“The Democratic Party has become the party of the oligarchs.”
So says Joel Kotkin, the author of The Coming Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, a sobering (actually, terrifying) book about the massive economic and political shifts that are currently underway. Kotkin is an old New York lefty, with an accent that reminds me of my Bronx grandma. Anyone who this thinks of themselves as of the left needs to reckon with his brilliant analysis: a new order, driven by progressives, has taken hold that will demolish all our notions of independence and community and reduce the vast majority of us to subsistence living.
Kotkin’s argument is that this new order resembles a pre-democracy age, despite its advanced technology, specifically the Ancien Régime of France, with its rigid hierarchies keeping the aristocracy at the top and the peasants at the bottom.
This new order is buttressed, as all rigid hierarchies are, by its own religion. Climate hysteria and woke-ism, Kotkin says, are the two core doctrines of this one, put in service to the oligarchs’ agenda. The feudal lords are the tech companies. The middle class is the quickly sliding down the ladder to become the 21st century yeomanry, or peasants. A new intellectual elite, a product of expensive universities, is the clerisy, rigidly enforcing doctrine upon us all.
You can hear Kotkin give a summary of his book and expand his ideas in the Q&A below.
Almost as if the universe was trying to send me a message, as I was reading Kotkin’s book I came across a Spectator USA article, part of a new “Wokeyleaks” series. It provided the perfect illustration of the vanity and elitism inherent in the woke orthodoxy.
“It’s the CEOs and board members of the social justice movement who are the problem: actors, musicians, models, journalists and professional campaigners who have benefited from structural inequalities but have decided to adopt woke principles because it is fashionable. They are wealthy, but money is not what motivates them most. They derive their power and privilege not from dollars but from an arguably more valuable form of currency: fame.”
In other words, enough with the Meghan Markles of the world. Up with people like Joel Kotkin.
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What I'm reading: The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class
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So says Joel Kotkin, the author of The Coming Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, a sobering (actually, terrifying) book about the massive economic and political shifts that are currently underway. Kotkin is an old New York lefty, with an accent that reminds me of my Bronx grandma. Anyone who this thinks of themselves as of the left needs to reckon with his brilliant analysis: a new order, driven by progressives, has taken hold that will demolish all our notions of independence and community and reduce the vast majority of us to subsistence living.
Kotkin’s argument is that this new order resembles a pre-democracy age, despite its advanced technology, specifically the Ancien Régime of France, with its rigid hierarchies keeping the aristocracy at the top and the peasants at the bottom.
This new order is buttressed, as all rigid hierarchies are, by its own religion. Climate hysteria and woke-ism, Kotkin says, are the two core doctrines of this one, put in service to the oligarchs’ agenda. The feudal lords are the tech companies. The middle class is the quickly sliding down the ladder to become the 21st century yeomanry, or peasants. A new intellectual elite, a product of expensive universities, is the clerisy, rigidly enforcing doctrine upon us all.
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You can hear Kotkin give a summary of his book and expand his ideas in the Q&A below.
Almost as if the universe was trying to send me a message, as I was reading Kotkin’s book I came across a Spectator USA article, part of a new “Wokeyleaks” series. It provided the perfect illustration of the vanity and elitism inherent in the woke orthodoxy.
In other words, enough with the Meghan Markles of the world. Up with people like Joel Kotkin.
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