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The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return
Two months before the 2016 presidential election, an anonymously published essay titled "The Flight 93 Election" rallied conservatives to "charge the cockpit" by voting for Trump. Michael Anton, the author of that controversial viral essay, now says that the last few years have only served to prove his "Flight 93" thesis: the left has become more aggressive, more vindictive, and more dangerous—and the stakes have never been higher.
To reframe the upcoming 2020 election, Anton looks at California: a state that has descended from a middle-class paradise into crumbling, crowded chaos under unchallenged Democrat rule. Where California goes, so goes the United States of America, Anton argues—unless conservatives take a stand.
To reframe the upcoming 2020 election, Anton looks at California: a state that has descended from a middle-class paradise into crumbling, crowded chaos under unchallenged Democrat rule. Where California goes, so goes the United States of America, Anton argues—unless conservatives take a stand.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2020
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October 1, 2020
I was taught from a young age, in those public schools no one seems to appreciate very much anymore, that part of being an American in times like this is the duty we have to listen to voices we don't altogether agree with. I apply this lesson to my reading in times of crisis. Hence Michael Anton's The Stakes.
Michael Anton grew up in California. He went to college here, then moved on to craft a career for himself in communications. He worked as a speechwriter for Rupert Murdock and Rudy Giuliani, and held a position at the NSC under Bush. Come September, 2016, he wrote an essay that brought him national attention. It was entitled "The Flight 93 Election" and expressed the sentiment that a vote for Hillary Clinton was tantamount to the passengers failing to rush the cockpit on that fatal flight over Pennsylvania. The crassness of this served its purpose, garnering him the stopwatch-start of his fifteen minutes. He went on to work as Trump's Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communication, until he didn't, as most don't after a while with this president - resigning, again as most of them do, before he was finished speaking.
The Stakes is Anton's view of what's at risk in the upcoming election. He bases his argument on the old maxim: As California goes, so goes the nation. His first section illustrates the many ways in which the state's leadership has failed its constituents, and paints the land in dismal shades of ruin and despair. This Californian finished that section wondering who'd killed his puppy - for while it's true the Golden State is equipped with its share of difficulties, they are no more or less than what you'll find in areas of similar urban concentration. (Our forest fire is often someone else's hurricane, tornado, or polar vortex.)
Anton goes on to discuss the Constitution, what he sees as the growing divide between rich and poor, red and blue, then adds illegal immigration to the mix to wind up with stark visions of eventual secession. If you're not afraid, he asserts, then you're simply not "woke" to this - which is one of the elements of the current discourse that I'm just not getting. Why does being "woke" require me to be afraid? What purpose does my fear serve? It's not going to make me any more tractable, open-minded, action-oriented...
Anyway, he lost me with this:
"A demoralized population is unlikely to rise in its own defense, to assert its rights, to insist on a say in how it is governed, or to demand a share of the future."
If history teaches us anything, it's that this is exactly the sort of population likely to do all those things. Sometimes you've just got to fall back on that public education. After all, that's what it's there for.
Michael Anton grew up in California. He went to college here, then moved on to craft a career for himself in communications. He worked as a speechwriter for Rupert Murdock and Rudy Giuliani, and held a position at the NSC under Bush. Come September, 2016, he wrote an essay that brought him national attention. It was entitled "The Flight 93 Election" and expressed the sentiment that a vote for Hillary Clinton was tantamount to the passengers failing to rush the cockpit on that fatal flight over Pennsylvania. The crassness of this served its purpose, garnering him the stopwatch-start of his fifteen minutes. He went on to work as Trump's Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communication, until he didn't, as most don't after a while with this president - resigning, again as most of them do, before he was finished speaking.
The Stakes is Anton's view of what's at risk in the upcoming election. He bases his argument on the old maxim: As California goes, so goes the nation. His first section illustrates the many ways in which the state's leadership has failed its constituents, and paints the land in dismal shades of ruin and despair. This Californian finished that section wondering who'd killed his puppy - for while it's true the Golden State is equipped with its share of difficulties, they are no more or less than what you'll find in areas of similar urban concentration. (Our forest fire is often someone else's hurricane, tornado, or polar vortex.)
Anton goes on to discuss the Constitution, what he sees as the growing divide between rich and poor, red and blue, then adds illegal immigration to the mix to wind up with stark visions of eventual secession. If you're not afraid, he asserts, then you're simply not "woke" to this - which is one of the elements of the current discourse that I'm just not getting. Why does being "woke" require me to be afraid? What purpose does my fear serve? It's not going to make me any more tractable, open-minded, action-oriented...
Anyway, he lost me with this:
"A demoralized population is unlikely to rise in its own defense, to assert its rights, to insist on a say in how it is governed, or to demand a share of the future."
If history teaches us anything, it's that this is exactly the sort of population likely to do all those things. Sometimes you've just got to fall back on that public education. After all, that's what it's there for.
September 8, 2020
Michael Anton’s latest, half analysis and half prophecy, is simultaneously terrifying and clarifying. As I have said before, I align very closely with Anton in both core politics and attitude toward politics, so naturally I am enthusiastic about a new Anton book. But in this very fluid time, he writes as nobody else seems able, making manifest where we are and where we are going. It proves his talent that in the mere two months since Anton wrote his Preface, more than one of his predictions has come true. Maybe he sold his soul in exchange for the gift of prescience, or stole a palantir. Whatever the reasons behind its no-holds-barred insights, this is an excellent book to which we all must pay close attention, to navigate the coming chaos and come out whole on the other side.
Anton is, on the surface at least, a Straussian—a believer that the American political system reached, perhaps not perfection, but as close to perfection as is likely possible in any human society, in some combination of 1787 and 1865. I do not believe he is a fully sincere Straussian, in that I suspect he does not actually think we can return to those halcyon days. Rather, he has effectively turned Augustan—interested in how a decent, even flourishing, society can be achieved through the clear-eyed use of power, not necessarily in the form of a republic, much less a democracy. In fact, in The Stakes, he explicitly examines the possibility of both left and right Augustanism, the rise of “Blue Caesar” or “Red Caesar,” to which possibility we will return below. True, that’s only part of this book, which first shows our inevitable awful future if we stay on our current path, and then discusses several possible alternatives, including at least one optimistic one. But I think it’s telling that someone of Anton’s stature openly and without apology talks about pessimistic futures.
Anton became famous as the result of a 2016 essay, “The Flight 93 Election,” in which he pointed out the existential nature of the 2016 Presidential election. He was much criticized by the catamite Right (and by the Left), but every word he wrote has been proven exactly correct, including those he wrote in his follow-up, After the Flight 93 Election. As he predicted in 2019, the 2020 election is even more existential. I did not think we would end up here—in early 2017 I predicted an American renewal. Ah well, I was wrong. Anton’s basic point, in a book filled with important points (and sparkling, pull-you-along writing), is that every election will necessarily be more existential, until either the Left wins all power, succeeding in its goal of denying the legitimacy of anything other than one-party rule, or the Right forces a return to normal politics, where both sides have legitimacy. (Personally, I favor a complete inversion of the Left’s goal, extirpating their poison, not leveling the playing field, but today is not about me.)
Cleverly, Anton begins with a super-detailed study of California. He is a native Californian, so well-positioned to perform this analysis. If you are rich, California is still pretty awesome, though quite inconvenient at times. For everyone else, it is bad, and getting worse, fast. Nobody can deny, and the Left in fact advertises, that they aim to remake the entire nation in the image of California, both in by whom it is ruled and in the laws the rulers impose. This is claimed to be a good thing, whereby the whole country would be greatly improved—if not a paradise, well on its way to becoming one. Underlying this claim is the belief that California is effectively a successful nation-state, with a world-bestriding economy. I have disposed of the economic claim earlier; Anton focuses less on this claim and more on the social disaster that California is. The self-image of California among its ruling class, and the image it projects to the rest of the country, is the picture postcard of the super-wealthy coastal slice of California, sprinkled with a few natural wonders elsewhere in the state. This is a mirage, because most of California is actually a terrible place to live.
This is new in the past few decades and was not inevitable. The promised land was what California really was, not that long ago—Anton offers a sepia-tinted snapshot of what it was fifty years ago, at the time of The Brady Bunch, a place where a man could raise six children on a middle-class income, inside Los Angeles, in a detached single-family home. As a direct result of the Left’s power and consequent ability to implement their deliberate policies, that California is dead. The state is now crowded, costly, congested, crumbling, incompetent, filthy, dangerous, rapacious, profligate, suffocating, prejudiced, theocratic, pathologically altruistic, balkanized, and feudal—and Anton crisply proves each of these claims. Driving home his point, just a few weeks ago, not mentioned here, California has proposed a new wealth tax—that would apply for ten years to anyone with modest wealth who dares to move out of state to escape the nightmare. A better symbol summing up California would be hard to find, though I suppose you could use the power blackouts, the unpunished violent crime, or the filth covering the streets of all its major cities to add a little color.
What caused this disaster, asks Anton? Four related things—tens of millions of poor immigrants, mostly illegal; the rejection of the melting pot; the massive success of Silicon Valley and resulting highly-concentrated wealth; and the total elimination of the Californian middle class. All this cemented the power of the Left at the same time the social fabric was deliberately ripped apart. The Left’s power is maintained as the result of a corrupt bargain between the Left and the super-rich, of which California has plenty. In that bargain, the woke Left is kept in power by the oligarchy, the richest Californians (whom Anton calls dukes, offering a complete mapping of California power onto a feudal hierarchy), as long as the dukes are allowed to do what they want to increase their wealth—e.g., Apple. The woke Left can then impose, and does impose, its desired policies without fear of contradiction. The result is, as always when the Left is in power, utter disaster on every level, social and financial, for the common man, with the polity descending quickly to somewhere between Venezuela and Somalia. That’s bad enough—but Anton’s key point is that the Left, our enemies, wants all of America to be just like California.
Having grabbed the reader’s attention, and made the prepared reader run to his safe for a quick gun count, Anton turns back to earlier history, focusing on what the American political system was designed to be and do. Not because he thinks the reader doesn’t know, but in order to specifically address objections to the American “parchment” from both the Right and the Left. On the Right, Anton examines past and present objections in detail, mostly relating to skepticism that America is or can be “propositional,” rather than centered around more visceral ties. He ends with John Calhoun’s demand for “concurrent majoritarianism,” better called “group rights,” the idea that the ruling minority of the time could not be overruled, which theory was created as a defense of slavery and in opposition to the bedrock American claim that “all men are created equal.” On the Left, Anton reviews, among much else, the original Progressives and their successors, the 1960s Left, noting that the core of their philosophy is indistinguishable from Calhoun’s concurrent majoritarianism. It differs only in that it is in service of different rulers, and it has concluded in today’s unhinged and anti-realist demands for the forced “equality” and “corrective justice” extolled by the cretinous John Rawls. Demands, in all of their multiplying manifestations, utterly incompatible with the American parchment.
Where does that leave “our present regime”? Here Anton refers to Christopher Caldwell’s recent The Age of Entitlement, describing how the quest for black civil rights morphed into demands for special rights and privileges, for everyone but heterosexual white men, the poisonous fruits of which change have roiled America over the past few months. “Inequality before the law—based on race, but also on sex and sexual orientation—is the true animating principle of the American regime as it exists and operates now.” This is justified as corrective—but the gap between the supposedly privileged and the supposedly subordinated never changes, requiring not a reevaluation, but ever more violent demands. Crucially, this woke Left ascendancy is intertwined with neoliberalism, what Anton calls “managerial leftist-libertarianism,” in effect creating a nationwide oligarchical system devoted to implementing Left policies without the consent of the governed, for whom contempt mixed with hatred are the only emotions of the ruling classes. We get kritarchy, corruption, electoral manipulation, weaponized “justice,” and much more, but all these corruptions serve the same goals.
