No I haven’t gone Monarchist — snort, giggle — I’ve also not been replaced with a pod person.
However work on the second book of Chronicles of Lost Elly — NOT THE SECOND VOLUME, that’s out, the second book Orphans of the Stars — brought up the concept and then I ran into some stuff on Twitter, which made me realize there are instances of that — sort of — in our own world.
Okay, to some extent kingship, like all forms of government, is always “by consent”. Piss off enough people who are strong/rich enough to unseat you and you’re going to have a problem. (Communism, of course, solves that problem by making everyone not the dictator and henchmen poor and powerless. It’s a choice for them. Not the people. In that sense it’s most closely related to feudalism, and I suspect Europe would still be locked down in THAT if it weren’t for the Black Death upending everything.)
However in small enough or in some cases distributed enough (later) systems, the kingship is more by consent than not. This is particularly the case if the king doesn’t really have armies. Or does, but it’s no more than some of his vassals can command.
Which is the situation in Elly, because small, distributed population, primitive armament and some of the clans, say, or even rich tradesmen can command a larger force than the king’s dedicated “personal guard”. In primitive fighting the size of the army is a lot more important than the proficiency, to a point, so that’s that.
And the problem is since they are also more … um…. primitive in communications — which weirdly isn’t any or much different than the situation we’re in, where we have massively unreliable mass media, and a zillion small voices often contradictory or falling for Mass Media’s bs. — it means that any rumor that catches hold of the people, or acquires legs of some sort can mean the kingship will be toppled. If not by killing the king (which might or might not be difficult) by disengaging from him so completely that he might as well not be there.
They have in fact, in their very long history had several situations like that, when it then takes a strong and charismatic king, with an ability to use rumor and story to his advantage to become a king again in anything but name.
So, why was I thinking about that for any other reason than that I’m writing the book. Because it occurred to me that it applies in all sorts of ways in our world to things that aren’t exactly monarchies.
For instance the Papacy. There is a concerted campaign to discredit Pope Leo, against all possible sanity or sense. No, seriously, they are calling him “Obama’s Pope” when the man has more than once possibly stretched his neck out too far to signal “I’m not a leftist.” I covered some of it here on the blog, but yesterday I sort of lost it at instapundit and blasted one of my favorite blogs for a serious case of head in ass. Here.
Note I’m not defending Leo because I’m Catholic. I was one of the first/most prominent Catholic bloggers to make bear and Pope jokes about Francis the excessively woke. I like to think that even if I weren’t Catholic I’d be defending Leo. A) because it burns me when someone is accused of exactly the opposite of what they’re doing, thereby catching the same flak from the right he gets from the left. b) if the left really wants you to hate him that badly, then you probably shouldn’t. Particularly since he seems not to like commies.
And every time I do this someone is like “Well, then why doesn’t he come right out and say it?” Well, because he is a king by consent. Yes, once upon a time the pope had armies and could send them out on various punitive expeditions. But right now, um…. no. And frankly the lower offices can and often do ignore him. So he has to be agreeable enough that people don’t simply tune him out and strong enough that he can do something other than wear the crown. Or in the Pope’s case the funny hat thing.
(Oh, I suspect the reason for the campaign to discredit him is that Leo has already once come out against mass migration from the third world. And if he can carry or make that point bear fruit and convince third worlders they shouldn’t be doing this, a lot of grifters within the church structure lose their rice bowls. Not to mention a lot of other grifters not in the church, and oh, yeah, the people who hope to wholesale replace their electorate.)
Anyway, so that’s why he doesn’t come right out and say stuff.
However, while on that, I’ve been reading Roger L. Simon’s American Refugees book. Thank you to whoever linked it. I’m reading it for obvious reasons: I are one. And it’s a fascinating mix of matching my experience and places I giggle, because — I like Roger. He was my remote boss when I worked for PJM and though we never had much contact, I find him eminently readable and interesting but — liberals who got red pilled have some interesting illusions, like his idea that the left ever actually was for free speech, and it wasn’t a from-the-lips-out and no such things behind the scenes (like how they controlled mass media and kept conservatives away) thing.
Anyway, one of the things he ran into which we did also is the existence structures of power in the red states we moved to, some of which bear a striking resemblance to kingship by consent, because there’s really no reason for locals to put up with corrupt or incompetent petty pseudo-GOP people, except personal loyalty and “I remember when his daddy…”
I’m not in politics. Well, other than this blog, and the fictional politics in my books. But if I were, that would be a b*tch to deal with, particularly since we would be dealing with it as refugees/new comers, ie. handicapped by “y’all not from around here” and “You can’t just that because you just arrived.”
