Enjoying The Mob

[SomeJackleg]

The oldest argument against democracy is that it is essentially mob rule, which means it is susceptible to the terrible dynamics of the mob. Something excites the mob and the members of the mob compete with one another to show they are more excited than anyone else inside the mob. In his Lyceum Address, Lincoln warned that the mob is the antitheses of the rule of law, because inevitably the mob comes to see the law as a barrier between itself and its goal.

It is why ruling classes have always feared mobs. Mobs are fickle and once they get going it is not clear where or how they end. It is a sign of our decline that the Cloud People caught the democracy bug and they have been chanting the phrase “our democracy” as if they have a strange form of Tourette’s syndrome. Everything they do is in defense of “our democracy” while even the slightest push back is called a threat to “our democracy” which is always a signal to the mob.

The promiscuous use of mobs has been the main tool of the regime going back to at least the Obama years. The entirely fake antiwar movement in the Bush years might be the first use of an official mob. It was, however, in the Obama years that the official mob was perfected. The rape on campus nonsense set mobs of internet feminists upon the remaining white boys in college. Then we got the BLM mob, which unleashed a one-sided race war on the white middle class.

Cancel culture is another form of official mob. First, they unleashed the “me too” nonsense, which set mobs of digital lunatics on men who were accused of being too normal around the ladies. That moved to digital kooks chasing after imaginary fascists and racists online. Antifa can probably be viewed as the first digital mob to break into the analog world or maybe it is the other way around. Either way, like the antiwar mobs, it was a creature of the regime.

The thing about the digital mobs is they took what existed in the analog space, the media frenzy, and then democratized it. Instead of a gaggle of credentialed press people chasing a guy down the street shouting questions, the digital mob is internet characters filling up the timeline of the victim with accusations. The dynamics are the same, except now one does not need a credential. You just have to possess a weak mind and access to social media.

It is what makes the present crisis around Joe Biden amusing. The people who have profited from the mob are now being eaten by the mob. The great and the good are taking turns telling their favorite media actor that Biden is too old, too feeble or too narcissistic to be president. The same people who brought us the Russian collusion hoax and the Covid panic are now hammering away at Biden. It would take a heart of stone not to see the humor in this.

This has always been the problem with mobs. Once the mob forms up it keeps going until it either burns itself out or is snuffed out. The former only happens after they have tasted the blood of their victim. The latter happens when they taste enough of their own blood that being a mob is no longer fun. Since the White House is not going to start shooting media toadies, which would be a welcomed result, it means this mob ends with the head of Joe Biden on a pike.

This brings up the other problem with mobs. The mob exists purely in the moment, which means anyone in contact with the mob exists in the moment. The reason Kyle Rittenhouse killed two men and wounded a third is no one in the mob, including himself, could even think, much less act outside the moment. If Rittenhouse could have saw one step ahead before the mob set upon him, no one outside his family would have reason to know his name.

The mob chasing Biden is not thinking about what comes next. They can only think about the joy they will feel when Biden steps aside. The chaos that will erupt in the regime when suddenly they do not have a body to parade around as the official nominee is outside the event horizon of the mob. What if the mob forms up in favor of someone that turns out to be worse than Biden? What if the mob splits into warring tribes organized around the various parts of the regime?

No one can think about that right now. All that matters for the members of the mob is creating some new way to yell “get him” at Joe Biden. They sense that time is running short, so they have to put everything into it, or Biden will escape. Realistically they have until the end of next week to drag his corpse from the ticket. After that, the mob will run out of steam and the regime will run out of time to stage a fake process to name a replacement, so they will be stuck with Biden.

From the Dirt People perspective, this is all to the good. The more intense and grinding this mob fury is over Biden, the deeper the anger between factions of the regime after the frenzy is over. One of the ironies of the mob is the longer it goes, the more destructive it becomes of its own ends. That means the nastier this fight gets, the more the regime damages its own interests. With any luck the Democratic convention is an even more chaotic replay of 1968.

Of course, this is the lesson of democracy. Of democracy, John Adams wrote, “I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious, on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy, but while it lasts it is more bloody than either.” Maybe that is what this mob chasing Biden signals. The democracy fever that set in after the Cold War is now reaching its natural end point.

The Zman Blog

while all this is true, the U.S. is not a true democracy, it is a democratic republic. in a true democracy everything passed is voted on by the mob. in a democratic republic the mob votes for fools to vote for them. main problem with that is when they elect fools the mob rules.