This sounds somewhat dry, but Anton manages to both prove each of his points in detail and to write in a fluid, compelling fashion that pulls the reader along. He frames much of his discussion around the concepts of the Narrative (the message the ruling classes demand be accepted without question); the Megaphone (the instruments of propaganda through which the Narrative is broadcast at constant maximum volume); and the Muzzle (the relatively new and ever-more-powerful system of crushing wrongthink). The Narrative is nearly all simply lies, about everything from rape to racism. The Megaphone is repetition of those lies, combined with the (so-far successful) ability to deny the legitimacy of any alternative media. The Muzzle is raw force, up to and including murder, as has recently been seen in Portland and Kenosha (though in that latter one target, the heroic Kyle Rittenhouse, fortunately got the first shots off).
The Narrative encompasses everything from sexual ideology to denying the noxious racism of BLM, and the system Anton sketches is instantly recognizable all around, the water that we swim in, if you simply look for a moment. Examples of how these three reinforcing Left tools work are infinite. Just in the past few days we have seen a small but telling example, also indicative of the Left’s plan for November’s election. The Atlantic magazine made up an obvious total lie about Trump insulting veterans, with zero evidence, which fit the Narrative; the Megaphone immediately broadcast it everywhere, going so far as to claim that repetition of the claim by different news outlets was itself “confirmation,” a second obvious total lie. And the Muzzle was deployed to ensure that pushback was silenced. Rinse and repeat.
After laying out his framework, Anton writes much more in this vein, discussing in one chapter, “The Ruling Class and Its Armies,” what the ruling class is, what and why it wants, and how it achieves its ends. In another chapter, he addresses immigration. He weaves together history, present-day events, and classical thought from Machiavelli to Montesquieu, all in coherent exposition of How We Got Here. It is brilliant (and I did not know Dan Quayle coined the odious phrase “Diversity is our strength”)—but you will have to read the book, because this is not CliffsNotes, and I want to move to the second half of the book, which discusses the future.
Anton divides his examination of the future into “If Present Trends Continue . . .” followed by “And If They Don’t . . .” He does not offer odds on either possibility, nor on the sub-possibilities that might follow each—but he does discuss reasons making any given outcome more or less likely. As to present trends continuing, he says “It’s at least possible that our ruling class are not all total fools. . . . . [T]hey might know what they’re doing and know how to keep things going, if not forever, for a very long time.” First, they have to defeat Trump this year. Then, they have to use the Narrative, Megaphone, and Muzzle to re-impose the status quo ante. More immigration, more inequality, more blurring the distinction between business and government, more surveillance, enforced with Portland-style anarcho-tyranny and selective justice, and the final cementing of a one-party state. More California, that is, and sedation of discontent with drugs and porn, with isolation, ruin and jail for anyone who fights back. This is James Poulos’s “pink police state,” or Rod Dreher’s “soft totalitarianism.”
Anton doesn’t think this is very likely, I am happy to report, though maybe he is just whistling past the graveyard. One-party rule has a history of being fatal to the party ruling, as it loses touch, and therefore all legitimacy. For the Left, this problem is exacerbated by that their rule is always and everywhere synonymous with incompetency. Most of all, their rule means the end of American excellence and therefore of any achievement whatsoever, and with that they would lose the ability to distribute adequate rewards to ever-more-greedy supporters, whose only means of support is parasitism and theft. Such a one-party state could therefore not maintain either internal or external American power; it would quickly become simply an extractive basket-case—that is, it would become the “People’s Republic” of Kurt Schlichter novels (though Anton does not mention those). In theory, the ruling regime might avoid collapse by adopting something like the Ottoman millet system for red states and areas, which could be left to a large degree of self-governance, but taxed, since they would be the only productive areas of the country. But the Left won’t allow such a system, because it violates their ideology of supposed justice, which motivates their shock troops. No totalitarian can abide embedded opposition; it is a constant rebuke that cannot be tolerated.
Nonetheless, we can be certain that if they regain full power in 2020, it’s pedal to the metal for the Left, in an attempt to create a Woke utopia. They are like the scorpion in the fable about the turtle—overreaching in pursuit of evil is in their nature. And true, there is some possibility the Left could maintain Wokeamerica forever, through technology. But probably not. A political entity bound together by an ideology centered on fractalized identity groups and stealing from others is nearly certain to fall apart.
Which brings us to “And If They Don’t . . .”, the most interesting part of the most interesting book of the year. . . . [Review completes as first comment.]
Anton is, on the surface at least, a Straussian—a believer that the American political system reached, perhaps not perfection, but as close to perfection as is likely possible in any human society, in some combination of 1787 and 1865. I do not believe he is a fully sincere Straussian, in that I suspect he does not actually think we can return to those halcyon days. Rather, he has effectively turned Augustan—interested in how a decent, even flourishing, society can be achieved through the clear-eyed use of power, not necessarily in the form of a republic, much less a democracy. In fact, in The Stakes, he explicitly examines the possibility of both left and right Augustanism, the rise of “Blue Caesar” or “Red Caesar,” to which possibility we will return below. True, that’s only part of this book, which first shows our inevitable awful future if we stay on our current path, and then discusses several possible alternatives, including at least one optimistic one. But I think it’s telling that someone of Anton’s stature openly and without apology talks about pessimistic futures.
Anton became famous as the result of a 2016 essay, “The Flight 93 Election,” in which he pointed out the existential nature of the 2016 Presidential election. He was much criticized by the catamite Right (and by the Left), but every word he wrote has been proven exactly correct, including those he wrote in his follow-up, After the Flight 93 Election. As he predicted in 2019, the 2020 election is even more existential. I did not think we would end up here—in early 2017 I predicted an American renewal. Ah well, I was wrong. Anton’s basic point, in a book filled with important points (and sparkling, pull-you-along writing), is that every election will necessarily be more existential, until either the Left wins all power, succeeding in its goal of denying the legitimacy of anything other than one-party rule, or the Right forces a return to normal politics, where both sides have legitimacy. (Personally, I favor a complete inversion of the Left’s goal, extirpating their poison, not leveling the playing field, but today is not about me.)
Cleverly, Anton begins with a super-detailed study of California. He is a native Californian, so well-positioned to perform this analysis. If you are rich, California is still pretty awesome, though quite inconvenient at times. For everyone else, it is bad, and getting worse, fast. Nobody can deny, and the Left in fact advertises, that they aim to remake the entire nation in the image of California, both in by whom it is ruled and in the laws the rulers impose. This is claimed to be a good thing, whereby the whole country would be greatly improved—if not a paradise, well on its way to becoming one. Underlying this claim is the belief that California is effectively a successful nation-state, with a world-bestriding economy. I have disposed of the economic claim earlier; Anton focuses less on this claim and more on the social disaster that California is. The self-image of California among its ruling class, and the image it projects to the rest of the country, is the picture postcard of the super-wealthy coastal slice of California, sprinkled with a few natural wonders elsewhere in the state. This is a mirage, because most of California is actually a terrible place to live.
This is new in the past few decades and was not inevitable. The promised land was what California really was, not that long ago—Anton offers a sepia-tinted snapshot of what it was fifty years ago, at the time of The Brady Bunch, a place where a man could raise six children on a middle-class income, inside Los Angeles, in a detached single-family home. As a direct result of the Left’s power and consequent ability to implement their deliberate policies, that California is dead. The state is now crowded, costly, congested, crumbling, incompetent, filthy, dangerous, rapacious, profligate, suffocating, prejudiced, theocratic, pathologically altruistic, balkanized, and feudal—and Anton crisply proves each of these claims. Driving home his point, just a few weeks ago, not mentioned here, California has proposed a new wealth tax—that would apply for ten years to anyone with modest wealth who dares to move out of state to escape the nightmare. A better symbol summing up California would be hard to find, though I suppose you could use the power blackouts, the unpunished violent crime, or the filth covering the streets of all its major cities to add a little color.
What caused this disaster, asks Anton? Four related things—tens of millions of poor immigrants, mostly illegal; the rejection of the melting pot; the massive success of Silicon Valley and resulting highly-concentrated wealth; and the total elimination of the Californian middle class. All this cemented the power of the Left at the same time the social fabric was deliberately ripped apart. The Left’s power is maintained as the result of a corrupt bargain between the Left and the super-rich, of which California has plenty. In that bargain, the woke Left is kept in power by the oligarchy, the richest Californians (whom Anton calls dukes, offering a complete mapping of California power onto a feudal hierarchy), as long as the dukes are allowed to do what they want to increase their wealth—e.g., Apple. The woke Left can then impose, and does impose, its desired policies without fear of contradiction. The result is, as always when the Left is in power, utter disaster on every level, social and financial, for the common man, with the polity descending quickly to somewhere between Venezuela and Somalia. That’s bad enough—but Anton’s key point is that the Left, our enemies, wants all of America to be just like California.
Having grabbed the reader’s attention, and made the prepared reader run to his safe for a quick gun count, Anton turns back to earlier history, focusing on what the American political system was designed to be and do. Not because he thinks the reader doesn’t know, but in order to specifically address objections to the American “parchment” from both the Right and the Left. On the Right, Anton examines past and present objections in detail, mostly relating to skepticism that America is or can be “propositional,” rather than centered around more visceral ties. He ends with John Calhoun’s demand for “concurrent majoritarianism,” better called “group rights,” the idea that the ruling minority of the time could not be overruled, which theory was created as a defense of slavery and in opposition to the bedrock American claim that “all men are created equal.” On the Left, Anton reviews, among much else, the original Progressives and their successors, the 1960s Left, noting that the core of their philosophy is indistinguishable from Calhoun’s concurrent majoritarianism. It differs only in that it is in service of different rulers, and it has concluded in today’s unhinged and anti-realist demands for the forced “equality” and “corrective justice” extolled by the cretinous John Rawls. Demands, in all of their multiplying manifestations, utterly incompatible with the American parchment.
Where does that leave “our present regime”? Here Anton refers to Christopher Caldwell’s recent The Age of Entitlement, describing how the quest for black civil rights morphed into demands for special rights and privileges, for everyone but heterosexual white men, the poisonous fruits of which change have roiled America over the past few months. “Inequality before the law—based on race, but also on sex and sexual orientation—is the true animating principle of the American regime as it exists and operates now.” This is justified as corrective—but the gap between the supposedly privileged and the supposedly subordinated never changes, requiring not a reevaluation, but ever more violent demands. Crucially, this woke Left ascendancy is intertwined with neoliberalism, what Anton calls “managerial leftist-libertarianism,” in effect creating a nationwide oligarchical system devoted to implementing Left policies without the consent of the governed, for whom contempt mixed with hatred are the only emotions of the ruling classes. We get kritarchy, corruption, electoral manipulation, weaponized “justice,” and much more, but all these corruptions serve the same goals.
This sounds somewhat dry, but Anton manages to both prove each of his points in detail and to write in a fluid, compelling fashion that pulls the reader along. He frames much of his discussion around the concepts of the Narrative (the message the ruling classes demand be accepted without question); the Megaphone (the instruments of propaganda through which the Narrative is broadcast at constant maximum volume); and the Muzzle (the relatively new and ever-more-powerful system of crushing wrongthink). The Narrative is nearly all simply lies, about everything from rape to racism. The Megaphone is repetition of those lies, combined with the (so-far successful) ability to deny the legitimacy of any alternative media. The Muzzle is raw force, up to and including murder, as has recently been seen in Portland and Kenosha (though in that latter one target, the heroic Kyle Rittenhouse, fortunately got the first shots off).
