The existence of some mysterious, superior method

Starmer hit by revolts on Lammy's handling of jail crisis and tax

Sir Keir Starmer faced extraordinary Cabinet infighting over David Lammy’s handling of the scandal over prisoners being wrongfully released and a Labour revolt on an expected manifesto-busting increase in income tax.

As he flew home from the COP30 summit in Brazil, the Prime Minister’s grip on his Government and his party looked increasingly shaky.

Ahead of the Budget on November 26, a split has erupted at the top of Labour over breaking its manifesto promises on tax hikes,.

Oh dear, what a rabble they are. I don't think Lammy is the worst of them though, Ed Miliband has done far more damage and he is said to be a popular candidate for replacing Starmer when the absurd muddler is finally shown the door. It's a revolving door though, so he'll be fine - probably better off too.

On a more serious note, it's another reminder of a catastrophically weak and deluded leadership which cannot grasp the essentials of strong leadership. They just don't get it we might say. Or perhaps, as in the Emile Zola quote below, they are dimly conscious of the existence of some mysterious, superior method of leadership, if only...

...if only.

The post title is a phrase taken from Emile Zola's novel La Débâcle and his graphic and poignant description of a catastrophic French defeat in the Battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Aghast and confounded, having failed so far to acquire the first idea of the rationale of the campaign, he was dimly conscious of the existence of some mysterious, superior method which he could not comprehend, against which he ceased to struggle, although in his dogged stubbornness he kept repeating mechanically:

“Courage, my children! victory is before us!”

Emile Zola - La Débâcle (1892)

You fellows are all doomed

Heat deaths in England and Wales could surge 50-fold, study warns

It comes as areas of the UK face another heatwave, with temperatures over the next few days forecast to be above average and exceed 30C (86F) for many.

Annual heat-related deaths might climb into the tens of thousands in the coming decades, according to research by University College London (UCL) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

They say today's baseline figure of 634 heat deaths a year could hit 10,317 in the 2050s and, in a worst-case scenario, 34,027 in the 2070s.


“Nothing can be more certain,” he continued, “if corn con­tinues to be imported from America, in a hundred years from now there won’t be a single peasant left in all France. Do you think that our land can contend with yonder one? Long before we have had time to put these new plans in practice, the foreigners will have inundated us with grain. I have read a book which tells all about it. You fellows are all doomed—”

Emile Zola - La Terre (1887)

Huge investment in shopping

Amazon to invest £40bn in UK - with more warehouses and thousands of new jobs

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the investment into Amazon's third-biggest market after the US and Germany was a "massive vote of confidence in the UK as the best place to do business".

"It means thousands of new jobs - real opportunities for people in every corner of the country to build careers, learn new skills, and support their families," said Sir Keir.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said it was a "powerful endorsement of Britain's economic strengths".

We use Amazon regularly for all kinds of bits and pieces where we prefer to avoid trawling around shops. The shop window has been replaced by the laptop or phone screen we might say. 

Nearly 150 years ago, Emile Zola saw a shopping revolution caused by ticketed prices clearly visible through the shop window. He saw success depending solely on what he called the orderly working of a sale. 

He then went on to sing the praises of the plain figure system. The great revolution in the business sprung from this fortunate inspiration. If the old-fashioned small shops were dying out it was because they could not struggle against the low prices guaranteed by the tickets. The competition was now going on under the very eyes of the public; a look into the windows enabled them to contrast the prices; every shop was lowering its rates, contenting itself with the smallest possible profit; no cheating, no stroke of fortune prepared long beforehand on an article sold at double its value, but current operations, a regular percentage on all goods, success depending solely on the orderly working of a sale all the larger from the fact of its being carried on in broad daylight.

Emile Zola - Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)

What we see with Amazon is that orderly working of a sale taken to an extreme Zola could not have foreseen, although he clearly saw some strong hints of it. 


