Society in General

Democratic Socialists Party Platform

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Everyone can see that a kind of Star Chamber hides in Biden’s shadow and dictates what he says and signs. Over the last year and a half, the game plan has been revealed by the exercise of authority assumed by federal and state Democratic Socialistic party.  The platform below summarizes what we have witnessed from these political operatives.

Establish Wokeism as the new state religion.

Under the guise of “Diversity-Inclusion-Equity, the doctrine is to eliminate pluralism from American Life. Critical Race and Gender Theories, among others, are to be asserted as secular truths, and all other beliefs are to be banned from the public square in the name of separation of church and state.

In the cult of Woke, adherents have a “critical consciousness” and are able to see the “problematics” in everything. This includes in speech, writing, institutions, thoughts, people, systems, knowledge, history, one’s past, and society itself. Society is broken into different groups or classes (social group identity) that are oppressive on one side, oppressed on the other, and in conflict over this. That is, conflict theory is the belief that different social groups in society are always in conflict with one another for power and dominance.  And rather than working together in complex, dynamical ways that can be mutually beneficial, they are at war.

Any criticism or questioning of Woke Doctrine is: racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, imperialistic, hateful, bigoted, unjust, evil, ignorant, wrong, and a crime against humanity.

Purge Public and Private Institutions of customs and symbols adverse to Wokeism.

To facilitate the dominance of Woke doctrine, the heritage of previous widely adopted beliefs must be purged. Thus monuments of past American heroes must be destroyed, and doubt must be cast over the documents and writings of the founders of the American Republic. Rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance or prayers at public events must be replaced with pride rainbows or kneeling to BLM flags.

Persecute and prosecute individuals whose speech and/or actions are contrary to Wokeism, or who are less than enthusiastic.

To achieve Woke totalitarian dominance, dissenters must be reviled as heretics. And if unrepentent, they must be incarcerated or otherwise excommunicated by removing their reputations and employment. Any spokespersons for alternative opinions to Woke views of history and identity politics must be driven out of public awareness and discourse.

Expand the administrative bureaucracy to extend social and economic control and to deepen dependency upon the state.

By declaring states of emergency, a la Covid or Climate, Executive agencies will create more rules regulating enterprises, indeed all employees public and private, constraining personal choices to align with Woke doctrines. Expanding the regulatory authorities will greatly increase numbers on the public payroll, and shift financial power away from the private sector.

Strip the citizenry of firearms to prevent resistance to the force of governmental edicts.

To complete the state’s monopoly of coercion force over the populace, citizens’ right to self-defense must be rendered mute by confiscating guns and ammunition.

Rig the election process so that the Woke party is always returned to power.

In line with Marxist theory, Woke doctrine includes believing that only one political party is legitimate; that is the one representing the victims of oppression. All others are illegitimate, and cannot be allowed to form the government by means of a free and fair election. The illusion of voters choosing will be maintained, but political communication will be slanted to heavily favor the Woke appointed candidates. Also the collecting and counting of ballots will be coordinated to ensure the right outcome.

Neutralize Congress and Supreme Court as checks upon Executive authority.

With the centralizing of governance in the Executive branch. Congress and the Courts must be relegated to advisory roles. Deliberation will occur in the agencies with Executive oversight, while congressional discussions will give the appearance of representation for the electors. The courts will limit themselves to reaffirming Woke doctrine against heresies arising from time to time.

Postscript

I have used satirical images to poke holes in this mistaken political movement, but this is a serious moment in the struggle for the soul and future of the American Republic.  For example, note these statements excerpted from a recent fundraising email from Ron DeSantis, addressing these same points in resolute language. The Appeal of Ron DeSantis

Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.

This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.

A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself.

To destroy America, they go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.

Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.

With regard to Covid, we listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”

We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.

We The People still have a say. We know the truth, you and I, about America and the country she is and can be. We must fight to defeat these false pretenses and predetermined narratives.

I am choosing to counter this enemy with faith, with reason, and with freedom. As Governor of the Free State of Florida, I have chosen to lead with a vision that builds America up rather than tears it down.

Together we can ensure that our children are raised to know they live in the greatest state in the nation, the greatest country in the world and that they have an opportunity to continue making them even greater.

Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don’t. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.

The World Is Not Over, But On The Wrong Track

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jeff Thomas writes at International Man It’s Not the End of the World with some advice for those of us watching the governance train wrecks around the world. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.  H/T Tyler Durden.

Periodically, I’ll encounter someone who has read one of my essays and has decided not to pursue them further, stating, “You’re one of those ‘End of the world’ guys. I can’t be bothered reading the writings of someone who thinks we’re all doomed. I have a more positive outlook than that.”

In actual fact, I agree entirely with his latter two comments. I can’t be bothered reading the thoughts of a writer who says we’re all doomed, either. I, too, have a more positive outlook than that.

My one discrepancy with such comments is that I don’t by any means think that the present state of events will lead to the end of the world, as he assumes.

But then, neither am I naïve enough to think that if I just hope for the best, the powers that be will cease to be parasitical and predatory out of sympathy for me. They will not.

For any serious student of history, one of the great realisations that occurs at some point is that governments are inherently controlling by nature. The more control they have, the more they desire and the more they pursue. After all, governments actually produce nothing. They exist solely upon what they can extract from the people they rule over. Therefore, their personal success is not measured by how well they serve their people, it’s measured by how much they can extract from the people.

And so, it’s a given that all governments will pursue ever-greater levels of power over their minions up to and including the point of total dominance.

It should be said that, on rare occasions, a people will rise up and create a governmental system in which the rights of the individual are paramount. This was true in the creation of the Athenian Republic and the American Constitution, and even the British Magna Carta.

However, these events are quite rare in history and, worse, as soon as they take place, those who gain power do their best to diminish the newly-gained freedoms.

Such freedoms can almost never be destroyed quickly, but, over time and “by slow operations,” as Thomas Jefferson was fond of saying, governments can be counted on to eventually destroy all freedoms.

We’re passing through a period in history in which the process of removing freedoms
is nearing completion in many of the world’s foremost jurisdictions.
The EU and US, in particular, are leading the way in this effort.

Consequently, it shouldn’t be surprising that some predict “the end of the world.” But, they couldn’t be more incorrect.

Surely, in 1789, the more productive people of France may have felt that the developing French Revolution would culminate in Armageddon. Similarly, in 1917, those who created prosperity in Russia may well have wanted to throw up their hands as the Bolsheviks seized power from the Romanovs.

Whenever a deterioration in rule is underway, as it is once again now, the observer has three choices:

Declare the End of the World

There are many people, worldwide, but particularly in the centres of the present deterioration – the EU and US – who feel that, since the situation in their home country is nearing collapse, the entire world must also be falling apart. This is not only a very myopic viewpoint, it’s also quite inaccurate. At any point in civilization in the past 2000 years or more, there have always been empires that were collapsing due to intolerable governmental dominance and there have always concurrently been alternative jurisdictions where the level of freedom was greater. In ancient Rome, when Diocletian devalued the currency, raised taxes, increased warfare and set price controls, those people who actually created the economy on a daily basis found themselves in the same boat as Europeans and Americans are finding themselves in, in the 21st century.

