Social Ideologies

High Cost of Green Wishful Thinking

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) admits, “We’re in Trouble,” as President Joe Biden (center) struggles to respond to the worst energy crisis in 50 years, and as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (right) makes homelessness worse.

Michael Shellenberger explains at his substack page Why Wishful Liberal Thinking Led to Disasters in Ukraine, Homelessness, And Climate.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and some headers. H/T Tyler Durden

The good news is that everything is changing — and fast

In the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberals in the West have denounced their political opponents as deniers of climate change, science, and reality in general. Progressives and neoliberals alike argued that they alone could see the shape of the new world being born. It would be increasingly globalized, democratic, and focused on new threats, like climate change.

It’s now clear that all of that was a delusion.

Neither China nor Russia is democratizing and both have become more autocratic and totalitarian. Neither nation views climate change as a major threat. On the contrary. Russia views climate change as an opportunity to expand agriculture and shipping through its newly ice-free waters. Where both Putin and Chinese Premier Xi used to give lip service to climate change, neither even bothered to attend last fall’s United Nations climate talks.

It’s true that the West has imposed sanctions on Russia, and the Ukranian people are battling the Russians fiercely and admirably. A few days ago, Russians retreated from the capital city of Kyiv. Western nations froze bank accounts of Russian oligarchs, hammering the ruble. And European governments are calling on their citizens to reduce energy consumption.

But those are hiccups on the way to a rapidly changed world. Consider that:

♦  China aided Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through a massive cyberattack on Ukraine’s military and nuclear facilities, according to intelligence memos obtained by The Times of London.

♦  Europe continues to import Russian energy while China and India are buying Russian oil at a steep discount. There is little reason to believe conservation measures by Western consumers will make much of a dent in energy consumption.

♦  And Russia’s retreat from Kyiv appears to be temporary and strategic.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes at the very same time as: the collapse of the West’s climate and renewables agenda; an energy crisis triggered by climate activists; and a worsening drug, crime, and homeless crisis in America’s cities.

What do all these events have in common?
They all point to the grave dangers of irrational liberal optimism.

Western Leftists Soft in Defending Civil Freedoms

When it comes to the West’s failure to deter an increasingly totalitarian and violent Russia and China, the growing scarcity and unreliability of energy, and the destruction of America’s cities by open air drug scenes, the fault lies squarely with people on the Left end of the political spectrum.

Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, French President Emanuel Macron, and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, all denied to themselves, and to others, what was plainly obvious to many analysts for years: Putin intended to invade Ukraine.

Even as Russian forces prepared for war games last fall, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan wondered “why Russia would take such a military action at that time,” according to a reconstruction of the events leading up to Putin’s invasion by the Wall Street Journal.

Western Leftists Indulged in Renewables Delusion

On climate change, center-Left parties around the world deluded themselves into thinking their high-energy economies could be powered by renewables, which energy historians have known for centuries had to be abandoned for fossil fuels in order for the industrial revolution to happen. And around the world it was liberals not conservatives who fought to shut down nuclear plants and block natural gas pipelines and infrastructure.

Liberals and progressives could have embraced a climate and energy strategy focused on domestically-produced natural gas and nuclear, as I have urged them to do for over a decade, and which Putin did, allowing him to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supplies.

Such a strategy was the only one that ever made any sense from an environmental point of view. Nuclear and natural gas are the two technologies that are most responsible for declining emissions by the US and Europe since the 1970s.

Instead, the Left in Europe opted for importing fossil fuels from Russia and the Left in the US for importing solar panels made by enslaved Muslims in China.

Leftist Cities Governed into Ruin

On crime, liberal cities have gradually reduced consequences for breaking laws, whether from addiction or malevolence, resulting in rising homicides, burglaries, and open air drug scenes. Relatedly, on homelessness, progressives have funneled hundreds of billions into “Housing First,” which gives away apartments to homeless drug addicts without requiring sobriety.

The result is that, today, well over 50 percent of the people on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles are from out of town, according to expert insiders, homeless outreach workers, and the homeless themselves.

Why do liberals keep making the same mistake over and over again?

Leftists Projecting Own Mindset, Ignoring Reality

In part, it’s because of what cognitive psychologists call “theory of mind.” Liberals tend to think that other people think like they do. Western liberal leaders thought Putin was one of them, a liberal democrat committed to rule of law, even though he repeatedly said he wanted to reconstruct the Soviet empire.

