Riding the tiger..................

 By the year 2020, every major institution of American culture had converted to the cult of identity.. . . As I have noted elsewhere, the motive force behind the mass conversion of the elites was a longing for control. Identity is a minority sect that imposes itself by shaming and silencing contrary opinions, even among those it purports to protect. Most Blacks don’t wish to defund the police. Most Hispanics don’t believe in open borders. Most Democrats don’t think government programs should discriminate based on race or sex. But old-fashioned liberalism is dying away with the boomer generation, and the elites, distrusted by the public, deprived of institutional authority, have gambled on riding the tiger of rule by internet mob.

-Martin Gurri, from this essay

Unchanged..............................

      Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.  Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined;  oligarchy ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth.  In either case the end is revolution. . . .
     But even democracy ruins itself by excess—of democracy.  Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy.  This is at first glance a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and wisest courses. . . . Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride;  every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course.  The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy;  the crowd so loves flattery, it is so "hungry for honey," that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the "protector of the people" rises to supreme power. . . .
     . . ."Like man, like state"; "governments vary as the characters of men vary; . . . states are made out of the human natures which are in them", the state is what it is because its citizens are what they are.  Therefore we need not expect to have better states until we have better men; till then all changes will leave every essential thing unchanged.

-Will Durant, once again quoting Plato in The Story of Philosophy

Needing just the right amount of chaos.......

     But if the government itself is a chaos and an absurdity, if it rules without helping, and commands without leading,—how can we persuade the individual, in such a state, to obey the laws and confine his self-seeking within the circle of the total good?  No wonder an Alcibiades turns against a state that distrusts ability, and reverences number more than knowledge.  No wonder there is chaos where there is no thought, and the crowd decides in haste and ignorance, to repent at leisure and in desolation.  Is it not a base superstition that mere numbers will give wisdom?  On the contrary is it not universally seen that men in crowds are more foolish and more violent and more cruel than men separate and alone?

-Will Durant,  The Story of Philosophy

On Crowds........................

....................................Josh Brown's post is here.  Quick take here:

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary conquered Mount Everest in 1953

"Being special requires taking a risk and doing something unproven – and difficult – before it becomes just another selfie opportunity for everyone else."

The line forms at the rear.  Mount Everest in 2019

"of the whole people".................

"Here is the thing you must bear in mind,"  Roosevelt said, clearly irritated.  "I do not represent public opinion:  I represent the public.  There is a world of difference between the two, between the real interests of the public, and the public's opinion of these interests.  I must represent not the existed opinion of the West, but the real interests of the whole people."

-Edmund Morris,  Theodore Rex

Woe...................................

“When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.” 

-attributed to Euripides

I wondered.......................

................................what had happened to all the statesmen.

There had been relative peace across the Continent continuously since 1815 (the end of the Napoleonic Wars), with irruptions of violence successively contained by the machinations of the old aristocratic order. But as the lordly whig Asquith said, as the clouds gathered in 1914, suddenly he felt trapped in a lunatic asylum. He was referring specifically to the extraordinary power of manipulated mass movements, which restricted the diplomacy of the statesmen, and compelled them to persist on courses they knew to be unwise and potentially catastrophic, under the impulse of national (as opposed to personal) “honour.” To do otherwise would mean losing power themselves — to be trampled under the mob, as it were — which was of course unthinkable to them. For they were no longer statesmen, but had become politicians.

-David Warren, as extracted from this post