Christopher Chantrill
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The Necessity of the Big Lie

We conspiracy theorists are all naturally outraged at the conspiratorial refusal of COVID Savior Dr. Fauci to testify to Congress. How Dare He!

But when I asked Google Search about Big Lies, it first mentioned Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction, Watergate Coverup and Nazi “Peace in our Time.”

Grok first mentions Hitler’s statement “that the masses more readily believe a colossal lie than a small one.” Then it lists the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Donation of Constantine, Piltdown Man.

My three Big Lies are:

  1. Climate Change

  2. COVID

  3. Red Scare Pushback.

Notice that the Google Big Lies are all Liberal Narrative related. Here the Bushies, the Nixons and the fascists are the problem. Grok’s list is not really related to today’s politics.

My list says that liberals are the problem. Climate Change is about liberals wanting to put the world on a war footing against fossil fuels; COVID seems to have been liberals wanting to put the world on a war footing to cover up “gain-of-function” research in the administrative government. The Red Scare seems to have been about liberals trying to cover up the fact that there were Commies in the State Department.

But Literally Hitler seems to have been the guy with at least half a brain. Let’s repeat, from Grok, Our Adolf’s idea:

Adolf Hitler described in Mein Kampf the idea that the masses more readily believe a colossal lie than a small one if it is repeated enough.

Ain’t that the truth. Fortunately, US leaders only repeat the truth.

I think that we have to understand that the basic — and only — function of government is to mobilize the people against the enemy. But there’s a problem. If you are a leader with strategic vision, you will be seeing the threat way before ordinary politicians and journalists and opinion makers — or the man on the street. So, if you are going to mobilize your people in time, you may have to add a bit of lipstick to the pig. Just a little.

Here in the US we had an anti-war movement in the runup to World War I. It was the left, from socialists to pacificists to feminists. But President Wilson got us in anyway, using the issues of German unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman telegram.

We also had an anti-war movement before World War II. It included the left during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, starting in 1939. And the right-wing America First Committee starring Charles Lindbergh. It all dissolved when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Then, in the runup to the Cold War we had the left pushing back against President Truman’s Red Scare campaign that was eventually all about Sen. McCarthy (R-WI) because reasons and “have you at last no sense of decency.”

You can see that lots of ordinary people don’t want to go to war. So any ruling class that needs to go to war has its work cut out for it. Fortunately, the US has noble, worthy leaders, while our enemies are led by liars and cheats. Still, it takes a great leader to persuade the American people to go to war, and he has to use all the arts of persuasion to save the world from Kaisers, Nazis, and Commies.

And now fossil fuels, COVID, and bigots making life difficult for transgenders.

| Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:13:55 GMT |


Our Modern Neo-Feudal Society

Back in the day, most humans in the Middle Ages lived in hierarchical subjection to warrior lords of the manor. Humans were serfs. Or slaves.

And the patriarchy! You don’t want to know…

But then the oppressed bourgeoisie in the towns stood up to the feudal oppressor class and defeated them in various uprisings and revolutions. Fact is that the bourgeoisie, their skills honed on the nascent market economy, were smarter than the illiterate barons feasting in their drafty castles.

The result was the oppression of the working class in another hierarchical subjection. And so the intellectuals of the world came together in a glorious movement to liberate the working class from bourgeois and capitalist subjection.

All good little boys and girls believe this. But is it true?

Obviously, socialism in its two variants, communism and fascism, makes the feudalism of the Middle Ages look like a walk in the park. All the world understands that, right? Mayor Mamdani? AOC? Bueller? Anyone?

But whatabout ordinary everyday welfare-state capitalism?

I think it is feudal.

I think that your average big corporation is feudal. Let’s call it neo-feudal, so we sound sophisticated. Its officers and managers are no different than the officers of a feudal manor.

Let’s research the movers and shakers of the feudal society working for our good friend the warrior feudal lord feasting in his castle. Google Search:

  • The Steward (or Seneschal): This was the highest-ranking official on the estate[.]

  • The Bailiff: A salaried, full-time outsider appointed directly by the lord. The bailiff was responsible for the physical administration of a specific manor.