Similarly, leading liberal leaders think homeless drug addicts are seeking a better life, and just need their own apartment to quit drugs, get a job, and re-connect with family and friends. In truth, many if not most homeless addicts maintain their addiction until they are forced to quit.

On energy and climate change, progressives indulged in the fantasy that we could power the world with energy sources that have no negative consequences. They convinced themselves that renewables were better in every way than either fossil fuels and nuclear, even as they demanded massive subsidies for, and the right to kill endangered species in, their deployment.

And liberals engaged in wishful thinking that high standards of living can be maintained with much lower levels of energy consumption, and that poor and working people will accept low standards of living.

There were financial rewards for such wishful thinking. Politicians like Newsom can raise much more money from homeless housing developers than from homeless shelter providers. Center Left parties take money from renewable energy companies all over the world. And it’s now clear that climate activists in Europe, and perhaps the United States, took, took money from the Russian government to fight fracking and natural gas production.

Stunning Failure of Leftist Governance 

The good news is that the failure of elites to govern at local, national, and international levels points to a coming change of leadership, triggered by covid, but ultimately resulting from the exhaustion of post-Cold War ideologies and institutions.

It will gradually become clear that the West must defend itself more vigorously against resurgent illiberal regimes, particularly Russia and China, which could well invade Taiwan, or even attempt to take a Japanese island, in the coming months or years.

And major political changes are afoot. Republicans will likely take one or more house of Congress, and President Joe Biden is unlikely to run again in 2024. The result will be major changes within both parties. California, long a leader of change, for good or ill, will likely see the recall of district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the election of a new attorney general, and the election of a new, more moderate, governor.

In this context, it becomes clear that the claims of reality denial by progressives were a kind of psychological projection. It was progressives who denied the realities of climate change and energy, the intentions of Vladimir Putin, and homelessness. The good news is that people are waking up, and quickly.

The trend toward the dismantling of civilization could soon reverse itself.
But, ultimately, what happens next is up to us.

 

 

Toxic Feminizing Running Amok

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Preface

In a previous post Is “Emotional Intelligence” an Oxymoron? I began by reflecting on a pattern often seen in organizational settings.

Warning: This post will express sincere thoughts that are politically incorrect, for example accepting that males and females have differing predominant behaviors and traits.

The title refers to a notion that came up in the fields of management science and industrial psychology, coincidental with increasing numbers of women practicing in those disciplines. I am prompted to write about this upon realizing that our present social divide is more fundamental than many think. This century, we see increasing numbers of people choosing to operate from emotions rather than intelligence.

This pattern is in contradiction to the trajectory of Western civilization placing reason as primary and individual rights and freedoms as essential.

In a recent article thread a comment caught my attention. “It has been said men rank, women exclude, and that is very true IMO. All-female groups are very exclusionary to anyone who does not fit in.” That expression of Ranking vs. Excluding was new to me, and it may be changing this century, what with women competing with other women in sports, and with men as well in the workplace. Still, it points to our present social struggle whereby “diversity” is employed to divide a nation into identity groups to protest prejudice and claim reparations against grievances. The US as usual is the leading example of this culture war. Ironically, tribalism is rearing its ugly head in precisely the nation-state that so successfully created an American tribe that included any and all ethnic and religious groups.

Ranking vs. Excluding also explains such events as the Senate hearings on Judge Kavanaugh. Clearly his opponents sought to exclude him not only from the Judiciary, but to banish him from the human race. Their fierce and unrelenting animus to this day is frightening for the republic. Ironically, Kavanaugh prevailed in the process only by an emotional outburst, his outrage finally waking others up to the enormously evil beheading underway. This was out of character for a man by all accounts extremely reasonable and unprejudiced, and even in this testimony his intelligence was evident and in control.

It also shows up in the warfare between Trump and the leftist media. From the moment of Trump declaring candidacy, the left has been focused on excluding Trump from legitimacy, not only as President, but as an human being. Meanwhile, he is focused on the ranking: Winning is what matters, coming in first place. And despite the media’s attempts to paint him racist and sexist, I see no evidence that he excludes losers in a contest. On the contrary, he and Senator Rubio are on the same side pushing back against election fraud in Florida. The media can not recognize Trump is driven by intelligence despite his determined actions pursuing rational policy goals, and unbowed by social pressure and disapproval.