The Narrative encompasses everything from sexual ideology to denying the noxious racism of BLM, and the system Anton sketches is instantly recognizable all around, the water that we swim in, if you simply look for a moment. Examples of how these three reinforcing Left tools work are infinite. Just in the past few days we have seen a small but telling example, also indicative of the Left’s plan for November’s election. The Atlantic magazine made up an obvious total lie about Trump insulting veterans, with zero evidence, which fit the Narrative; the Megaphone immediately broadcast it everywhere, going so far as to claim that repetition of the claim by different news outlets was itself “confirmation,” a second obvious total lie. And the Muzzle was deployed to ensure that pushback was silenced. Rinse and repeat.
After laying out his framework, Anton writes much more in this vein, discussing in one chapter, “The Ruling Class and Its Armies,” what the ruling class is, what and why it wants, and how it achieves its ends. In another chapter, he addresses immigration. He weaves together history, present-day events, and classical thought from Machiavelli to Montesquieu, all in coherent exposition of How We Got Here. It is brilliant (and I did not know Dan Quayle coined the odious phrase “Diversity is our strength”)—but you will have to read the book, because this is not CliffsNotes, and I want to move to the second half of the book, which discusses the future.
Anton divides his examination of the future into “If Present Trends Continue . . .” followed by “And If They Don’t . . .” He does not offer odds on either possibility, nor on the sub-possibilities that might follow each—but he does discuss reasons making any given outcome more or less likely. As to present trends continuing, he says “It’s at least possible that our ruling class are not all total fools. . . . . [T]hey might know what they’re doing and know how to keep things going, if not forever, for a very long time.” First, they have to defeat Trump this year. Then, they have to use the Narrative, Megaphone, and Muzzle to re-impose the status quo ante. More immigration, more inequality, more blurring the distinction between business and government, more surveillance, enforced with Portland-style anarcho-tyranny and selective justice, and the final cementing of a one-party state. More California, that is, and sedation of discontent with drugs and porn, with isolation, ruin and jail for anyone who fights back. This is James Poulos’s “pink police state,” or Rod Dreher’s “soft totalitarianism.”
Anton doesn’t think this is very likely, I am happy to report, though maybe he is just whistling past the graveyard. One-party rule has a history of being fatal to the party ruling, as it loses touch, and therefore all legitimacy. For the Left, this problem is exacerbated by that their rule is always and everywhere synonymous with incompetency. Most of all, their rule means the end of American excellence and therefore of any achievement whatsoever, and with that they would lose the ability to distribute adequate rewards to ever-more-greedy supporters, whose only means of support is parasitism and theft. Such a one-party state could therefore not maintain either internal or external American power; it would quickly become simply an extractive basket-case—that is, it would become the “People’s Republic” of Kurt Schlichter novels (though Anton does not mention those). In theory, the ruling regime might avoid collapse by adopting something like the Ottoman millet system for red states and areas, which could be left to a large degree of self-governance, but taxed, since they would be the only productive areas of the country. But the Left won’t allow such a system, because it violates their ideology of supposed justice, which motivates their shock troops. No totalitarian can abide embedded opposition; it is a constant rebuke that cannot be tolerated.
Nonetheless, we can be certain that if they regain full power in 2020, it’s pedal to the metal for the Left, in an attempt to create a Woke utopia. They are like the scorpion in the fable about the turtle—overreaching in pursuit of evil is in their nature. And true, there is some possibility the Left could maintain Wokeamerica forever, through technology. But probably not. A political entity bound together by an ideology centered on fractalized identity groups and stealing from others is nearly certain to fall apart.
Which brings us to “And If They Don’t . . .”, the most interesting part of the most interesting book of the year. . . . [Review completes as first comment.]
September 15, 2020
Excellent book
The last chapter offers hope to an otherwise gloomy state of affairs. His analysis starts of weak, but picks up power as you go through the book and I would highly recommend anyone who bought it to stick with it till the end.
The last chapter offers hope to an otherwise gloomy state of affairs. His analysis starts of weak, but picks up power as you go through the book and I would highly recommend anyone who bought it to stick with it till the end.
August 24, 2020
There is no aggressive left in the U.S.A. There is barely any left, only corporate democrats...except for senator Sanders and a few others. You have to be politically completely uneducated to say otherwise.
September 5, 2020
Leave Flight 93 out of your disgusting Trumper BS, Anton! They literally can't speak of for themselves to agree or not agree with Trump's (not heroic at all) rhetoric so please give the (actually legit heroic) dead of Flight 93 the respect they most definitely deserve! They deserve better than what you are dragging them into! Seriously! Let them rest in friggin peace rather than drag em into political warfare they personally have no say in! Nor much comprehension of. Things are different now than how they were then. Plus, the flight was most likely a group of diverse people of both political parties plus some independents and other third parties not to mention some foreigners as well most likely.
You can't just ... just dictate what kinda politics this flight as a whole would approve of... even if you are just using flight 93 as rhetoric as "do or die" that is STILL very disrespectful to those poor, albeit again very heroic indeed, souls that perished on that doomed flight!
How dare you USE these RL heroes like some bloody lowly pawns in your politically motivated blatherings! Again, they can't speak for themselves being deceased obviously. I mean c'mon, have at least a iota of decency, man! Though then again, not super surprising that a Trumper would pull this crud... It's hard to expect decency from where there is none... But sure, it's the left that is so awful and terrible. and pfft sure it was totally the left that started the identity politics things (you can't see me, but I'm letting you know I'm am rolling my eyes). yeah, yeah, yeah. we'll see what the history books have to say in the coming years about your lord and savior, Trump and those that lifted him into power/supported him...
You wanna hold liberals accountable for what is wrong with the world but ya never thought to hold Trump accountable for any lie he's told, any mistake he's made, any of his bullpoo? None at all? Gonna just spread more lies about how the world is gonna burn if we don't re-elect Trump. Too late. The world is burning right now - and it has BEEN burning for a few years- and look who's the guy in the white house right now? Why worry about electing trump's adversary if the worst that could come out of it is keeping the status quo?
But seriously... Is it possible for a conservative to get anything done without fearmongering? I can't help but wonder. Can you motivate at all without emotional manipulation? without the pathological lying? gotta have some liberal strawmen/boogeymen or can't get anything done, huh?
I know what it's like to be scared. To be paranoid. It's overwhelming. it's horrible. It's hell on earth. It is a harmful and ineffective state of mind to boot. Makes one easier to both abuse and be abused. Why anyone would be part of a party that thrives on such miserable state of being is beyond me.
You can't just ... just dictate what kinda politics this flight as a whole would approve of... even if you are just using flight 93 as rhetoric as "do or die" that is STILL very disrespectful to those poor, albeit again very heroic indeed, souls that perished on that doomed flight!
How dare you USE these RL heroes like some bloody lowly pawns in your politically motivated blatherings! Again, they can't speak for themselves being deceased obviously. I mean c'mon, have at least a iota of decency, man! Though then again, not super surprising that a Trumper would pull this crud... It's hard to expect decency from where there is none... But sure, it's the left that is so awful and terrible. and pfft sure it was totally the left that started the identity politics things (you can't see me, but I'm letting you know I'm am rolling my eyes). yeah, yeah, yeah. we'll see what the history books have to say in the coming years about your lord and savior, Trump and those that lifted him into power/supported him...
You wanna hold liberals accountable for what is wrong with the world but ya never thought to hold Trump accountable for any lie he's told, any mistake he's made, any of his bullpoo? None at all? Gonna just spread more lies about how the world is gonna burn if we don't re-elect Trump. Too late. The world is burning right now - and it has BEEN burning for a few years- and look who's the guy in the white house right now? Why worry about electing trump's adversary if the worst that could come out of it is keeping the status quo?
But seriously... Is it possible for a conservative to get anything done without fearmongering? I can't help but wonder. Can you motivate at all without emotional manipulation? without the pathological lying? gotta have some liberal strawmen/boogeymen or can't get anything done, huh?
I know what it's like to be scared. To be paranoid. It's overwhelming. it's horrible. It's hell on earth. It is a harmful and ineffective state of mind to boot. Makes one easier to both abuse and be abused. Why anyone would be part of a party that thrives on such miserable state of being is beyond me.
September 23, 2024
I have once again decided to embark on a mission to read a number of books on subjects that will be of great importance to the upcoming 2024 US Presidential Election. This was a great success as I prepared for 2020, with an outcome at the polls (and antics by both candidates up to Inauguration Day) that only a fiction writer might have come up with at the time! Many of these will focus on actors and events intricately involved in the US political system over the last few years, in hopes that I can understand them better and, perhaps, educate others with the power to cast a ballot. I am, as always, open to serious recommendations from anyone who has a book I might like to include in the process.
With the events of July 21, 2024, when Joe Biden chose not to seek re-election, the challenge has become harder to properly reflect the Democratic side. I will do the best I can to properly prepare and offer up books that can explore the Biden Administration, as well as whomever takes the helm into November.
This is Book #33 in my 2024 US Election Preparation Challenge.
One of my goals during this challenge was to be able to read books by authors who hold views of the right who can make their arguments effectively using plausible foundations. While many of the books I have read during this challenge are more interested in kissing the... (ring?) of Donald Trump and prefer to spew vitriol. Michael Anton uses his academic position to raise key arguments and thoughts that are well-supported and full of thought-provoking views that left me challenging my previous ideas. While I cannot support some of his arguments, Anton presents them clearly and kept me wondering as I read each chapter. The right surely has some views with which I cannot support and use some short-sighted ideas, but Anton makes them understandable and keeps much of the sycophantic sentiments to a minimum. A great book that sheds light on the right and some of their thinking, helping me respect Michael Anton with ease.
Anton made a name for himself when he published a controversial essay in 2016, asking voters on the right to ‘rush the cockpit’ and vote for Trump. “The Flight 93 Election” caused some chatter in the academic community, but it helped the intended audience see the importance to look away from Clinton and seek a better America. That Trump was at the helm mattered little to Anton (perhaps it was a ‘hold your nose’ moment), but rather that the GOP needed to return to controlling the direction in which America was headed to save it from a catastrophic political crash. Anton got his wish, though he does not comment on the new disaster his sentiments helped create. Perhaps that’s for another book or the final portion of the book!
Opening the book, Anton explores California, the crown jewel of left-leaning sentiments, and how it is nothing as it appears to be. He seeks to explain the problems with the left’s view of the state and how these sentiments skew the truth about the country as a whole. This is a bold start and threw me for a loop, but I can see what Anton is doing here. He seeks to shatter the Utopia and sentiment that the left’s ideal locale is anything but a facade. This is how the right begins their attack, by targeting something the left holds dear and seeks to make a mess of it. Doing so seeks to crack the foundation and find blemishes that can only be fixed by walking away. Sly work, Mr. Anton.
From there, Anton seeks to explore the role of the state in America (the political actor, not the fifty divided land masses with their own governments). The state was the key actor to the Founding Fathers and Anton argues that this is as it ought to be. He posits that the loose federation America became was meant to give the stature its own power, not a centralised government making sweeping decisions and seeking to weasel its way into the role of the states. Should states be able to run things as they see fit, the people would be happier and their leaders could do so with ease. Ask a woman seeking choices about an unwanted pregnancy and see how happy that citizen might be, Mr. Anton. Oh wait, you don’t want the citizenry to ask questions, just let their leaders (for whom a voter was cast a ballot occasionally) to hold the reins of power alone until the next election. These sentiments are short-sighted and is the encapsulated view of the right. Let them vote, shut them up, and hope the boat does not sink until next time!
Tackling views about ‘woke ideas’ (the sentiment that the people are too focussed on inclusivity rather than what is best for the people), radical racism, and immigration policies, Anton takes things on a wild exposition of how things have gone down a horrible rabbit hole that must end soon. He feels that Americans have come to stop being American and would rather dilute their sense of being to be overly inclusive. This is a means of eroding the greatness of America and leaves it ready to fall into ruin. A tad melodramatic, perhaps, but the attentive reader can see some of the views that Anton tries to peddle. He worries about the loss of the country he has come to love, as though it is gone forever. One need only worry if the choice of America is a xenophobic entity, seeking to purify itself and keep people from being open-minded. It is this view that is being dethroned, though the right would gussy up a pig and call it something else.
