Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill personal website
Numbers   Charts   Ideas
Find all blog entries at A Commoner Manifesto Substack.

It’s the Economy, Stupid

It’s funny isn’t it. All the talk of “affordability” and inflation.

And it’s Trump’s fault. Because it’s on his watch.

Why do we have an affordability problem? Because the administrative state, Dr. Fauci, General Director, decided to shut down the economy in February 2020 and then Jerome Powell, Assistant Director, increased the M2 money supply by 40 percent between March 2020 and March 2022 to send checks to everyone while the economy was shut down.

But it is Trump’s fault.

Of course, Trump could have sent Dr. Fauci to Outer Slobbovia for his ridiculous World War, which was really a coverup of his Gain-of-function Industrial Complex. But the fact is that governments love a war, whether World War Kaiser, World War Nazi, World War Commie, World War Race, World War Gender, World War Climate, or World War COVID, and Trump is nothing if not a Man in the Arena. You know all my maxims on the subject of politics and war:

  • There is no politics without an enemy.

  • War is the mere continuation of politics by other means.

  • We have always been at war with East Asia.

Let’s say that World Wars Kaiser, Nazi, Commie were all a Good Thing. But in my view the last four World Wars, ending in COVID, were a proof of Eric Hoffer’s dictum, that every mass movement ends up as a racket. If you don’t believe that WW Race, Gender, Climate, COVID were rackets, I gotta bridge…

But the real question is: How do we get out of here? How do we dial down the politics so that it doesn’t even occur to the average politician to ask, like the Irish of old: “would yer be lookin’ for a foight, then?”

Here is my dream.

“I have a dream that one day this nation” will be the first people in world history to turn politics into sport.

Because? Because:

  • Humans no longer live by defending their food growing territory from invasion.

  • Humans are social animals that look after each other and fix things and make things and build cities and see the USA in a Chevrolet and help the poor and the helpless without government force.

  • Humans invented the market economy and it works.

  • Humans have tried socialism and it doesn’t work.

  • Humans invented shame to keep most bad actors in check.

  • Humans invented law to help negotiate differences short of violence.

  • Humans invented police to put the vigilantes out of business.

But the fact is that, like the Jets and the Sharks, young men like a bit of a rumble, and God invented sport to help them cool their jets.

I say that the man who invents the game of Politics as Sport deserves to be remembered as the GOAT of the World, celebrated from pole to pole and shore to shore. Maybe all we need to do is sit teenage boys down to Minecraft for 10 hours a day until they get war out of their system.

And as for the fools and knaves that don’t get with the new program, the Mikado suggests something with boiling oil in it.

| Wed, 04 Nov 2026 22:43:15 GMT |


What Do the Augurs Say About Haley Stevens?

All of our Democratic friends are enraged at the betrayal of the Party by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) who broke with Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and cuddled up with the Republican candidate Mike Rogers.

But really, isn’t it about time for the Democrats to split apart?

I mean, if you are a semi-moderate that’s all in for all the welfare state programs from FDR to LBJ, but you feel a bit queasy about the end letters on LGBTQ and men in the women’s bathroom and kids being transitioned by their public school administrators without parental notification, let along consent, and Gaza genocide and hate the Jews and women in hijabs and full-on socialism with the DSA? Wouldn’t you be getting ready to head for the exits?

I affect to understand what is going on, because I believe in Crane Brinton’s narrative in The Anatomy of Revolution. As a revolution fails, the moderates get ejected — or guillotined — by the extremists. Until Thermidor and eventually Napoleon.

Here’s one of my takes on Brinton’s theory.

But our story is written on a larger canvas, going back no later than the 1880s and the birth of the administrative state in the US with the Pendleton Act. Ever since, the educated experts have proposed one administrative government program after another. But here we are, 150 years later, and anyone with half a brain would be asking “what’s the point?” And the rest of America would be instinctively feeling that something was wrong.

But the logic of war and the logic of politics is that you don’t ever give up. You always rally the troops for one more Big Push.

That’s because of Clausewitz and “war is the mere continuation of politics by other means” and my corollary that “politics is the mere continuation of war by other means.”

Until the regime collapses and a new set of rascals rises to power.

