G. K. Chesterton argued there are three types of people. The first are the People, “the largest and probably the most valuable class.” They are the truckers. They are the frontline workers. They are the diligent and honest people holding our communities together and fixing the tears in our social fabric. They are patriotic and God-fearing mothers and fathers, sons and daughters—those who put food on our tables, gasoline in our cars, and heat into our homes. They fight our wars and keep us safe. They are predominantly the working- and middle-classes.
The second type, according to Chesterton, should be called Poets. “They are a nuisance to their families, but generally speaking, a blessing to mankind.” Unlike those in the next category, Poets rise above the People by understanding them.
By poets, as I have said, I do not mean people who write poetry, or indeed people who write anything. I mean such people as, having culture and imagination, use them to understand and share the feelings of their fellows; as against those who use them to rise to what they call a higher plane.
The third type rises above the People by refusing to understand them. They are the critics, the destroyers, the users—those who diminish the People, suggesting that their “dim, strange preferences are prejudices and superstitions.” Chesterton deemed those intellectuals and technocrats among this allegedly “thoughtful type” “Prigs.” Unlike the People and the Poet, these Prigs are a “blight and a desolation both to their families and also to mankind.”
These three types don’t necessarily align with classes or estates, but rather with vocations and dispositions. The first build the world and maintain it. The second extol the first, helping them to record their dreams and achievements as well as to develop a vocabulary for the world they want. The third have the political, social, and or financial means—or ideological bona fides—to disassociate from the first, and tend to lack the interest to be a party to the second.
Despite the reality and tendencies of these types, the boundaries between them are sometimes porous. In his essay, Chesterton allowed room for overlap and admitted he had seen as much in his day.
Where this overlap is concerned, sometimes it is fleeting—resultant of a migration from one type to another. Just as there are migrations, however, there also exists the potential for isolations. In fact, the long-time detachment of the third type from the first type (taken up thoughtfully by Victor Davis Hanson in The Dying Citizen) is one such glaring isolation.
Chesterton, writing early in the 20th century, noted that the Prigs “who despise the people” are “often loaded with lands and crowned.” The Prigs, in other words, reward others of their kind for their continued type-isolationism. Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden come to mind. Meanwhile, the People are barred from the halls they themselves built (e.g. the Capitol in Washington, D.C., the houses of Parliament in Ottawa and London, etc.) and by the very personalities to whom they first conferred power.
In The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, Stephen R. Soukup writes: “For more than a century, the responsibility of the republic has shifted, remorselessly, from ‘the people’ to ‘the powerful’.” Those wielding power irresponsibly and insensibly in the third type now include more than “men and women of letters and of ‘proper’ experience”—the “credentialed ruling class”—but titans of industry and those on Wall Street as well. BlackRock’s Larry Fink and others like him believe that, of the three types, the very last to be charged with determining what is best for the People should be the first: the People themselves.
Keen to maintain and advance their isolation, the Prigs have recognized that beating the People up and down isn’t enough—or at the very least, it isn’t working. Having neglected to observe their common sense, the Prigs also fail to see that the common man and common woman also have great courage and perseverance. The People continue to resist the Great Reset, woke indoctrination, medical tyranny, and micromanagement by remote elites. Citing the benefit they can and often do confer to this resistance, the Prigs have determined that in order for the People to be made obedient, the Poets must first be silenced.
While targeting those Poets who understand the People, the Prigs are also easing restrictions on movement from the second type to their own class. The price of admission is that of having to abandon any familiarity with or affinity for the People and to embrace the Prigs’ insensible and inaccurate conception of them. (Over the past decade, there has been a massive transfer from the second type to the third amongst former Hollywood and New York Poets.)
A great example of a recent migration from the second type to the third, made possible by punishment of the first, has been the stuff of many conversations this past week. The migrant: Neil Young. Though The Nation’s John Semley regards him as the “poet of disillusionment,” Young certainly is no longer a Poet. He hasn’t been one for a long time. Now, officially, he is a Prig.