While I accept some of Anton’s views, including the need to stop tearing down memorials of the past, I cannot swallow many of the views he puts on offer. Anton seeks to fuel the rhetoric that the right needs to take things back and wrest control away fro the left. However, drawing parallels from Anton’s 2016 essay, ‘storming the cockpit’ to keep control, the use of violence and xenophobic views does nothing but add new problems. The idea of ‘white’ washing America back to greatness holds no water for me and I cannot see how anyone could swallow that elixir. Anton does well to lull the reader into thinking that this is the only way to ensure America will be there when needed, but his views are not plausible for a society that must stand with its fellow countries on the world scene. This makes sense only to be more divisive on the world scene and keep the citizenry pig-headed and left clueless about their ignorance. How can anyone want this and why would anyone choose a political sentiment that paves this path towards the future?
Anton does not simply whinge about the issues, he offers a multi-pronged solution. While never serving as sycophant, Anton feels that Trump holds the blueprint to future right-wing success. Be it with a revamped GOP or a new party, the right needs to heed the warnings that POTUS 45 made to create something the masses can accept. While some of the tenets sound logical and contrast well with what the Democrats have to offer, little of it works to solve things. Rather, it is a means of further alienating the America that has emerged and seeks to wash it of its immigrant-loving past that has, in Anton’s mind, helped erode all that was once good about the Republican Party and the country’s right-wing base. Sobering and spine-chilling in equal measure!
I love a good book that can challenge my views and leave me wanting to learn more. Michael Anton did that and more with this book. He explains things well and keeps the reader curious as the arguments pile up, which includes pushing some truths that the left might not want to admit. However, I cannot sit here and have his views poured into my head without seeking to challenge them. Each chapter, which is long and full of information, helps push the sentiments along and rock the automaton reader into a sleepy acceptance, but the attentive one will be able to read between the lines and understand both sides of the coin. While Anton’s academic approach helps challenge preconceived notions, his views cannot simply be accepted as gospel (nor do I see Anton as speaking for all on the right, thank goodness). I am open to seeing both sides and am pleased that Michael Anton could do so. Whatever comes to pass in November 2024, reading this has me eager to see if Anton’s predictions come true. Scare tactics usually backfire, as Trump has come to show with his ridiculous antics. Thank goodness we all know he will never let this book cross his path, as the lack of pictures is sure to help him lose interest swiftly.
Kudos, Mr. Anton, for a great thought project, even if it is simply that for those who see reality for what it is.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
With the events of July 21, 2024, when Joe Biden chose not to seek re-election, the challenge has become harder to properly reflect the Democratic side. I will do the best I can to properly prepare and offer up books that can explore the Biden Administration, as well as whomever takes the helm into November.
This is Book #33 in my 2024 US Election Preparation Challenge.
One of my goals during this challenge was to be able to read books by authors who hold views of the right who can make their arguments effectively using plausible foundations. While many of the books I have read during this challenge are more interested in kissing the... (ring?) of Donald Trump and prefer to spew vitriol. Michael Anton uses his academic position to raise key arguments and thoughts that are well-supported and full of thought-provoking views that left me challenging my previous ideas. While I cannot support some of his arguments, Anton presents them clearly and kept me wondering as I read each chapter. The right surely has some views with which I cannot support and use some short-sighted ideas, but Anton makes them understandable and keeps much of the sycophantic sentiments to a minimum. A great book that sheds light on the right and some of their thinking, helping me respect Michael Anton with ease.
Anton made a name for himself when he published a controversial essay in 2016, asking voters on the right to ‘rush the cockpit’ and vote for Trump. “The Flight 93 Election” caused some chatter in the academic community, but it helped the intended audience see the importance to look away from Clinton and seek a better America. That Trump was at the helm mattered little to Anton (perhaps it was a ‘hold your nose’ moment), but rather that the GOP needed to return to controlling the direction in which America was headed to save it from a catastrophic political crash. Anton got his wish, though he does not comment on the new disaster his sentiments helped create. Perhaps that’s for another book or the final portion of the book!
Opening the book, Anton explores California, the crown jewel of left-leaning sentiments, and how it is nothing as it appears to be. He seeks to explain the problems with the left’s view of the state and how these sentiments skew the truth about the country as a whole. This is a bold start and threw me for a loop, but I can see what Anton is doing here. He seeks to shatter the Utopia and sentiment that the left’s ideal locale is anything but a facade. This is how the right begins their attack, by targeting something the left holds dear and seeks to make a mess of it. Doing so seeks to crack the foundation and find blemishes that can only be fixed by walking away. Sly work, Mr. Anton.
From there, Anton seeks to explore the role of the state in America (the political actor, not the fifty divided land masses with their own governments). The state was the key actor to the Founding Fathers and Anton argues that this is as it ought to be. He posits that the loose federation America became was meant to give the stature its own power, not a centralised government making sweeping decisions and seeking to weasel its way into the role of the states. Should states be able to run things as they see fit, the people would be happier and their leaders could do so with ease. Ask a woman seeking choices about an unwanted pregnancy and see how happy that citizen might be, Mr. Anton. Oh wait, you don’t want the citizenry to ask questions, just let their leaders (for whom a voter was cast a ballot occasionally) to hold the reins of power alone until the next election. These sentiments are short-sighted and is the encapsulated view of the right. Let them vote, shut them up, and hope the boat does not sink until next time!
Tackling views about ‘woke ideas’ (the sentiment that the people are too focussed on inclusivity rather than what is best for the people), radical racism, and immigration policies, Anton takes things on a wild exposition of how things have gone down a horrible rabbit hole that must end soon. He feels that Americans have come to stop being American and would rather dilute their sense of being to be overly inclusive. This is a means of eroding the greatness of America and leaves it ready to fall into ruin. A tad melodramatic, perhaps, but the attentive reader can see some of the views that Anton tries to peddle. He worries about the loss of the country he has come to love, as though it is gone forever. One need only worry if the choice of America is a xenophobic entity, seeking to purify itself and keep people from being open-minded. It is this view that is being dethroned, though the right would gussy up a pig and call it something else.
While I accept some of Anton’s views, including the need to stop tearing down memorials of the past, I cannot swallow many of the views he puts on offer. Anton seeks to fuel the rhetoric that the right needs to take things back and wrest control away fro the left. However, drawing parallels from Anton’s 2016 essay, ‘storming the cockpit’ to keep control, the use of violence and xenophobic views does nothing but add new problems. The idea of ‘white’ washing America back to greatness holds no water for me and I cannot see how anyone could swallow that elixir. Anton does well to lull the reader into thinking that this is the only way to ensure America will be there when needed, but his views are not plausible for a society that must stand with its fellow countries on the world scene. This makes sense only to be more divisive on the world scene and keep the citizenry pig-headed and left clueless about their ignorance. How can anyone want this and why would anyone choose a political sentiment that paves this path towards the future?
Anton does not simply whinge about the issues, he offers a multi-pronged solution. While never serving as sycophant, Anton feels that Trump holds the blueprint to future right-wing success. Be it with a revamped GOP or a new party, the right needs to heed the warnings that POTUS 45 made to create something the masses can accept. While some of the tenets sound logical and contrast well with what the Democrats have to offer, little of it works to solve things. Rather, it is a means of further alienating the America that has emerged and seeks to wash it of its immigrant-loving past that has, in Anton’s mind, helped erode all that was once good about the Republican Party and the country’s right-wing base. Sobering and spine-chilling in equal measure!
I love a good book that can challenge my views and leave me wanting to learn more. Michael Anton did that and more with this book. He explains things well and keeps the reader curious as the arguments pile up, which includes pushing some truths that the left might not want to admit. However, I cannot sit here and have his views poured into my head without seeking to challenge them. Each chapter, which is long and full of information, helps push the sentiments along and rock the automaton reader into a sleepy acceptance, but the attentive one will be able to read between the lines and understand both sides of the coin. While Anton’s academic approach helps challenge preconceived notions, his views cannot simply be accepted as gospel (nor do I see Anton as speaking for all on the right, thank goodness). I am open to seeing both sides and am pleased that Michael Anton could do so. Whatever comes to pass in November 2024, reading this has me eager to see if Anton’s predictions come true. Scare tactics usually backfire, as Trump has come to show with his ridiculous antics. Thank goodness we all know he will never let this book cross his path, as the lack of pictures is sure to help him lose interest swiftly.
Kudos, Mr. Anton, for a great thought project, even if it is simply that for those who see reality for what it is.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
October 10, 2020
*Audiobook review* Great book! For readers of Pat Buchanan/Ann Coulter/Tucker Carlson and the like, there may not be a whole lot of new ideas here, but it’s still a very good read. Some things that were new to me were the political theories towards the end of the book about the possible outcomes for the United States. It was a very interesting look back into history! I also really liked the discussion of a new platform, which had some aspects that weren’t on my radar, such as ending dual citizenship.
September 9, 2020
A cornucopia of interesting ideas
Michael Anton must have been up day and night to produce such a wealth of interesting political analysis and so many action items for the next four years Trump Administration...how many will actually come to pass remains to be seen, so stay tuned!
Michael Anton must have been up day and night to produce such a wealth of interesting political analysis and so many action items for the next four years Trump Administration...how many will actually come to pass remains to be seen, so stay tuned!
September 18, 2020
In "The Stakes", Michael Anton plays the part of a robed classical philosopher commenting on the great political morass of our day. It's an able exercise in analysis, re-interpretation of history, and careful prognostication. Those who read Anton in 2020 will likely return to this text years from now to reflect on the other paths which could have been taken. Hopefully not in the same spirit as a "Man in the High Castle" film reel.
Like any great "current events" book, Anton peppers his text with observtions on human nature which are worth a good mental note or two. Chief among them is that we are not at the end of history. There are valid reasons to bet on the "inevitable", but just about as many to suppose great, unexpected changes may occur. Especially in times like these.
Ultimately, Anton urges ordinary Americans to seize Lady Fortuna while they still can or find themselves in the dustbin of history.
Like any great "current events" book, Anton peppers his text with observtions on human nature which are worth a good mental note or two. Chief among them is that we are not at the end of history. There are valid reasons to bet on the "inevitable", but just about as many to suppose great, unexpected changes may occur. Especially in times like these.
Ultimately, Anton urges ordinary Americans to seize Lady Fortuna while they still can or find themselves in the dustbin of history.
October 21, 2020
I read Anton's article 'The Coming Coup' last month and found out he wrote an entire book. He makes no secret of his political stripes. He lays out how the Left is ripping the fabric of the country apart by starting off by detailing the plight in which they put California.
He doesn't spare establishment republicans and their feckless and useless exisitence over the past half-century and makes the case for populism and how to address various hot button issues from immigration to foreign policy to welfare and education.
I'm sure about half of the population of the US will hate it.
He doesn't spare establishment republicans and their feckless and useless exisitence over the past half-century and makes the case for populism and how to address various hot button issues from immigration to foreign policy to welfare and education.
I'm sure about half of the population of the US will hate it.
November 14, 2021
Great book from one of my favorite current conservative-populist thinkers and writers. I thought as I read this (especially the 1st half of the book) that it was almost Tocquevillesque in its analysis of our current time in America, as Democracy in America was for its time. I think this review will just be a collection of notes organized around the chapters of the book.
Ch. 1 - Anton describes modern California as a case study in progressive (hereafter: blue) one-party rule. Having grown up in the state and being only a bit older than me, he's witnessed a paradisiacal place slowly descend into the early layers of Hell. Dante would be at home in L.A. or SanFran.