This modern tribalism emerged from the academic world and has now spread into the wider society as graduates gain employment in private and public sector institutions. However, many of them carry a virus along with whatever knowledge and skills they have been able to acquire in their studies.

Philip Pippin brings the issue up to date writing on the corrosive social effects from today’s male/female culture warfare in his America Greatness article Who’s Toxic Now?  Excerpts on in italics with my bolds and added images.

Is America suffering from toxic masculinity—or toxic femininity?

So far this year, events are rapidly unwinding in chaos both at home and abroad. Inflation is soaring; the nation’s southern border is effectively dissolving; violent crime is escalating in many cities, seemingly unchecked; radical indoctrination is replacing proper education in public schools; and Russia is emulating the Nazis’ savage blitzkrieg-cum-genocide strategy of conquest, with relative lassitude by America.

It is vital to reflect on what autocratic Democratic rule—yes, rule, not governance—in Washington, D.C. has produced since Joe Biden’s inauguration and the leftist seizure of near-total control of the national legislative agenda. Such reflection can emanate from a myriad of perspectives, both mundane and esoteric, but there is a cultural lens I’d like to peer through here in this critical election year.

Those who value fact-based realities over “social constructs” meant to facilitate and justify ideological imperatives like identity politics and tribalism accept that there are two—and only two—sexes. Social “innovations” such as “gender fluidity” and the heated efforts exerted by their proponents to normalize them are designed to confound, disrupt, and ultimately destroy the organic social order that has evolved over centuries of experimentation across many societies. These proponents euphemistically label this “fundamental transformation”; those well-acquainted with world history and the relentless delusions of social utopians, foreign or domestic, more accurately call this “social engineering.” Usually, decadence in all forms attends the drive towards “perfecting” society by “perfecting” all the people who live in it. Rampant amorality, the debasement of all civilized norms of behavior, and the successful elevation—even glorification—of perversions of all kinds become milestones on the way to “utopia.” The result? Narcissistic elites prosper, and everyone else slides into misery and poverty as mere tools for the elite’s aggrandizement of power and lucre.

One of the modern whipping boys to advance this savage menace has been “toxic masculinity,” embodied in and epitomized by white, hetero, generically (but not exclusively) Christian, middle- and working-class males. Traits of this supposed scourge include tendencies toward emotional aggression, physical intimidation and violence, attitudes of patriarchal disdain and supremacism, and the usual laundry list of demonic isms and phobias: racism, sexism, various LGBTQ-centric phobias, and Islamophobia.

In a word, men are the problem, and particularly white, heterosexual men who possess natural masculine attitudes, values, and predispositions.

This perspective deliberately ignores the positive traits of masculinity that have long been esteemed and celebrated in America and throughout all organized societies. These include the capacity to design and build structures and organizations; the ability to preserve and protect through exertion of physical strength; the ability to produce and amplify material wealth by the use of rational thought and physical labor; and the ability to produce food and water supplies. “Toxic masculinity” is really just a propaganda meme of the utopian Left created for the purpose of besmirching the strong individualism and independent mindset of society’s motivated producers, who, predominantly, happen to be male.

So, what of femininity? If in fact there is a tangible taint known as “toxic masculinity” beyond just being an inflammatory meme designed to divide and alienate people from one another for purposes of aggrandizing political power, is there something rightfully labeled “toxic femininity”? I assert there is, and it is likely even more menacing.

If “toxic men” can be overly aggressive and intimidating, then “toxic women” may be overly passive-aggressive and covertly conniving, working behind the scenes to get what they want by subterfuge. If “toxic males” can be too direct and “in your face” with their demands, needs, and wants, then “toxic females” can be intentionally indirect, coy, sly, and even deceitful to get whatever they want. If the former can be physically violent based on emotions gone awry, then the latter can be emotionally manipulative towards others, playing on their personal fears, vulnerabilities, and sensitivities.

If men and women share both masculine and feminine traits, in varying degrees, then this discourse can hardly be defamed as a diatribe aimed invidiously at women as women. Rather, these behaviors exist in the politics, ideological conflicts, and rivalries bedeviling our nation today—modes employed by both men and women.

Today, Democratic politicians at every level of government and their ideological cohorts in major media, academia, Hollywood, and Big Tech are increasingly being outed as serial liars, deceitful spin artists, subversives, and cynical manipulators of our people’s basest emotions and instincts. Their predations did not start with the 2020 elections, of course. However, in achieving greater normalization, they threaten to subvert and topple not only our own civil society and republican form of government, but the world order, which is predicated on unparalleled American military strength, economic power, and historical values.

