TEXT JOIN TO 77022

Enjoy Your Gruel: Understanding the Deliberate Agenda of Our Ruling Class

If you pay attention to recent discussions of social and economic change, much of the rhetoric attempts to normalize what used to be considered unmistakable marks of poverty. Rather than living in a home with a family, you are supposed to embrace the child-free life and see the benefits of a pod or a tiny home. 

Instead of meat, which is now scarce and expensive, you are going to eat the bugs and enjoy them. Electricity itself may prove scarce, but this is the price of reducing global warming. Video games and travel—ephemeral things that do not last—are offered as substitutes for the old fruits of a free market economy: a job, a home, and economic independence. 

Culture makers and political leaders have moved away from talk about the American Dream and towards preparing us for privation. Biden’s speeches often have this quality. While he’s bragging now about gains in jobs, he also speaks in very dark terms about the need for collective sacrifice and the country’s uncertain future.

The coronavirus episode deepened this pessimistic mood. While government workers and the Zoom-capable professional classes adapted, many in the private sector had to do without. Many people lost wages, jobs, family members, and their sanity. It has been, for most Americans, a terrible year. 

In its wake, we are told that we live in an uncertain and dangerous world, beset by public health crises, global warming, and cyber-attacks on infrastructure and the financial system. The only solution is the Great Reset and to Build Back Better.

Fear Mongering Encourages Demands for Government Action

It is noteworthy that all of these warnings have the same basic message: this is a dangerous world, and safety is attainable only if the government and oligarchs work together. At the same time, it is also hard to ignore how crises appear on a regular schedule to justify this revolution. 

For example, while periodic and inconvenient hacking attempts have happened for over 20 years, recently a large gasoline distributor was taken down, which created gas shortages and panic on the East Coast. This is something new. Then, miraculously (and suspiciously) all the money turned up in a bitcoin wallet in the foreign province of . . . California?!?

A number of recent reports warn of cyberattack threats to the financial sector, in which half or more of our national wealth is stored electronically. The managerial elite in big corporations, the media, and the national security sector have called for more consolidation of power to deal with these threats. As a recent World Economic Forum report stated, “A critical situation cannot be tackled by an organization or a lone individual. . . . This situation can be prevented by promoting collaboration between the public and private sectors and law enforcement agencies.” Under the rubric of a “Great Reset” or “Building Back Better,” authentically fascist solutions—like regulators and enterprises working out the new rules cooperatively—are supposed to further the public good. 

In case it’s not obvious, the whole point of regulators is that those being regulated will not do this on their own. The private sector and regulators have an adversarial relationship. The regulators are supposed to enforce laws to promote the good of the general public, not divide the market among regulated entities or encourage them to hobnob in Jackson Hole where they can fix prices, hurt consumers, and otherwise squeeze out small competitors. 

I realize this concept of regulation is aspirational and glosses over a lot. But the so-called Great Reset heralds a return to the atmosphere of the 1930s, where big enterprises divided markets, set prices, and advanced their private institutional interests, while pretending to further the public good.

Inflation Increases Dependency on Government

The rapid debasement of the currency also relates to the general message of “expect less.” While spreading around inflated currency would seem to spread the wealth, ultimately it amounts to taking the same sized pie and cutting it into more pieces. This, among other reasons, is why houses and meat and plywood and gasoline and a bunch of other things are suddenly two times or more expensive than they were last year.

Inflation ultimately destroys most kinds of wealth and disincentivizes saving. It makes life even more chaotic and unpredictable for the average Joe. When fueled by government programs and transfer payments, it also has a social and political cost: it permits the government to pick winners and losers, and it degrades politics into a crude war over the spoils. After all, there are advantages to being first at the till in receiving inflated dollars. This practice increases the power of government in absolute terms, while encouraging bribery of one kind or another since the stakes have become so large. 

Far from bringing the country together, the larger government role in the economy promised by the Great Reset will amplify existing tensions because politics, like economics, is becoming a winner-take-all affair. The party in power will have more to do with designating who will thrive and who will be crushed. 

We have already seen certain companies face immediate consequences, such as the Keystone Pipeline workers laid off due to Biden’s executive order. This company won’t be the last.

The Great Reset is a War on the Middle Class

I’ve hardly paid attention to any of the recent legislative happenings, including the enormous stimulus and infrastructure bills, because almost all of these laws will only affect me indirectly. I didn’t receive any of the stimulus payments, nor did I get a benefit from some of the new tax credits. In this sense, I am typical of much of the middle class: my chief relationship to the government is in paying for it. 

But the details will matter a lot among the more vulnerable echelons of the middle and working classes. For them, the government and its programs and their rules will decide who sinks into poverty. Obamacare is a typical example. For some of the working poor it was a real help, allowing essentially free Cadillac care for those making several multiples of the official poverty line. But for families of four making a modest household wage of $60K or above, they hit the “subsidy cliff” and had to pay full freight. 

