What Is the Point?

Capitalist

This morning I was reading a thoughtful essay on The BFD by Matt Judd where he covered quite a lot of ground regarding the changes of the last couple of years. He mentions enemies within, plans to subjugate the entire population and various other sick, demented things that are vaguely known as “The Great Reset”.

All this is troubling: there is a sense of unease about it, but it is not a particularly new concept.

If you take the last, say, 3000 years of history, various empires have come and gone: Greek, Roman, British… There was the local bigwig landowner and his numerous tenants; he made the rules and everyone followed them. Noblemen emerged at various times and strict class systems existed.

Then along came a few conservative thinkers and reformers, followed by the American Revolution. In due course, there was the emergence of what is known as “liberal democracy” – the rule of law, democracy, capitalism, property rights, the democratisation (i.e. becoming widespread) of capital and accumulation of assets; a sense of freedom and rights. In an historical context, the 250-odd years of ‘freedom’ have been fairly brief and not particularly welcomed by various elitists whose positions became untenable, especially during the 20th century.

It is the concept of equality among men that has been particularly brief and particularly annoying for the average elitist. Let me explain.

Your ancestor headed off to the West Indies as a cabin boy or something, parlayed his rat cunning into acquiring (by hook or by crook) 1000 acres to grow sugarcane and a few slaves to do all the work and made a fortune. He headed back to Blighty in due course, bought a country estate and perhaps acquired a title, but was certainly the Lord of the Manor bigwig as far as the local village folk were concerned. The next four or five generations enjoyed a leisured lifestyle funded by rents and investment dividends – they considered it the ‘natural order of things’.

Then along comes Gladstone with his reforms, later Mr Attlee, and suddenly some ghastly farmhand or fishwife is your “equal”. And the law says so! If you are an elitist from a rich elitist family with a sense of entitlement – and there are a few “thinkers” in the current generation who meet up with similar sorts of people, know the history of their ancestors and the privileges they enjoyed as of right – let’s just say a few things may cross their minds.

They may start asking questions such as ‘What is the point of being an elitist if you’re equal to those at the bottom?’; they may start looking at various welfare-sated no-hopers and wonder why they should have the same rights as [you]. They may start to think there was something monstrously unfair that despite their being so rich and powerful, some oik is ahead of them in the queue.

They may decide to do something about it, just as throughout history that sort of thing wasn’t tolerated; the elite had special rights and privileges and the oiks knew their place. They may decide it’s time to return to “the good old days” their ancestors enjoyed.

What is happening isn’t so much a desire to control people – in a Stalinist or Mao or Hitler sense – but more of a class war; the current generation of various wealthy families and new-money billionaires feel there is too much ‘equality’ in the world and not enough deference or privilege.