What is required for membership in good standing in the new societies of the 2020s?
Pretense, my son; pretense.
You have to pretend. Again and again. And, you have to pretend you’re not pretending.
Now in terms of “higher education,” one must learn to regard reasoning as primarily the calculation of what will tomorrow be the ideologically most up-to-date line of pretense.
But that is advanced work. Reserved for smartie over-achiever kids whose resumés sell themselves as potentially reliable operatives of the elite. It is much simpler for the rest of you, for whom fairly short lists can suffice.
The Ten Pretenses
All things pass, no “truths” exist, and no promises are forever, but we can say, as FDR once did about a new Bill of Rights, that our new societies have “so to speak” adopted the following sacred pretenses as a kind of social contract. We provide here the America-specific pretenses, but the lists Australian, German, British, etc., are largely the same.
You must pretend:
First, that the Covid-19 vaccines were not a disaster, that they didn’t unleash harms across the globe, killing at least a couple million, injuring tens of millions, and do not seem poised to bring about general declines of fertility and longevity.
Second, that this disaster does not point to a danger to the continued existence of humanity, one as worrisome as that posed by nuclear weapons, present in trusting the existing medical/scientific organizations public and private, suffused as they are with Pharma corruption, China-envy, and a positive cult of scientism, with CRISPR-type technology and similar “humanity hacking” advances.
Third, that the overall bundle of actions—lockdowns, fear-media, required protocols, mandates, etc.--of the “Covid/Vax Disaster,” as well as the present refusal to discuss the consequences of and the responsibility for them, did not reveal that about 90% of our elites in all areas are incompetent, unprincipled, oligarchic, easily-corrupted, and mentally enslaved to group-think.
Fourth, that a massive suppression of reporting and public discussion, about all items on this list but especially the first, is not underway, executed by a.) content censorship/reach-diminishment by corporate and government agents, and b.) voluntary self-silencing and news black-out by all major media/institutional platforms, and most minor ones.
Fifth, that the 90% of elites already mentioned, and large portions of the citizenry (up to 30-40%), have not de facto renounced their allegiance to the American Creed as expressed in the Declaration and Constitution, evidenced by many basic offenses, but particularly by their refusal to stand up for fundamental rights during the call for vaccine mandates, to stand against the deployment of on-offense-violence-for-political-ends and the mandatory CRT sessions during the “summer of BLM,” and to stand now against the ongoing violation of First Amendment rights to free speech and press, the greatest violation1 of these in our history.
Sixth, that Joseph Biden is mentally and morally fit to serve as President, not a glaring embarrassment to the office, and not obviously guilty of large-scale political-financial corruption.
Seventh, that there is nothing worth taking seriously in Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2020, and much to take seriously about the Russian-collusion charges, the two impeachment efforts, and the current indictment against him.
Eighth, that the border is not open, and that nothing radical or not forced by unavoidable circumstances is going on with our policies on illegal immigration under the Biden administration.
Ninth, that ‘trans women’ are women, that all equivalent affirmations demanded by the trans-activists are good ones to voice, and in fact must be voiced if one is to hold any professional position; also, there is no ‘social-contagion’ cause of the recent upsurges of trans-identifications.
Tenth, that when our elites say that the fundamentals of our economy are sound, despite years of government overspending and despite what we now know about the true character of our elites, we should believe them.
Discussion, from a Conservative Perspective
Yes, we could go into more detail, and the list could get longer.
And no, I am not unaware that political life, and life generally, always involves rhetoric which downplays certain truths and highlights others. When I used a newer Van Morrison song to explain the emerging pattern in our time of brazen pretense, I did not insist on a Cordelia- or Coriolanus- like insistence on maximum expression of all feelings and truths at all times.
But I am quite serious that these are the main pretenses, adjusted to the American case, which our new Potemkin-liberal-democratic yet deeply oligarchic societies are demanding of their subjects and supporters. As we are in a transition period, and as the changes are contested, we cannot yet say whether our regimes have transformed, only that the transition is being attempted, and that pretense and denial are going to have to be fundamental pillars of these new regimes.
And I can’t help but note that what increasingly puts me at odds with my fellow conservatives, especially the ones with a wee bit of power who strive to be seen as “respectable,” is that so many of them, while indeed standing against some of the pretenses on this list, and often at real cost, are all-in on the first one. This is why the key essay I wrote this year, “Adjunct Suppressors: The Claremont Institute Editors Have Helped Squelch the Covid-19 Vax-Harm Story,” which by its logic convicts many more conservatives of other institutions, including most GOP members of Congress, has been met by such icy and insulting silence. (In a couple of weeks I will provide a fuller report on the various reactions to it so far.)
Our “respectable conservatives” are also pretty supportive of the second and third pretenses, and are at best ambivalent or divided about the fourth and fifth.
