Three counterexamples

Constants and Variables: Booker T vs the Meritocrats.

Before the “rights” crowd started playing their vicious game in the 1700s, caste and locality worked together to keep cultures strong and give most men and women a position that fitted their abilities and tendencies.

The meritocrats busted up both caste and locality with the fraudulent claims that anyone can do anything, and any skill can be securitized and arbitraged.

We’ve seen three different countertrends or rebellions in the 20th century.

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(1) FDR avoided the rhetoric of both sides but implicitly favored the localist side. The New Deal took great pains to leave cultures in place, encouraged expression of local cultures and local traditions, and worked solely to change economics. Its programs were highly localized, adapted to the geography and talents of each place, led by local leaders.

The robber barons knocked out Truman and resumed their leveling and annihilating in 1946.

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(2) Around 1910 rebellion started to pop up among the “freed” blacks. We can trace a line of unfooled black men from Booker T to WEB DuBois to Elijah Muhammad to Malcolm X. All of them recognized that people are different, and tried to advise black men to use their best talents and opportunities IN PLACE, instead of falling for the GUARANTEED FAILURE offered by the plutomeritocrats. The modern Wokers, though somewhat confused, still carry the same message.

The Booker T line has been ruthlessly suppressed by the plutomeritocrats, but the Woke stuff seems to be reviving it. Now even Clarence Thomas, the ultimate non-Woker, is saying it publicly.

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(3) Also around 1910, a very different shift happened in the native tribes. They didn’t need separatism because their reservations had preserved their own cultures. They needed a way to reach some degree of modern prosperity. The answer bubbled out of the ground. Black gold. Texas Tea. Oil, that is. The Cherokee were already partly modernized and knew how to run a ruthless business. They grabbed the oil ball and ran with it to the goal line, becoming executives and senators. Other tribes followed suit, not always with the same finesse. When casinos offered a way to monetize the semi-separate legal code of reservations, they grabbed casinos and became the new plutocrats in some states.

The tribes gained more respect and power than the New Deal or the Booker T line, because they were operating in the realm of MONEY, not SKILLS. Plutomeritocrats don’t respect skills or culture, only raw money. Especially betting money, which has much higher status than grubby old production money.

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Despite the three counterexamples, the Booker T message is still ruthlessly suppressed. We can be sure Thomas will be punished. He will be a pariah to the “conservatives” who stoutly and corruptly defend meritocracy in order to give all power and money to Bezos and Fink, who are emphatically NOT “conservatives”.