So, definitely to topple the petty small local kings, you need some kind of power: either local ties that allow you to say “yeah, and I wasn’t that impressed by his daddy, either” OR a rumor mill worthy of a dystopian novel. (Which to an extent is what the left employed to flip those petty kings on the right.)
Anyway, I really don’t have any other point except that I find people don’t understand this. We are so entrenched in an elective system that we assume everyone is able to behave like an elected leader.
While in fact, for those whose power is more granted by prestige and tradition, they have to be almost Machiavellic to manage to do anything they actually want to do.
And many are. But they baffle those watching them. Having figured it out, I wanted to share the insight.
According To Hoyt 
England got the Magna Carta because John “Lackland” needed money (owning land meant income to the landowner) and the “Barons” weren’t going to give him money if he didn’t sign.
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Interesting post, I think your concept of small town/state politics is right on. Too many people who put up with flawed, untrustworthy “conservatives” because of where they are or who they’re descended from or linked to from the past. I think it also explains the classic “yellow dog” dem as well……….. Their family always voted that way, they’re going to vote that way and are totally blind to the actual behavior of the people they vote for.
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I think a lot of them put up with RINOs because the alternative is so much worse.
We do need to primary the RINOs, but the ‘jungle primaries’ here in Kalifornistan make it ten times harder to not wind up with two Democrats on the ballot.
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We have a king. King Charles the tooth. Bucky, as some like to call him. An utter prat at best, possibly a secret(ish) moose limb.
Watching that guy trying to smile in Washington the other day was comedy gold.
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:nod: Yup, all this. The Federalist Papers go into fine detail about it (glares at Hamilton in “why do you have to be so brilliantly convoluted? Madison is so much easier to read, being straightforward), but that is essentially how our system works. We take a king (President), put him in for four years; we have democratic style elections checked by republican measures (the Electoral College). In essence, our government system is a Frankenstein-style mashup of monarchy, democracy, and republic, with a VERY heavy emphasis on the republic part to check the power (and therefore excesses) of the other two options.
And we like it just the way it is, thanks!
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I don’t.
Because ‘the way it is’ is what’s left of the Founders’ ideals subverted by 150 years of Democrat corruption.
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Thank you, yes. There’s a bunch of software ad ons which we need to purge.
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Off topic a bit, a few years back the kids at sporting events would get chants going of “F Joe Biden!” Or “Let’s go, Brandon!”, whichever works better. Are there similar chants popping up against Trump? I know there are protests, and certain sections of the internet go off on TDS rants with the slightest provocation (NAR, I’m looking at you.), but I’ve not heard of this sort of spontaneity.
If not, it must be driving certain populations crazy.
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No, but I remember the days when someone in crowded room for a panel discussion at an SF Con would yell out, “Fuck Trump!” to generous applause. I’ve been going to a lot of Cons the last couple of years, and that kind of **** doesn’t happen anymore. Of course, I’m skipping WorldCon despite it being only a few hours north of me this year. In the past I’ve gone when it’s in LA, but not this year. Sad puppies is still too fresh a memory.
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“F Joe Biden” has better rhythm than “F Trump” as far as I can tell.
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I credit LSU.
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Spontaneous chants, from leftists? Unless the uberLeft has authorized anything, I’d say no. Recall “The left can’t meme.” I think the situation is similar.
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See the Department of Spontaneous Preprinted Protest Signs.
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Somebody down here put up an, “I Did That!” billboard with Trump and a gas pump. I figured, sauce for the goose and otherwise ignored it.
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Tonight I’m going to a free pizza event hosted by a Republican political candidate. I intend to say 2 things:
The government’s first priority should be to solve problems created by the government.
The government’s second priority should be to stop trying to solve problems their efforts have only made worse.
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I think those need to come in the reverse order, or there will be a never-ending, possibly expanding cycle of “break it” followed by “hire someone to fix it, thus breaking something else.”
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See Alaska. Yes, I am looking at you, Nepo Senator.
The thing you get here in the formerly golden state is “it’s their turn” – thus we got Gavin and Kammy as Governor and Senator respectively, in spite of neither having any actual qualifications other than accumulated years at the government trough. The exceptions, like The Governator being dropped into that race to head off and redirect a popular uprising behind the recall of the sitting governor, are few and far between, basically since the immigration amnesty Reagan was conned into signing back in the 1980s and the subsequent 1990 Census driven redistricting cemented the Dems as The California Uniparty.