Ch. 2 - Anton engagingly describes the arguments both pro and con in regards to nationalism and the ideas behind "all men are created equal." On pgs. 93-95 Anton describes progressivism succinctly and accurately. "Progressivism... holds that it has discerned the people's true interest and redefines democracy as what the people would vote for it only they were smart enough to know their own good." He outlines the history of progressivism in America and how it attacked the Constitution and morality itself, while honestly admitting its positive accomplishments. Anton continues with a brief history of the origins of "social" justice and how it is really just a return to the antebellum concept of "group rights" developed by John C. Calhoun in his effort to legally defend slavery.
Ch. 3 - I would call this chapter "How Things Work Now." From pg. 110: "Inequality before the law- based on race, but also on sex and sexual orientation- is the true animating principle of the American regime as it exists and operates now." I don't know how anyone who is informed and even a little bit alert could argue the truth of that. Anton goes on to describe the cancerous 4th branch of government, the unelected and permanent administrative state, almost wholly captured by blues and blue allies. He taught me a new work "Kritarchy" - rule by judges, and the damage they do when they run amok (virtually only leftist judges do this, because it is part of their philosophy. This is why we only see progressive innovations escape their states of origin to be applied nationally, i.e. gay marriage from Massachusetts. This chapter is summed up perfectly by its concluding paragraph on pg. 170, which is so good I will just quote it here: "Perhaps the greatest irony of modern American politics is that those most attached to America - the physical country, its history, and its symbols- are those its government least serves, while those most vocally dissatisfied or even angry with America are precisely those whom the government has been transformed to favor. The former can't stop cheering for a country whose institutions and elites, as every day passes, more openly despise and work against them. The latter can't stop complaining about a county that they've successfully remade in their own image to serve their own interests. At least the latter know that their complaints have a strategic purpose: to continue to punish the former and further transform America to their liking. The former are, emotionally, living in the past."
Ch. 4 - Anton talks about globalism and its goals for a borderless economic zone. Here I did disagree with his comments on "homogenization." I think it's hard to dispute that the products manufactured today are both of overall better quality and of far more variety, even for the poor, than at any time in the history of the planet. I would say quantity, quality and variety are not the issues, rather remuneration and monopolization are, among other things. A fantastic quote from pg. 205: "This cost-free ""fun"" of being ""on the right side of history"" is a big part of the reason why every achieved triumph leads inexorably to the next struggle, why every fresh enthusiasm immediately becomes the next ""defining civil rights issue of our time"." And another from truism from pg. 208: "So long as the destructive energy is aimed at tradition, religion, and culture, the ruling class aren't worried: half of them despise that stuff as much as the Wokerati do, and the other half figure they can wall themselves off from whatever downsides may arise from acid-washing away all historic supports for productivity, morality, and order." Anton describes the 3 possible options for the end results of increasing societal chaos. Pg. 221: "Alternatively, perhaps the ruling class has made a bet that however antisocial the behavior of their surrounding serfs and barbarians may get, their own lives will never suffer. The Great March of Progress, let from the top, will go on. The implicit wager here is that states don't matter, that the Davos Archipelago is a kind of quasi-independent and self-sufficient Hanseatic League."
Ch. 5 - Interesting discussion of the reality behind the myths of Ellis Island immigration nested inside the much larger and wider-ranging discussion of the immigration issue.
Ch. 6 - Titled "If Present Trends Continue...," Anton here makes his predictions of the consequences of not regaining Constitutional control of our government. He asks on pg. 307: "...how long can a county that can't run a train or make surgical masks, that despises its past and antagonizes half its citizenry, sustain its position as global hegemon? ...Indeed, to what extent is the wealth necessary to maintaining our hegemony derived from that hegemony?" Pg. 313: "Ultimately, there are only two ways to hold the current ruling coalition together: generate and distribute enough spoils to keep everyone happy, and stoke the constituent parts' common resentments." Pg. 316: "The core purpose of mass immigration for the left specifically (as opposed to the ruling-class passion for cheap labor) is demographically to overwhelm red America so that, first and foremost, no Republican can ever win the presidency again and second, the Republican Party becomes irrelevant in as many states, counties, and cities as possible." He is right, for this is, of course, why the current Regime secretly flies and buses illegal immigrants to political swing localities.
Ch. 8 - Anton looks to solutions. Pg. 367: "...the Republican party needs to become more like the old Democratic Party- more worker-friendly, more concerned with wage and wealth inequality- but also the opposite of today's Democratic Party: openly nationalistic on economics and trade, stalwartly traditional on morality and culture. If the Republicans can so transform themselves, they have a chance. If they cannot, then the party will have to be destroyed and replaced, or else left to wither in the ruling class's anteroom, its dwindling adherents the last to realize their won irrelevance." Hmmm... this sounds like Trumpism sans the "morality and culture" part. Anton details a party platform going forward, then ends by listing strategies to be adopted. They include:
1. Attack the legitimacy of the ruling class and their media lapdogs.
2. Found new media (movie studio / TV network) in order to confront the culture head-on. Ben Shapiro is attempting to do this at this writing.
3. When able, use government power - clean out Federal LE, Intel, etc. agencies & use anti-trust law to break up tech monopolies.
4. Education: Repeal anti-bankruptcy law for undergraduate degrees only, curtail government grants and make them contingent on elimination of race-based admissions. Decouple education from broader job market. Reform primary education- make it patriotic and assimilationist (this book was written just prior to the country-wide local parent revolt against CRT and associated progressive political dreck being integrated into all levels of primary ed). Anton calls to stop the "feminization" of boys- maybe start a network of all-boys schools; pg. 397 rather strongly states: "America will not benefit from raising another generation of sissies and beaten dogs." He amusingly suggests perhaps some type of "holistic military schools." As an aside, I think the "start-up" UTAX is positive development and another alternative way forward, especially as far as cleaning up the intellectual wasteland that liberal arts and humanities have almost universally become. University administrations and DIE departments have to be lanced.
5. Unrelentingly defend the Bill of Rights. Recognize any calls to suppress "hate speech" & complaints about "money in politics" are just veiled attacks on free speech.
6. Defend the Electoral College. I would say if there is a "hill to die on," this is it.
7. Attack the Kritarchy, ways to approach this. One of the most challenging tasks, honestly.
8. Defend voting integrity.
9. In Anton's view the most important: Create and elevate a new elite.
10. Allow counties, cities, towns to join an adjacent state.
To end, a quote from pg. 402 from Anton's legitimate condemnation of the failure of establishment conservatives: "So, ""conservatives":" if the Constitution is what you care about most, then you should have been far more concerned with helping the American people remain fit to maintain it and be governed by it." So true.
Ch. 1 - Anton describes modern California as a case study in progressive (hereafter: blue) one-party rule. Having grown up in the state and being only a bit older than me, he's witnessed a paradisiacal place slowly descend into the early layers of Hell. Dante would be at home in L.A. or SanFran.
Ch. 2 - Anton engagingly describes the arguments both pro and con in regards to nationalism and the ideas behind "all men are created equal." On pgs. 93-95 Anton describes progressivism succinctly and accurately. "Progressivism... holds that it has discerned the people's true interest and redefines democracy as what the people would vote for it only they were smart enough to know their own good." He outlines the history of progressivism in America and how it attacked the Constitution and morality itself, while honestly admitting its positive accomplishments. Anton continues with a brief history of the origins of "social" justice and how it is really just a return to the antebellum concept of "group rights" developed by John C. Calhoun in his effort to legally defend slavery.
Ch. 3 - I would call this chapter "How Things Work Now." From pg. 110: "Inequality before the law- based on race, but also on sex and sexual orientation- is the true animating principle of the American regime as it exists and operates now." I don't know how anyone who is informed and even a little bit alert could argue the truth of that. Anton goes on to describe the cancerous 4th branch of government, the unelected and permanent administrative state, almost wholly captured by blues and blue allies. He taught me a new work "Kritarchy" - rule by judges, and the damage they do when they run amok (virtually only leftist judges do this, because it is part of their philosophy. This is why we only see progressive innovations escape their states of origin to be applied nationally, i.e. gay marriage from Massachusetts. This chapter is summed up perfectly by its concluding paragraph on pg. 170, which is so good I will just quote it here: "Perhaps the greatest irony of modern American politics is that those most attached to America - the physical country, its history, and its symbols- are those its government least serves, while those most vocally dissatisfied or even angry with America are precisely those whom the government has been transformed to favor. The former can't stop cheering for a country whose institutions and elites, as every day passes, more openly despise and work against them. The latter can't stop complaining about a county that they've successfully remade in their own image to serve their own interests. At least the latter know that their complaints have a strategic purpose: to continue to punish the former and further transform America to their liking. The former are, emotionally, living in the past."
Ch. 4 - Anton talks about globalism and its goals for a borderless economic zone. Here I did disagree with his comments on "homogenization." I think it's hard to dispute that the products manufactured today are both of overall better quality and of far more variety, even for the poor, than at any time in the history of the planet. I would say quantity, quality and variety are not the issues, rather remuneration and monopolization are, among other things. A fantastic quote from pg. 205: "This cost-free ""fun"" of being ""on the right side of history"" is a big part of the reason why every achieved triumph leads inexorably to the next struggle, why every fresh enthusiasm immediately becomes the next ""defining civil rights issue of our time"." And another from truism from pg. 208: "So long as the destructive energy is aimed at tradition, religion, and culture, the ruling class aren't worried: half of them despise that stuff as much as the Wokerati do, and the other half figure they can wall themselves off from whatever downsides may arise from acid-washing away all historic supports for productivity, morality, and order." Anton describes the 3 possible options for the end results of increasing societal chaos. Pg. 221: "Alternatively, perhaps the ruling class has made a bet that however antisocial the behavior of their surrounding serfs and barbarians may get, their own lives will never suffer. The Great March of Progress, let from the top, will go on. The implicit wager here is that states don't matter, that the Davos Archipelago is a kind of quasi-independent and self-sufficient Hanseatic League."
Ch. 5 - Interesting discussion of the reality behind the myths of Ellis Island immigration nested inside the much larger and wider-ranging discussion of the immigration issue.
Ch. 6 - Titled "If Present Trends Continue...," Anton here makes his predictions of the consequences of not regaining Constitutional control of our government. He asks on pg. 307: "...how long can a county that can't run a train or make surgical masks, that despises its past and antagonizes half its citizenry, sustain its position as global hegemon? ...Indeed, to what extent is the wealth necessary to maintaining our hegemony derived from that hegemony?" Pg. 313: "Ultimately, there are only two ways to hold the current ruling coalition together: generate and distribute enough spoils to keep everyone happy, and stoke the constituent parts' common resentments." Pg. 316: "The core purpose of mass immigration for the left specifically (as opposed to the ruling-class passion for cheap labor) is demographically to overwhelm red America so that, first and foremost, no Republican can ever win the presidency again and second, the Republican Party becomes irrelevant in as many states, counties, and cities as possible." He is right, for this is, of course, why the current Regime secretly flies and buses illegal immigrants to political swing localities.
Ch. 8 - Anton looks to solutions. Pg. 367: "...the Republican party needs to become more like the old Democratic Party- more worker-friendly, more concerned with wage and wealth inequality- but also the opposite of today's Democratic Party: openly nationalistic on economics and trade, stalwartly traditional on morality and culture. If the Republicans can so transform themselves, they have a chance. If they cannot, then the party will have to be destroyed and replaced, or else left to wither in the ruling class's anteroom, its dwindling adherents the last to realize their won irrelevance." Hmmm... this sounds like Trumpism sans the "morality and culture" part. Anton details a party platform going forward, then ends by listing strategies to be adopted. They include:
1. Attack the legitimacy of the ruling class and their media lapdogs.
2. Found new media (movie studio / TV network) in order to confront the culture head-on. Ben Shapiro is attempting to do this at this writing.