If not checked decisively this year by the sane, the rational, the historically literate, and the spiritually conscious, historians of the future may well ascribe America’s devolution and ultimate collapse as a free, independent, and sovereign nation primarily to a pandemic of “toxic femininity.”

It is, to be emphatic, a fully inclusive, “pan-gender” affliction embodied in men and women of all “gender orientations.” That said, the biological men in power today acting as “toxic females” will be most to blame. There are many: Biden, Blinken, Austin, Garland, Kerry, Mayorkas, Buttigieg, Milley, Schumer, Schiff, and Nadler. So, the ladies will have to move over. They have once again been usurped.

See Also To Be a Man, Or Not to Be (Fight Degendering)

Green Apocalyptic Adventists

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Pascal Bruckner writes at City Journal  Apocalyptic Daze.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Secular elites prophesy a doomsday without redemption.

My point is not to minimize the dangers that we face. Rather, it is to understand why apocalyptic fear has gripped so many of our leaders, scientists, and intellectuals, who insist on reasoning and arguing as though they were following the scripts of mediocre Hollywood disaster movies.

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, a paradigm shift in our thinking took place: we decided that the era of revolutions was over and that the era of catastrophes had begun. The former had involved expectation, the hope that the human race would proceed toward some goal. But once the end of history was announced, the Communist enemy vanquished, and, more recently, the War on Terror all but won, the idea of progress lay moribund. What replaced the world’s human future was the future of the world as a material entity. The long list of emblematic victims—Jews, blacks, slaves, proletarians, colonized peoples—was likewise replaced, little by little, with the Planet, the new paragon of all misery.

No longer were we summoned to participate in a particular community; rather, we were invited to identify ourselves with the spatial vessel that carried us, groaning.

How did this change happen? Over the last half-century, leftist intellectuals have identified two great scapegoats for the world’s woes. First, Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery. Second, “Third World” ideology, disappointed by the bourgeois indulgences of the working class, targeted the West, supposedly the inventor of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. The guilty party that environmentalism now accuses—mankind itself, in its will to dominate the planet—is essentially a composite of the previous two, a capitalism invented by a West that oppresses peoples and destroys the earth. Indeed, environmentalism sees itself as the fulfillment of all earlier critiques. “There are only two solutions,” Bolivian president Evo Morales declared in 2009. “Either capitalism dies, or Mother Earth dies.”

So the planet has become the new proletariat that must be saved from exploitation
—if necessary, by reducing the number of human beings,
as oceanographer Jacques Cousteau said in 1991.

One could go on citing such quotations forever, given the spread of the cliché-ridden apocalyptic literature. Environmentalism has become a global ideology that covers all of existence—not merely modes of production but ways of life as well. We rediscover in it the whole range of Marxist rhetoric, now applied to the environment: ubiquitous scientism, horrifying visions of reality, even admonitions to the guilty parties who misunderstand those who wish them well. Authors, journalists, politicians, and scientists compete in the portrayal of abomination and claim for themselves a hyper-lucidity: they alone see clearly while others vegetate in the darkness.

The fear that these intellectuals spread is like a gluttonous enzyme that swallows up an anxiety, feeds on it, and then leaves it behind for new ones. When the Fukushima nuclear plant melted down after the enormous earthquake in Japan in March 2011, it only confirmed a feeling of anxiety that was already there, looking for some content. In six months, some new concern will grip us: a pandemic, bird flu, the food supply, melting ice caps, cell-phone radiation.

The fear also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the press reporting, as though it were a surprising finding, that young people are haunted by the very concerns about global warming that the press continually instills in them. As in an echo chamber, opinion polls reflect the views promulgated by the media. We are inoculated against anxiety by the repetition of the same themes, which become a narcotic we can’t do without.

Atime-honored strategy of cataclysmic discourse, whether performed by preachers or by propagandists, is the retroactive correction. This technique consists of accumulating a staggering amount of horrifying news and then—at the end—tempering it with a slim ray of hope. First you break down all resistance; then you offer an escape route to your stunned audience. And so the advertising copy for the Al Gore–starring documentary An Inconvenient Truth reads: “Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced—a catastrophe of our own making.”

