Noah Smith. Funny how the worm is turning in understanding the deeper social transformations in play. But he…

Noah Smith. Funny how the worm is turning in understanding the deeper social transformations in play. But he ends with: “ I predict that the new age of kings won’t last.” The age of kings never ends. /1 https://t.co/K9UkkQP0Ux https://t.co/xw0O2Jgiyc

Most of Noah’s piece is a window into the terrible mess American thought and life is, when it comes to understanding how humans live collectively. This idea that ‘the people’ are the real game, constantly thwarted by kings and other tyrants. The American delusion. /2

I genuinely invite everybody who believes that guff to spend a week on a switchboard at their local council, or in any public institution. To get a taste of ‘the people’ firsthand. It’s idealised nonsense. People are so many flavours of batshit crazy. /3

And righteously crazy, convinced their way is the only way. The idea people left to their own devices are freedom-loving peaceniks is hilarious, and totally out of whack with the empirical reality of collective life. All people, at all times in history, do one thing. /4

They look to protect and promote their own status, at the expense of the status of others if needed. If you take away Kings and other more stabilised status hierarchies at the centre of societies, people will invent new ones all over the place. That’s Western life today. /end