3. When able, use government power - clean out Federal LE, Intel, etc. agencies & use anti-trust law to break up tech monopolies.
4. Education: Repeal anti-bankruptcy law for undergraduate degrees only, curtail government grants and make them contingent on elimination of race-based admissions. Decouple education from broader job market. Reform primary education- make it patriotic and assimilationist (this book was written just prior to the country-wide local parent revolt against CRT and associated progressive political dreck being integrated into all levels of primary ed). Anton calls to stop the "feminization" of boys- maybe start a network of all-boys schools; pg. 397 rather strongly states: "America will not benefit from raising another generation of sissies and beaten dogs." He amusingly suggests perhaps some type of "holistic military schools." As an aside, I think the "start-up" UTAX is positive development and another alternative way forward, especially as far as cleaning up the intellectual wasteland that liberal arts and humanities have almost universally become. University administrations and DIE departments have to be lanced.
5. Unrelentingly defend the Bill of Rights. Recognize any calls to suppress "hate speech" & complaints about "money in politics" are just veiled attacks on free speech.
6. Defend the Electoral College. I would say if there is a "hill to die on," this is it.
7. Attack the Kritarchy, ways to approach this. One of the most challenging tasks, honestly.
8. Defend voting integrity.
9. In Anton's view the most important: Create and elevate a new elite.
10. Allow counties, cities, towns to join an adjacent state.
To end, a quote from pg. 402 from Anton's legitimate condemnation of the failure of establishment conservatives: "So, ""conservatives":" if the Constitution is what you care about most, then you should have been far more concerned with helping the American people remain fit to maintain it and be governed by it." So true.
October 12, 2020
This book is mandatory reading for American conservatives. The Stakes is a well written book that essentially divided into four parts: a case study of California, a diagnosis of the current ruling class, a prophecy of what is to follow, and solutions. This book is written so that it will remain relevant after the 2020 election, and when compare to other mainstream Nationalist-Populist books, offers a much deeper look into the past, present, and future than say Tucker Carlson's Ship of Fools.
Section 1: California. Pages 1 to 53 is a case study of California, and this chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Anton starts off describing mid century California, a state where the depiction of the Brady Bunch matched the reality of the time. A place where:
Today, such a scenario is unthinkable. Anton does an excellent job demonstrating how if one doesn't come from inherited money, the average person achieving the middle-class dream is near impossible or requires a souless lifestyle of long commutes, that hardly makes life worth living. After going through the list of all the problems California has, and the incompetency of the state to fix these problems, this book really helps articulate why so many people are leaving the state. Anton's message is that California is what our ruling class wants to turn America into, which leads us to the next section where he describes the ruling class.
Section 2: The State of Our Ruling Class. There were four standout parts of the second section that I think are worth highlighting. The chapter "Torching the Parchment" is excellent defense of the Founding Fathers, where Anton defends them against both the far left and the far right. A standout part of is the sub-section "Equality Revisted" (77-83) where Anton discusses what the Founder's meant when they said that "All men are created equal". The Founder's knew that talents, wisdom, and virtue were not equally distributed, and also not inheritable traits, thus built a system that was designed to try to get the most talented individuals into power. Anton's point is how the vision of the Founder's is superior to the system we have created a few centuries on.
Another incredibly memorable sub-section was "Virtue and Wisdom vs. Consent" (122-123), where Anton goes into how our current ruling class justifies its power:
If you follow this book up with reading Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game which does an amazing job at demonstrating how most "expertise" celebrated today is a myth, then you get a sense of how hollow this ruling class is.
Pages 165-167 "The Celebration Parallax" is refreshing for everyone who has felt like they are insane after being told that the great replacement theory is a racist conspiracy theory, and then watching those same people celebrating the replacement of straight white males.
I was also glad to see Michael Anton take on porn on page 185, and correctly calling porn out for being the enslaving spiritual disaster that it is. I wish more people had his courage.
Section 3: What is to Come. The third section is where Anton moves into prophecy. In the "Only More So" section he envisions what happens if the current ruling class is able to tighten its grip on power. In some respects the dystopia is already here with so called "racists" being denied social media platforms, banking (in a world that is moving away from cash), travel, and (as proposed in the UK) healthcare. With the standard for so called bigotry being arbitrarily expanded and shifted year by year, a stealth implementation of a Chinese social credit score is a very dark direction for a liberal democracy to head towards.
The most fun part of the book is the chapter "...And if they Don't" where Anton theorizes the possible ways how this ruling class could collapse, and the ways Americans might respond from political segregation, to Caeserism, or succession.
Section 4: What to Do About It. After spending 376 pages of waterboarding you with blackpills, Anton finally comes in to show a way out. He uses his chapter "A New Platform" to basically describe the Nationalist-Populist platform (halt to immigration until we reach full employment, improve infrastructure, have an industrial policy, move away from sociopathic libertarian economic policies, opposing any discrimination, etc). The more exciting part is the chapter "What Now" where Anton proposes a bunch of ideas of how to correct course. Some of my favorite are his educational ideas, and his efforts to promote heroic masculinity.
The last sub-section of the book if an incredibly fun and exciting read, where Anton proposes the creation of new states and the redrawing of borders of current states as way to bring the temperature down in the country. This would be done in a Missouri Compromise method as to not sway the balance of the senate to one side or another. The historic precedents he cites are quite convincing, and left me thinking that this would be an option that should be considered by both political parties.
Overall this is a great book and really captures the spirit of our time. All Americans on the right should read this book as he does an excellent job laying out the political landscape around us, and presents realistic scenarios of how things can develop. It is both demoralizing and exciting. It's up to you to figure out what you are going to do with the knowledge he gives.
Section 1: California. Pages 1 to 53 is a case study of California, and this chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Anton starts off describing mid century California, a state where the depiction of the Brady Bunch matched the reality of the time. A place where:
...a middle-class family with six children (!) whose non-dufus dad (!!) provided, on one income (!!!), not just the sustenance but also a spacious semi-suburban detached house with front and back yards, in the City of Los Angeles (!!!!)- specifically, LA's San Fernando Valley, ground zero for middle-class bliss not just for California but in the entire postwar United States.
Today, such a scenario is unthinkable. Anton does an excellent job demonstrating how if one doesn't come from inherited money, the average person achieving the middle-class dream is near impossible or requires a souless lifestyle of long commutes, that hardly makes life worth living. After going through the list of all the problems California has, and the incompetency of the state to fix these problems, this book really helps articulate why so many people are leaving the state. Anton's message is that California is what our ruling class wants to turn America into, which leads us to the next section where he describes the ruling class.
Section 2: The State of Our Ruling Class. There were four standout parts of the second section that I think are worth highlighting. The chapter "Torching the Parchment" is excellent defense of the Founding Fathers, where Anton defends them against both the far left and the far right. A standout part of is the sub-section "Equality Revisted" (77-83) where Anton discusses what the Founder's meant when they said that "All men are created equal". The Founder's knew that talents, wisdom, and virtue were not equally distributed, and also not inheritable traits, thus built a system that was designed to try to get the most talented individuals into power. Anton's point is how the vision of the Founder's is superior to the system we have created a few centuries on.
Another incredibly memorable sub-section was "Virtue and Wisdom vs. Consent" (122-123), where Anton goes into how our current ruling class justifies its power:
"By contrast, our current overlords rest their claim to rule on a two-fold and mutually reinforcing assertion of superiority. The first is expertise: their purportedly superior understanding of the complexities of modern life, grounded in their purportedly superior intelligence and elite education. These claims dovetail neatly with their moral claim, because to twenty-first-century America's elite, virtue is less a matter of what one does or does not do than what one believes and does not believe. To be smart and educated is to hold the correct opinions; to hold the correct opinions is evidence of intelligence and education....
This is not to dismiss all claims to expertise as ipso facto illegitimate. Government in the complex modern world needs expertiese- but confined to its proper sphere. Many problems cannot be solved without recourse to specialized information, which experts-- and often only experts-- possess. But in a system based on the consent of the governed, expertise may inform policy, but it cant justly make policy without first persuading democratic majorities. Our elites ignore or override the latter when they contradict elite consensus. This is undemocratic and illegitimate use of expertise."
If you follow this book up with reading Nassim Taleb's Skin in the Game which does an amazing job at demonstrating how most "expertise" celebrated today is a myth, then you get a sense of how hollow this ruling class is.
Pages 165-167 "The Celebration Parallax" is refreshing for everyone who has felt like they are insane after being told that the great replacement theory is a racist conspiracy theory, and then watching those same people celebrating the replacement of straight white males.
"In the case of contemporary speech, the decisive factor is the intent of the speaker. If she can be presumed to be celebrating the phenomenon under discussion, she may shout her approval from the rooftops. If not, she should shut up before someone comes along and shuts her up."
I was also glad to see Michael Anton take on porn on page 185, and correctly calling porn out for being the enslaving spiritual disaster that it is. I wish more people had his courage.
Section 3: What is to Come. The third section is where Anton moves into prophecy. In the "Only More So" section he envisions what happens if the current ruling class is able to tighten its grip on power. In some respects the dystopia is already here with so called "racists" being denied social media platforms, banking (in a world that is moving away from cash), travel, and (as proposed in the UK) healthcare. With the standard for so called bigotry being arbitrarily expanded and shifted year by year, a stealth implementation of a Chinese social credit score is a very dark direction for a liberal democracy to head towards.
The most fun part of the book is the chapter "...And if they Don't" where Anton theorizes the possible ways how this ruling class could collapse, and the ways Americans might respond from political segregation, to Caeserism, or succession.
Section 4: What to Do About It. After spending 376 pages of waterboarding you with blackpills, Anton finally comes in to show a way out. He uses his chapter "A New Platform" to basically describe the Nationalist-Populist platform (halt to immigration until we reach full employment, improve infrastructure, have an industrial policy, move away from sociopathic libertarian economic policies, opposing any discrimination, etc). The more exciting part is the chapter "What Now" where Anton proposes a bunch of ideas of how to correct course. Some of my favorite are his educational ideas, and his efforts to promote heroic masculinity.
The last sub-section of the book if an incredibly fun and exciting read, where Anton proposes the creation of new states and the redrawing of borders of current states as way to bring the temperature down in the country. This would be done in a Missouri Compromise method as to not sway the balance of the senate to one side or another. The historic precedents he cites are quite convincing, and left me thinking that this would be an option that should be considered by both political parties.
Overall this is a great book and really captures the spirit of our time. All Americans on the right should read this book as he does an excellent job laying out the political landscape around us, and presents realistic scenarios of how things can develop. It is both demoralizing and exciting. It's up to you to figure out what you are going to do with the knowledge he gives.
September 19, 2021
This book predicts the future of the US by extrapolating from California (i.e. California is ~20 years in the future). Makes the case that we're at a crossroads (although we always are...). Pretty well written and reaffirms your beliefs if you're already somewhat on the right, but probably not super effective at convincing anyone actively in opposition, and doesn't really make new arguments or new data.
However, the immigration and other arguments are presented very well.
However, the immigration and other arguments are presented very well.
December 14, 2020
To Anton America is about to enter the Moon's orbit and it will be impossible to reach the Earth afterwards. It makes some sense, only Anton is not that intelligent.
November 27, 2020
Semi-spoiler alert (but no deep details)
It's hard to pick a starting point for all I want to say about this book, but let's give it a go.
At this point, I should have learned that length of book does not equate to superior or inferior material. Nonetheless, a cursory glance piqued mt interest, and finally, I decided to bite the bullet and buy it.
Getting into it, I could see it read a lot like stream-of-consciousness, but by his references, he's obviously well-read, and more often than not, would make solid arguments and points. At least enough to keep me reading.