Another of my ideas is that while people in politics use a moral agenda to justify their political power — such as “fight for the workers” or “fight for the victim du jour” — it all ends up as politicians taxing the rest of us to reward their supporters. Right now, my beloved Rep. Primila Jayapal (D-WA) is raging on X for Medicare For All. So that everyone can afford health care. Ultimately it comes down to taxing everyone to give money to everyone. Except that government programs never work, because Science.

And so we get to the revolutionary moment where half the country is yelling Off With Their Heads and the other half is yelling Don’t You Dare Touch My Benefits.

I understand our DSA friends and the youngsters all excited about socialism as a moral feeling in the young generation that They Was Robbed by the old geezers.

Of course they were. It’s in the jeans of politics, which is always and everywhere about allies and enemies. Enemies? Billionaires, racists, transphobes. Allies? Vote for me and you will get free stuff.

That is all.

But the problem is that the DSA kids are going to need to tap into the benefits now being handed out to moderate Democratic voters. And at some point the moderate Democratic voters will head for the exits.

What’s a nice moderate Democrat, like Haley Stevens, to do? Well, she starts by being concerned about the wild and crazy DSAers. Then, at some point, she has to decide whether she belongs in the DSA camp or whether she should sneak away in the middle of the night and show up at the GOP tents and ask if they have room.

Meanwhile, there is the minor problem that you can’t run the economy from the government with taxes and spending and rules and regulations and handouts. The economy just doesn’t work like a slave plantation where everyone sits around until the overseer with the cowskin whip tells them what to do for the day and hands out their meager rations. You need a market economy with businesses and prices and wages and investing and lots of people with crazy ideas and a few people with crazy ideas that work. Unless you prefer to live as a slave.

And there is the other problem that politicians and bureaucrats and administrators and activists have absolutely no idea how to run the economy.

Yep, no doubt a whole bunch of moderate Democrats are in the process of heading out into the political wilderness, and maybe start to vote Republican. And maybe the Democratic party will be the party of hard-left educated activists and Muslim fraudsters.

Or maybe not.

| Tue, 03 Nov 2026 22:56:15 GMT |


Switch to Substack for more blog posts

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.


“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer

A Commoner Manifesto

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

Great Reaction: Socialism is a return to slavery; the welfare state is a return to feudalism; identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism a return to revolution, rioting for the ruling class, part medieval knight-errantry, and part activisme, or gentry kids putting on a school play for their parents; helpless victims are a return to sacrifice; totalitarianism is a return to the scapegoat; social justice is good old loot and plunder.

Politics and government are all about force; law is all about private property; religion is all about morality.

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 Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
BLOG TOPICS

Today’s topic: Analysis of Prophecy
 

 
Books
 
Road to the Middle Class from country to city. Price: $0.99 at Amazon. Or download for free.
 
 
US Government Spending 2022, from usgovernment-spending.com. Price: $1.99 at Amazon.
 
 
NOTICED BY LEFTIES
• Daily Kos
• Patheos
• Right Wing Watch
• “My ‘1584 Project’” Banned by Google
• Wikipedia: “biased American site”
Top Sites

US Government
Spending

 

UK Public
Spending

 
 

 
Sites

Government Spending

Numbers, charts, analysis of government spending in the US. You can make your own spending charts and download spending data.

Government Revenue

Numbers, charts, analysis of government revenue in the US. You can make your own revenue charts and download tax data.

Government Debt

Numbers, charts, analysis of government debt in the US. You can make your own charts of debt over the years and download data.

Federal Budget

Numbers, charts, analysis of the US federal budget. You can create your own custom charts, and look at budget projections and compare estimated with actual.

Spending 101

Take a course in government spending. It’s free!

US Bailout

Check out cost of 2008 Financial Bailout!

UK Public Spending

Numbers, charts, analysis of public spending in the UK. You can make your own spending charts and download spending data.

UK Public Revenue

Numbers, charts, analysis of public revenue in the UK. You can make your own revenue charts and download revenue data.

US President Elections

Results of United States presidential elections.

US Midterm Elections

Results of United States House and Senate midterm elections.

Stuck on Stupid

What went wrong in the nightmare of the Great Depression? For ten long years, American was stuck on stupid.


 •  Contact