It may have seemed like the end of the world, but it was not. Enough producers left Rome and started over again in other locations. Those other locations eventually thrived as a result of the influx of productive people, while Rome atrophied.

Turn a Blind Eye

This is less dreary than the above approach, but it is nevertheless just as fruitless. It is, in fact, the most common of reactions – to just “hope for the best.”

It’s tempting to imagine that maybe the government will realise that they’re the only ones benefitting from the destruction of freedom and prosperity and they’ll feel bad and reverse the process. But this clearly will not happen.

It’s also tempting to imagine that maybe it won’t get a whole lot worse and that life, although not all that good at present, might remain tolerable. Again, this is wishful thinking and the odds of it playing out in a positive way are slim indeed.

Accept the Truth, But Do Something About It

This, of course, is the hard one. Begin by recognising the truth. If that truth is not palatable, study the situation carefully and, when a reasonably clear understanding has been reached, create an alternative.

When governments enter the final decline stage, an alternative is not always easy to accept. It’s a bit like having a tooth pulled. You want to put it off, but the pain will only get worse if you delay. And so, you trundle off to the dentist unhappily, but, a few weeks after the extraction, you find yourself asking, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

To be sure, those who investigate and analyze the present socio-economic-political deterioration do indeed espouse a great deal of gloom, but this should not be confused with doom.

In actual fact, the whole point of shining a light into the gloom is to avoid having it end in doom.

It should be said here that remaining in a country that is tumbling downhill socially, economically and politically is also not the end of the world. It is, however, true that the end result will not exactly be a happy one. If history repeats once again, it’s likely to be quite a miserable one.

Those who undertake the study of the present deterioration must, admittedly, address some pretty depressing eventualities and it would be far easier to just curl up on the sofa with a six-pack and watch the game, but the fact remains: unless the coming problems are investigated and an alternative found, those who sit on the sofa will become the victims of their own lethargy.

Sadly, we live in a period in history in which some of the nations that once held the greatest promise for the world are well on their way to becoming the most tyrannical.

If by recognizing that fact, we can pursue better alternatives elsewhere on the globe, as people have done in previous eras. We may actually find that the field of daisies in the image below is still very much in existence, it’s just a bit further afield than it was in years gone by.

And it is absolutely worthy of pursuit.

Why The Protests Over Abortion and Guns?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

As Jimbob notes in this cartoon, the people in the streets are nearly always leftists appealing to the state to take away someone else’s freedom.  This latest round is triggered by Supreme Court decisions confirming American constitutional rights, contradicting the left’s agenda.  They respond with outbursts of emotion and rage, rather than  by reading and understanding what they have gotten wrong.

Bruce Pardy explained the dynamics in his National Post article Meet the new ‘human rights’ — where you are forced by law to use ‘reasonable’ pronouns.  Excepts in italics with my bolds.

Human rights were conceived to liberate. They protected people from an oppressive state. Their purpose was to prevent arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and censorship, by placing restraints on government. The state’s capacity to accommodate these “negative rights” was unlimited, since they required only that people be left alone.

If only arm twisting were prohibited beyond the ring.

But freedom from interference is so 20th century. Modern human rights entitle. We are in the middle of a culture war, and human rights have become a weapon to normalize social justice values and to delegitimize competing beliefs. These rights are applied against other people to limit their liberties.

Freedom of expression is a traditional, negative human right. When the state manages expression, it threatens to control what we think. Forced speech is the most extreme infringement of free speech. It puts words in the mouths of citizens and threatens to punish them if they do not comply. When speech is merely restricted, you can at least keep your thoughts to yourself. Compelled speech makes people say things with which they disagree.

Traditional negative human rights give people the freedom to portray themselves as they wish without fearing violence or retribution from others. Everyone can exercise such rights without limiting the rights of others. Not so the new human rights. Did you expect to decide your own words and attitudes? If so, human rights are not your friend.

Then, some comments about the abortion street theater from Rajan Laad’s American Thinker article Decoding the Democrat protestors after Roe.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The recent ruling from the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade launched a thousand protests, which the Democrats called “The Night of Rage.”

In Washington D.C., hundreds of pro-abortion ‘activists’ marched, shouted slogans, and held signs outside the Supreme Court building and beyond.

Crowds ‘demonstrated’ before the federal building in downtown Chicago. The cacophony of ‘protests’ was also witnessed at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta, the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, and in Flint, Michigan.

There were ‘marches’ in downtown Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, and Los Angeles.

There were ‘demonstrations’ in Richmond, Virginia; Jacksonville, Florida; Columbia, South Carolina; Raleigh, North Carolina, and Topeka, Kansas.

In Phoenix, ‘protesters’ managed to break the doors of the Arizona Senate building.

Some of these ‘demonstrations’ involved road blockades while obscenities were shouted elsewhere.

Enraged ‘protesters’ also descended before the homes of the six conservative Supreme Court justices.

Also, this week the Senate passed a gun control bill, that among other things, enables the confiscation of guns on the basis of suspicion. But conservatives didn’t hit the streets demonstrating that their rights were encroached upon.

For decades, since the beginning of the Nixon era, the Democrats have been the party of “demonstrations.” The operation has become so smooth now that they can muster raucous nationwide protests for any issue in a matter of hours. It is almost as if they have a sleeper cell that can be activated on command.

Democrats use these groups like disposable commodities. They will be cheered as a group but overlooked as individuals. They will always be part of the crowds. but never be allowed on stage. The stage is reserved for the Hollywood star or the pop singer or the politician. If they secure a victory, the Democrat ‘elites’ will enjoy the fruits of power and receive invites to galas. The activist will always be out on the streets.

Comment:

The protests are about purifying the population of the “wrong thinkers”.  It means cancelling any woman (yes, they do know what one is) concerned about ending the life of her unborn child.  It means forcing doctors and caregivers to act against their principles to do procedures to abort an embryonic human life because someone couldn’t manage their sexual practices to prevent it.

The guns thing is even more obvious.  Responsible gun owners are to have their self-defense removed so that outlaws can roam freely without fear of lethal confrontation.  Urban snowflakes want rural folks disarmed so they can feel safer in their crime ridden neighborhoods, even though they aren’t.

And on it goes.  Anyone who has a longer and higher quality life because of fossil fuel products must be deprived of it to “save the planet.”  Anyone thinking otherwise is to be silenced and ostracized.  There is only one right way to think; all others must be cast aside.

 

 

One More Time: Shooters Are Disordered Personalities

Posted on by Ron Clutz

One more time:  These shooters assaulting their fellow citizens are disordered personalities, not people suffering from emotional problems who can be helped by counseling therapy.

John Dale Dunn, M.D. explains in his American Thinker article Don’t assume school shooters are mentally ill.  Excerpts in italics below with my bolds.

There is a lot of mumbo jumbo psych talk circulating around the dead bodies in Uvalde, a town I knew pretty well because I consulted frequently with their hospital administrator.