He had put his elbows on the table, and was staring at her so hard that she felt uneasy. “But look here,” resumed he; “you who know the business, do you think it right that a simple draper’s shop should sell everything? Formerly, when trade was trade, drapers sold nothing but drapery. Now they are doing their best to snap up every branch and ruin their neighbors. The whole neighborhood complains of it, for every small tradesman is beginning to suffer terribly. This Mouret is ruining them. Bédoré and his sister, who keep the hosiery shop in the Rue Gaillon, have already lost half their customers; Mademoiselle Tatin, at the under-linen warehouse in the Passage Choiseul, has been obliged to lower her prices, to be able to sell at all. And the effects of this scourge, this pest, are felt as far as the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, where I hear that Vanpouille Brothers, the furriers, cannot hold out much longer. Drapers selling fur goods — what a farce! another of Mouret’s ideas!” “And gloves,” added Madame Baudu; “isn’t it monstrous? He has even dared to add a glove department! Yesterday, as I was going along the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, I saw Quinette, the glover, at his door, looking so downcast that I hadn’t the heart to ask him how business was going.” “And umbrellas,” resumed Baudu; “that’s the climax! Bourras feels sure that Mouret simply wants to ruin him; for, in short, where’s the rhyme between umbrellas and drapery? But Bourras is firm on his legs, and won’t allow himself to be beggared. We shall see some fun one of these days.”

Emile Zola - Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)

The barren glory

I myself had already spoken to you of that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and office, distinctions and plumes, and which at the same time is so avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce, having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official administration.

Emile Zola – Rome (1896)


Today we know all about the barren glory of belonging to some official administration. From prime ministers downwards, all are familiar with a world of bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. 

Ours has become a world particularly well suited to a constantly growing and evolving swamp of bureaucracy which attracts and sucks in those its makes its own. The Swamp as it is sometimes called – it’s a good modern name for a not so modern evil.

Should Mrs H and I wish to extend our house beyond certain official limits we’ll have to acquire official approval. The other day I topped up the AdBlue tank in our car, a bureaucrat’s answer to a bureaucrat’s problem. The whole car is a complex web of manufacturer’s responses to bureaucratic interference. Now we have the EV, a bureaucrat’s car. A Swamp car perhaps, to be powered by Swamp electricity - but not when the wind doesn't blow. There is no Swamp wind.

Senior politicians, senior members of the permanent administration, international bureaucrats, senior members of the judiciary, NGO and Quango executives, senior media people, major journalists, politically active celebrities and many others could be considered as a loose caste with one particular interest in common – support the Swamp, grow the Swamp.

We are stuck in a highly evolved bureaucratic Swamp where we cannot vote for anything but more bureaucracy, more Swamp, more Swamp people, more Swamp-related business. We are entangled with a whole caste of Swamp people who can’t do anything but Swamp-work. Even the UK monarchy joins in.

Nothing escapes Swamp-people. They have their Swampy fingers in everything from the corner shop to the local school, from light bulbs to the road network, from paint to social media, from petrol to sausages, from coffee to missiles to Swamp health, Swamp hectoring. Nothing escapes completely and nothing avoids being sucked in further, decade by decade.

The Road to Serfdom was a warning we failed to heed and now we are faced with our destiny – Swamp Serfs. We were warned and warned again, but still we voted Swamp.

Besides that, a wave of regimentation is sweeping the world—standardized schooling, like everything else out of a tin, is cheaper, easier, and certainly safer than my sort of venture. In the educational sense, as well as every other, individual effort is going to be swamped.

Dorothy Bowers - Fear for Miss Betony (1941)

The torment of understanding

Oh! to believe, to believe with his whole soul, to plunge into faith for ever! Doubtless there was no other possible happiness. He longed for faith with all the joyousness of his youth, with all the love that he had felt for his mother, with all his burning desire to escape from the torment of understanding and knowing, and to slumber forever in the depths of divine ignorance.

Émile Zola – Lourdes (1894)

There is a limit, vague and diffuse perhaps, but there is a limit to what people are willing to understand. Worlds beyond the comfort zone are understandable in principle, but no, we don't go there. 

It's an important distinction between what we are able to understand and what we are prepared to understand and allow into our established viewpoints. There is a viewpoint censor in case we find ourselves adrift on the strange sea of other possibilities, other people, other worlds.

