Masters and Minions and Muppets, Oh My!

Who we are. Why we do what we do.

Muppets. Nice folks.

“Masters are the rulers. Minions corral the muppets. The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them to serve the muppets.”
—Stanley Dundee

“Only the destitute are blameless.”
—John Dominic Crossan’s translation of “Blessed are the poor…”

Following Robert Benchley’s admonition, I’ve long advocated for a three-part view of the nation, a vertical view, a look from top to bottom. This will be a simplification to be sure, but it usefully illustrates a few hidden truths.

Three Layers of American Parties

Let’s start with this: What do people think of when they say “the Democrats did X” or “those Republicans did Y”? Not all “Democrats” are Democrats; same with Republicans. Most people are neither. They have no control; they exist to be marketed to.

Let’s be specific. Each of these parties is divided, like Gaul, in three parts. The stratification is vertical.

Layer 1 are the leaders, deciders, people with real party power: the Schumers, the Trumps, the Millers, the Pelosis, the Obamas. This group also includes the lessers — Mike Johnson, Mark Penn, Lindsay Graham, the Podestas, J.D. Vance and the like, the higher consultants and upper strata of Money. These, in the aggregate, run their particular show, do the deeds that control the nation.

Layer 2 are the flag-wavers, people who carry the banner and rouse the troops — the activists, consultants, media allies and organizers, messengers and advocates. Ezra Klein is in this group. So is the army of consultants and surrogates who “get out the word,” bend media ears, get on the talk shows and sparkle. They raise the banner and cheer, hoping to move the masses to cheer along.

There are greater and lesser among them. Some work for candidates in reasonably high positions (think Jennifer Palmieri or Nicolle Wallace); others toil in the fields, harvest and glean the crops, encourage the locals, get out the vote in precincts from Maine to Alaska.

It can be a noble calling, waving the flag, depending one what’s being encouraged. All local organizing, for example, involves showing the banner and trying to move the unmoved.

Layer 3 is the largest group, the masses, the multitudes. People like us — the millions on millions of voters and equally large numbers of angry and disaffected. The target market, in other words, for the other two groups. If candidates are soap, these are the weekly shoppers.

Note that in the U.S., the masses can’t literally be Democrats or Republicans, however they fancy themselves. They’re bystanders when it comes to deciding; they have no say. They’re asked to vote when the party decides who will run, and only rarely get candidates they themselves choose. Sorry to add this, but primaries really don’t matter. Sanders in 2020 is an excellent example; the Party picked against Sanders, and Sanders was out. Trump in 2016 is the rare counter-example.

These are the layers of what Americans call a party — layer 1, layer 2, layer 3, each with their place. By this reckoning the “party” is small; only at the top does an organized group exist whose wishes are heard.

Keep these distinctions in mind. I’ll refer to these layers later. When we talk about “the Democrats,” it matters which layer we mean.

Masters, Minions and Muppets

This brings me to Stanley Dundee. He holds a similar tripartite view of the nation, a division that’s especially true economically, since in metastasized Western culture, only money gives life. That’s by design; God didn’t make us this way.

Here’s Dundee’s national three-part division:

Class in the USA: Masters, Minions, and Muppets

2020-07-29 v. 1

Masters, the 1% of the 1%, are the owners and rulers. Minions, aka the professional-managerial class (PMC), corral the muppets (precariat working class) on behalf of the masters. The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them into service to the muppets. For that, we'll need muppet solidarity.

To a first approximation, there are three classes in the USA. At the top is the ruling elite, the one percent of the one percent. These are the owners and rulers. I'll call them the masters.

Next, scrabbling for advantage in the meritocracy, we find the professional-managerial class (PMC). About 10-15% of the population, the PMC is essential to the continued rule of the masters. The PMC carries out most of the crucial missions of the masters, of which the most important mission might be maintaining the tribal divisions outside of the ruling elite. In recognition of the importance of the PMC role, I designate the PMC as minions.

At the bottom (85-90%) is everybody else. The precariat. As we used to say on Wall Street, if you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu. Hence, I'll designate the bottom rung as muppets.

