The Danger of Ideologues

Not Agreement Capable

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H. L. Mencken, The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.

American social and political commentator H. L Mencken was no fan of the common people, democracy or politicians, but he certainly had a way with words. For some, the election of George Bush the lesser in 2001 was the fulfilment of Mencken’s nightmare. For others it was Donald Trump in 2016. One can make good arguments either way, but we can be quite certain now that under Smokin’ Joe Biden, the White House is truly adorned by a downright moron. Senile old Joe is a pathetic, threadbare glove puppet, wheeled on stage by his handlers to read from a teleprompter and shuffle quickly off stage before he says something unscripted.

Joe Biden is certifiably senile. We can all see it. He belongs in a care home where he can shuffle around mumbling to the other unfortunates about hairy legs and his love for the black community (the clean ones) and prepubescent girls, but no, he’s too valuable an asset for the faceless people using him that the pretense must be maintained. What choice do they have? Cacklin’ Kamala Harris? She too is a certifiable moron, put on the ticket solely because of skin colour and that she puts out. This begs the question - why did they choose to put forward these people and what does it say about them?

A historical diversion

In middle 11th century, the East Roman (Byzantine) empire was facing crises on multiple fronts. After nearly a century of territorial and economic expansion, the empire had fallen into the hands of a series of emperors who were not up to the task. As a consequence, the civil service had expanded its power and was increasingly running the empire behind the scenes. Public expenditure went up as the bureaucracy expanded and corruption - previously ruthlessly suppressed by strong emperors like Basil II - ran rampant.

As if this were not enough, military problems arose on the empire’s borders. In the west, exploitative taxes and restrictions on trade sparked a revolt in Bulgaria that proved impossible to suppress. In the east, nomadic Turkoman raiders began to penetrate the Armenian frontier. All attempts to stop these small, mobile bandits ranging across the steppe-lands of Anatolia failed. A major part of the problem on the eastern frontier was that the funds originally intended for the Armenian garrisons was paid to the nobility in the form of landed estates in central Anatolia. For the Armenian nobles it was easier to retire to these estates and keep the money for themselves than to stand guard on the distant frontier. For the soldiers manning the frontier, when the pay stopped coming, they stopped fighting. Many turned to banditry or joined the Turks.

None of these problems was insurmountable however. Soldiers could be re-employed, rebellions could be suppressed, but there was one insoluble problem - legitimacy. The Macedonian dynasty, which had seized power in a bloody coup a century earlier was at its last gasp. When the last male heir of the Macedonian line, Constantine VII, died in 1028, the succession fell to his three unmarried daughters, who were all in their 50s and well past child-beading age. The courtier factions progressively married the sisters off to various candidates to keep the regime alive until the last surviving sister, Theodora, died in 1056.

Theodora’s younger sister, Zoe, elevated three men to the throne. Here she is in a mosaic in the Hagia Sophia church in Istanbul with her last husband, Constantine XI Monomachus. Both portraits have been edited. Constantine’s face replaces that of his predecessor, Michael and possibly even his predecessor, Romanus. Zoe’s face has been ‘airbrushed’ to make her look younger as she was well into her 60s at this time.

On Theodora’s deathbed she nominated Michael VI Bringas as her successor. The kind of person Michael was is indicated by the sobriquet he received by historians - “The Old.” How old is not documented but the historian, Michael Psellus, a courtier who was present, provides a sardonic observation of the scene:

“The councillers were gathered together around the throne, their leader in the midst [Psellus never mentions the conspirators by name], deciding whom they should elect as the new emperor in preference to all others, a man likely to favour themselves, one who would be reliable and would protect their own interests. It is not my purpose at the moment to describe the object of their choice, but I will say that the man chosen was pretty well the best candidate, except that he was the sort of person less qualified to rule than be ruled by others.” Michael Psellus, Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, Penguin Books, pg 271.

Placing a feeble old man, a widower, without children or clamorous relatives on the throne allowed the courtier faction an unparalleled degree of control over the government. They were free to award themselves noble titles, largess from the public treasury, enrich themselves and their friends. They were unconcerned with the goings on at the far edge of the empire and focused exclusively on the politics of the capital. And here is where things went badly wrong.

Feasting at the public trough is like a carcass on the savanna - every vulture wants a piece of the action and at Christmas 1056, the great generals of the east came to Constantinople to complain about the shortchanging of the army and the demand their share of the carrion feast. The military nobility were a rival power faction which the civil faction were determined to destroy. Michael berated the generals, had their leaders arrested and the rest sent back from whence they had come. One doesn’t need to a degree in history to understand what happened next. The generals withdrew, gathered an army and marched straight back to Constantinople and Michael and his clique found themselves…unemployed. A lot of people were killed in the process.