The eternal indifference of the universe, the unimaginable vastness, the absence of purpose may be abstractions, but they are not abstractions we generally contemplate with enthusiasm in our day to day life. We need local human viewpoints, especially when we catch bleak glimpses of the impersonal behind our local reality. We reject the torment of understanding - the lure of the impersonal tempting us away from those comfort zones.

How do we cope with it in our digital world of instant communication? 

Not too well apparently. 

Even so, we are all aware that understanding ought to be better than not understanding. This was the core of Spinoza’s philosophical journey, he saw understanding as blessedness, the only thing worth striving for. Yet instead of understanding things ourselves, we have the option of proxies, someone else or some institution which purports to understand on our behalf.

Large numbers of politicians wilfully misunderstand the job they are supposed to be doing. Or they avoid understanding it, which amounts to the same thing. Political parties and big media promote themselves as proxies for understanding abstract ideas such as freedom, democracy, integrity, veracity, science, progress, government… even facts… even common sense.

Politically active people such as environmental activists use some obvious proxies. The catastrophe narrative is their proxy for understanding the environment - and themselves. A more impersonal understanding is evaded, personal motives, even emotions are hidden behind the proxy, out of reach.

Unappeasable

His desolate household, his whole wounded life, choked him at the throat like a death agony. Things were not all for the best because one had bread. Who was the fool who placed earthly happiness in the partition of wealth? These revolutionary dreamers might demolish society and rebuilt another society; they would not add one joy to humanity, they would not take away one pain, by cutting bread-and-butter for everybody. They would even enlarge the unhappiness of the earth; they would one day make the very dogs howl with despair when they had taken them out of the tranquil satisfaction of instinct, to raise them to the unappeasable suffering of passion.

Emile Zola – Germinal (1885)


We see this all the time, corrupt political rhetoric attracting useful idiots and their idiot demands which cannot be appeased.  A few optimistic persons try to circumvent the unappeasable roadblocks left across the arena of public debate, so good for them, it's a public service.

But all we have to tackle it politically is a useless vote. 

And “Sir” Keir Starmer.

And Angela Rayner.

And the BBC.

And…

Draping the canker

For a moment, the Abbé Mauduit found himself once more in the middle of the deserted drawing-room. He looked, through the wide open door, on the crush of guests; and vanquished, he smiled, he again cast the mantle of religion over this corrupt middle-class society, like a master of the ceremonies draping the canker, to stave off the final decomposition.

Émile Zola - Pot-Bouille (1882)


This is what the BBC does, it has usurped the role of Abbé Mauduit but on a much grander scale. Yet it’s one of those quotes which sets too many hares running as all the mainstream media do it.

As for the UK general election, the only question seems to be, which party colour do you prefer for draping the canker? Which political leader should take the role of Abbé Mauduit?

The pale hands of the past

Occasionally the antiquity of political futility raises the bigger spectre of human futility, perhaps the most dismal spectre of all. Like a wagging finger reaching out from the past, it says “you haven’t learned anything.”


The pale hands of the past had reached out and gathered us together again.

Thorne Smith – Dream’s End (1927)


Best wave those hands away and move on, but they won't be waved away –


Monferrand, the strong-handed man of government, who undertook to bury the African Railways scandal by bringing about a Commission of Inquiry, all the strings of which would be pulled by himself.

Emile Zola - Paris (1898)

The depths of divine ignorance

Oh! to believe, to believe with his whole soul, to plunge into faith for ever! Doubtless there was no other possible happiness. He longed for faith with all the joyousness of his youth, with all the love that he had felt for his mother, with all his burning desire to escape from the torment of understanding and knowing, and to slumber forever in the depths of divine ignorance.

Émile Zola – Lourdes (1894)


In Zola’s sense, we could say that when a climate scientist or a journalist makes an absurd claim about climate change, then for susceptible people it is an offer of escape. An escape from reality is an escape into the comfort zone of shared belief, an escape into what Zola described as the depths of divine ignorance. It may be frustrating for sceptics, but widely shared ignorance can be popular.