Now here are the means that the former vice president, like most environmentalists, proposes to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions: using low-energy lightbulbs; driving less; checking your tire pressure; recycling; rejecting unnecessary packaging; adjusting your thermostat; planting a tree; and turning off electrical appliances. Since we find ourselves at a loss before planetary threats, we will convert our powerlessness into propitiatory gestures, which will give us the illusion of action. First the ideology of catastrophe terrorizes us; then it appeases us by proposing the little rituals of a post-technological animism.

But let’s be clear: a cosmic calamity is not averted
by checking tire pressure or sorting garbage.

Another contradiction inherent in apocalyptic discourse is that, though it tries desperately to awaken us, to convince us of planetary chaos, it eventually deadens us, making our eventual disappearance part of our everyday routine. At first, yes, the kinds of doom that we hear about—the acidification of the oceans, the pollution of our air—charge our calm existence with a strange excitement. The enemy is among us, and he waits for our slightest lapses, all the more insidious because he is invisible. If the function of ancient rites was to purge a community’s violence on a sacrificial victim, the function of our contemporary rites is—at first—to dramatize the status quo and to exalt us through proximity to cataclysm.

But the certainty of the prophecies makes this effect short-lived. The language of fear does not include the word “maybe.” It tells us, rather, that the horror is inevitable. Resistant to all doubt, it is satisfied to mark the stages of degradation. This is another paradox of fear: it is ultimately reassuring. At least we know where we are heading—toward the worst.

One consequence of this certainty is that we begin to suspect that the numberless Cassandras who prophesy all around us do not intend to warn us so much as to condemn us.

In a secular society, a prophet has no function other than indignation. So it happens that he becomes intoxicated with his own words and claims a legitimacy with no basis, calling down the destruction that he pretends to warn against. You’ll get what you’ve got coming!—that is the death wish that our misanthropes address to us. These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we have the presumption to refuse to listen to them. Catastrophe is not their fear but their joy. It is a short distance from lucidity to bitterness, from prediction to anathema.

What is surprising is that the mood of catastrophe prevails especially in the West, as if it were particular to privileged peoples. Despite the economic crises of the last few years, people live better in Europe and the United States than anywhere else, which is why migrants the world over want to come to those places. Yet never have we been so inclined to condemn our societies.

Perhaps the new Green puritanism is nothing but the reaction of a West deprived of its supreme competence, the last avatar of an unhappy neocolonialism that preaches to other cultures a wisdom that it has never practiced. For the last 20 years, non-European peoples have become masters of their own futures and have stopped regarding us as infallible models. They are likely to receive our professions of environmentalist faith with polite indifference. Billions of people look to economic growth, with all the pollution that accompanies it, to improve their condition. Who are we to refuse it to them?

Environmental worry is universal; the sickness of the end of the world is purely Western.

To counter this pessimism, we might list the good news of the last 20 years: democracy is making slow progress; more than a billion people have escaped absolute poverty; life expectancy has increased in most countries; war is becoming rarer; many serious illnesses have been eradicated. But it would do little good. Our perception is inversely proportional to reality.

The Christian apocalypse saw itself as a hopeful revelation of the coming of God’s kingdom. Today’s has nothing to offer. There is no promise of redemption; the only hope is that those human beings who repent of their errors may escape the chaos, as in Cormac McCarthy’s fine novel The Road.

How can we be surprised, then, that so many bright minds have become delirious
and that so many strange predictions flourish?

 

Background see post Progressively Scaring the World

ESG Funds Buy Russian Over Canadian Oil

Posted on by Ron Clutz

More evidence that ESG investing is poppycock is revealed in Jeff Lagerquist’s Yahoo Finance article Why ESG funds ‘shockingly’ buy Russian oil instead of Canadian crude.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Russia’s war on Ukraine continues to expose uncomfortable realities for environmental, social and governance-focused (ESG) investments, prompting calls for the asset management industry to rethink the loosely-defined term as analysts point to “shocking” holdings within some funds.

A new report from CIBC Capital Markets shows many of the 10 largest energy holdings across ESG funds have pared down or exited investments in Canada’s oil sands, while half stayed invested in Russia. At the end of 2021, the bank found ESG funds owned twice as much Russian oil and gas as Canadian oil and gas.

“Perhaps most shockingly, the ratio of dollars held in Gazprom (a Russian state-owned energy firm) was six times that of Suncor,” the CIBC analysts wrote in research published on Monday.