I want to remind readers of the problem of personality disorders (PD) and distinguish PD from mental illness.

PD is pattern of anti-social or dysfunctional behavior that is not caused by mental illness but by bad manners and bad social adaptation. There are 3 groups of personality disorders. In the Emergency Medicine part of my life,

I taught residents that PDs are the weird, the wild, and the withdrawn.

The killers and criminals are usually in the wild group, who are the most anti-social and disruptive.

Here is a typical listing available from a search at: https://psychone.net/list-of-personality-disorders.php

Class A (The Weird)

Odd or eccentric disorders

·         Paranoid personality disorder 

Characterized by suspiciousness and a deep mistrust of people, paranoid personalities often think of others as manipulative, cunning or dishonest. This kind of a person may appear guarded, secretive, and excessively critical. More..

·         Schizoid personality disorder 

People with schizoid personalities are emotionally distant and tend to prefer to be alone. They are generally immersed in their own thoughts and have little interest in bonding and intimacy with others. More..

·         Schizotypal personality disorder 

This disorder is characterized by odd and unusual “magical” beliefs. These individuals may have an eccentric way of behaving or dressing. They also tend to display outlandish beliefs such as believing that they can see the future or travel to other dimensions.

People with this condition often have difficulty connecting with others and establishing long term relationships. Overtime, they may develop a fear of social gatherings. More..

Class B (The Wild)

Dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders (wild) 

·         Antisocial/psychopath personality disorder

Individuals with this disorder are known to be manipulative, irresponsible, and have a history of legal difficulties. They show little respect for the rights of others and feel no remorse for their actions. They also leave a trail of unfulfilled promises and broken hearts.

Antisocial personalities are also at high risk for drug abuse (e.g., alcoholism; meth) since many are rush seekers. While they seldom suffer from depression or anxiety, they often use drugs to relieve boredom and irritability. More..  (Dunn note–this PD is male dominant) 

·         Borderline personality disorder

Borderline personalities are impulsive and have extreme views of people as either all good or bad.

These people are unstable in relationships and have a strong fear of abandonment. They may form an intense personal attachment with someone they barely know and end it without no apparent reason. They might also engage in a pull and push behavior that usually ends with their partner leaving permanently.

Self-mutilation, suicidal gestures or attention-seeking destructive behaviors are not uncommon. Borderline personalities are three times more likely to be female. More..

·         Histrionic personality disorder

People with this condition engage in persistent attention-seeking behaviors that include innapropriate sexual behavior and exaggerated emotions. They can be oversensitive about themselves and constantly seek reasurrance or approval from others.

Excessive need to be the center of attention, low tolerance for frustration, blaming others for failures are also characteristics of the histrionic personality. More..

·         Narcissistic personality disorder 

Narcissistic personalities have a blown up perception of themselves and an excessive desire for attention and admiration. Individuals with this disorder have a false sense of entitlement and little respect for other people’s feelings. They are oversensitive to criticism and often blame others for their failures.

Prone to outbursts of anger and irritability, the narcissistic personality tends to be manipulative in interpersonal relationships. But deep beneath the surface lies a vulnerable self-esteem, susceptible to depression and feelings of inferiority. More..

Class C (The Withdrawn)

Anxious or fearful disorders 

·         Avoidant personality disorder 

This disorder is described by chronic social withdrawal, feelings of inferiority, over-sensitivity and social withdrawal.

People with avoidant personality disorder are constantly fearful of rejection and ridicule. They form relationships only with people that they trust. The pain of rejection is so strong that these individuals prefer to isolate rather than risk disappointment. More..

·         Dependent personality disorder 

Individuals with this condition have an abnormal desire to be nurtured that leads to submissive and clinging behavior. Dependent personalities have difficulty making their own decisions and seek others to take over most important areas in their lives.

They will often go to great length to obtain nurturance from others, have separation anxiety when alone and desperately seek another partner when a close relationship ends. More..

·         Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)

Not to be confused with OCD. People with OCPD are perceived as strict and demanding by others. They have a persistent preoccupation with perfectionism, orderliness, and efficiency, at the expense of interpersonal relationships. They also show an excessive devotion to work, productivity and exhibit rigidness and stubbornness.

People with OCPD usually have a negative view of life and often become withdrawn and depressed.

I was a corrections physician for almost 30 years as a contribution to our hometown and local law enforcement/incarceration services. I know a little about criminals. Here are three essays, two short, one long, on the issue of criminality and mental disorders.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/02/mental_illness_and_misconduct.html

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/03/personality_disorders_and_mass_murder.html

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/senator_cornyn_and_the_inmates.html

Consider my warning: PDs are not a mental illness, they are a culturally dysfunctional behavior problem. PD individuals are not psychotic or out of touch with reality — they just have a bad set of behavior and social controls. They got messed up on the way to adulthood and functional good behavior.

 

My Comment:

Dr. Dunn puts analytic rigor to confirm a suspicion many of us have, that these violent acts by individuals demonstrate the breakdown of socialization in our societies.  Current political initiatives aim to denigrate and defund law enforcement, and to not prosecute criminal behavior.  Educators are proudly replacing family values with ego-centric pleasure gratification.  How can this be anything but a concerted effort to infect free societies with more and more mal-adjusted, disordered personalities?  And social media adds fuel to the fire.

The wokeness destruction of our institutions must be reversed, and families must function to raise children to care about and respect others.  Otherwise, when the social bonds are completely dissolved, the jack boots will come in.

See also Hey Groomers, Leave Those Kids Alone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where Leftist Media Saturation Leads

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tyler Durden writes insightfully on the current cultural war in his zerohedge article Why Are Twitter Employees So Afraid Of Free Speech? It’s About Market Saturation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

When a franchise sets out to compete with other companies that have a superior market or branding presence, they will sometimes exploit a strategy called “market saturation” in order to undermine their opponent’s visibility. An example of this is Starbucks, which sought to co-opt and then destroy the concept of the neighborhood hipster coffee shop by flooding every city and town with their own stores. After several years, there was at least four Starbucks within a mile of every other Starbucks store and often these franchises would sit right across the road from each other.

Every coffee house was now a Starbucks coffee house.

You might ask – What the hell does this have to do with Twitter? Well, remember this analogy for later because it’s important, but it has a lot to do with the manner in which the political left operates and how social justice warriors and trans activists take control of the narrative. And guess who has been running Twitter until recently? That’s right, extreme leftists based out of the social justice Mecca – San Francisco.

Twitter is supposedly one of the largest social media companies in the world (though this has come under question recently as it has yet to be determined how many users on the platform are actually fake), and basing this massive communications hub out of one of the most communistic/collectivist cities in the US already set the stage for unprecedented political bias.

When your company is headquartered in such a place, the vast majority of people you hire will be part of the social justice hive mind. It’s saturated.