But somewhere in the last 30-50 pages (semi-spoiler alert), he lost me. Then he'd find me. Then he'd lose me again. That cycle continued through to the end. And admittedly, he's not claiming to have all the answers. But what scares me is that he most seems to have the courage of his convictions when it comes to top-down approaches.
All of this is not to say don't read the book. It is interesting and informative at many points. If one is involved in policy it might prove helpful as a reference. Just please don't use this as the final word.
It's hard to pick a starting point for all I want to say about this book, but let's give it a go.
At this point, I should have learned that length of book does not equate to superior or inferior material. Nonetheless, a cursory glance piqued mt interest, and finally, I decided to bite the bullet and buy it.
Getting into it, I could see it read a lot like stream-of-consciousness, but by his references, he's obviously well-read, and more often than not, would make solid arguments and points. At least enough to keep me reading.
But somewhere in the last 30-50 pages (semi-spoiler alert), he lost me. Then he'd find me. Then he'd lose me again. That cycle continued through to the end. And admittedly, he's not claiming to have all the answers. But what scares me is that he most seems to have the courage of his convictions when it comes to top-down approaches.
All of this is not to say don't read the book. It is interesting and informative at many points. If one is involved in policy it might prove helpful as a reference. Just please don't use this as the final word.
November 30, 2020
I enjoyed reading this book. The author has an insightful take on the current situation as well as some good ideas regarding possible solutions. I don't usually read current events/political books but I saw the author being interviewed by Timothy Gordon on his YouTube channel and I was impressed by his performance. He mentioned that he had a recently written a book so I ordered it. I was not disappointed. It's worth the read, especially now.
August 26, 2021
There’s obviously something in the political air today about the divide between the DC or technological oligarchy and the rest of the United States. This is the third book in a row I’ve read that I didn’t know was about that divide but turned out to be.
I bought this because it went on sale after the election and it was marketed as a book about why we should vote for Donald Trump in 2020. It’s always fascinating to see such prognostications after the fact. However, this book is nothing about that. Trump is barely mentioned except in one small chapter at the end which is about the divide between Trump voters and the Republican old guard.
The “stakes” in the book are the consent of the governed, the predations of a vindictive ruling class, and the modern liberal democracy. Unlike the other two political books I’ve read recently, The Stakes does not attempt to explain that the divide between Republican and Democrat voters is an artificial divide meant to benefit a uniparty ruling class. Anton assumes the reader already knows this, and describes how the ruling class deception evolved, how to recognize it in modern politics, and how it hurts working class and middle class Americans who live and work—to the extent that they can—outside the narrative elite.
The alternative to these stakes is to continue down the road of technologically-driven abolishment of freedom of speech and other parts of the constitution, until we have “a neoliberal finance-tech oligarchy whose absolute rule is disguised by meaningless staged elections.”
Because he wrote this before November 2020, when he discusses how voter fraud affects the outlook of the governed, he’s talking before it became part of the narrative that voter fraud is a dangerous conspiracy theory from potential domestic terrorists. Fraud was still a given across the political spectrum, and he doesn’t know that, by the end of the year, what he says here about, for example, elections “overturned… through boxes of ‘found’ ballots, or by some other means” will be controversial.
One of the most interesting parts of this book to me, however, is not so much the politics as his view of how and why technological advancement is stagnating. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. I’m supposed to be a technological dinosaur. Much as Mark Steyn wrote about in After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, the technology really hasn’t changed much over my adult lifetime. Computers have become more powerful, but we already had them; and much of what we thought we’d have now we not only don’t, but we’ve been backsliding on. Our public transport systems not only don’t look like the Jetsons, they’re also less reliable and more prone to failure.
The picture he presents is one that could be part of the montage at the beginning of one of those post-civilizational movies of the seventies or eighties, such as Mad Max, where there was no apocalyptic event that caused the post-apocalypse world; civilization simply wound down.
Anton lays this squarely on an elite that doesn’t care about the middle class, nor even respect the accomplishments that a thriving middle class brings. Inequality, he writes, is on the rise. Despite “more than a half century of warring against inequality… America [is] as unequal as it was in the so-called robber baron era—perhaps more so.”
The narrative elite literally try to treat the conservative middle class as terrorists, and consider those who believe that teenage girls need their own sports teams or that God exists as the same threat level as real terrorists.
Despite very commonly using the term “left” to describe the elite, Anton is not writing about Democrats vs. Republicans. Most Republicans in power are part of the left in his telling. They either openly support the goals of the elite, or they acquiesce to them, even when faced with issues of common sense and wide public support.
This was an incredible summary of how the divide in America has changed from one in which “red” and “blue” tended to living intermingled at the same levels of society into one in which a technological and narrative elite has separated itself from the working and middle class. His solutions are less interesting than his overview. Anton himself has been part of that elite for much of his life, and some of his solutions seem mired in that viewpoint, that for our biggest problems, a big government solution will solve it—a national health care system of sorts, perhaps wage subsidies.
And that his solutions depend on either rebuilding the Republican party to support the working and middle classes or creating a new party to replace them is also something he admits will be difficult at best.
But neither of those detract from the important, essential, insights he has on the decline of the modern liberalism that has given us such freedom and such technological advancement, and how important it is to halt that decline.
I bought this because it went on sale after the election and it was marketed as a book about why we should vote for Donald Trump in 2020. It’s always fascinating to see such prognostications after the fact. However, this book is nothing about that. Trump is barely mentioned except in one small chapter at the end which is about the divide between Trump voters and the Republican old guard.
The “stakes” in the book are the consent of the governed, the predations of a vindictive ruling class, and the modern liberal democracy. Unlike the other two political books I’ve read recently, The Stakes does not attempt to explain that the divide between Republican and Democrat voters is an artificial divide meant to benefit a uniparty ruling class. Anton assumes the reader already knows this, and describes how the ruling class deception evolved, how to recognize it in modern politics, and how it hurts working class and middle class Americans who live and work—to the extent that they can—outside the narrative elite.
The alternative to these stakes is to continue down the road of technologically-driven abolishment of freedom of speech and other parts of the constitution, until we have “a neoliberal finance-tech oligarchy whose absolute rule is disguised by meaningless staged elections.”
Because he wrote this before November 2020, when he discusses how voter fraud affects the outlook of the governed, he’s talking before it became part of the narrative that voter fraud is a dangerous conspiracy theory from potential domestic terrorists. Fraud was still a given across the political spectrum, and he doesn’t know that, by the end of the year, what he says here about, for example, elections “overturned… through boxes of ‘found’ ballots, or by some other means” will be controversial.
One of the most interesting parts of this book to me, however, is not so much the politics as his view of how and why technological advancement is stagnating. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. I’m supposed to be a technological dinosaur. Much as Mark Steyn wrote about in After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, the technology really hasn’t changed much over my adult lifetime. Computers have become more powerful, but we already had them; and much of what we thought we’d have now we not only don’t, but we’ve been backsliding on. Our public transport systems not only don’t look like the Jetsons, they’re also less reliable and more prone to failure.
Did you know, for instance, that most commercial flights take longer now than they did in the 1970s? That’s both because the planes are slower and because of an outdated air traffic and airport system that can’t handle congestion and incentivizes padding schedules. This is, of course, to say nothing of the horrible ordeal of getting through airport security or the purgatory-like environment and experience on board.
The New York City subway… is still dirty, smelly, overcrowded, slow, and always late. The MTA blames this on an “outdated signal system” that dates from when the network was originally built in the early twentieth century. And no doubt, technology from the ragtime era is probably no longer cutting-edge. But what does it New York—about America—that we’ve not managed to find a way to update it in 120 years?
For twelve years, I was a daily commuter on America’s busiest rail line, Metro-North, which ferries office drones in and out of Manhattan. When I started riding, very train, every day, in both directions, was on time to the minute per the printed schedule. At some point in the early 2010s, I started to notice increasing lateness. Trains would either arrive late or else park mid-route on the tracks for extended periods. Curious, at one point I kept a log of every ride I took for a month. Not a single one either departed or arrived on time.
The picture he presents is one that could be part of the montage at the beginning of one of those post-civilizational movies of the seventies or eighties, such as Mad Max, where there was no apocalyptic event that caused the post-apocalypse world; civilization simply wound down.
Anton lays this squarely on an elite that doesn’t care about the middle class, nor even respect the accomplishments that a thriving middle class brings. Inequality, he writes, is on the rise. Despite “more than a half century of warring against inequality… America [is] as unequal as it was in the so-called robber baron era—perhaps more so.”
It’s not a coincidence that this rise began more or less precisely when old American social, political, and economic arrangements began to give way to what come to be called “neoliberalism.” A more precise name might be “managerial leftist-libertarianism,” for this movement is top-down, bureaucratic, and anti-democratic, committed to social engineering and grievance politics, and undermines virtue while promoting vice.
The narrative elite literally try to treat the conservative middle class as terrorists, and consider those who believe that teenage girls need their own sports teams or that God exists as the same threat level as real terrorists.
Despite very commonly using the term “left” to describe the elite, Anton is not writing about Democrats vs. Republicans. Most Republicans in power are part of the left in his telling. They either openly support the goals of the elite, or they acquiesce to them, even when faced with issues of common sense and wide public support.
The left’s rout of the right in the “culture wars” has made Republicans so gun-shy that they can’t even seize obvious opportunities such as standing up for female high school athletes who suddenly find themselves losing all their track meets to biological boys.
Fifty-year-old men asserting a fundamental “right” to change in front of eleven-year-old girls in YWCA locker rooms is not the moral equivalent of ending Jim Crow—and despite the left’s caterwauling, few Americans see it that way.
This was an incredible summary of how the divide in America has changed from one in which “red” and “blue” tended to living intermingled at the same levels of society into one in which a technological and narrative elite has separated itself from the working and middle class. His solutions are less interesting than his overview. Anton himself has been part of that elite for much of his life, and some of his solutions seem mired in that viewpoint, that for our biggest problems, a big government solution will solve it—a national health care system of sorts, perhaps wage subsidies.
And that his solutions depend on either rebuilding the Republican party to support the working and middle classes or creating a new party to replace them is also something he admits will be difficult at best.
But neither of those detract from the important, essential, insights he has on the decline of the modern liberalism that has given us such freedom and such technological advancement, and how important it is to halt that decline.
Perhaps the greatest irony of modern American politics is that those most attached to America—the physical country, its history, and its symbols—are those its government least serves… [they] can’t stop cheering for a country whose institutions and elites, as every day passes, more openly despise and work against them.
September 29, 2020
I appreciated Michael Anton's contribution to the last election. This book is something similar. It would be wrong, however, to say that what Anton is doing is making a case for desperate times in order to push us to desperate measures. He does think we are on the brink. But he believes we are on the brink because we have for too long been lacking in the necessary virtues.
I appreciate the constant appeal to history, to the classics of political philosophy, and to reasoned judgment. Many people participate in political thinking but not in an intelligent way. Anton's problem is not that he's unintelligent in his approach.
I do wonder if his problem is one of the imagination. He is great at imagining scenarios of doom and coming up with arguments for the worst possible outcome. Why does he not use his imagination more in coming up with solutions that are better worked out? He goes to such lengths to figure out future bad outcomes, anticipating arguments against his predictions but at the end of the book does not give proportionate space to think his way into the solutions. Is a person who can only envisage ruin and has no idea how to build therefore a conservative? Anton has a final chapter with some roughly sketched out suggestions, but these are nothing to the long, brooding chapters on how bad it is and how much worse it can become. I understand the need to make the point, but the effect is not what one would call spirited. I think in that sense, tacitly, it is more an indictment of conservatism and one of the reasons it fails as spectacularly as it does to appeal.
