Don't know nuthin' 'bout neither "Anthropogenic Global Warming" nor "Keynes-Fisher macro-economics," but MM's latest post at Unqualified Reservations contains one of the greatest masterpieces of indirection that I've ever encountered.
Keep in mind, if you choose to read further, that MM is a Stuart Restorationist, and therefore a partisan of noble privilege...
"Let's say you were a person who didn't care at all about the Constitution, and you wanted to take America back to the past and establish a new order of hereditary nobility. What could be more deliciously reactionary than that? Real, live nobles, walking around on the street. So let's see what it would take to make it happen.
"First, we need to define noble status. Our rule is simple: if either of your parents was a noble, you're a noble. While this is unusually inclusive for a hereditary order, it is the 21st century, after all. We can step out a little. And nobility remains a biological quality - a noble baby adopted by common parents is noble, a common baby adopted by noble parents is common.
"Fine. What are the official duties and privileges of our new nobility? Obviously, we can't really call it a noble order unless it has duties and privileges.
"Well, privileges, anyway. Who needs duties? What's the point of being a noble, if you're going to have all these duties? Screw it, it's the 21st century. We've transcended duties. On to the privileges.
"The basic quality of a noble is that he or she is presumed to be better than commoners. Of course, both nobles and commoners are people. And people do vary. Individual circumstances must always be considered. However, the official presumption is that, in any conflict between a noble and a commoner, the noble is right and the commoner is wrong. Therefore, by default, the noble should win. This infallible logic is the root of our system of noble privilege.
"For example, if a noble attacks a commoner, we can presume that the latter has in some way provoked or offended the former. The noble may of course be guilty of an offense, but the law must be extremely careful about establishing this. If there is a pattern of noble attacks on commoners, there is almost certainly a problem with the commoners, whose behavior should be examined and who may need supplemental education.
"If a commoner attacks a noble, however, it is an extremely serious matter. And a pattern of commoner attacks on nobles is unthinkable - it is tantamount to the total breakdown of civilization. In fact, one way to measure the progress that modern society has made is that, in the lifetime of those now living, it was not at all unusual for mobs of commoners to attack and kill nobles! Needless to say, this doesn't happen anymore.
"This intentional disparity in the treatment of unofficial violence creates the familiar effect of asymmetric territorial dominance. A noble can stroll anywhere he wants, at any time of day or night, anywhere in the country. Commoners are advised not to let the sun set on them in noble neighborhoods, and if they go there during the day they should have a good reason for doing so.
"One of the main safeguards for our system of noble authority is a systematic effort to prevent the emergence of commoner organizations which might exercise military or political power. Commoners may of course have friends who are other commoners, but they may not network on this basis. Nobles may and of course do form exclusive social networks on the basis of nobility.
"Most interactions between commoners and nobles, of course, do not involve violence or politics. Still, by living in the same society, commoners and nobles will inevitably come into conflict. Our goal is to settle these conflicts, by default, in favor of the noble.
"For example, if a business must choose whether to hire one of two equally qualified applicants, and one is a noble while the other is a commoner, it should of course choose the noble. The same is true for educational admissions and any other contest of merit. Our presumption is that while nobles are intrinsically, inherently and immeasurably superior to commoners, any mundane process for evaluating individuals will fail to detect these ethereal qualities - for which the outcome must therefore be adjusted.
"Speaking of the workplace, it is especially important not to let professional circles of commoner resistance develop. Therefore, we impose heavy fines on corporations whose internal or external policies or practices do not reflect a solid pro-noble position. For example, a corporation which permits its commoner employees to express insolence or disrespect toward its noble employees, regardless of their relationship in the corporate hierarchy, is clearly liable. Any such commoner must be fired at once if the matter is brought to the management's attention.
"This is an especially valuable tool for promoting the nobility: it literally achieves that result. In practice it makes the noble in any meeting at the very least primus inter pares. Because it is imprudent for commoners to quarrel with him, he tends to get what he wants. Because he tends to get what he wants, he tends to advance in the corporate hierarchy. The result, which should be visible in any large business without dangerous commonerist tendencies, will be a predominance of nobles in top executive positions.
"And, of course, this should be especially the case in government... but enough. We've made the point."
Good one, huh? So how many paragraphs did you have to read before you got the joke? I'm ashamed to say that it took me no fewer than seven.
On the off chance that there's anybody still reading who still doesn't get it, I proceed to the punch-lines:
"The underclass are infinitely depraved aristocrats, with the aristocrat's economic role of extracting profit without productivity through the use or threat of violence. The women are concubines or queens, the men are warriors or barons. In terms of sheer, industrial-strength vice, the denizens of [this] world surrender nothing to the louchest rake of the Hellfire Club, and their capacity for random mayhem might even shock the Borgias.
"That this Orcish parody of aristocracy was created, in the lives of those now living, out of the certainly imperfect but generally functional pre-WWII American Negro subculture, through policies designed by 'social scientists' who were in fact religious moralists in disguise, is one of the larger ironies of modern history."
* * * * *
Well. It's rare for me to wish that I had written something that I didn't write. But I wish that I had written that.
Comments (7)
That's pretty much a dead giveaway. But from a glance at the original post, it looks to me like he says just before this what he is trying to portray. The legacy of old MLK, right? Our national saint.
Posted by Lydia | January 26, 2009 3:46 PM
The more times you read through this, the more hilariously funny it becomes; and of course it is funny because of how much truth is wrapped up in it.
Posted by Zippy | January 26, 2009 8:13 PM
This is priceless.
Posted by M.A. Roberts | January 30, 2009 4:14 PM
This is brilliant. Just a formatting note: Blockquoting the section from Mencius you wanted to cite would make it easier to read than putting quotation marks around each separate paragraph. For me, at least.
My eyes jumped immediately to the paragraph about how nobles are free to walk anywhere they choose, while commoners should not walk in a noble neighborhood at night. So I picked up the joke right away.
Posted by weston | January 30, 2009 4:50 PM
Well done, though it makes me sigh with a wee bit of despair. I suppose that our society deserves no finer aristocracy. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Posted by Joseph | January 30, 2009 7:19 PM
Those who " Don't know nuthin' 'bout ... "Anthropogenic Global Warming" are missing out on a great crusading opportunity- an opportunity to convert millions of heathens with a Sign in the Heavens .
According to the most excellent and accurate experimental theologians, injecting as little as 100 teragrams, ( 1 million tonnes in the vernacular') of soot heavenward should afford a transformation of climate so appalling as to put the fear of God into everyone under the sun.
Since the average Auto da Fe yields a tonne of soot , were only half the world's extant heretics to be handed over to the secular arm on a good dry day, the resulting soot pall would send temperatures running haywire throughout paynimry, causing the infidels to throw in their towels as fast as the can unwind them from their heads.
Posted by Polyester Mather D.D. | January 31, 2009 6:49 PM
Im ashamed to say.......8 paragraphs for me :)
Posted by Jeff Crews | November 4, 2010 10:58 AM