According to the report, the big four Russian energy companies, NK Lukoil, Novatek, Gazprom and NK Rosneft, accounted for about 0.2 per cent of the global ESG holdings. That’s double the size of investments in Canada’s TC Energy (TRP.TO)(TRP), Suncor Energy (SU.TO)(SU) and Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)(CNQ), the bank said.

“Russia and Saudi Arabia may well emit less CO2 per produced barrel of oil equivalent than some North American firms, but they also invariably have less robust social and governance oversight,” the CIBC analysts wrote.

“This says nothing of the reality many of their energy entities are de-facto state controlled and often aligned (read: weaponized) with foreign policy objectives – many of which will be an affront to mainstream ESG investors.”

Several of the world’s largest companies and institutional investors have moved to cut ties to Russia in recent weeks, amid increasingly violent attacks on Ukraine’s population. ESG funds held at least US$8.3 billion in Russian assets before Russia invaded Ukraine, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Those include the country’s financial firms. Bloomberg News recently reported that Vanguard Group and Northern Trust upped their stakes in Russia’s leading bank through their respective index-based ESG funds in January, as Vladimir Putin’s forces amassed on Ukraine’s borders.

Vlad Tasevski, chief operating officer and head of product at Purpose Investments, says these examples show the need to rebalance the trio of ESG priorities. He says the environmental “E” in ESG is being over-emphasized, likely due to the greater challenge of measuring the social and governance variables, compared to hard carbon emissions data.

Tasevski isn’t overly surprised by the lack of enthusiasm for Canadian fossil fuel producers across ESG funds. He says Canadian producers have been “overwhelmingly negatively impacted by the ESG movement,” even as the industry has worked to shrink its carbon footprint, and invested in technology like carbon capture and storage.

CIBC says global flows into ESG funds were down more than 50 per cent through the first two months of this year, after setting records in 2020 and 2021. The bank says flows out of ESG funds have outpaced net outflows from other asset classes.

 

Dangerous Illusion: 2 Weeks to Flatten the Curve

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Bruce Pardy explains in his Epoch Times article Back to the Future: ‘Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve’ Was a Dangerous Mistake From the Beginning.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Editor’s note: COVID lockdowns and restrictions for “two weeks to flatten the curve” began two years ago in late March 2020. At the time, many pundits called it a dangerous mistake, one of whom was law professor Bruce Pardy. Two years later, as restrictions finally begin to ease, the federal government and many workplaces still maintain vaccination mandates. Below are prognostications (edited) from Pardy from April and May 2020.

Lenin once said that there are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. In this new era of the past few weeks, Canada has become less free. Lockdowns will eventually ease, but we have crossed a threshold. Canadians now want government to keep them safe—not just from foreign threats and violence, but from viruses and the vicissitudes of life. Authorities have enthusiastically seized the moment. Politicians have assumed unprecedented powers not subject to legislative oversight and have suspended civil liberties. For the first time ever, officials have confined citizens—with their approval—to their homes. Municipalities issue citations for walking through the park, police enforce rules that do not exist, and health authorities surveil the sick.

The situation that we are now in may be a shock, but it should not be a surprise. We have long been headed down this road. COVID restrictions may seem like an extreme change to daily life, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind. We were not a free country on March 22 that suddenly became unfree on March 23. We have an expansive administrative welfare state, which for a long time has driven the bus. It regulates everything. It subsidizes, taxes, supervises, and directs. The degree of infringement on civil liberties is more extreme now than it has even been for the general population in this country, but COVID rules are not differently intrusive, just more so. The lockdowns will ease, but the mandate that the government now has will remain. It will be difficult to put this genie back in the bottle.

It has worked like this: In Stage One, which we passed through a long time ago, the populace becomes convinced that it is the state’s role to keep them safe. In Stage 2, which began with the onset of the virus, they become fearful. Stage Three is necessity: if the virus is to be feared and the job of government is to keep us safe, then government must do whatever is necessary to protect us from the virus. Necessity provides the excuse for control, and control exacerbates dependence. What we have now is a dependent population, economically and psychologically.

There will not be rational debate about these policies. Governments do not adopt policies for logical and rational reasons. It is a mistake to believe that it is possible to engage in a civil conversation with the public and with government officials to figure out what works best. What has worked for governments in this circumstance is the promotion of fear. Concentrating on making rational policy recommendations based upon the premise that we are engaging in a good faith dialogue would be to miss the plot.

