Amerika

The Wall Street Journal has been, like any publication as reality-focused as a business-centric newspaper must partially be, hammering home the early analysis of the new wave of change in the 21st century: Leftism had its chance, but is steering us toward Soviet-style collapse through the notion of globalism and its handmaidens of global elites.

As a recent editorial points out, these elites are tyrants. Their power serves themselves alone and is forced onto the rest of us through a duality of good/evil mapped to egalitarian politics, because equality always favors tyrants by reducing the population to a raging mass.

Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.

The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”

Whatever happens to Donald Trump, the legitimacy of this system has been shattered, putting an end to the seemingly inevitable Leftward drift after World War II. The elites who promised to end our problems have in fact made everything worse, and have shown that they do not care about anyone beneath them, which is the single most telling aspect of a tyranny.

As a result, mass upheaval is on the wind. The system has failed. The protections of democracy — which was viewed as better than nationalism, strong authority or monarchy — have failed. The question is whether we recognize that with it has failed the idea of systems, as well, and where that will take us in the future.

Tags: cathedralism, donald trump, global elites, the cathedral