Puppet emperors and puppet presidents are a common enough trope in history and the outcome is always the same. Collapse. Disaster. Revolution. The rules of politics are immutable, whether in 1056 or 2022.

It’s Idiots all the way Down

The Islamic historian, Ibn Khaldun, was the first to document cyclical process of social and political degeneracy in the preface to his history of the Mahgreb, called the Muqaddimah (the preface). He noted that political dynasties rose and fell within the span of three or four generations. The founders of the dynasty usually rose up from humble beginnings and clawed their way to the top thanks to their cunning, creativity and energy. The next generation, having shared in the experience of the struggle, consolidated the gains of their predecessors. The third generation however were born into privilege and here the rot begins to set in. By the time of the fourth generation, the elites have lost all touch with the common folk, with the common struggle, and revel in their privilege and entitlement. The elites, esconced within their overton windows, drive headlong to disaster and are ultimately overthrown and replaced by a new dynasty that has arisen from the street and the whole cycle starts again.

There were plenty of idiots in the Soviet Union and United States during the Cold War. True believers and ideologues determined to bend reality to their will. However, while this balance of power between the ideologies existed, the rationalists on both sides were able to reign the extremists in, as the consequences of their going ‘off-piste’ were too horrific to bear. And then, in 1990, the United States “won” the Cold War. Well, they didn’t so much win as the Soviet Union retired from the fight. The sclerotic edifice of Soviet communism collapsed in on itself and the US had the field to itself. It still took a few years for the rationalists in the west to also step aside, but when they did the door was wide open for the ideologues, or as President George HW Bush described them, “the crazies in the basement.”

The Crazies in the Basement

During the 1930s two sets of exiles were driven out of Europe to the United States - firstly White Russians fleeing the communists, and then international communists fleeing Stalin. They were followed in turn by German socialists fleeing the Nazis. Ardent ideologues, they fumed with rage over the failure of their revolution/counter-revolution and plotted their revenge. They settled into positions of academia and the arts and began the long, slow process of subversion.

In the later 1940s, another group of socialists arrived in the US - the National Socialists. There were plenty of powerful people in the US who believed the country was fighting on the wrong side in the Second World War and the real enemy was the Soviet Union. As the Cold War chill began, head of the CIA (then the Office of Special Services), John Foster Dulles, turned the post-war hunt for Nazi war criminals into a rescue operation. Even the head of military intelligence on the Eastern Front, Reinhard Gehlen, became a CIA asset. Gehlen, like so many other Nazis, talked a big game but was in fact utterly incompetent. He had dismissed the reports passing across his desk of the Soviet build up of troops for Operation Uranus as being of no consequence. Two months later the 6th Army was annihilated in Stalingrad and Germany’s fate was sealed. Gehlen and his staff were unable to provide honest analysis of Soviet forces and intentions because they were Nazis. Ideologues. Now Gehlen was providing his flawed intelligence about the Soviet Union to the US, and later the Federal Republic of Germany.

While these groups may have had different political ideologies, they were bound together by their common hatred of Russia. US animosity to the Soviet Union gave them a platform, which amplified their voices and gave them power. Their children were indoctrinated with their hatred and then boosted into the corridors of power where they met like-minded ideologues and continued their scheming. Now, White House, Congress, the Pentagon, and all positions of power are occupied by these people and their allies. They are known by different names at different times. In the early 2000s they were called Neo-conservatives (nothing new or conservative about them). The names however are irrelevant, they are defined by their character. They are entitled, ideological, incapable of learning, unable to compromise and totally and utterly stupid. And these people are running a country with nuclear weapons.

The Russians have understood what they are facing for some time now. In 2016 they declared the Obama administration ‘not agreement capable’, recognising that there is no centre of power in Washington, only factions competing for power. Now it is worse as there is no one in charge. Smokin’ Joe makes a speech one day, which is immediately denied by the White House or the State Department. The next day ‘he’ publishes an editorial denying he said what he did. There is no policy direction, just a series of contingencies against the latest debacle. We don’t want to escalate the war in Ukraine, but we’re increasing supplies of weapons. We don’t want to open a second front with China, so we’ll announce that we’re prepared to go to war over Taiwan. It’s chaos, but driven by the fact that there are so many ideologues spread through the regime unprepared to back down or face reality. This is a recipe for disaster. It’s said that the European elites sleep walked their way into the Great War. We will be driven into the Third World War by the crazies in the basement.