Why is this a problem? Leftists don’t believe in work, they believe in activism, and they even believe that their activism is so important to the world that they should be paid for it as if it is the same as work. This is not an exaggeration; they really are that crazy. That’s why when it became apparent that billionaire Elon Musk, a self described proponent of meritocracy, was going to take over the platform, the employees freaked out. Not because they thought they were going to lose their jobs (though that was a concern), but more so because they were horrified at the notion that Twitter as a communications platform would be “forced” by Musk to allow free speech. Meaning, Twitter employees have spent most of their careers trying to erase one side of the political discussion (conservatives), and the prospect of all that censorship disappearing has them frothing at the mouth like rabid dogs.

Again, it’s about saturation.

Though leftists often greatly overestimate their influence within the overall culture, they don’t really care so much about convincing the public of the legitimacy of their ideology. Rather, what they are obsessed with is their beliefs becoming the ONLY beliefs that are perpetuated in the mainstream. No other franchises can be allowed a foothold in media, in popular culture or on Big Tech platforms. They see the public as a blank canvas, a lump of clay that can and should be molded, and they think that if the public is bombarded daily with the social justice cult message then this will eventually translate to a manufactured majority that serves their interests.

A perfect example is the concept of “pride month.”

Since when does 2%-3% of the global population need an entire month to celebrate their obscure sexual habits? Since when does almost every major corporation need to brand their products with pride propaganda during June? Because saturation works, to a point. In the US, where there has been a constant bombardment of LGBT propaganda in media, the number of people identifying as gay and trans rose from around 2.5% in 2008 to over 5% in 2016, and it’s still climbing today. Remember, the gay lobby has long argued that homosexuality is inborn. So, somehow, the rate of people born gay doubled in the span of 8 years, and only in the US and certain parts of Europe. How is this possible?

It’s not possible. Not statistically or scientifically. There was no stigma in 2008 in terms of identifying as gay; there wasn’t really any stigma as far back as the 1990’s. On top of that, survey methods are generally anonymous anyway. So stigma can’t be used as an excuse for the abnormality in stats. Furthermore, the rise in gay identification is almost entirely among Gen Z teens and young adults (an easily manipulated subsection of society). Again, there is no stigma in any age group today. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The LGBT movement has become a political movement and a pop culture movement driven by corporate saturation. It is considered trendy among young people to be gay or trans, and so the percentage rises according to the trend.

Leftists have long understood a concept which most of their political opponents have not, and that is the power of cultural gatekeeping.

They understand that by forcefully injecting their ideology into every aspect of a culture through key sources of entertainment and information distribution as well as public schools, they can create the illusion that they are the majority. And by creating the illusion of a majority, you can one day turn that illusion into a reality as millions of people start to assume that there is only one way to see the world – The leftist way.

In a recent meeting with Elon Musk to discuss the future of the company, Twitter employees were particularly grieved by the notion that the business would be run on meritocracy and that Musk argued in favor of people being able to say whatever they want within the bounds of the law (no death threats). Twitter is a platform that has been declining for years, but it is true that there is no alternative in existence yet with the same level of cultural reach. Employees have been enjoying an incredible level of power – the power to omit, to bury and to erase any messages, facts or people that contradict the greater hive mind.

They see this as their job and the thing that brings meaning to their lives.
Now, that power is about to be taken away.

Not surprisingly, many globalists also share the same sentiments as Twitter workers. Max Boot, a long time member of the Council on Foreign Relations, had this to say about the potential for free speech on Twitter:

Note the level of hypocrisy: For “democracy” to survive, we need MORE censorship?

There is something very wrong with the existence of only a few major communications networks becoming integral to social and economic cohesion within a society. It’s not just about a handful of corporations working together to form a technically legal monopoly, it’s also about the ability of those companies to digitally shun entire groups from the wider discourse. As Big Tech platforms become more integrated into our financial life, those same companies could even block entire groups of people from economic access.  They could literally starve people to death if they disagree with the collectivist narrative.

This is the power that leftists really want; the power to silence
and to destroy all other ideals besides their own.
And they get to that goal by first achieving market saturation.

On the bright side, companies like Starbucks got the saturation they wanted and it’s killing them. With so many franchises everywhere, they are now competing with each other and cannibalizing each other. You’ll find that this is also a common theme among leftist movements. With so many different professional victims battling over an ever shrinking piece of the pie, it’s only a matter of time before these people eat each other alive.

Unfortunately, they may destroy our country well before our society
gets a chance to wake up from the madness and rebalance the scales.

2000 Mules is the Smoking Gun

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Now we know why they avert their eyes from watching the film 2000 Mules.  And why the panel investigating the January 6 protest didn’t dare to screen the documentary.  Because it shows beyond reasonable doubt that election theft activities were coordinated and replicated in multiple states, proving a national criminal enterprise rigged the 2020 US Presidential election.  The smoking gun is there for all to see, and even more, it is only part of the pattern of corruption.

Charlie Johnston explains in his American Thinker article D’Souza’s Mules Left Tracks.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Many conservative commentators have noted that Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, 2000 Mules, offers compelling evidence of large-scale vote fraud. It offers more than this, though. It provides compelling evidence of a massive, centrally coordinated conspiracy to commit vote fraud. Examining several states with different voter laws while focusing on just one form of fraud, the movie found that the method of fraud was executed identically in each of these states.

That is prima facie evidence of central organization and management.

From the moment counting was stopped in the dead of night in five Democrat-run swing states on election night, Democrats and the media have treated anyone who questioned election integrity in 2020 like a mob boss treats anyone who threatens to testify against him: shut up, or we will cancel you.

Democrats and the media routinely smear anyone who questions the election results as a conspiracy theorist.  They routinely pronounce any evidence that emerges as “debunked.”  For the record, “debunked” does not mean “inconvenient to the leftist narrative.”  It means “thoroughly investigated and proven to be false.”  Almost none of the evidence has been debunked; very little has been officially examined.  Leftists treat actual evidence like how a vampire treats a crucifix.  There is no reasoned discourse, just a lot of hissing and snarling.

From well before he took office, Donald Trump faced an ongoing administrative coup attempt. First was the long-running Russian collusion hoax, mounted by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee and abetted by the FBI and intelligence agencies. Federal employees who were, theoretically, subordinate to Trump gleefully worked to undermine his administration. Two baseless impeachments were mounted against him by Democrats who know nothing other than shrieking partisanship anymore.

The slow-moving coup finally succeeded on the evening of November 3, 2020, when those five states quit counting ballots to give Democrats time to “fortify” the election. The last real hurdle to thwarting election integrity came on December 11, 2020, when the Supreme Court ruled that Texas and 18 other states lacked standing to complain of massive fraud. How states that conduct honest elections lack standing to complain of states that don’t in an election that affects them all is beyond my understanding. It looked like unconditional institutional surrender to massive fraud to me. All hail the barbarians!

D’Souza’s documentary examined only the slice of fraud that involved
organized physical ballot-stuffing.

It did not touch on compromised voting machines and systems or unconstitutional, administrative election law changes. If the single slice that 2000 Mules so effectively biopsied is filled with the cancer of fraud, it is willful ignorance to believe that everything else was clean.