Muppets are a resource to be exploited by the minions on behalf of the masters, not unlike oil, lumber, and soil. Or perhaps domestic livestock is the best analog. To keep the muppets in line, a never-ending program of divide-and-conquer is played by the minions in the media. Muppets are divided into ever-narrower slices according to the dictates of identity politics, and are encouraged to hate each other and blame each other for their ever-worsening conditions. The cure for this affliction is muppet solidarity.

Thus is the nation divided. Why does this matter?

Because minions are loyal to masters. They feed from the master’s table on scraps they’re allowed. That’s still a good life; scraps from the feast is a meal, especially so when the other choice is to starve. A low-end minion can make $100,000 a year running the system that pulls millions a week for the masters.

The courtier Richard Rich from A Man for All Seasons

“Courtiers in an Interior,” 1864, by Eugene Isabey

Minions aren’t just courtiers, shiny-heeled praise machines. They make things go; they make the kingdom run. They keep books, levy taxes, deliver to the deserving, punish the undeserving and recalcitrant. They command the armies and police. They’re accountants, desk riders, brokers, traders, physicians; professionals with solid incomes; people who deliver to the good and take from the bad. They keep the state oiled and happy, keep masters in place. Without their minions, masters are apes like us, no better, no worse.

It should be obvious from this that minions — the PMC, professional management class — are the key to the whole operation. Without them the state comes apart. With them, the muppets are managed, milked and controlled.

Notes for Future Discussion

A few additional comments before we get out. (These will be expanded on later; this is long already.)

The Ratios

Notice the relative numbers of these three groups:

• Masters: the 1% of the 1%. Some estimate this at about 300,000 households, but in terms of sway, I think less than 1000 people make decisions that count.

• Minions: the top 10–15%. Minions by definition are comfortable financially — earning good salaries, enough to feel reasonably safe unless overextended. Minions win when the masters gain; an economy that’s good for masters is good for them too. That’s almost by definition; it’s how and why they’re rewarded. Their loyalty is bought in a structure where money is life.

• Muppets: all of the rest, the bottom 85–90%. While those above them do well, they stay flat or do worse. Muppets are those who are milked when their betters need wealth. Their betters always need wealth.

This matches rather closely the ratios in classical societies like Rome:

• The ruler and governing class: about 1%
  Retainers (administrators and soldiers): about 5%
  Merchants and priests: some small number

• Tradesmen, artisans, peasants and slaves: about 85%. Their wealth is taxed; they struggle to stay alive.

• The expendables, unclean, destitute: 5-10%. The refuse; they die in the streets.

  (Source: The Historical Jesus, John Dominic Crossan, Ch 3.)

Can the Management Class Switch Sides?

To bring down a system that maintains all this oppression, the minions must side with the muppets. Repeating Dundee from above:

The heart of the struggle is to detach the minions from the masters and get them into service to the muppets. For that, we'll need muppet solidarity.

Is muppet solidarity likely? Is it even possible? Dundee thinks the chances are low. So does Amber A’Lee Frost, whom he quotes:

The [DSA event] culminated during the Q and A, wherein a woman earnestly asked, What do I do if some alt-right guy wants to be in the union? Visibly vexed, I replied that if an alt-right guy wants to be in your union, you won. This … is the very premise of a union: it is not a social club for people of shared progressive values; it's a shared struggle … She did not appear convinced.

These divisions are made and promoted, they serve the masters. But they’re also genetic; the species we are, and those from which we came, spent millions of years in tribes. Each tribe has a culture, and conflicts naturally arise.

“Only the destitute are blameless”

Finally, consider the state as the perp in this story — its nature, its very existence.

Without strong, strict and exploitable social hierarchies, these crimes can’t occur. Tribal societies, the life we were bred to live, don’t have these divisions, the kind that treats people as beasts. But once established, state power protects state power for the sake of the masters; only disaggregation or collapse will end their rule.

And notice this feature of that world: Everyone not at the bottom exploits someone below. Everyone.

It’s why John Dominic Crossan, in his books on the historical Jesus, Jesus the philosopher, translates this saying:

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
(Sayings Gospel Q, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Luke)

as this:

“Only the destitute are blameless.”

Only those at the bottom don’t immiserate others. Life in a state. No wonder Jesus was killed.