It is a grim book. It is probably a necessary book. But because it dwells so long on the problem and the solution is little more than a gesture, it nurtures despair more than it does hope. Is that what Anton wanted to achieve?
I appreciate the constant appeal to history, to the classics of political philosophy, and to reasoned judgment. Many people participate in political thinking but not in an intelligent way. Anton's problem is not that he's unintelligent in his approach.
I do wonder if his problem is one of the imagination. He is great at imagining scenarios of doom and coming up with arguments for the worst possible outcome. Why does he not use his imagination more in coming up with solutions that are better worked out? He goes to such lengths to figure out future bad outcomes, anticipating arguments against his predictions but at the end of the book does not give proportionate space to think his way into the solutions. Is a person who can only envisage ruin and has no idea how to build therefore a conservative? Anton has a final chapter with some roughly sketched out suggestions, but these are nothing to the long, brooding chapters on how bad it is and how much worse it can become. I understand the need to make the point, but the effect is not what one would call spirited. I think in that sense, tacitly, it is more an indictment of conservatism and one of the reasons it fails as spectacularly as it does to appeal.
It is a grim book. It is probably a necessary book. But because it dwells so long on the problem and the solution is little more than a gesture, it nurtures despair more than it does hope. Is that what Anton wanted to achieve?
November 5, 2020
Perfect book to read on election night!
November 1, 2020
This book is a timely reminder of what is at stake in the American election of 2020. This is not an election between Republican or Democrat but of ruling elites versus overlooked disdained dispised average Americans. I could have done with less snark from the author, but it is hard not to be snarky in a climate such as ours today. I was surprised by his general opinion of where the GOP must go-- center right. Embracing labor and becoming more like a JFK democrat then the globe embracing Bush's. It is an interesting read at least.
January 25, 2021
Eye-opening informative look at the current situation in the USA. Hint - the "Elite" oligarchs in the U.S. want to turn the rest of America into California. In other words, they want to destroy the middle class in order to bolster their own power. Anton takes a serious hypothetical look at how things might play out over the next 20 years and what we can do in the here and now. I want to go back and re-read this book.
September 27, 2020
Great read!!
February 7, 2021
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It sometimes got a little slow because Anton was very thorough in his argumentation. I like to judge books by how engaged the book made feel and think throughout and four stars seems right to me. If you hate right wing politics, then you're going to hate this book. I don't understand hate-reading something.
A really thoughtful exploration and argumentation of right wing politics (particularly of the nationalism / populism bent) in 2020. It explores the right's view of American neo-liberalism, its failures, its consequences, and attempts to guess at what comes next.
Based upon my reading, I would say that Anton identifies 4 main problems with American neo-liberalism. The primary is mass illegal and legal immigration. Immigration stagnates wages for Americans, stresses social services (schools in particular), and creates distrust among communities within cities, where immigrants primarily live (since assimilation is no longer needed -immigrants can live in a community solely of their own people - and it is not promoted). It also creates resentment among Republican voters because the number one correlation that someone will vote Democrat is whether the voter themselves is an immigrant or the voter is a child of an immigrant.
Second is wealth inequality created by stagnating technology (personal computing was the last great revolution in productivity), outsourcing, immigration, and financialization. Average American wages have been relatively stagnant since the 1970s while the cost of living has increased. It requires two working parents in order to provide the same middle class lifestyle that a family could sustain on one income in the 1960s. This wealth inequality (and lack of good jobs) has spun into urban blight, the opioid crisis, etc.
Third is what is commonly referred on the right as identity politics. Identity politics a) distributes wealth from one type of people to another (pick winners and losers), b) create narratives and "history" that destroy people's connection to America as a country and their community (atomize the individual), or c) create fear and destruction when necessary for a purpose (June-August riots).
The atomized individual then turns to food, things, drugs, and porn to make themselves. Of course, neo-liberal companies are happy to sell them all the products/services. Or they're happy to buy cheap real estate for redevelopment once the fires stop burning.
Fourth is concentration of power and wealth in a few American companies (particularly in Silicon Valley) and the US government to create the Megaphone and the Muzzle. The Megaphone amplifies whatever message neo-liberalism wants to promote (mostly identity politics) in order promote its agenda. The Muzzle is the ability to bring social media backlash, outright ban, or prosecution based upon having the perceived "wrong" politics or ideas.
Anton is thorough in covering the counter-arguments against the above ideas (or at least stating the typical liberal argumentation). Whether you agree with Anton or the liberal argumentation is more about your personal intellectual bent than the argument itself.
Anton has a big problem with many Republicans (and particularly their wealth donors) that mostly embrace corporatism, mass immigration, and on some level the identity politics of the age.
The last third of the book is dedicated to predictions, possible futures, and what to do next (if your in right wing politics).
As for predictions, I would say that his "big idea" prediction is the idea of a "Blue" or "Red" Caesar. A Caesar is a strong man/woman from one of the dominant political sides that really does not care for the rule of law (what Caesar does), but is put in power to bring peace, stability, and (hopefully) governance. The people (whichever side puts their Caesar in power) does so because they are afraid of the other and there is enough of a threat of violence and instability to make the populace crave law and order more than democratic rule.
Among other predictions, Anton very accurately predicted Republican resentment of the 2020 election and the consequences of that resentment. (Book was published in the late summer/early fall of 2020)
I think there are probably a few leftists (the What's Left podcast comes to mind) that would agree with at least some, if not most, of Anton's analysis regarding wealth inequality and the concentration of power by some corporations. However, identity politics will continue to keep those leftists from having real power or influence or maybe even keep them from agreeing with Anton's solutions (on some level).
Some other important concepts discussed in the book that I found to be accurate descriptions of current American politics: celebration parallax and the law of merited impossibility. Celebration parallax is when an objective event is viewed completely different depending on the view point of the observer. In the political realm an example of this is when a right winger discusses demographic change and how whites will no longer represent a majority of the population soon, the media calls it an alt right racist conspiracy theory, but then can turn right around and publish an article by lefty that states the same thing about demographics and how it should be celebrated. Law of merited impossibility (from Rod Dreher) is "No, that will never happen, but when it does, you'll deserve it, bigot."
A really thoughtful exploration and argumentation of right wing politics (particularly of the nationalism / populism bent) in 2020. It explores the right's view of American neo-liberalism, its failures, its consequences, and attempts to guess at what comes next.
Based upon my reading, I would say that Anton identifies 4 main problems with American neo-liberalism. The primary is mass illegal and legal immigration. Immigration stagnates wages for Americans, stresses social services (schools in particular), and creates distrust among communities within cities, where immigrants primarily live (since assimilation is no longer needed -immigrants can live in a community solely of their own people - and it is not promoted). It also creates resentment among Republican voters because the number one correlation that someone will vote Democrat is whether the voter themselves is an immigrant or the voter is a child of an immigrant.
Second is wealth inequality created by stagnating technology (personal computing was the last great revolution in productivity), outsourcing, immigration, and financialization. Average American wages have been relatively stagnant since the 1970s while the cost of living has increased. It requires two working parents in order to provide the same middle class lifestyle that a family could sustain on one income in the 1960s. This wealth inequality (and lack of good jobs) has spun into urban blight, the opioid crisis, etc.
Third is what is commonly referred on the right as identity politics. Identity politics a) distributes wealth from one type of people to another (pick winners and losers), b) create narratives and "history" that destroy people's connection to America as a country and their community (atomize the individual), or c) create fear and destruction when necessary for a purpose (June-August riots).
The atomized individual then turns to food, things, drugs, and porn to make themselves. Of course, neo-liberal companies are happy to sell them all the products/services. Or they're happy to buy cheap real estate for redevelopment once the fires stop burning.
Fourth is concentration of power and wealth in a few American companies (particularly in Silicon Valley) and the US government to create the Megaphone and the Muzzle. The Megaphone amplifies whatever message neo-liberalism wants to promote (mostly identity politics) in order promote its agenda. The Muzzle is the ability to bring social media backlash, outright ban, or prosecution based upon having the perceived "wrong" politics or ideas.
Anton is thorough in covering the counter-arguments against the above ideas (or at least stating the typical liberal argumentation). Whether you agree with Anton or the liberal argumentation is more about your personal intellectual bent than the argument itself.
Anton has a big problem with many Republicans (and particularly their wealth donors) that mostly embrace corporatism, mass immigration, and on some level the identity politics of the age.
The last third of the book is dedicated to predictions, possible futures, and what to do next (if your in right wing politics).
As for predictions, I would say that his "big idea" prediction is the idea of a "Blue" or "Red" Caesar. A Caesar is a strong man/woman from one of the dominant political sides that really does not care for the rule of law (what Caesar does), but is put in power to bring peace, stability, and (hopefully) governance. The people (whichever side puts their Caesar in power) does so because they are afraid of the other and there is enough of a threat of violence and instability to make the populace crave law and order more than democratic rule.
Among other predictions, Anton very accurately predicted Republican resentment of the 2020 election and the consequences of that resentment. (Book was published in the late summer/early fall of 2020)
I think there are probably a few leftists (the What's Left podcast comes to mind) that would agree with at least some, if not most, of Anton's analysis regarding wealth inequality and the concentration of power by some corporations. However, identity politics will continue to keep those leftists from having real power or influence or maybe even keep them from agreeing with Anton's solutions (on some level).
Some other important concepts discussed in the book that I found to be accurate descriptions of current American politics: celebration parallax and the law of merited impossibility. Celebration parallax is when an objective event is viewed completely different depending on the view point of the observer. In the political realm an example of this is when a right winger discusses demographic change and how whites will no longer represent a majority of the population soon, the media calls it an alt right racist conspiracy theory, but then can turn right around and publish an article by lefty that states the same thing about demographics and how it should be celebrated. Law of merited impossibility (from Rod Dreher) is "No, that will never happen, but when it does, you'll deserve it, bigot."
August 13, 2021
Simple Minded
The author pretends to be an intellectual of sorts, but depends on name calling, stereotyping, and demonizing. While piously claiming traditional and religious values, he wholeheartedly supports those without them. His arguments do not ring true, even if you share some of his positions.
The author pretends to be an intellectual of sorts, but depends on name calling, stereotyping, and demonizing. While piously claiming traditional and religious values, he wholeheartedly supports those without them. His arguments do not ring true, even if you share some of his positions.
May 22, 2022
A very sobering account of current political situation in the United States. Although written prior to the last presidential election it is still an insightful and informative political analysis that continues to be applicable. Will be re-reading in order to highlight and annotate the many critical points that were made.
February 21, 2023
started finished 21st february 2023 kindle library loaner first from anton and i stopped reading not sure where i was but early on california is lost, was once the place to be, no more and as california goes so goes the nation. we're witnessing the downfall of the last hope for western civilization and it remains to be seen what will rise form the ashes, if anything, or when.
April 29, 2024
This book is such an important work in the political science field that highlights the future of America under the current regime. Everyone should read this book, regardless of political beliefs, specially those in academia who are the most targeted by these dangerous ideologies that will be detrimental to the future of the nation.
July 9, 2022
Excited! Insightful! Well worth the read.
This book contains in-depth analysis of various facets of our current society, its history and its politics which i found quite illuminating.
This book contains in-depth analysis of various facets of our current society, its history and its politics which i found quite illuminating.
May 24, 2023
Well thought, written tale
An excellent novel with raw gut punch of materials every US citizen needs to read. Should be a mandate, for every civics class offered a tale of truth and horror . Highly recommended great read get it today.
An excellent novel with raw gut punch of materials every US citizen needs to read. Should be a mandate, for every civics class offered a tale of truth and horror . Highly recommended great read get it today.
September 21, 2023
Excellent summary of the current political situation. Although the author is reluctant to make predictions about the future (as any wise person would be), he does make very interesting statements about where our Republic can go.
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