The Universal Argument Is All About, "Who Is In Charge Here?"

Both the results of the midterm election and the confused subtexts brought out in the assorted exit and other polls shows that if there is one unifying theme defining American political discourse today it is the matter of who is or should be in charge of power in the US.

The opponents are well defined.  On the one hand is the self-defined elite, the hoi oligoi of academia, media, and politics with a firm belief in its education and status conferred right to rule (for the good of all, of course.)  On the other is the rest of us, the hoi polloi who lack the arrogance, the utterly delusional sense of self entitlement, the prideful certainty that we are so competent, so blessed by wisdom that we can run anyone's life other than our own.

In this conflict as in the confusion over what government is all about, We the People are  no different from our fellow members of the Order of the Belly Button in Europe.  The same conflict has been extant and growing over there for some years.  Most recently it has culminated--as it has here--in a lurch away from the wholesale commitment to social democracy with its firm conviction that the government is the fountainhead of equality, justice, and security.  As in the US the assorted elites of Europe have been outraged, horrified by the notion that the ungrateful "masses" so repeatedly celebrated in the abstract by the elites have turned the worm against their presumed benefactors.

At root in both Europe and the US, the issue in play is the same.  Who will exercise political authority, that is power over the lives, the choices, the values, the beliefs of the individual citizen?  The short answer, apparent right now, is the citizenry generally in both the US and Western Europe no longer trusts the ability or the motives of the central government and those who closely identify with the central government be they politicians, academics, journalists, pundits, labor leaders, and the rest of the elite legion.

As the line in an old TV ad had it, "Please, mother, I'd rather do it myself."

The contest for power pitting supporters of the state against those who desire (demand?) that the state be either limited or shrunk has been raised in profile and embittered in tone by the exigencies of the great budget crunch.  The crunch would have come sooner or later and is in no way directly dependent upon the effects of the Great Recession.  The crunch is the product of the cold equations of population demographics pure and simple.  But the impact of the Great Recession on national bottom lines accelerated the pace of events, sped up the coming of the crunch.

The rapid coming and blooming of the budget crunch assured that people in the US and Western Europe had the impetus to bring an almost subterranean debate over the nature, role, and extent of governmental authority into the open.  For the moment at least, the Big State is on the defensive, but it is far from becoming an endangered species.

One reason for this is the distrust of international aggregates such as the European Union or the UN is far, far greater among the hoi polloi than with the hoi ollogoi.  There is and has been for many years a belief dear to the hearts of elites here and in Europe that the day of the nation-state was over.  To most of the elite the demise of the nation-state was an unmitigated good.  The complete antipathy held for the nation-state was equaled by a passionate affection for multi-national institutions whether the various precursors to the EU, the UN or, closer to us in the States, the Organization of American States.

All multi-national institutions but particularly the UN were wildly applauded and supported by all members in good standing of the elite here and abroad.  In the US the fact that Uncle Sam was often the designated whipping boy of the globe was seen as a sign of the UN's legitimacy.  How could any body in which the countries of the world had an equal voice be mistaken?

We the People have been reluctant in the extreme to embrace the notion that the US was the source of all global evil, all the problems, inequities, and injustices of the human race.  Few of the hoi polloi have been eager to accept the "We are bad" and "Blame America first" slogans of the elite in its exaltation of the UN or other multi-national bodies.

One reason for this as well as for the innate distrust of multi-national bodies is the intuitive understanding within We the People and our counterparts in Europe that not all people, not all cultures, not all countries have identical or even compatible norms, values, imperatives, and goals.  Regardless of the propaganda offered by the elites, there is and has been a pervasive belief that not all people, not all cultures, not all societies, not all countries are fundamentally interchangeable parts of some mythical human whole.

It is this understanding that is in play with the "Clash of Civilizations" so dramatically evident today.  The CoC pits two world views which are diametrically opposed in many basic features in sharp combat over just who will be in charge of the globe in the decades to come.