If the election of 2020 had been fundamentally clean, Democrats and the media should have been the loudest advocates for a thorough and bipartisan investigation of the election to put widespread doubts to rest and own the conservatives. (By bipartisan, I do not mean like the J6 committee, where the Democrats unilaterally appointed all members, including a couple of Republican chumps for show.) Instead, the left hisses and snarls at every piece of evidence brought forth, no matter how compelling. A guilty man tries to suppress every bit of evidence at his trial, never knowing which piece will seal his conviction, while an innocent man tries to get every piece into evidence he can, never knowing which piece will exonerate him. To assess credibility on this, look who is trying to suppress evidence and who is trying to get evidence into the public record.

At this stage, it is hard to credit Democratic and media intransigence to anything innocent. If they are not just stupid, they have become co-conspirators in the only actual insurrection America has seen over the last six years. Understand, this coup was not primarily aimed at Trump and conservative Republicans; it is a coup against the very idea of self-government. Alas, many Republicans may disagree with elements of Democratic methods but agree with them that a self-serving elite class should rule the citizen-serfs they think constitute the American people.

The relentless smears, the constant howls, and the shrieking rage of the leftists are not because they are so offended that the right would challenge them. It is because the mud of massive deception is being washed away to reveal the rock of stark fraud the left mounted to steal an American presidential election. That is genuine insurrection. Confession, repentance, and forfeiture of all offices of public honor or trust by the conspirators could begin to establish American honor and liberty anew. That, of course, will never happen. Power is the left’s only god, and pursuit of it by any means its only liturgy.

Republicans will win by unprecedented margins in November. If they hold the left to account for its depredations against the American system of law and systemic attack on the Bill of Rights, we can begin to crawl out of this hole of despotism. If, instead, the Republicans largely choose to let bygones be bygones, as they have done with the Russian collusion conspirators, there is little hope that America can long survive as anything the founders would recognize. Renewal will come. Americans will not forever submit to be ruled by any class of people — and certainly not to this degenerate class of aspiring despots.

However it comes, D’Souza’s documentary is the seminal moment the tide washed away enough mud that, despite their shrieks and howls, the left can no longer hide the ugly truth of what it did.

Massive election fraud in 2020 is a conspiracy, but it is no longer merely a theory.

OPEC runs out of spare capacity, makes bullish case for oil

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mohammed Barkindo, the secretary general of OPEC, has warned that “OPEC is running out of capacity,” and that “with the exception of two or three members, all are maxed out.” PHOTO BY REUTERS/DADO RUVIC/ILLUSTRATION/FILE PHOTO

Eric Nuttall explains at Financial Post OPEC running out of spare capacity confirms our multi-year bull case for oil.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Oil companies are going to be pumping high returns to investors
for much longer than people realize

Imagine life without insurance. The constant worry of an unexpected accident, such as your house burning down or car getting stolen, wreaking financial havoc without the economic certainty that everything would be OK in the end. This is where the world is heading in the next several months.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC’s) spare capacity, the oil market equivalent of insurance, has since the 1960s been available to avoid severe price spikes by smoothing out periodic supply disruptions caused by geopolitical events.

Now, owing to too many years of insufficient investment, as the needs of social spending and sovereign revenue dwarfed those of investing in incremental capacity during a multi-year period of low oil prices, OPEC’s spare capacity is set to become exhausted.  This imminent reality will be a watershed event and has enormous implications for the oil market that investors must urgently appreciate.

We have for more than a year argued the world was hurtling into an energy crisis of epic proportions that would result in a multi-year bull market for oil.

Our bullish thesis had four basic tenets:

♦  persistent demand growth for at least the next 10 years;
♦  the end of shale hyper-growth in the United States, defined as shale production growth rates that no longer exceed global demand growth;
♦  stagnant production growth from the global super-majors resulting from eight years of insufficient investment and, finally,
♦  the exhaustion of OPEC’s spare capacity.

The hardest of these four core assumptions to prove by far was the last one. U.S. shale growth rates could be forecasted by talking with oil executives and modelling corporate cash flows. One could easily see that spending by the super-majors had peaked in 2014, falling to half of those levels today, while also being burdened by increasing pressures to decarbonize, so we could predict and model stagnant growth for years to come. And demand growth was boosted in the short term by the emergence from global lockdown, and is supported over the medium-to-long term by the realities that limit alternatives from reaching enough critical mass to meaningfully displace oil in the next several decades.

OPEC’s spare capacity, however, was the tricky one. Monthly data released by several different sources can vary wildly. Given the strategic importance of oil revenue to many Gulf States, hard data on productive capacity has at times been viewed as state secrets and either difficult to get or taken with some skepticism. How then can we be so confident that OPEC’s spare capacity is nearing exhaustion? Because they just told us so.

Last week, the Royal Bank of Canada hosted a spectacular energy conference in New York with the highlight being a keynote speech by Mohammed Barkindo, the secretary general of OPEC. That same night, I had the good fortune to have dinner with him, which to an energy enthusiast was the equivalent of a tech investor getting to hang out with Elon Musk. I found him to be a warm, insightful, soft-spoken and, surprisingly, straight-talking gentleman.

In his keynote speech, Barkindo warned that “OPEC is running out of capacity,” and that “with the exception of two or three members, all are maxed out.” Further, “the world needs to come to terms with this brutal fact” and that it is a “global challenge.”

Why is this so incredibly important? Well, what would happen if the U.S. Federal Reserve ran out of hard currency? It would just simply print more, with fresh bills sent to banks via armoured car the next day.

For oil producers, the cycle time to produce more oil is measured not in days, but in years.

With short-cycle U.S. shale set to grow at a fraction of historical rates, the world is now almost entirely dependent on long-cycle production, yet the global super-majors are entrenched in a multi-year period of stagnation due to too many years of underspending, and now OPEC, out of incremental capacity, is constrained by the very same challenge.

With oil inventories already at multi-year lows, demand back to pre-COVID-19 levels and structural challenges to supply growth, we believe oil prices will have to act as a demand-destroying mechanism, rising to a high enough level that kills discretionary demand, thereby balancing the market, while also staying there long enough to give the super-majors the confidence needed to start adequately spending again.

Given industry cycle times of four to six years, we believe that oil companies are set up to return egregiously high returns to investors for much longer than people realize, leading to a rerating from valuation levels that still imply the end of oil is nigh.

Eric Nuttall is a partner and senior portfolio manager with Ninepoint Partners LP.

 

USA Today Outed for Fictional Fact Checking

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Paul Joseph Watson writes at Summit News Top ‘Fact Checker’ USA Today Forced to Delete Articles Over Fabricated Sources.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.  H/T Tyler Durden

USA Today, which is used as a ‘fact checker’ by social media platforms, was forced to delete 23 articles from its website after an investigation found one of its reporters had fabricated sources.

Well, this is awkward. 

The news outlet has an entire section of its website dedicated to ‘fact checking’ and is used by Facebook to ‘fact check’ stories published by other outlets, downranking them in algorithms in a form of soft censorship.

However, it appears as though USA Today should have devoted more resources to fact checking itself before publishing articles by its own staff.