How can we be sure Young has made the journey? First, a Poet is unlikely to seek to “rise to a higher plane” at the expense of the People and certainly not to the satisfaction of the Prigs. Young has done just that, not just in his latest trite and self-interested maneuver, but over the years—protesting clean and ethical Albertan oil, the production of which kept the men of at least two provinces employed; protesting the Dakota Access, again taking food out of working-class families’ mouths, helping hinder energy independence, increasing the price of gas, and keeping the Saudis happy; fear-mongering about gays spreading AIDS in the 1980s (a ploy once used by Dr. Anthony Fauci, albeit in a more determined fashion) and so forth.
Second, a genuine Poet might seek solidarity with a fellow Poet; nay the Poet Laureate of Joe and Jill Six Packs everywhere. As an individual chock full of imagination and creativity who works ardently at understanding Prigs and People both, and excels at bridging the divide, Joe Rogan certainly meets Chesterton’s definition. It’s telling that Young sought to use his new sway with the Prigs to take down such a man as this.
Long before the opportunistic bridging of the second and third types took place, Chesterton observed the tendency for the “Poets who embrace and admire the people” to end up “pelted with stones and crucified.” The trouble with a good Poet like Rogan is that he puts words to the People’s feelings. Rogan goes further by putting evidence before the People, clearly demonstrating with the help of expert witnesses that the third type has it out for them; that the Prigs want to destroy all that is good in the People’s lives in order to secure more power, affluence, and money; that the Prigs are keen to turn the lot of them into serfs—that they’re expected to own nothing and be happy.
For that, Rogan is in the Prigs’ sights. (Even the White House wants him shut down.) Former Poets like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are happy to pull the trigger. Why the rush to bury this particular Poet, and why now? There has been much conjecture, but following the money points us in one particular direction.
The Blackstone Group—which entered into a partnership with Pfizer and SFJ Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in 2012, and has developed a reputation for aiding in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, collaborating with the genocidal CCP, and driving up housing costs—teamed up with Hipgnosis Song Management (i.e. after striking a deal with Merck Mercuriadis). Together they bought billions of dollars worth of songs, recorded music, and musical intellectual property. In addition to acquiring royalty rights to the music of Barry Manilow, Beyonce, and Blondie, they also picked up a sizable portion of Neil Young’s catalog.
It is entirely possible that Blackstone likes neither the Poet Laureate’s forthrightness nor his alliance with the People, and is happy to use a newly minted Prig to do its dirty work.
After all, it is detestable to the third type—at a time when Poets must be silent—that Rogan would dare to explore serious issues on his long-form podcast with the People’s edification in mind, and worse: that he’d point out some of the rapacious designs of Big Pharma and Big Government (with which the Blackstone Group is enmeshed), as well as the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the likes of Fauci and others.
Thus, an ultimatum was issued, and all were to believe it was one Poet against another, but none were convinced because the People won’t readily let the Prigs kill their Poet.
A false Poet is easily discovered. Neil Young is no Poet.
Fortunately for Young, his hollow gesture was risk-free. The intellectuals, academics, and woke capitalists all were ready to castigate his detractors among the People. A golden bridge was set before him to cross over to the security of a lucrative deal with other music streaming services, including that provided by Apple—a company that has avoided paying over $76.7 billion in U.S. taxes through its Longhua scheme, uses sweatshop labor, and works hand-in-glove with the genocidal Chinese Communist Party.
Though Young is likely unfazed, his operators are probably concerned. The Prigs’ attempted assassination appears to have backfired in a major way.
A real Poet whose mettle is tested and proven is a beloved Poet better. Not only have the Prigs failed in their deplatforming efforts (so far), they made Jack and Jill’s Poet Laureate even more popular. Kudos to Rogan for his graciousness. But he should have no doubt the pressure will not abate any time soon.
The Prigs want Poets who will cling to them and shun the People. They want obedience and they want quiet. We will give them neither.
Recall: it was the People who retook Jerusalem. It was the People who took Omaha beach. It will be the first People who reject the present designs of both the technocrats and elites. It will be the People who kill the Great Reset. It will be the People who will retake this Republic in 2022 and in 2024. When the People do so, the Poets will record the hour, the date, and the Prigs’ surprise.