In an atmosphere where we are being told there will be less to go around, what remains, and how and to whom it gets distributed, will be in the hands of government bureaucrats and their helpers in the vast human resources bureaucracies of large corporations. These officials will be guided not by neutral rules, but by managerial class concerns for a “new equilibrium among political, economic, social and environmental systems toward common goals.” 

These are not freestanding policies; they should be considered in light of the anti-white race talk of the last few years. When both are viewed together, one must conclude that Democrats are basically resigned to the fact that a lot of poverty is coming, that this poverty will further our collective good, that the extreme wealth accumulations of tech oligarchs and Wall Street are off limits, and that the government will be able to rescue some from falling into the ranks of the poor. To state the obvious, whites, particularly noncompliant whites outside of the professional classes, won’t be among those they are interested in saving.

Consider Biden’s unconstitutional restaurant initiative. Recently struck down by a federal court, it set up a fund exclusively to aid black-owned restaurants harmed by the public health rules and economic conditions that occurred in response to COVID-19. Similar race-specific initiatives arose within the private sector. Admittedly, the entire restaurant sector got completely walloped last year. Yelp reports that 100,000 businesses that closed due to the COVID-19 shutdowns—60 percent of all those that closed—would not reopen. They all need help, and most restaurateurs would not have failed but for heavy-handed government measures. Even so, the government that took away their livelihoods is only giving it back to selected, preferred racial groups. Tough luck white guys! Enjoy your Tiny House and Impossible Burger. 

The Left rightly may be described as using race to divide the lower classes, while pillaging the most politically palatable source of spoils for its redistributionist policies: the mostly white middle class. 

In other words , this is a high-low coalition engaged in a pincer movement. The top includes the very wealthy, along with the professional and managerial class. The latter includes economically privileged government workers, along with the army of lobbyists, contractors, and other insider industries. In addition to keeping their jobs in these uncertain times, the bureaucrats obviously stand to benefit by manning the tools of redistribution, which are aimed almost exclusively at the non-governmental private sector. (No one on the Left has suggested cutting government jobs or government pay to help the poor.) 

The oligarchic class benefits because it is largely immune to social change, when it is not benefiting directly. This is why there is no talk of redistribution in general, such as a wealth tax aimed at billionaires. This is also why large-scale immigration, racial strife, and artificially engineered diversity remain core organizing principles for the Left. These policies serve the interests of corporate oligarchs, even as they are dressed up as humanitarian gestures. These conditions push down wages and prevent unionization and other forms of economic solidarity among the middle and working classes. 

On the other side of the squeeze is the low part of the coalition, the clients: students, the urban poor, the NGOs, and the recipients of government welfare. In addition to being riled up by defamatory lies about America, they are kept vulnerable and eager for assistance through the managed scarcity that is at the core of the Great Reset Agenda.

The Left and the middle class are in an abusive relationship. But there is no honeymoon period. Rather, the middle class is told explicitly and repeatedly that it is going to suffer. The Left is managing their expectations downward; and along with those declining expectations comes a lax attitude towards crime, constant criticism and abuse, the destruction of historical memory, and economic warfare all serving to weaken their dignity and sense of ownership in their society. 

Donald Trump appealed to the American middle class’ sense of identity and channeled their grievances. Where other conservative politicians preached a false unity of interest between the middle class and the mega-rich, he recognized on trade and immigration and middle class entitlements like Social Security and Medicare that their interests were often at odds.

After Trump’s presidency, the struggles of the middle class remain. Their opponents are eager for collective punishment. By electing Trump, the American middle class rejected Obama’s legacy and reversed many of his signature achievements. In the Left’s eyes, this was a collective crime, proof of selfishness and atavistic racism. When the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the president talk about the threat of “white supremacy,” they’re talking about every white Trump voter. They’re talking about you.

The first step in politics is to understand who is a friend and who is the enemy. All of these developments—the pod propaganda and torn-down statues and Great Reset—are related. They are part of a scheme to elevate some at the expense of others. More precisely, the Left aims to build its new edifice on top of the middle class, which will be cut down and plowed over in the process. 

Get the news corporate media won't tell you.

Get caught up on today's must read stores!

By submitting your information, you agree to receive exclusive AG+ content, including special promotions, and agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms. By providing your phone number and checking the box to opt in, you are consenting to receive recurring SMS/MMS messages, including automated texts, to that number from my short code. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP for help, STOP to end. SMS opt-in will not be sold, rented, or shared.

About Christopher Roach

Christopher Roach is an adjunct fellow of the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida. He is a double graduate of the University of Chicago and has previously been published by The Federalist, Takimag, Chronicles, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Marine Corps Gazette, and the Orlando Sentinel. The views presented are solely his own.

Photo: Getty Images

Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@centerforamericangreatness.com.