  • The Reeve: Unlike the bailiff, the reeve was an unfree peasant (villein) elected annually by his fellow villagers. (Hmm. Elected? No kidding!)

  • The Hayward: A specialized officer tasked with guarding the boundaries of the estate’s cultivated fields.

  • The Miller: A highly skilled tenant who operated the manorial grain mill.

Imagine that: an administrative hierarchy just like your average corporation and your average government or NGO bureaucracy.

Let’s think about the employees in the modern corporation, paid a fixed wage or salary not dependent on profits. Let’s face it: we employees are neo-serfs, just like the agricultural workers of yore. The average corporation has: effective lifetime tenure, subject to market upheaval; promotion by satisfying your manager; health insurance; pension plans. Etc. Sometimes there is profit-sharing and stock options, especially in tech firms influenced by the VC-startup culture.

I think that the entitlement programs are neo-feudal. The government and its credentialed expert bureaucrats manage the programs and dish out the benefits to the neo-serfs. The neo-stewards and neo-bailiffs decide what pensions we need and what healthcare we need, and don’t complain if you know what is good for you. The ordinary person is just a neo-serf touching his forelock in obeisance to the bureaucratic neo-stewards and neo-bailiffs that rule over him.

Whatabout welfare? I think modern welfare is neo-slavery. Yes. Really.

Back in the day, in The Year 1000 by Lacey and Danziger, I read how a serf could go to his feudal lord and ask to become a slave. “Head for food,” it was called. You tell me what the difference is between welfare in the Year 1000 and today. Disagree? I’m willing, I’m wanting, I’m waiting to hear from you, just like the world’s most famous dustman.

Seriously, I suspect that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I think that human society is not an artificial thing. I don’t think it changes that much from dynasty to dynasty and era to era. Instead the structure of society reflects our human instincts and our human needs. It’s in the jeans.

We are social animals: but what does that mean? I suspect it means that some of us are fighters; most of us are not. Some of us are leaders; most of us are followers. Some of us are inventors; most of us are imitators, plagiarists (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Many of us are carers; lots of us need to be cared for.

That means that society can’t be just organized from the top down, although it’s always hierarchical. The purest hierarchical society known to man is Communism. How did that work out, Joey and Mao? Society can’t just be from the middle out, although it’s always cooperative and mutual. It’s a combination of hierarchy, of shared culture, of shared tradition, of cooperation, of shared morality,

And of course, there’s the price organism. Let’s not call it a price system, because that’s too mechanical and Enlightenment rationalism. Maybe we should call it the price universe, because it stretches from horizon to horizon, and way beyond the boundaries of states and communities.

OK, I know I’m being a naughty boy here, comparing our modern society to feudalism. But I am making a larger point. That we are not as special as we think.

Mind you, I am reading a biography of Alexander the Great. And you don’t want to know about the assassinations of likely rivals for political power that took place in Macedonia when the latest monarch died. At present, here in these United States, we do not wipe out the defeated presidential candidate after an election. Although we do like a nice bit of lawfare to teach the defeated candidate a lesson if his name is Trump.

| Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:44:28 GMT |


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Christopher Chantrill Follow chrischantrill on Twitter

Christopher Chantrill (@chrischantrill) is a writer and conservative.

He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.


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A Commoner Manifesto

Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
TODAY’S MAXIMS:

Women have a Culture of Complaint, as in “I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but she...”

Every human alive has a religion, that explains for him, and especially her, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

all maxims...

BIG IDEAS:

The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.

My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.

I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.

And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.

The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.

But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.

The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.

The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.

IN BRIEF:
ABC of PoliticsActivism Culture“Anatomy of Revolution”AllyismCritical TheoryDownstream-ismDutch FinanceGerman TurnGood LifeGreat ReactionLittle DarlingsPerfect PlanWomen in the Public SquareRuling ClassThree LayersThree PeoplesThree Peoples ReligionTribalismTwo CulturesWrong Turn
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Today’s topic: The left experienced as a Great Reaction, a lurch back from the modern to the primitive
 

 
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