What do to?

There is a definite ruling class in this country.
People that feel entitled to run your life and control your choices, all for the greater good. Despite their populist screeds they are quite well to do and very... insulated from the real world.

Both links penned by Victor Davis Hanson.

The interesting thing is that the "serfs" are getting angry about it, and starting to push back, and the elites are pushing back in turn.

Like take this bit of propaganda that Bob Owens has dismantled.


Ed Driscoll looks into the history and thinks about the future. And what happens when the political philosophy borne of the Industrial Revolution: "Machinery was Big — from the steam locomotive to the assembly line to the hydroelectric plant to the printing press, the radio towers and the film studios. Thus they were expensive to acquire, and thus, ownership of that machinery was rare." finally hits the world we are in now.


Bill Quick has some related thoughts.

The Progressive ideology much of the western world has labored under for a century or so is a product of the industrial revolution. It will die and be replaced by something else as the technological revolution sweeps all before it. Political wonks live in the sort of bubble where they give primacy to politics over everything else, little understanding that politics grow from more basic factors, and those factors are currently being rearranged, rebuilt, newly created or destroyed by forces far more powerful than politics or ideology.

The question is what can you do about this?

Well... the Prof and his readers have some suggestions.

Here's a paring down:

* Mockery : Very mockable, very thin-skinned, erupt in embarrassing ways. Use their sense of entitlement against them.

* Transparency : The political class is pretty stupid. Point it out, repeatedly. Use FOIA, ubiquitous videocameras, and other tools to make the stupidity show.

* Money : The coming budget crisis — already here, really, but still largely denied by the rulers — is an opportunity to defund a lot of this patronage stuff. Cut them off in other ways, too. Don’t support the media, nonprofits, and politicians who support them with your money.

* Organize and infiltrate : Take over party apparatus from the ground up.

* Subject : Don't act like one. Rulers like subjects. Don’t be one. “Be armed, both intellectually and especially with guns. The ruling class hates it, but more importantly, it mitigates their baser instincts.”

* Backups : Have a backup plan. Especially with information.

As linked before They're not going down without a fight.

They see such power within their grasp: medical control and tracking your body, counting any gold you buy.

There really is no limit. The idea of a government constrained by what it can do is alien to these people.

You'll have to buy healthcare because the fine for failing to submit is a "tax", and as such well...

A little further down in the story, the CBO says, “Because the penalty is a tax, no one can challenge it in court before paying it and seeking a refund.”

I wondered about that. The IRS has its own courts and its own judges paid for out of its own budget. And they’re the only courts in the land (?) where you’re presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Welcome to Brazil.

We all joked that Obama would make Healthcare in this country like the DMV, turns out they want it like the IRS.

And it won't just be healthcare if they get their way.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

[SNIP]

“The Commerce Clause supplies sufficient authority for the shared-responsibility requirements in the new health reform law,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “To the extent that there is any question of additional authority — and we don’t believe there is — it would be available through the General Welfare Clause.”

Again, they want you as a subject, and see no limits to their power.