It is no more xenophobic or racist or "tribal" for a person in the West to want to see the West continue to be the dominant voice in global affairs than it is to say the same of a Muslim, even an advocate of violent political Islam to wish his world view to triumph.  Rather both are seeking to answer the "who is in charge" question in the way which most benefits the personal preference, the individual loyalty.

When a Western European polity determines to ban minarets or burquas it is neither intolerance at work nor the chimera of "islamophobia."  Rather it is the right of the majority culture, the majority society acting as polity, to determine it and not the stranger in our familiar land who is in charge of today and tomorrow.  It is the assertion of a basic human social right to determine its own identity and destiny--regardless of what the self-selected elite might desire.

Banning symbols of Islamic culture is not an attack on Islam.  Actions in Switzerland, France, or even the US in no way threaten the political integrity of majority Muslim polities.  Muslims have an untrammeled right to stone women, force women into garbage sacks, lop of hands and feet of purported criminals, or engage in the other requirements of their faith--in the areas where they are in charge.

At the same time it is well within the purview of Westerners to dictate the requirements of conduct, the tests of membership in their national communities.  It is not, despite the pronouncements of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an attack on Muslims to assert that they conform to the demands of the nation-states in which they choose to reside.  Nor is it, again regardless of the position adopted by the OIC, for the US or any other Western state to defend itself against the physical attacks mounted by Muslims who advocate violent political Islam.  Neither is it an attack against Islam qua Islam to retaliate when attacked by a Muslim.

The violent aspects of the Clash of Civilizations constitute nothing less than a war.  And, war is nothing but a means of determining just who is in charge.  The Clash, most importantly its violent component, was initiated by Muslims who are strong and fervent believers in violent political Islam.  They sought and continue to seek to be in charge not only in their own, home countries but elsewhere, everywhere if the words of such as Osama bin Laden are to be taken at face value.

We the People and our counterparts throughout the West can be grateful to the advocates of violent political Islam.  Their attacks, their mass murders, their terror has forced us to see just what is abroad in the world.  It has turned out that the danger is not  simply violent political Islam or even the add on of the intrusive Nanny state, but rather the long unchallenged ascendancy of the hoi ollogoi.

For too long we have surrendered power almost without question or protest to those who have proclaimed themselves to be "our betters."  The failure of the self-designated elites to defend our lives and territory against foreign threats gave rise to an increased unwillingness to entrust the elite with power.  As election after election in both Europe and now the US show, the non-elite, the common person, the hoi polloi has belatedly but decisively decided that it is in charge, that it has the power to control its life today and into the future.

And, that, Bucko, is a damn good thing.

EU Elites Get The Jitters Again

If anything perturbs the serene sleep of assorted Eurocrats more than an election success on the part of a "right wing, " populist party it is hard to imagine. Well, perhaps the thought of having to bail out Greece or one of the other "PIGS" states. But, for the moment the elites of the EU are spinning faster than an Iranian centrifuge because of the outcome of the Hungarian elections.

The Right-leaning Fidez party under the leadership of veteran politician Viktor Orban came out of its seemingly perpetual status as a minority with fifty-three percent of the vote. That meant the Socialists were out.

This is not the part of the election which is giving the Eurocrats hissy-fits. Rather it was the emergence of the hypernationalist, antisemitic, anti-Gypsy Jobbink party which gained almost seventeen percent of the votes. An obscure, fringe element founded by Gabor Vona, the Movement For A Better Hungry rode a wave of anti-status quo, anti-establishment rhetoric to a stunning degree of success.

Jobbink is deeply disturbing not only for the strong echoes of National Socialism in its verbiage, but for its militia offspring. The Hungarian Guard is also headed by Gabor Vona. In its actions if not its uniforms the Magyar Garda closely resembles the Iron Guard of Hungary's World War II Nazi days. The Hungarian Guard has been outlawed by a local court but the Socialist government did not enforce the suppression order.

The breadth and depth of the anti-status quo vote bespeaks not only a widespread frustration over current economic conditions which are, admittedly, bad even by Central European standards but also anger over corruption which appears pervasive. Of the two the former is the more often pointed to by observers, but the latter is the more critical.