There will be court challenges, but the courts will not say that these policies are unconstitutional. The government can do what it is doing because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not provide the lines in the sand that we think that it does. Courts like to pretend that they are immune from public opinion, but they follow the culture as much as anybody else.

The charter will not protect us from the culture, and the culture now is one that demands safety, provided by the state.

Governments will be allowed to do indirectly what they could not do directly. Take the vaccine for example. If a vaccine is developed, they will not make the vaccine mandatory. Instead, they will say, make your own choice but if you do not have a vaccine you cannot come inside the building. You cannot come and renew your driver’s licence unless you can show us you have been vaccinated. Technically that is not mandatory, but practically it is. Contact tracing means that they are imposing upon you a requirement without admitting that what they are doing is locking you down if you decide not to do it. Governments will use means by which to achieve their objective without being so authoritarian that you cannot move.

The most disturbing thing about the COVID regime is not that governments are putting it in place, but that citizens support it, and indeed demand it.

COVID madness will not stop until a critical mass of people say that they have had enough. The way to turn this around is to get the population to reject the authority of experts, health officials, and governments to tell them what to do. Until we get to that, efforts to reverse these policies may prove to be a waste of time. Until people perceive that the purpose of government is to protect liberty instead of safety, everything else is fiddling around the margins.

Crises are an ideal time for the state to advance into territory from which it will not wish to retreat. In time, controls will loosen but old expectations have been swept away. In this new era, we will discover that leaders of all political stripes have more than a little Lenin in them.

Ukraine Is Elites’ Latest Propaganda Ploy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ukrainian ambassador and flag waving at Biden State of the Union speech.

Lee Smith writes at Compact Ukraine Is the Ruling Class’s Latest Propaganda Ploy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The war in Ukraine has been dominating headlines for more than a month, but it is still hard for most Americans to grasp what is going on. In part, that’s because most of what is coming out of Kyiv and Moscow is war propaganda. But it’s also because the US ruling class is once more waging information war—against domestic critics and internal enemies.

You can hardly blame the Ukrainians for inventing stories about fighter pilots who single-handedly downed scores of Russian aircraft. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is trying to keep up morale on the home front while soliciting support from Western leaders to fend off Vladimir Putin’s onslaught. For those in power, lying is part of the logic of war.

What isn’t normal is the all-out effort to promote Ukraine’s cause in America—an effort grafted on to a long series of ongoing propaganda campaigns deployed by US institutions and industries against the same target: the American public. These campaigns have used the same methods, personnel, platforms, and even catchwords to deceive, harass, and punish working- and middle-class Americans to the benefit of the country’s increasingly powerful ruling oligarchy.

To help their chosen candidate, Joe Biden, unseat President Donald Trump, Silicon Valley giants blocked an October 2020 New York Post exposé about influence-peddling by Biden’s son Hunter. Fifty former top US intelligence officials characterized the Post’s reporting as Russian disinformation, a claim echoed unanimously and uncritically by prestige outlets. The New York Times repeatedly called the Hunter Files “unsubstantiated,” while National Public Radio’s managing editor for news, Terence Samuels, huffed that “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”

Yet even as the Times acknowledged last week that the Hunter emails uncovered by the Post were indeed authentic, the same tech firms are banning videos and stories that contradict the US political establishment’s official Ukraine narrative for the same reason: American spies claim it’s Russian disinformation.

If you aren’t accused of serving Moscow, you are at least disloyal to the United States.

The media say that the Trump supporters who showed up to protest election irregularities at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, were there to wage an insurrection. This, despite mounting evidence, including the confessions of New York Times reporters, suggesting that law enforcement played a significant role in staging the day’s violence. Yet video of the events selectively edited by local police and the US Department of Justice and then released to the media has already solidified the official narrative: Anyone who didn’t vote for Biden is likely a domestic terrorist.

Or you are said to be endangering American lives with conspiracy theories.

That’s how the ruling class framed opposition journalists and researchers who questioned the origins of Covid-19, as well as doctors who noted the obvious fact that the vaccines didn’t work as promised—otherwise there would have been no need for boosters. The accused were banished from social media, hectored by their professional colleagues and institutions, and received scores of death threats. Americans who failed to comply with government efforts to rig the stock market by mandating Pfizer and Moderna shots were fired from work, expelled from school, and ostracized from their communities.