“USA Today’s breaking news reporter Gabriela Miranda fabricated sources and misappropriated quotes for stories, the news outlet confirmed on Thursday. The outlet conducted an internal audit after receiving an “external correction request” on one of its published stories,” reports Breitbart.

The 23 articles which were removed for not meeting the paper’s “editorial standards” included pieces on the Texas abortion ban, anti-vaxxer content and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Miranda, who has now resigned from her position, “took steps to deceive investigators by producing false evidence of her news gathering, including recordings of interviews,” according to the New York Times.

“After receiving an external correction request, USA TODAY audited the reporting work of Gabriela Miranda. The audit revealed that some individuals quoted were not affiliated with the organizations claimed and appeared to be fabricated. The existence of other individuals quoted could not be independently verified. In addition, some stories included quotes that should have been credited to others.”

As we previously highlighted, USA Today was also forced to hastily delete a series of tweets which critics said were tantamount to the normalization of pedophilia after the newspaper cited “science” to assert that pedophilia was “determined in the womb.”

The newspaper was also lambasted by critics after it ‘fact checked’ as “true” claims that an official Trump 2020 t-shirt features a ‘Nazi symbol’.

In February last year, the news outlet published an op-ed which denounced Tom Brady for refusing to walk back his previous support for Donald Trump and for being “white.”

The newspaper also had to fire their ‘race and inclusion’ editor Hemal Jhaveri after she falsely blamed the Boulder supermarket shooting on white people.

In summary, USA Today has a severe bias problem and shouldn’t be used as a non-partisan ‘fact checker’.

 

How to FLICC Off Climate Alarms

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John Ridgway has provided an excellent framework for skeptics to examine and respond to claims from believers in global warming/climate change.  His essay at Climate Scepticism is Deconstructing Scepticism: The True FLICC.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added comments.

Overview

I have modified slightly the FLICC components to serve as a list of actions making up a skeptical approach to an alarmist claim.  IOW this is a checklist for applying critical intelligence to alarmist discourse in the public arena. The Summary can be stated thusly:

♦  Follow the Data
Find and follow the data and facts to where they lead

♦  Look for full risk profile
Look for a complete assessment of risks and costs from proposed policies

♦  Interrogate causal claims
Inquire into claimed cause-effect relationships

♦  Compile contrary explanations
Construct an organized view of contradictory evidence to the theory

♦  Confront cultural bias
Challenge attempts to promote consensus story with flimsy coincidence

A Case In Point

John Ridgway illustrates how this method works in a comment:

No sooner have I’ve pressed the publish button, and the BBC comes out with the perfect example of what I have been writing about:  Climate change: Rising sea levels threaten 200,000 England properties

It tells of a group of experts theorizing that 200,000 coastal properties are soon to be lost due to climate change. Indeed, it “is already happening” as far as Happisburg on the Norfolk coast is concerned. Coastal erosion is indeed a problem there.

But did the experts take into account that the data shows no acceleration of erosion over the last 2000 years? No.

Have they acknowledge the fact that erosion on the East coast is a legacy of glaciation? No.

[For the US example of this claim, see my post Sea Level Scare Machine]

The FLICC Framework

Below is Ridgway’s text regarding this thought process, followed by a synopsis of his discussion of the five elements. Text is in italics with my bolds.

As part of the anthropogenic climate change debate, and when discussing the proposed plans for transition to Net Zero, efforts have been made to analyse the thinking that underpins the typical sceptic’s position. These analyses have universally presupposed that such scepticism stubbornly persists in the face of overwhelming evidence, as reflected in the widespread use of the term ‘denier’. Consequently, they are based upon taxonomies of flawed reasoning and methods of deception and misinformation.1 

However, by taking such a prejudicial approach, the analyses have invariably failed to acknowledge the ideological, philosophical and psychological bases for sceptical thinking. The following taxonomy redresses that failing and, as a result, offers a more pertinent analysis that avoids the worst excesses of opinionated philippic. The taxonomy identifies a basic set of ideologies and attitudes that feature prominently in the typical climate change sceptic’s case. For my taxonomy I have chosen the acronym FLICC:2

  • Follow data but distrust judgement and speculation

     i.e. value empirical evidence over theory and conjecture.

  • Look for the full risk profile

      i.e. when considering the management of risks and uncertainties, demand that those associated        with mitigating and preventative measures are also taken into account.

  • Interrogate causal arguments

      i.e. demand that both necessity and sufficiency form the basis of a causal analysis.

  • Contrariness

      i.e. distrust consensus as an indicator of epistemological value.

  • Cultural awareness

       i.e. never underestimate the extent to which a society can fabricate a truth for its own purposes.

All of the above have a long and legitimate history outside the field of climate science. The suggestion that they are not being applied in good faith by climate change sceptics falls beyond the remit of taxonomical analysis and strays into the territory of propaganda and ad hominem.

The five ideologies and attitudes of climate change scepticism introduced above are now discussed in greater detail.

Following the data

Above all else, the sceptical approach is characterized by a reluctance to draw conclusions from a given body of evidence. When it comes to evidence supporting the idea of a ‘climate crisis’, such reluctance is judged by many to be pathological and indicative of motivated reasoning. Cognitive scientists use the term ‘conservative belief revision’ to refer to an undue reluctance to update beliefs in accordance with a new body of evidence. More precisely, when the individual retains the view that events have a random pattern, thereby downplaying the possibility of a causative factor, the term used is ‘slothful induction’. Either way, the presupposition is that the individual is committing a logical fallacy resulting from cognitive bias.

However, far from being a pathology of thinking, such reluctance has its legitimate foundations in Pyrrhonian philosophy and, when properly understood, it can be seen as an important thinking strategy.3 Conservative belief revision and slothful induction can indeed lead to false conclusions but, more importantly, the error most commonly encountered when making decisions under uncertainty (and the one with the greatest potential for damage) is to downplay unknown and possibly random factors and instead construct a narrative that overstates and prejudges causation. This tendency is central to the human condition and it lies at the heart of our failure to foresee the unexpected – this is the truly important cognitive bias that the sceptic seeks to avoid.

The empirical sceptic is cognisant of evidence and allows the formulation of theories but treats them with considerable caution due to the many ways in which such theories often entail unwarranted presupposition.

The drivers behind this problem are the propensity of the human mind to seek patterns, to construct narratives that hide complexities, to over-emphasise the causative role played by human agents and to under-emphasise the role played by external and possibly random factors. Ultimately, it is a problem regarding the comprehension of uncertainty — we comprehend in a manner that has served us well in evolutionary terms but has left us vulnerable to unprecedented, high consequence events.

It is often said that a true sceptic is one who is prepared to accept the prevailing theory once the evidence is ‘overwhelming’. The climate change sceptic’s reluctance to do so is taken as an indication that he or she is not a true sceptic. However, we see here that true scepticism lies in the willingness to challenge the idea that the evidence is overwhelming – it only seems overwhelming to those who fail to recognise the ‘theorizing disease’ and lack the resolve to resist it. Secondly, there cannot be a climate change sceptic alive who is not painfully aware of the humiliation handed out to those who resist the theorizing.