From another angle, it has been said by B.F. Skinner and others that fear is not what causes someone to run away. The running away is the fear - running away is one criterion of what fear is. A climate change analogy would be running away from the social consequences of scepticism - again towards Zola's depths of divine ignorance. There is fear in there too.

Conversely, a sceptic may well be trying to avoid that same ignorance, but is clearly not running away from anything. There is no fear either, except perhaps the fear of ignorance.

That sphere of falsehood and strategy

However, can one ever be certain of anything in that sphere of falsehood and strategy? The surest things, the things prophesied with the most certainty, became, at the slightest breath, subjects of distressful doubt.

Emile Zola - L'Argent (1891)

How Labour ditched its flagship £28bn green investment pledge

Labour’s pledge to spend £28bn a year on green investment is to be ditched, two and a half years after it was announced to cheering party members as an eye-catching flagship policy.

It has been at the centre of a public and private struggle since it was announced, with factions inside Labour arguing against moves to water it down.

The decision on Thursday is to be defended on the basis of uncertainty about public finances as Labour moves to finalise its election manifesto. Nevertheless, voices from different sections of the party and from business are mourning a failure of ambition.

Tyranny of the two horse race

The engine-man shrugged his shoulders. He felt contempt for fine talkers, fellows who go into politics as one goes to the bar, to get an income out of phrases.

Emile Zola - Germinal (1894)


The Nadhim Zahawi debacle does at least highlight what a dire choice we have when it comes to voting in the next general election. Of course nobody has to vote and it is usually possible to vote for a no-hoper as a protest, but the overall winner is almost certain to be Conservative or Labour.

Neither party is fit to form a government. Instead we need MPs who do more than merely get an income out of phrases. We need them more than we need moribund political parties. Unfortunately it's a two horse race which suits both horses.

Isolated by an entourage

And for eighteen years now he had been shut up in the Vatican, isolated from the rest of mankind and communicating with the nations solely through his entourage, which was often most unintelligent, most mendacious, and most treacherous.

Emile Zola – Rome (1896)


Zola is referring to Pope Leo XIII, but this is an entirely familiar problem - leaders isolated from the outside world within a leadership clique. Common enough throughout history, but our political leaders try to persuade us that it isn’t a problem - that they listen to us. Suppose we highlight the issue of modern leadership isolation by taking an extreme example such as Kim Jong-un of North Korea.

Not easy because good information is not readily available, but we know enough to see Kim as a man completely surrounded by advisers, servants, guards and senior officials. Surrounded by his entourage all day, every day for as long as he remains in power.

Suppose we widen the focus from Kim himself to his immediate entourage then their entourages and so on down through the bureaucracy. This gives us Swamp(NK) as the wider ruling clique, the complex bureaucracy which serves and maintains the system. It projects Kim as a cult figure, a personification of the regime. Kim himself may be isolated from everything but Swamp(NK), but the system he represents is not his. He inherited it from his father and grandfather.

Moving on to actors on other political stages such as Joe Biden or Boris Johnson. Maybe they are less isolated by Swamp(US) or Swamp(UK), but part of that is due to their affiliation with Swamp(EU), Swamp(UN) and Swamp(Global). They too have no need to escape into the reality most voters know.

Kim Jong-un highlights the level of elite isolation which is possible, but even within democracies, elite isolation from real life is still a major feature of political life. It is impossible to vote against Swamp(NK), but hardly any easier to vote against Swamp(UK) or Swamp(US). Allowing the UK electorate to vote against Swamp(EU) was an aberration. It is unlikely to be repeated.

A sort of divine immobility

If it were true, too, that civilization was a check to excessive natality, this phenomenon itself might make one hope in final equilibrium in the far-off ages, when the earth should be entirely populated and wise enough to live in a sort of divine immobility.

Emile Zola – Fruitfulness (1899)

Zola wrote his novel in part as a counter to Malthusian angst which at the time was very fashionable. His novel was a contrarian hymn to the power of human fruitfulness and the need in his eyes to maintain the French birth rate and populate the whole world with worthy, hard-working families.

It is a highly optimistic book and not one of his best, but within it there is this single, fascinating fancy, an ideal end-game for humanity when the earth should be entirely populated and wise enough to live in a sort of divine immobility.

