Order And Chaos
Lost in the rush into the holiday season is the Charlottesville monkey trial concluded last week with a verdict for the plaintiffs. The jury had no verdict on some of the claims but agreed there was some sort of conspiracy by the defendants. They also decided that the plaintiffs suffered no harm as a result of it, but the defendants were doo-doo heads who deserved some sort of punishment. As a result, they awarded the plaintiffs eleventy billion bars of gold-pressed latinum in punitive damages.
The jury did not fall into Star Trek jargon, but they may as well have, given the structure of their decision. According to lawyers who followed the case, the punitive damages are symbolic due to rules governing the relationship between punitive and compensatory damages in civil cases. Typically, courts limit the ratio to a single digit. That is, punitive damage awards are capped at something less than ten times the compensatory damages, which in this case were one dollar.
This reality is of no consequence as the trial was always political activism on behalf of the ruling class. In a sane society this never would have been in a courtroom and the lawyers who brought it would be deported. Ours is a society in crisis, so ridiculous things like this are common now. The lawyers got their win and regime media was happy to promote it as a great blow against free speech. For a day, the blue-checks on Twitter were celebrating the win.
That is the first lesson of this trial. Two lessons, actually. One is the reminder that political activism is all about boosting the spirits of your side and depressing the sprits of the other side. In the language of Osama bin Laden, activism is about making your horse look strong and their horse look weak. When given the choice, people will always pick the strong horse. Everything about the UTR event was bad activism for the participants and good activism for their opponents.
The other lesson here is that the world has now moved on from that chapter of political opposition to the ruling regime. Hardly anyone in regime media noticed the trial when it was happening. The verdict was a one day event celebrated by trivial figures on low-end social media. Basically, the story rated a wire report that was picked up by websites as part of their automated filler. The world has moved on from this sort of drama, which is very good news for dissidents.
Another lesson of this case is one of the oldest. If you lie down with dogs you will wake up with fleas. Guilt by association is a real thing. You may think it is unfair, but it is just how the world operates. If you hang around with screwballs like Chris Cantwell, then you will be judged by that association. The fact is, all organizations, especially in politics, are judged by their worst members. It is why high standards are essential in all political activism. You are judged by the company you keep.
Similarly, this should be the final nail in the optics debate. Both sides of this case revolted the jury. They clearly saw that the plaintiffs were liars and doing this for political reasons, but the defendants were wildly offensive to them. It is not hard to imagine the jury’s motivation here. They wanted out of that courtroom and as far away from all of them as possible. The symbolic award was a way to end the nightmare and inoculate themselves from retaliation by the Twitter blue-checks.
The fact is, the alt-right and its traveling partners never much cared about the issues they claim are at the center of their politics. The big names of that thing were there for attention and internet likes. Spencer represented himself in the case because it afforded him more time to talk about himself. The narcotic of minor celebrity is powerful stuff and it led the big shots of the alt-right to embrace increasing extreme rhetoric as they chased the dragon of internet celebrity.
The final lesson here is that America is no longer a rules-based society. This case like so many of late, had no business in a courtroom. The underlying claims are un-American and fly in the face of civil society. The people behind this case have no business in a Western society. Until this is remedied, no sane person should ever put himself in a position where he may end up in court. Even if you are completely in the right the courtroom is no place for a white person.
Scars are lessons. Stupid people accumulate as trophies to their past stupidity, while smart people carry them as lessons. These trials are scars on the face of Western civilization and they need to be seen as such. It is not about winning and losing, but about the far deeper problem that lies behind them. The people behind these cases are the same people behind the riots. The great lesson in all of this is the battle is not about policy, but between order and chaos and chaos is winning.
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