know as little about Islam as they do about rural Iowa. But borders and airports are an important metaphor. President Trump said, "A nation without borders is not a nation." And that's exactly what the left wanted. No borders and no nations.
If you make tangible goods or have a mortgage, you are more likely to want borders and a nation. If on the other hand you deal in intangibles, in strings of numbers, in data on global servers, in movies and music, then borders are an unreal abstraction. If you get your rides from Uber, your house from Airbnb, your entertainment from Netflix and your dates from Tinder, if you don't actually own anything, and have no plans for a family or anything more permanent than a virtual existence, who needs a nation?
Nations are ideals grounded in real things. Our elites exist in an unreal world filled with unreal things. Their system is based on using communications technology to organize the world in new ways. They have grown so dazzled by the potential of that organization that they ignore what is underneath.
That metaphor became reality with Brexit and Trump. The country rebelled against the city. People who were in the business of making and doing real things rose up against a virtual economy.
The elites are unable to understand the nationalistic and territorial impulses of either their own citizens or Islamic terrorists. Their strange social-plutocratic fusion of Marxism and technocracy sees it as a problem of sharing the wealth. All the popular uprisings can be put down with a bigger welfare state. Redistribute more of the profits from Facebook to Muslims and Trump voters. Problem solved.
But the problem can't be solved by enlarging the welfare class. It's a gaping cultural chasm.
People need meaning. It is meaning that gives them a sense of worth. The angry leftist reactionaries find meaning in their post-everything world. The shattering of this world has driven them into the streets. And yet they can't grasp that it was the shattering of their world that drove so many working people to vote for Brexit or Trump. They refuse to comprehend that nations have meaning to more people than their post-national world order of interchangeable multicultural megacities does or that most people want something tangible to hold on to, including land and family, even if it requires labor and sacrifice.
It was a war between Davos, Conde Nast, GQ, Soros, MSNBC, Hollywood, Facebook and America. And America won.
The "resistance" is a collection of elites, from actors at award shows to fashion magazines to tech billionaires, decrying a popular revolt against their rule. They are not the resistance. They are dictators in exile. They had their chance to impose their vision on the people. And they lost.
The protests aren’t a revolution. They’re a counterrevolutionary reaction by a fallen establishment.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265668/elites-protest-new-revolution-daniel-greenfield