As a more or less vague ideal this is obviously not new. Equally obviously it comes in a variety of guises. Heaven is presumably a sort of divine immobility. Perhaps Hell is supposed to insist on the horrors of variety. It seems to be the ideal behind many religions and political movements even though it may not be explicitly stated. The wrapper varies but they all promise to deliver the same ideal.

Ironically this seems to be a covert ideal behind modern progressive political notions which apparently envisage an ideal world where everything is settled, everyone is equal and there is no progress whatever. Progressive immobility perhaps. Sounds like an unpleasant disease associated with age. In one sense maybe it is.

Every possible point

They could occasionally show some justice for men who in no wise shared their ideas; but in their estimation it was an unpardonable crime for anybody to hold much the same views as themselves, without being absolutely in agreement with them on every possible point.

Emile Zola - Rome (1896)

One of the great human scourges. It has destroyed millions.

Barren glory

I myself had already spoken to you of that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and office, distinctions and plumes, and which at the same time is so avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce, having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official administration.

Emile Zola - Rome (1896)

Zola describes a type still with us today but in larger numbers. It is worth reminding ourselves that the BBC is one of their warrens because in a crucial sense it too is an official administration.

It accounts for the Beeb’s inability to stray beyond the establishment outlook, why it has nothing useful to say as democratic accountability collapses. Which was never strong or even healthy, but the dear old BBC never did anything to help it to its feet.

Instead the Beeb prefers the barren glory of shoving a microphone under some punter’s nose, sucking up to dull celebrities or interviewing sports stars with nothing to say.

What about the future though? Suppose the world is evolving towards three primary groups, aristocrats who control everything, specialists who perform specialist services aristocrats find useful and intelligent machines which do all the donkey work. That would be the ASM world – Aristocrats, Specialists and Machines.

In which case a fat layer of the population won’t be required. Particularly that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and office, distinctions and plumes. 

Destitute of all power

And as his glance returned yet once more to the window of the Vatican, and he fancied he could see a pale hand uplifted behind the glass panes, he thought of that papal benediction which Leo XIII gave from that height, over Rome, and over the plain and the hills, to the faithful of all Christendom. And that papal benediction suddenly seemed to him a mockery, destitute of all power, since throughout such a multitude of centuries it had not once been able to stay a single one of the sufferings of mankind, and could not even bring a little justice for those poor wretches who were agonising yonder beneath the very window.

Emile Zola - Rome (1896)

This is something Zola does so well. Priest Pierre Froment is losing his faith after a visit to Lourdes followed by a sojourn in Rome trying to gain papal support for a religiously radical book he has published.

In his lowly naiveté, Father Froment thought his ideas could be a route back to the ancient values of his Christian faith, a means to extricate the Catholic Church from the moral quicksand of political intrigue.

Pierre glances up at that high window, having already seen the squalid side of Rome, the filth and poverty in close proximity to Vatican wealth, grandeur and endlessly subtle political machinations. He now knows that without its political resources the Vatican would be doomed, as his faith is doomed by exposure to the realities and exigencies of political power.

An interesting question arises if we ask ourselves if power is on the move again. It may be that traditional political power is on the wane - look at the people it attracts. Their benedictions are also a mockery, destitute of all power.

The construction of little motors

De Dion Bouton c1900
source

He was ever on the watch; and even now was thinking of reverting to the construction of little motors, for he thought he could divine in the near future the triumph of the motor-car.

Emile Zola – Paris (1898)

Zola’s character here was a successful bicycle manufacturer feeling the heat of competition. Even by 1898 it must have been obvious how significant the development of the car could be, but perhaps only to some and only in the big cities.

When confusion reigns

Towards the end of the nineteenth century Émile Zola wrote an interesting novel about Lourdes, the claimed miracles, the character and visions of Bernadette Soubirous and the huge pilgrimage site Lourdes became. He wrote the novel through the eyes of Pierre Froment, a priest struggling with his loss of faith.