In practice, the theorizing and the narratives that trouble the empirical sceptic take many forms. It can be seen in:

♦  over-dependence upon mathematical models for which the tuning owes more to art than science.

♦  readiness to treat the output of such models as data resulting from experiment, rather than the hypotheses they are.

♦  lack of regard for ontological uncertainty (i.e. the unknown unknowns which, due to their very nature, the models do not address).

♦  emergence of story-telling as a primary weapon in the armoury of extreme weather event attribution.

♦  willingness to commit trillions of pounds to courses of action that are predicated upon Representative Concentration Pathways and economic models that are the ‘theorizing disease’ writ large.

♦  contributions of the myriad of activists who seek to portray the issues in a narrative form laden with social justice and other ethical considerations.

♦  imaginative but simplistic portrayals of climate change sceptics and their motives; portrayals that are drawing categorical conclusions that cannot possibly be justified given the ‘evidence’ offered. And;

♦  any narrative that turns out to be unfounded when one follows the data.

Climate change may have its basis in science and data, but this basis has long since been overtaken by a plethora of theorizing and causal narrative that sometimes appears to have taken on a life of its own. Is this what settled science is supposed to look like?

Looking for the full risk profile

Almost as fundamental as the sceptic’s resistance to theorizing and narrative is his or her appreciation that the management of anthropogenic warming (particularly the transition to Net Zero) is an undertaking beset with risk and uncertainty. This concern reflects a fundamental principle of risk management: proposed actions to tackle a risk are often in themselves problematic and so a full risk analysis is not complete until it can be confirmed that the net risk will decrease following the actions proposed.7

Firstly, the narrative of existential risk is rejected on the grounds of empirical scepticism (the evidence for an existential threat is not overwhelming, it is underwhelming).

Secondly, even if the narrative is accepted, it has not been reliably demonstrated that the proposal for Net Zero transition is free from existential or extreme risks.

Indeed, given the dominant role played by the ‘theorizing disease’ and how it lies behind our inability to envisage the unprecedented high consequence event, there is every reason to believe that the proposals for Net Zero transition should be equally subject to the precautionary principle. The fact that they are not is indicative of a double standard being applied. The argument seems to run as follows: There is no uncertainty regarding the physical risk posed by climate change, but if there were it would only add to the imperative for action. There is also no uncertainty regarding the transition risk, but if there were it could be ignored because one can only apply the precautionary principle once!

This is precisely the sort of inconsistency one encounters when uncertainties are rationalised away in order to support the favoured narrative.

The upshot of this double standard is that the activists appear to be proceeding with two very different risk management frameworks depending upon whether physical or transition risk is being considered. As a result, risks associated with renewable energy security, the environmental damage associated with proposals to reduce carbon emissions and the potentially catastrophic effects of the inevitable global economic shock are all played down or explained away.

Looking for the full risk profile is a basic of risk management practice. The fact that it is seen as a ploy used only by those wishing to oppose the management of anthropogenic climate change is both odd and worrying. It is indeed important to the sceptic, but it should be important to everyone.

Interrogating causal arguments

For many years we have been told that anthropogenic climate change will make bad things happen. These dire predictions were supposed to galvanize the world into action but that didn’t happen, no doubt partly due to the extent to which such predictions repeatedly failed to come true (as, for example, with the predictions of the disappearance of Arctic sea ice).  .  .This is one good reason for the empirical sceptic to distrust the narrative,8 but an even better one lies in the very concept of causation.

A major purpose of narrative is to reduce complexity so that the ‘truth’ can shine through. This is particularly the case with causal narratives. We all want executive summaries and sound bites such as ‘Y happened because of X’. But very few of us are interested in examining exactly what we mean by such statements – very few except, of course, for the empirical sceptics. In a messy world in which many factors may be at play, the more pertinent questions are:

♦  To what extent was X necessary for Y to happen?
♦  To what extent was X sufficient for Y to happen?

The vast majority of the extreme weather event attribution narrative is focused upon the first question and very little attention is paid to the second; at least not in the many press bulletins issued. Basically, we are told that the event was virtually impossible without climate change, but very little is said regarding whether climate change on its own was enough.

This problem of oversimplification is even more worrying once one starts to examine consequential damages whilst failing to take into account man-made failings such as those that exacerbate the impacts of floods and forest fires.9   The oversimplification of causal narrative is not restricted to weather-related events, of course. Climate change, we are told, is wreaking havoc with the flora and fauna and many species are dying out as a result. However, when such claims are examined more closely,10 it is invariably the case that climate change has been lumped in with a number of other factors that are destroying habitat.

When climate change sceptics point this out they are, of course, accused of cherry-picking. The truth, however, is that their insistence that the extended causal narrative of necessity and sufficiency should be respected is nothing more than the consequence of following the data and looking for the full risk profile.

Contrariness

The climate change debate is all about making decisions under uncertainty, so it is little surprise that gaining consensus is seen as centrally important. Uncertainty is reduced when the evidence is overwhelming and it is tempting to believe that the high level of consensus amongst climate scientists surely points towards there being overwhelming evidence. If one accepts this logic then the sceptic’s refusal to accept the consensus is just another manifestation of his or her denial.

Except, of course, an empirical sceptic would not accept this logic. Consensus does not result from a simple examination of concordant evidence, it is instead the fruit of the tendentious theorizing and simplifying narrative that the empirical sceptic intuitively distrusts. As explained above, there are a number of drivers that cause such theories and narratives to entail unwarranted presupposition, and it is naïve to believe that scientists are immune to such drivers.

However, the fact remains that consensus on beliefs is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for presuming that these beliefs constitute shared knowledge. It is only when a consensus on beliefs is uncoerced, uniquely heterogeneous and large, that a shared knowledge provides the best explanation of a given consensus.11 The notion that a scientific consensus can be trusted because scientists are permanently seeking to challenge accepted views is simplistic at best.

It is actually far from obvious that in climate science the conditions have been met for consensus to be a reliable indicator of shared knowledge.

Contrariness simply comes with the territory of being an empirical sceptic. The evidence of consensus is there to be seen, but the amount of theorizing and narrative required for its genesis, together with the social dimension to consensus generation, are enough for the empirical sceptic to treat the whole matter of consensus with a great deal of caution.

Cultural awareness

There has been a great deal said already regarding the culture wars surrounding issues such as the threat posed by anthropogenic climate change. Most of the concerns are directed at the sceptic, who for reasons never properly explained is deemed to be the instigator of the conflict. However, it is the sceptic who chooses to point out that the value-laden arguments offered by climate activists are best understood as part of a wider cultural movement in which rationality is subordinate to in-group versus outgroup dynamics.

Psychological, ethical and spiritual needs lie at the heart of the development of culture and so the adoption of the climate change phenomenon in service of these needs has to be seen as essentially a cultural power play. The dangers of uncritically accepting the fruits of theorizing and narrative are only the beginning of the empirical sceptic’s concerns. Beyond that is the concern that the direction the debate is taking is not even a matter of empiricism – data analysis has little to offer when so much depends upon whether the phenomenon is subsequently to be described as warming or heating. It is for this reason that much of the sceptic’s attention is directed towards the manner in which the science features in our culture rather than the science itself. Such are our psychological, ethical and spiritual needs, that we must not underestimate the extent to which ostensibly scientific output can be moulded in their service.

