In an era thankfully consigned to the dustbin of history—the age of colonies and slavery —there existed the “house negroes.” Slaves, “ house negroes” who, instead of being worked to death in the prairie - oh sorry, not those one, I meant field not prairie - served as domestics in the master’s household.
Two uniforms and one pair of shoes per year, the right to eat in the kitchen, and of not being quartered with the field negroes. To keep those perks, these “house negroes” would do anything—except seize their freedom.
For the sake of two uniforms and a pair of shoes annually, they will do anything to cling to the privileges bestowed by their master—privileges denied to the field negroes, drenched in sweat, carved by hunger and dressed in rags, - yet their own people.
The master tells them: “I emancipate you—be strong, fend for yourselves; it’s in my interest.”1 But the house negroes know full well they are incapable of tilling their own land—and, horror of horrors, that the field negroes will one day demand an accounting for the abuses they suffered at their hands, all under the cover of their cozy status as the master’s favored tool.
That is exactly what today’s European leaders are: house negroes.
Hence the value in making our interview with our colleague Michael Shellenberger—conducted a year ago—freely available to all.
(Alternatively, you could just read Hegel; his master–slave dialectic is far less crude than our rant - and Micheal Shellenbeger is not responsible for our choice of analogy and vocabulary).
In the kingdom of the deaf, who wears the crown?
An quick illustration that nothing has changed since last year.
America is no longer our ally. America brokers peace in Ukraine by betraying us. Donald Trump is treading in Adolf Hitler’s footsteps—even Jacques Attali dared to scribble that, in a fit of full-blown paranoid delirium...
That was then, a year ago. Now Jacques Attali, former éminence grise of President François Mitterrand for 14 years, mentor of Emmanuel Macron, is asserting that America is on the verge of dictatorship. Maybe because he ain’t no kingmaker anymore.
The first one who adds “and get a Pontiac” will be canceled for eternity.