A perception of corruption, of cronyism, of the hoi oligoi ripping off and exploiting the hoi polloi necessarily results in a corrosion of faith in the current system. Taken to the extreme, corrupt acts by members of the government leads to a violent exercise in regime change as in Kyrgyzstan.

Corruption along with economic conditions which seem to have a greater, disproportionate impact on the working class, the small shopkeeper, the lesser farmer provides a very rich soil for politicians hawking the wares of the farther right shore of politics. They cater effectively to a general sense that the status quo is so rigged to the sole benefit of the hoi oligoi that wholesale change is needed. This, of course, along with a hefty dose of national pride and the appointment of an evil "Other," constitutes the stock in trade of Jobbik and similar parties throughout Europe.

As has been seen in the US with the shrill, not to say, hysterical reactions of the Left to the rise of the Tea Party Movement, the European internationalist elites have responded to any success by a so-called "populist" party by attacking the voters rather than soberly assessing the real world motivations for the vote having gone the way it did.

There are very good, quite realistic reasons for disenchantment among the European hoi polloi. The rush toward meshing the many quite different nations of Europe into a single entity has been way too rapid not to perturb the equanimity of those many folks who are not by virtue of employment, education, or background given to celebrating internationalism, let alone the multi-cultural stance so fervently embraced by the "betters" of the EU.

The stresses imposed by Muslim immigration and the apologies offered by the multi-cultis on their behalf have fostered a sense of alienation within their own lands on the part of many. One consequence has been to increase the distrust felt by some as to the motives and worthiness of those in government.

Further stressing the social and political cohesion of most European states have been the effects of the Great Recession. The view from the bottom of the economic pyramid has been that somehow, some way, the Mr and Ms Bigs of the several European states have been able to ride out the recession. The conclusion drawn all-too-often is the hoi oligoi have made a corrupt bargain to protect themselves while offloading the bitter fruit of economic calamity on the lesser sorts.

Absent any of these several stressors there is little doubt but the traditional waver between Center-Left and Center-Right governments would have continued. However, the European social and political compacts have been tried and found wanting under the pressure of these several recent phenomena. The result has been a shift to the extremes on the political spectrum.

The fact that the extreme most favored by recent voters has been that on the Right is quite important. The Right emphasizes the national. National identity. National economy. National interest above all. The European voters have shown in impressive numbers that they reject the forced integration not only of the several European states but of non-Europeans into the local culture, society, polity, and, most importantly, sense of identity.

This is evidence that, once more, the lofty thinking people who live in the high mountains of the Left have no clue how the hoi polloi not only live but think of themselves, their nation, their identity as individuals and as a nation. With disdain bordering on arrogance, the high minded who inhale the rarefied air of an ideal world have shown that their belief in changing the "lesser sorts" to a similar view of life and living if only enough hectoring, lecturing, verbal beating is administered does not work.

The True Believers of the Left in Europe and, dare one write, the US as well, have been and continue to act as if they are the new divinely ordained aristocracy equipped by virtue of birth, education, employment, social and economic status to dictate to all the rest, the vast majority, how they should live, how they should view life and the world, how they should think and behave. This proclamation of being in sole possession of moral rectitude serves to provide grounds for alienation.

The alienation is enhanced when the elite slide through economic hard times relatively undamaged. The alienation is completed when the the two perceptions combine to give rise to a sense of class based corruption. If the perception is reinforced by proof positive of corruption in high (and not so high) places as it has been in Hungry, the result is the rise of the more extreme Right.

Once again an elite has been hoisted on a petard of its own making. In Hungry as in other European states the lurch to the far Right has been caused by the attitudes, words, and actions of the Left leaning elite.

That ground truth is what should be exercising the movers and shakers of the EU, not the specifics of the Hungarian election. Of course, this will not happen. The elite in Europe as in the US is too blinded by its own light, believes too deeply in its own press releases, is too sure of its own rectitude to engage in self-examination.

Failing this, the elite can only lambaste the blindness, the stupidity, the xenophobia of the lesser breeds in need of guidance, care, and supervision. And so the days of the Left elite may be numbered, small numbered.