Innocents afloat on the USS Kayfaybe
How the Establishment coopts and neuters grassroots movements
Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Two, Issue 51
It's all about the game and how you play it.
All about control and if you can take it.
All about your debt and if you can pay it.
It's all about pain and who's gonna make it.
I am the game, you don't want to play me.
I am control, no way you can change me.
I am heavy debt, no way you can pay me.
I am the pain and I know you can't take me.
The Sunday Reader, Oct. 1, 2023
Freddie deBoer is an excellent writer, a fascinating thinker, and an avowed Marxist.
He’s also an innocent.
His new book, “How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement,” examines how the thousands marching in the streets and billions of dollars spent in the wake of George Floyd’s death ended up changing pretty much nothing.
deBoer examines the strategy and tactics that ended in this failure, including routing passionate leftist activists into the “Non-profit Industrial Complex” – 1.5 million registered nonprofits spending more than $1 trillion annually; 5 percent of GDP. “It’s the nature of nonprofits to take radicals and make them bureaucrats,” he writes.
And he rails against the self-defeating tactics of identity politics.
“What too often goes undiscussed in left spaces in the social justice era is this: While the act of dividing the left’s constituencies into smaller and smaller identity niches might be fine for academic analysis, it’s ruinous for taking action. Ruinous because the smaller and smaller you slice humanity into groups, the less power those groups have, whether that be the power of votes, of organizing, or of educating the masses.”
None of this failing surprises him. “As a radical anti-capitalist, I’m used to losing; my political movement has done little else but lose for my entire lifetime.”
Oh Freddie. Don’t you know the old military rule of thumb?
Once is an accident.
Twice is a coincidence.
Three times or more is enemy action.
Ask yourself this: could a declared enemy of DeBoer ’s progressive movement come up with better strategy than the one outlined here?
Here’s the thing: You lose every time you play the games aboard the USS Kayfabe, because getting you to play is the entire point.
We’re all just Marks sailing on the USS Kayfabe. Oh, sure, lots of us like to think we are SMarks – Smart Marks, who are in on the con – but at the end of the day a Mark is a Mark is a Mark.
The performers don’t care if you’re a Mark or a SMark. They only care that you keep playing.
As long as you’re playing, they’re getting paid.
Kayfabe is the story performers are telling to work an audience. It’s a term that emerged from carnies a century ago, and now has been popularized by professional wrestling.
In Kayfabe, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock were mortal enemies who met in bloody fights in the ring.
After the lights went down and the Marks went home, Austin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnston were friends who would drive to the next show together, planning out their next match and betting cases of beer on which one could pull off the most preposterous spot. On one especially boring road trip through “house shows” – events that aren’t broadcast on TV and therefore where new things can be tried out – the bet was who could get the famously all-business Undertaker to break character and laugh.
The winner turned into The Most Electrifying Move In Sports Entertainment – The People’s Elbow!
The entire point of The People’s Elbow is that the audience is in on the joke with the performers. They’re all smarks!
The performers don’t care. They’re still getting paid.
That’s just good business in professional wrestling. And it’s just good business in our political system.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-KY) have traded leadership of the Senate back and forth. Blood enemies, no?
They’re getting paid!
McConnel’s net worth in 2008 was $16.98 million. 15 years later he’s now worth $110 million.
Pretty sharp on an annual salary of $174,000. He must be a genius investor!
Let’s check on his nemesis from New York. Schumer was worth $1.74 million in 2008. A decade and a half later, he’s now worth $81 million! Another genius investor!
But they’re both pikers compared to Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat and former Speaker of the House of Representatives was worth $31 million in 2008. But the last decade and a half have been kind to her – she’s now worth $290 million.
Here’s the thing; none of this requires a vast conspiracy, or even a small one. DeBoer actually lays this out in his book on a single page, where he cites The Iron Law of Oligarchy – over time, any human organization develops an internal elite that works for its own best interests to consolidate power and protect their position – and the Iron Law of Institutions – people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution, rather than the power of the institution itself.
“People don’t make their own jobs obsolete,” DeBoer writes.
And is it not human nature, after all, to form social ties and friendships with the people you see and work with every day? Why then, should it be a surprise that US Supreme Court justices Antoine Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg were ideological enemies, but real-life best friends. So, too, were US senators Orin Hatch and Edward Kennedy, though Hatch was a conservative stalwart and Kennedy a liberal lion on the Senate floor.
Is it not human nature, after all, to value those social ties and friendships with the people you see and work with every day over the wants and needs of distant, unseen, theoretical citizens?
And doesn’t this extend to the press? The national press corps is all about the White House Correspondents Dinner and dinner parties in Georgetown, where they hang out with all those hard-working people from the nonprofits and the governmental departments.
So which names are the “faces” — the good guys — in all this? Which are the “heels” — the bad guys?
It doesn’t matter what their names are! In kayfabe, all the performers are in on the work. Face and Heel are just roles they are playing; they can and do switch as the performance requires.
No, no grand conspiracy is needed to explain deBoer’s eternal losing streak. All it requires is human nature, and inertia, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy, and the Iron Law of Institutions.
And oceans of cash.
More than a trillion dollars flows through those 1.5 million non-profits. Where does all that money come from? Much of it comes from government grants.
Millions of smart people work at all those non-profits. Millions more work at the government agencies that make those grants. And the money sloshes back and forth, and the people do, too.
Inertia is one of the strongest forces in the universe. Add in the Iron Law of Oligarchy, and the Iron Law of Institutions, and it’s clear that deBoer’s losing streak will continue as long as the current system lasts.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, that same system is being eviscerated by the death of the Industrial Age and the birth of the Information Age.
More on that, starting next week, in American Twilight: How the Manifest Destiny that crowned the US as king of the Industrial Age is now tearing it apart as we enter the Information Age.
Like almost every statistic from the far right and far left, this one is worthless. A trillion bucks a year sounds like a lot, and one wonders why an anti-capitalist would criticize nonprofits anyway. But then look closely at the figures. Some 80% of nonprofit revenue is fees for service. You know, colleges and nonprofit hospitals. Duh.
On the other hand, the chief executives at some of these places, like all execs, often make really big bucks. Because nonprofits don't actually have marketable stock, that compensation is basically a pension and a paycheck.
Over at Facebook, I've been put on probation for noting that if you killed every American billionaire and stole their money, you'd have bit over $4 trillion. That is also a lot of money. Enough to run the federal government for about 7 months. Whoopee. Facebook's AI said that was incitement to riot. No wonder they call AI "artificial."
The top 1% already pays a third of federal income taxes, could pay more, and should be taxed on capital as well as income. As % of income, the IRS says on average they pay almost 27% annually... which is a higher percent than any other cohort, even higher than Warren Buffet's famous secretary. Half the country pays no federal "tax" at all, may pay into Social Security, usually pays sales taxes, and may get an earned income tax credit to offset that.
Complicated.
BUT what is obvious is that the far left cannot get everything it wants, and that income leveling is not only incentive-destroying, it is mathematically impossible.