The passage below shows how in Zola’s view confusion can be a vehicle for human hopes and passions even when faced with the stark realities of death and incurable disease. Over two centuries earlier Baruch Spinoza saw confusion as the essential element of misguided human thought. Whatever one thinks of the Lourdes phenomenon, it is very far from being the only area where confusion has bypassed painful or inconvenient realities. 

Pierre had now begun to understand what was taking place at Lourdes, the extraordinary spectacle which the world had been witnessing for years, amidst the reverent admiration of some and the insulting laughter of others. Forces as yet but imperfectly studied, of which one was even ignorant, were certainly at work — auto-suggestion, long prepared disturbance of the nerves; inspiriting influence of the journey, the prayers, and the hymns; and especially the healing breath, the unknown force which was evolved from the multitude, in the acute crisis of faith.

Thus it seemed to him anything but intelligent to believe in trickery. The facts were both of a much more lofty and much more simple nature. There was no occasion for the Fathers of the Grotto to descend to falsehood; it was sufficient that they should help in creating confusion, that they should utilise the universal ignorance. It might even be admitted that everybody acted in good faith — the doctors void of genius who delivered the certificates, the consoled patients who believed themselves cured, and the impassioned witnesses who swore that they had beheld what they described.

And from all this was evolved the obvious impossibility of proving whether there was a miracle or not. And such being the case, did not the miracle naturally become a reality for the greater number, for all those who suffered and who had need of hope?

Émile Zola – Lourdes (1894)

The heavens are empty

“In any case,” she continued, “science has swept away all our past beliefs. The earth is bare, the heavens are empty, and what do you wish that I should become, even if you acquit science of having inspired the hopes I have conceived? For I cannot live without belief and without happiness.

On what solid ground shall I build my house when science shall have demolished the old world, and while she is waiting to construct the new? All the ancient city has fallen to pieces in this catastrophe of examination and analysis; and all that remains of it is a mad population vainly seeking a shelter among its ruins, while anxiously looking for a solid and permanent refuge where they may begin life anew.

You must not be surprised, then, at our discouragement and our impatience. We can wait no longer. Since tardy science has failed in her promises, we prefer to fall back on the old beliefs, which for centuries have sufficed for the happiness of the world.”

Emile Zola - Doctor Pascal (1893)

Rather late in the day, political elites have discovered that in itself science does not offer a mode of social control. It hasn't swept away all our past beliefs, but it made a pretty big mess of them. Over the past few decades we have seen changes which suggest that this situation is to be changed.

Science is to be used to repopulate not the heavens but our social mores, our modes of social control. Social controls are being recast as ‘scientific’ and therefore beyond challenge. ‘Settled’ one might say. We don't have to be smokers to be familiar with a trend which now touches us all in one way or another. The trend continues.

“Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed ... Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.”

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar-acceptance speech

To dream extravagant dreams

But he had always been a man of imagination, seeing things on too grand a scale, transforming his shady dealings as an adventurer into poems; and this time, with this really colossal and prosperous enterprise, he had been carried off into extravagant dreams of conquest, to so crazy, so vast an idea, that he did not even clearly formulate it to himself.

Emile Zola - L’Argent (1890)

If anyone is incautious or dishonest enough to become enmeshed in a false position they commonly do as Zola’s anti-hero did – they do not clearly formulate the position to themselves. Middle class folk seem to do it all the time.

The middle classes have a tendency to enmeshed themselves in worthless abstractions, extravagant dreams where they cannot afford to clearly formulate the dream to themselves. Ordinary working people and the elite classes seem to be far more likely to focus on concrete realities such as family, friends, money, land, possessions and so on. They are essentially pragmatic. Devious perhaps, but pragmatic.

It seems to be the middle of the social sandwich where pragmatism becomes more scarce, where insecurity seems to rock the mental boat. Middle class people seem more likely to enmesh themselves in abstractions such as the environment, equality, gender politics, racism and the latest fashionable finger-pointing meme.

As journalists, pundits and ‘experts’ their voices dominate the public domain promoting the malign, harming the benign. What has made a large slice of the middle classes so profoundly stupid, so culturally destructive, so gullible and unaware of their longer term interests?

Which longer term interests? The possible demise of the middle class would be a good starting point.