Note this is why the school board and city council elections are important, as that turn-based thing uses those local elected offices at the farm team. If only the really far left bother with those local positions, then that’s the only type of player moving up from AAA ball.
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“It’s his turn,” is why Bob Dole and John McCain were nominated by the Republican Party. And we all know how well *that* turned out.
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“However in small enough or in some cases distributed enough (later) systems, the kingship is more by consent than not.”
When I was writing Secret Empire, one of the (many) things I had to figure out is a plausible reason for there to be an “empire” in space. Particularly one whose “citizens” are artificial intelligence beings. Machines.
So I decided it’s a coalition of the willing, lead by a hierarchical organization of “Elders,” and the economy is mostly reputational. The more able and more willing rise higher, the lazy and the stupid fall lower. The laziest and stupidest (stupid is a choice to a machine, right?) end up scrubbing the floors and doing all the other menial labor.
Theoretically, if you don’t like it you can leave. In practice the middle management makes sure that’s not an option, as with any hierarchical system. Cream rises, but so does froth, and so does scum.
I chose this way of doing it because I wanted something well-meaning and mostly functional, but with the possibility for stupidity and corruption to be hiding in it. Mighty and powerful do-gooders, needing a hearty kicking because their dogs are running loose getting into other people’s chickens.
Fun stuff!
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Re: Pope, is it time to remind ppl that the head of the executive is always at the mercy of the existing bureaucracy?
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First of all, that image up top is dazzling. But just a quick aside here: I’m a Chicago boy, and way back in 2005 I wrote parts of a novel in which Chicago’s cardinal is elected Pope. It has its moments, but I set it aside because nobody would ever believe that a Chicago bishop (or any American) would be elected Pope. And it’ll stay in the trunk because if I published it today, people would just think I got the idea from Pope Leo XIV.
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You could always change the cardinal’s diocese to one that includes St. Louis, Phoenix, Louisville, or Stanford. That would give you the opportunity to work in a pun.
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You could put in a foreword: “By the way, I started writing this in 2005.” 😁
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For those who don’t remember, Fr. Andrew Greeley got in trouble for trying to electioneer an American-style or Chicago-style Pope election, when he was supposed to be just reporting on the papal election.
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Tsekung asked about government, and Confucius replied: ‘There must be sufficient food; there must be a sufficient army; and the people must have confidence of the ruler.’ ‘If you are forced to give up one of these three objectives, what would you go without first?’ asked Tsekung. Confucius said, ‘The army.’ ‘And if you were forced to go without one of the two remaining factors, what would you rather go without?’ asked Tsekung again. ‘The food. There have always been war and hunger, but a nation cannot exist without confidence in its ruler.’
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Sarah, thanks for the perspective. I take back all negative leaning thoughts regarding Leo. As of now, I am solidly neutral on him, and will treat any aspersions of him as if they were earnest assertions of flat Earth or faked moon landing ‘evidence’, as I will look VERY carefully and skeptically, before accepting them.
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We’re all shell shocked from Leo. And the American council of Bishops is THOROUGHLY repellent. But you can tell Leo isn’t a leftist as most people don’t even know he’s been on a continuous tour of the dangerous places in Africa and Asia. if he were a commie, they’d be writing paens about him, and people who haven’t had their kids baptized would name their kids after him, as they did with Francis.
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Local politics is almost worse than federal and state level. The old school money in the area mostly controls it. It’s better than it used to be which means its only 10% less graft. We all notice when new roads go in where the interchanges are. At the property of the family that owns 20% of the whole area land wise. Makes it a lot easier to develop that land if roads and access are easy.
The other problem is that the understanding of the constitution is almost nil with most of the local politicians and they and local law enforcement constantly have to have someone taking them to court over, overreach!
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In the early days* of the Scottish clans, the chieftain had a certain sense of loaned power. If he messed up too badly, the rest of the family/clan could ignore him, or demote him, and give leadership to another of the blood. After all, he was one of them, if a little more competent, or slightly more closely related to the founder, but still brother/uncle/cousin/in-law. If he messed up, he could be ignored and a different family member accepted as leader and authority.
That changed over time and with the centralization of the kingship after Kenneth Mac Alpin, but the sense that the clan chief had best not irritate too many people too greatly remained in some of clans/lineages.
*Iron Age to early Middle Ages, so 500 BC/BCE to AD 700s CE or so.
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