Cosseted: adj.; cared for and protected in an overindulgent way; pampered.
David Mamet:
Weve often heard, Im a fiscal conservative but a social liberal; but everyone is a fiscal conservative. So the phrase can be most usefully translated: Im perfectly capable of controlling my own finances. Now I intend to control yours.
*From Mamets essay The School Dream in National Review, May 17, 2021, in a footnote.
Two events erupted recently: Governor Gavin Newsom survived a recall and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, was reported to have subverted the authority of the President in communications with subordinates in the chain of command, the military leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and the Presidents political opposition. Obviously, both are, or can be, deeply disturbing. Which is worse? You choose.
Yet, both instances are evidence of a troubling trend among the citizenry (and uncitizenry since certain places have effectively erased the distinction). In the one, California clung to its current class of baneful leaders. In the other, according to reports coming out of Bob Woodward/Robert Costas new book, a member of an elite class of administrators these happen to be military – may have attempted to supplant the Constitutional authority of the duly-elected President with his own, even possibly going so far as to cooperate with an acknowledged and powerful foreign adversary. Its what happens when an increasingly cosseted people surrender personal sovereignty to elected or unelected lords and oligarchs in an administrative state. Its a horrible deal for rulers and ruled. It comes down to a people who longingly desire to be ruled and a group chomping at the bit to do it.
California has frequently asserted the mantle of being on the cutting edge. From Prop 13 to high tech to the counterculture, California expanded on its reputation by justifiably being the first to go from Ronald Reagan to the embrace of the Fabian socialist dream of a cradle-to-grave nanny state in the span of less than 20 years.
I suspect that demographics had a monumental role to play in the transition. Its much more than immigration. The state changed social complexion by changing its economic complexion (and I dont mean skin pigment) after the end of the Cold War. Defense industries and the kinds of people attracted them faded as their numbers were replaced by elements drawn to the burgeoning workplaces of entertainment, the college campus, unionized public-sector employment, and the pampered, climate-controlled world of computer screens on the elongated coastal plain west of the Coast Range – the denizens east electorally less consequential. The newly burgeoning cohort demand a different form of governance as opposed to those inspired by Chuck Yeager, and can be rightfully called subjects and not citizens. This new class of subjects is all-in for anything and anyone wholl promise to build, extend, and maintain the public romper room. The states Democratic Party is the breeding ground for this claque of wet nurses and hall monitors.
That distinction between a subject and citizen is critical. A subject accepts a role of inferiority in the status ladder and looks to their betters for guidance and restraint. A society of citizens is a society of peers.
For the states segment still considering themselves citizens who find this state of affairs repugnant, you still have the right to travel . . . if Biden hasnt repealed it for the unvaccinated. So, move, leave the place to the emotional midgets in desperate need of a helicopter-parent state.
The dependency demographic, or subjects, is always in search of a mommy or daddy wholl protect them from the vagaries of life. When the real mommy and daddy go into chronic care or the rest home, the urgency for a cloying adult stand-in becomes paramount. Stepping into the breech is the vaunted, credentialed public-sector expert and administrative functionary. The subjects hopes and affections goes to the head of the those exalted with power. The laureled class morphs into a law unto themselves to rule over the subjects. Enter General Mark Milley, showing in a more martial manner the symmetry between the Pentagon and the nanny state.
In California, the elected leadership and the massive, unionized administrative state that they birthed are unsurprisingly on the same page. Nationally, the situation is quite different. Many states arent as affectionate of rule by credentialed autocrat. Thats where you find the greatest concentration of citizens. Since there is a whole other expanse to the country between the coasts, sometimes elected federal leadership doesnt correspond to the wishes of the Google and Harvard campuses. Yet, the specific ethos of the minions of DC and its environs is more at home on those campuses than Texas-to-North Dakota.
The Pentagon is an administrative state par excellence. Think of it as a microcosm of Sacramento, and Sacramento is solely a microcosm of LA to San Francisco. Milley sounds like he stepped out of CRT/Faculty Lounge central casting, or the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, only in uniform. For instance, why was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff weighing in on an ongoing criminal matter the Derek Chauvin case imitating Rev. Al Sharpton? If your eyes were closed, youd mistake his June 2020 National Defense University commencement address for a Jeremiah Wright sermon. Heres a snippet:
I am outraged by the senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd. His death amplified the pain, the frustration, and the fear that so many of our fellow Americans live with day in and day out. The protests that have ensued, not only speak to his killing, but also to the centuries of injustice towards African Americans. What we are seeing is the long shadow of original sin in Jamestown, 401 years ago.
Mind you, Chauvins trial hadnt begun but that didnt stop Milley from declaring his guilt with as much caution and reserve as Maxine Waters at a BLM rally. Little did we know back then that we were experiencing our first woke, safe-space, four-star general who functions at the frontier between a racialist neo-Marxism and treason.
Who can forget his following years comments before Congress? He sounded less like a mature adult and more like the infantile statue topplers of the previous summer of manufactured rage. In response to a question on the teaching of CRT in the military academies, he said, I want to understand white rage and Im white, and I want to understand it. The answer assumes the existence of white rage and is not a call for the academic study of its legitimacy.
Milley and Austin subsequently tried to backtrack on their white rage and white supremacy remarks. He later said, I want America to know that the United States military is an apolitical institution. Its pure hokum. Of course Austin and Milley are politicizing the military in their ideologically-laced purges and neo-Marxist indoctrination.
To better understand, lets turn to an instructive hypothetical. Lets say that the concern is about the teaching of Marxism in the academies. Suppose Milley had said, I want to understand capitalist exploitation of the working class and Im a capitalist, and I want to understand it. Already hes gone more than halfway to accepting the premises of communism. Marxism and CRT are claptrap. Understanding claptrap is a mealy-mouthed way of accepting many of its fundamentals. Whos he trying to fool? The cadets are being indoctrinated in a form of ideological self-loathing.
And I havent gotten to the most disturbing charge against Milley. Most frightening is his alleged usurpation of civilian control of the military and his pre- and post-election cooperative assurances to the head of the CCPs Peoples Liberation Army. The latter behavior comes very close to the Article III, Section 3, clause 1s definition of treason. A portion of which says, Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. Milley certainly may have given the Communist Chinese aid and comfort, even though technically and legally Red China isnt a formally declared enemy. But Congress never declared war on the USSR and there is many rotting in prison for giving aid and comfort through espionage to the Kremlin.
Thats how Milley gets off: he didnt commit espionage. He allegedly just picked up the phone to openly declare the aid and comfort. No sneaking around . . . apparently. But that puts him in the same category as O.J. Simpson. Everybody knows theyre guilty but the technicalities of jury nullification and legal jargon saved them from the chair and Leavenworth.
California is a sickening role model. Dont expect citizens to emerge from the cosseting of perpetual adolescence in a nanny state. The best hope for citizen-Californians was made familiar by Cubans braving the waters of the Florida Strait on rickety rafts to flee Bernies workers paradise in the land of Castro. Just like them, Californios, rent yourself a box truck before the fee eats up your 401k and flee east across the border. To reformulate Horace Greeley, Go east, young man.
More tools are available to cage the federal Leviathan. At least the rest of the country can bring to heel the federal administrative state and prevent it from being a cheap imitation of the California nightmare.
RogerG