Conclusions

Taxonomies of thinking should not be treated too seriously. Whilst I hope that I have offered here a welcome antidote to the diatribe that often masquerades as a scholarly appraisal of climate change scepticism, it remains the case that the form that scepticism takes will be unique to the individual. I could not hope to cover all aspects of climate change scepticism in the limited space available to me, but it remains my belief that there are unifying principles that can be identified.

Central to these is the concept of the empirical sceptic and the need to understand that there are sound reasons to treat theorizing and simplifying narratives with extreme caution. The empirical sceptic resists the temptation to theorize, preferring instead to keep an open mind on the interpretation of the evidence. This is far from being self-serving denialism; it is instead a self-denying servitude to the data.

That said, I cannot believe that there would be any activist who, upon reading this account, would see a reason to modify their opinions regarding the bad faith and irrationality that lies behind scepticism. This, unfortunately, is only to be expected given that such opinions are themselves the result of theorizing and simplifying narrative.

Footnote:

While the above focuses on climate alarmism, there are many other social and political initiatives that are theory-driven, suffering from inadequate attention to analysis by empirical sceptics.  One has only to note corporate and governmental programs based on Critical Race or Gender theories.  In addition, COVID policies in advanced nations ignored the required full risk profiling, as well as overturning decades of epidemiological knowledge in favor of models and experimental gene therapies proposed by Big Pharma.

 

 

Our Childish Leaders

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Donald J. Boudreaux writes at AIER Beware the Allure of Simple ‘Solutions’.  H/T Brownstone Institute.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The attitudes and opinions of today’s so-called “elite” – those public-opinion formers who Deirdre McCloskey calls “the clerisy” – are childish. Most journalists and writers working for most premier media and entertainment companies, along with most professors and public intellectuals, think, talk, and write about society with the insight of kindergartners.

This sad truth is masked by the one feature that does distinguish the clerisy from young children: verbal virtuosity. Yet beneath the fine words, beautiful phrases, arresting metaphors, and affected allusions lies a notable immaturity of thought.

Every social and economic problem is believed to have a solution,
and that solution is almost always superficial.

Unlike children, adults understand that living life well begins with accepting the inescapability of trade-offs. Contrary to what you might have heard, you cannot “have it all.” You cannot have more of this thing unless you’re willing to have less of that other thing. And what’s true for you as an individual is true for any group of individuals. We Americans cannot have our government artificially raise the cost of producing and using carbon fuels unless we are willing to pay higher prices at the pump and, thus, have less income to spend on acquiring other goods and services. We cannot use money creation to ease the pain today of COVID lockdowns without enduring the greater pain tomorrow of inflation.

While children stomp their little feet in protest when confronted with the need to make trade-offs, the necessity of trade-offs is accepted as a matter of course by adults.

No less importantly, adults, unlike children, are not beguiled by the superficial.

Pay close attention to how the clerisy (who are mostly, although not exclusively, Progressives) propose to ‘solve’ almost any problem, real or imaginary. You’ll discover that the proposed ‘solution’ is superficial; it’s rooted in the naïve assumption that social reality beyond what is immediately observable either doesn’t exist or is unaffected by attempts to rearrange surface phenomena. In the clerisy’s view, the only reality that matters is the reality that is easily seen and seemingly easily manipulated with coercion.

The clerisy’s proposed ‘solutions,’ therefore, involve simply rearranging,
or attempting to rearrange, surface phenomena.

♦  Do some people use guns to murder other people? Yes, sadly. The clerisy’s superficial ‘solution’ to this real problem is to outlaw guns.

♦  Do some people have substantially higher net financial worths than other people? Yes. The clerisy’s juvenile ‘solution’ to this fake problem is to heavily tax the rich and transfer the proceeds to the less rich.

♦  Are some workers paid wages that are too low to support a family in modern America? Yes. The clerisy’s simplistic ‘solution’ to this fake problem – “fake” because most workers earning such low wages are not heads of households – is to have government prohibit the payment of wages below some stipulated minimum.

♦  Do some people suffer substantial property damage, or even loss of life, because of hurricanes, droughts, and other bouts of severe weather? Yes. The clerisy’s lazy ‘solution’ to this real problem focuses on changing the weather by reducing the emissions of an element, carbon, that is now (too simplistically) believed to heavily determine the weather.

♦  Do prices of many ‘essential’ goods and services rise significantly in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters? Yes. The clerisy’s counterproductive ‘solution’ to this fake problem, “counterproductive” and “fake” because these high prices accurately reflect and signal underlying economic realities, is to prohibit the charging and payment of these high prices.

♦  When inflationary pressures build up because of excessive monetary growth, are these pressures vented in the form of rising prices? Yes indeed. The clerisy’s infantile ‘solution’ to the very real problem of inflation is to blame it on greed while raising taxes on profits.

♦  Is the SARS-CoV-2 virus contagious and potentially dangerous to humans? Yes. The clerisy’s simple-minded ‘solution’ to this real problem is to forcibly prevent people from mingling with each other.

♦  Do many Americans still not receive K-12 schooling of minimum acceptable quality? Yes. The clerisy’s lazy ‘solution’ to this real problem is to give pay raises to teachers and spend more money on school administrators.

♦  Do some American workers lose jobs when American consumers buy more imports? Yes. The clerisy’s ‘solution’ is to obstruct consumers’ ability to buy imports.

♦  Are some people bigoted and beset with irrational dislike or fear of blacks, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals? Yes. The clerisy’s ‘solution’ to this real problem is to outlaw “hate” and to compel bigoted persons to behave as if they aren’t bigoted.

♦  Do many persons who are eligible to vote in political elections refrain from voting? Yes. The ‘solution’ favored by at least some of the clerisy to this fake problem – “fake” because in a free society each person has a right to refrain from participating in politics – is to make voting mandatory.

The above list of simplistic and superficial ‘solutions’ to problems real and imaginary
can easily be expanded.

The clerisy, mistaking words for realities, assumes that success at verbally describing realities more to their liking proves that these imagined realities can be made real by merely rearranging the relevant surface phenomena. Members of the clerisy ignore unintended consequences. And they overlook the fact that many of the social and economic realities that they abhor are the result, not of villainy or of correctible imperfections, but of complex trade-offs made by countless individuals.

Social engineering appears doable only to those persons who, seeing only a relatively few surface phenomena, are blind to the astonishing complexity that is ever-churning beneath the surface to create those surface phenomena. To such persons, social reality appears as it does to a child: simple and easily manipulated to achieve whatever are the desires that motivate the manipulators.

The clerisy’s ranks are filled overwhelmingly with simple-minded people who mistake their felicity with words and their good intentions for serious thinking. They convey to each other, and to the unsuspecting public, the appearance of being deep thinkers while seldom thinking with more sophistication and nuance than is on display daily in every classroom of kindergartners.