I am not opposed to a politics that would rhetorically lighten the seriousness of the sins our elites, that would provide pathways for some of them to step-away from their past decisions and toxic patterns, and thus avoid backing all of them into a single corner. We must seek to divide them, and to incentivize enough of them to return to clearly-stated allegiance to the liberal-democratic principles. The mass firings of the present elites and dismantling of their institutions can come later (and will likely not punish half of those who deserve it), once the main danger has passed.
Similarly, we should seek to avoid outright collapse of our economies.
So whatever conservatism is for the tactics and rhetoric most likely to accomplish such ends, I am with it. Even if it means not going full-bore against every one of the pretenses here, or at the same time.
But I do not see how any democracy-sustaining politics, conservative or otherwise, can avoid making frontal attack on most of these, especially the third, the fifth, and most especially, the first. The bodies are, after all, stacking up. All of these pretenses are poisonous, but I do not see which conservative principles can stand if we do not pose them against that first Denial. Or, are we really going to try to inhabit a “political house” which would have truckloads of malodorous skeletons stuffed into its closets?
To speak in a more calculating mode, if a collapse of the first pretense does happen, but without conservatives having noticeably pushed for that, their electoral prospects could be fatally wounded.2
Moreover, we should not comfort ourselves with the idea that the truth will out, that there is some automatic dynamic, or some number of Covid-19 vax-harms, which will do the work for us. As I’ve said before, no-one should bank on hypotheses about public-opinion “tipping points” or “dam breakings”—these are metaphors more than they are reliable laws of social science.
Rather, the last several years show that regimes built upon pretenses and propaganda, even out of societies whose members had seemed to pledge themselves to liberal democratic principles, and even in the face of mass death, can hold onto power. And as Bill Rice Jr. has argued, the personal reputational stakes and system-wide financial stakes for our elites are so high as to guarantee their vigorous defense of these pretenses. No unavoidable opinion dynamic is going to bring the truth out without our also fighting for that, a fighting that will bring with it all the rancor and division and turmoil of real political struggle, and then some.
Thus, the ten pretenses have a good chance of becoming the defining markers and the authoritative “state truths” of our new reality.
What Our “Conservative Leaders” Need to Hear
A conservativism which does not defend liberal democracy (or seek to establish a less-dogmatically-liberal adjusted version of it) is no conservatism. And due to the immediate danger of a new Denialist, Oligarchic, and quasi-Totalitarian regime consolidating its hold, the cause of sustainable modern democracy and that of truth-telling are linked more than ever before. Aaron Kheriaty was spot-on to declare, in his (essential) The New Normal: The Rise of the Bio-Security State, that
There is a human right not enshrined in any constitution: the right to the truth. No right has been more systematically trammeled over the last three years. (184)
Thus, any real conservatism in our time must be a politics dedicated to the citizenry’s reconnection with reality.
I get how that can and must be a politics that at times deploys rhetoric, makes strategic decisions, and downplays its attack on one “Regime Pretense” the better to concentrate fire on another.
But notice my qualifiers: at times and downplays.
I can also understand a conservatism whose leaders get confused on the importance of a couple of these Regime Pretenses, because they do not have the full story on them.
But a “conservatism” that joins the emerging regime in discouraging discussion of or reporting on any of these ten pretenses, or similar huge stories, whose leadership decides that “no, this is not an issue for us” and refuses to keep channels open for (and to) its dissenting members, in part so these leaders can guarantee that they never will hear the full story and can thus wash their hands of responsibility—no, we cannot understand that, and must categorically refuse to.
The politics of truth-telling is a package deal.
When making this “greatest in our history” statement, I am speaking of direct violations of the letter of the First Amendment rights, of the kind which will surely convict the government in Missouri v. Biden, and I have in mind this sort of evidence. But in terms of mass violation of the implicit principles of the First, nothing can surpass the 90-year squelching of discussion of segregation and its effects, and the (more complicated) squelching of the same about slavery. I assume close study would show that the lion’s share of that suppression happened via voluntary refusal to report or publish by newspapers, magazines, and institutions across America. Note also that in the segregation case, very few specific apologies by the elites responsible for the suppression, many of whom were proud progressives and liberals, were ever offered.
RFK Jr.’s candidacy is a warning-sign, one that illustrates a possible “centrist-yet-radically-anti-establishment” position that could, if formulated more expertly than Kennedy has done so far, and articulated in the face of continued conservative participation in several of the above pretenses, draw half or more of the conservative base away from the GOP. A leader who espouses this position with more charisma and consistency than Kennedy can, say, a Malcolm X type whose rhetoric catches fire with audiences due to the way he talks about taboo subjects, could emerge at any time.
It’s so weird having to play pretend with people, especially people close to us (for the sake of not wishing to cause tension) It’s also super weird that when I meet someone who is on the exact same page, I feel such joy it almost makes we want to hug them. Of course, being that it’s something we’re ‘not supposed to talk about’, it’s hard to find these folks so there’s the illusion that they’re rare.
Very true!