Magic Makes The Stuff God Happy

Guest Post by The Zman

One of the things normal people struggle with when they look over the great divide, at the arguments of our side, is the lack of interest in economics. In the lands of the normie, the cry of “socialism” remains salient, despite the fact America is a socialist country and has been for as long as anyone reading this has been alive. Still, the people of whiteness remain locked in that old dynamic that says the fight is between free market capitalism and command and control socialism. This is especially true of older whites.

Perhaps the most powerful tool deployed against us is the weaponizing of the economy, by turning it into the third man in the room whenever there is a debate about politics. The economy is like a mysterious god, who can get angry at the wrong policy and punish the people with high prices or job losses. This is especially true in libertarian and conservative circles. They are convinced that the whole point of life is to work and then buy cheap stuff from China. Anything that threatens that is viewed as un-American.

Democracy has also become an enchanted being that, unlike the economy, needs to be defended at all costs. While the right side of the political class worships the economy, the left side worships democracy. Everything they don’t like is a threat to democracy, even the results of elections. Democracy and the economy make up the modern Janus that presides over the beginning and end of all political debates. Both sides ritually invoke his name whenever it is time to debate the issues of the day.

This post at Marginal Revolution is a great example. The comments are worth reading, as they reveal this strange worship of both democracy and the economy. The skeptics you find in the comment thread are all skeptics of democracy. You don’t see any doubts about the righteousness and superiority of the economy face of our god. Even when someone points out that the Nazis were pretty good at running their economy for a while, no one seems to pick up on the fact that GDP is not the measure of a people.

There are a lot of ways to characterize the civic religion that animates our ruling class, but one of them is that they believe the right ceremonies will make the stuff god happy. That’s why they insist that diversity makes businesses more profitable and universities more intellectually dynamic. One of the bloggers at Marginal Revolution has argued that open borders is a moral imperative because it makes the economy stronger. He literally believes the stuff god is carefully monitoring immigration policy in the West.

When put together, the worship of democracy and the economy is the thermite reaction that is destroying America. If democracy is a good thing, then more of it must be a better thing. The result being the expansion of the franchise to hostile aliens. If the GDP is all that matters when measuring the health of society, then any criticism of the ruling oligarchy is an offense to the stuff god. It’s not an accident that the worship of both democracy and the economy has increased as social cohesion has declined.

This may be at the root of the strange hostility to the past. Modern America is a strange place, in that the ruling class is composed of amnesiacs. What they say today has no connection to what they said yesterday. It’s as if every day is a new day and the past never existed. Mendacity certain plays a role, but the never ending quest for more requires an ignorance of the past. To remember yesterday is to contemplate the trade-offs that made today possible. That calls the worship of the economy into question.

There’s also the sad dearth of beauty in this age. The classical period featured a celebration of human beauty. The artists strove to capture the ideal of man in those beautiful statues we still have today. The medieval period had the celebration of God and his love for man. Walk into an old cathedral and you immediately feel the essence of that relationship. Of course, our canon is packed with poetry exploring the beauty of life, all of which was composed in a prior age, by men who are strangers to us now.

Walk into a modern building today and you know what it is like to be in the chute at a slaughter house. Modern art is a mockery of the idea of art. It is a celebration of pointless vanity and nihilism, if such a thing can be called a celebration. Stroll through the modern parking lot and it is like being in a black and white movie. The cars all look the same and come in black, white or some shade of grey. A time traveler could be forgiven if he thought the communists had won the Cold War and imposed their aesthetic on America.

That’s the end result of worshiping democracy and the economy. The stuff god is a selfish god, who takes the hopes of the faithful and turns them into cheap goods from China, that get tossed away in order to be replaced by more cheap stuff. It is a pointless form of worship that treats life as a transaction. Just as Evangelicals love Israel, despite the fact Jews despise Evangelicals, Americans worship the stuff god, despite the fact he hates humanity. It’s a lethal codependency that can only end in death.