What the election of Scott Brown means

Notice Scott Brown’s old pick up truck.

Partly, of course, it is simply a massive swing against the Democrats.  The economy is collapsing, people blame the party in power.

But it also means more important and more interesting things:  Scott Brown was campaigning as the anti elitist candidate, brandishing a working class and underclass identity, such as his old truck and his conviction for shoplifting.  The elite is unpopular, not just one party of the elite.

This was a populist landslide.  People think that those running our country, Democrat and Republican, are evil, stupid, and insane.

Normally a populist movement is anti libertarian, but the massive crony capitalism of the last few years, Obama and Bush, has put populists on the libertarian side.  They want real capitalism, not crony capitalism where the losses are socialized but the profits are privatized.  They want capitalists to be free to take risks with their own money, and not free to take risks with the taxpayers money.

I would like to say that democracy is self correcting, and the populist masses will get what they want.  But they probably will not.  The elite is just too entrenched at every level of society, and the politicians are just their public relations officers.  Some politicians will be thrown overboard to appease the masses, some perfectly innocent businessmen will be falsely accused of crony capitalism, and punished to appease the masses, but then the elite will continue with business as usual.

To get the reforms the Tea Party wants, it would probably be necessary to proscribe Harvard, every organization with “environment” in its name, and everyone involved in “diversity”, in the way Nazis were proscribed in postwar Germany.

Observe what happened when various states passed plebiscites declaring affirmative action illegal.

Absolutely nothing happened, and that is the likely outcome of a thorough Teaparty victory in the US.  The elite will just continue doing what it does.  Reagan had a vision for ending Soviet power.  I do not see anyone with a vision for ending elite power and privilege.

This raises the interesting question:  Is the elite evil, stupid and insane?

Yes it is, and the disease is bound to get worse.  It is an inherent problem with theocracies.  The official priesthood tends to become more and more religious, while the masses become less and less religious.  The official religion gets sillier, tending to select silly people for priests.  To be part of the elite, you have to believe in an ever growing list of stupid stuff, such as “diversity” and global warming.  This selects for people who apply their smarts to deluding themselves, rather than connecting to reality.