For the Record: Moldbuggery

Saw something yesterday that tempted me to go have a look at something written by enemy of democracy Curtis Yarvin, the artist formerly known as "Mencius Moldbug" (and I really should register a protest against at the use of the Latinized name of the philosopher known as Mengzi (孟子, 372-289 B.C.E.), the most humane and liberal of the early Confucians, a man who sincerely and deeply believed in the innate goodness of the human being and the saving value of education for all, a man as remote intellectually from the Moldbug as it is possible for anyone to be, it actually gets me kind of angry). 

It's pretty interesting, though of course perverted, what Yarvin is doing there, which is spelled out at his own substack graymirror.substack.com/p/a-conversa.... He claims FDR exercised an "informal dictatorship-for-life" that was so immensely powerful that he retained power after he died. Or at any rate left behind a zombie presence that governs us still, 80 years later, presumably forcing us against our will to accept Social Security payments and workers' comp and unemployment benefits and the like:

Read FDR’s First Inaugural, specifically the part where he demands the powers of a general resisting an enemy invasion. In 1933! These were the powers FDR needed to create what, during his informal dictatorship-for-life, was more or less his personal executive monarchy, then after his death became the formalized administrative state.

That is to say, no, Roosevelt did not rule from beyond the grave, but the institutions of the New Deal persisted after he died, and, with the advent of civil rights laws and no doubt Obamacare, even got worse, from Yarvin's point of view...

To dismantle this vast and ancient growth [Yarvin writes], the vacant throne of FDR is not even enough [he's extremely fond of italics]. Today, the powers of the general resisting an enemy invasion are insufficient...

To escape the sickening, ever-growing coils of DC’s Gordian knot, American voters have only one realistic option. They need to elect a President who clearly states his intention and preparedness to take over the entire American government, assuming plenary power—not just in response to any specific event or emergency, but immediately upon his inauguration (when his democratic authority is at its strongest).

I.e., "dictator on Day One", because of the horror that had happened on FDR's death, when his rule became the "vast and ancient growth" of the "formalized administrative state". This is bad, I guess, because it's a monarchy with laws he doesn't like (our long outdated attempt at a welfare state which looks so helpless and inadequate to our European friends?), so bad, in fact, that we need another monarchy to get rid of it; if FDR wanted, and didn't get, "the powers of a general resisting an enemy invasion", then Trump needs to be given far more than that: "the powers of the enemy general", that is he needs to be not merely a king, but an invading king who will force laws Yarvin likes on us.

Because, what he doesn't and won't say is that the welfare state (Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare, and unemployment insurance, and so on) is actually a product of democracy, the thing the people really want (inadequate though it is), and no conservative has had the votes to get rid of. The social safety net is what the people wanted in the 1930s and still do, and only a king, or Caesar, or Emperor Trump, can undo it, because only he could have the power to be the actual "enemy of the people" who can take our welfare state away.

Or, putting it another way, it's not the alleged "monarchy" of FDR that survived him, it's the legal apparatus of which he directed the creation; the "rule of laws", as we say, which govern us as long as the people's representatives see fit, which should be directly connected to how their constituents feel about them; as opposed to the "rule of men", an emperor or the emperor's dim or vicious son, who can change the law at will or disregard it. 

FDR was no king—calling him that is just a cute paradox; he was a brilliant politician, who knew as hardly anybody has known before or after how to work with the other politicians and the voters and the rule book of law and procedures; not so much for his own theoretical preferences, of which he didn't have a lot, but on behalf of the people with their understanding and input, which changed his mind from time to time. 

Calling FDR a "dictator" or "monarch" is meant to disguise the fact that FDR commanded an overwhelming democratic majority against our actual enemies, the owners of capital. To suggest, "Oh, left, right, everybody wants to be a dictator, is that such a big deal?" No, he didn't. He aspired, as well as he could, to represent the hopes and aspirations of the whole of the people as far as he understood them, and gave him the traditional opportunity, in three further elections, to tell him he was wrong.

It's meant to normalize the idea of dictatorship before the next move. Don't let that fool you. Yarvin understands the extent to which we really do have the rule of law, and he's objecting to it. He wants a king to move for the things the people don't want--placing a greater tax burden on the poor than the rich, taking away the regulations that give us physical and financial security, to profit Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and the rest of them. 

It's meant to provide a whatabout excuse for Trump's disregard of the law, his incessant solicitation of bribe money, his threats to coopt the justice system into trying to prosecute his personal enemies, his unhidden desire to use the US military to put down public dissent as in the Black Lives Matter movement. His apparent selling of offices and pardons. His efforts to silence the press. His open violation of anti-nepotism law. The reality is, from Yarvin's point of view, very much the candidate he wants: the president who cheerfully ignores the law and consistently gets away with it, with the cooperation of the Supreme Court, the president who makes every attempt to act like Charles I with his divine right—he keeps claiming to have been anointed by God—is the politician most likely to bring about what Yarvin wants.

You can say he's a pipsqueak, or an "incel", or whatever you want, but the anti-democratic message he and his confederates support is not dead yet. Only undead.