Fast-forward a few months: If you say out loud that you think there is something strange about a campaign involving Democrats and Republicans, the media, Big Tech, corporate giants, and US intelligence services to promote one side in a foreign war that doesn’t obviously touch on the daily concerns of most Americans, you’re pro-Putin.

That accusation has haunted the American public sphere going on six years.

For this is where the long campaign started, with Russiagate, the most destructive information operation ever waged against the nation. And unlike, say, the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, its authors aren’t adversarial spy services, but fellow Americans, our own ruling class. Now the same journalists, foreign-policy experts, and retired US officials who lied in 2016 about Trump’s ties to Russia are front and center shaping public opinion about the war waged by Putin—the world leader our overclass put in the middle of an elite conspiracy theory designed to guarantee Hillary Clinton the presidency.

It would be useful to have insight into Putin’s thinking, especially now with a massive land war in the middle of Europe giving rise to a powerful anti-American bloc led by Russia and China. But don’t count on America’s national-security establishment to provide that insight. For they squandered their credibility with Russiagate. From former officials like ex-Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and retired spy chiefs like James Clapper and John Brennan to Biden deputies like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the Pentagon’s top strategist, Colin Kahl, and the entire Democratic Party and its media apparatus, the lies of America’s political class left the republic vulnerable to destructive forces.

Why did they lie? Policymakers, spy chiefs, and military officials rightly deceive foreign powers to protect and advance the US national interest. But these men and women lied to the American people about the president they elected. Then they lied about everything. Public US institutions and private industries have spent the last six years mustering their formidable powers to break the US working and middle classes. Why?

Because lying is part of the logic of war,
and America’s oligarchy is at war with the American people.

Ukraine Crisis Works Against Woke Politics

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Grady Means writes at The Hill Ukraine crisis: Unexpected weapon against woke politics. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted his way into Ukraine, he thought he was simply reassembling the great Russian Empire. What he actually did was reverse the global tide toward authoritarianism under the banner of woke politics.

For years, the would-be New Illuminati of global elites have trekked to the World Economic Forum (WEF) to be fed a diet of woke politics under the banner of “stakeholder rights” and “The Great Reset,” a rebranded version of Marxism designed to defeat neo-liberalism, i.e., capitalism, and its spiritual partner, individual freedom. For the most part, these pretentious “leaders” are what Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin would have called “dupes” and “useful idiots,” selling their own hangman the rope to hang them.

Four major fronts in this global war to destroy liberal democracies and free-market systems have been decarbonization, COVID response, baseless accusations of racism, and corrosion of the rule of law — all efforts to undermine key foundations of civil society.

As outlined by the leaders of the WEF, the COVID pandemic provided the opportunity to increase the authoritarian role of government, albeit unconstitutionally, and replace individual liberty with state mandate — the “great reset,” leading to the increased power of the state (and the elite) to control citizens. The WEF simulated this strategy well in advance of COVID, including the role of “authoritative spokesmen” and traditional and social media to promote the state view and suppress dissent and free speech as “disinformation.”

Also central to the strategy is rapid decarbonization — federal, state and local laws and mandates to shut down the use of fossil fuels and transition to solar and wind power — promoted as answers to the climate crisis. Most serious analyses suggest they will fail. Solar and wind are unreliable. They require a doubling of the grid, which itself has proven to be unreliable across the country with blackouts. They require battery backups to store and supply energy when solar and wind are down. Current battery backup capacity in America is less than 10 quads. To support American industrial and consumer usage at 2022 levels, it would require between 60 to 90 quads to sustain our economy and standard of living.

Expanding and strengthening the grid and installing the battery capacity will take decades. It will require bridge energy — i.e., natural gas and nuclear — to be used as the transition takes place. But government policies are shutting down fossil fuels and nuclear power as quickly as possible.

It will be a disaster. And, it is intentional. The point is to have skyrocketing energy prices and shortages. It enshrines government power. It is cynical to an Olympian degree.

Of course, it will have no effect on the climate at all. China will continue to build coal-fired generators (at least 1,000 are planned) and use the full range of fossil fuels. Russia, of course, is wedded to fossil fuels. The only result of decarbonization in the West is the destruction of our economies and democracies.

“Defunding the police” and not enforcing urban or border laws undercut civil society and weaken social cohesion. It creeps toward anarchy. Calling out these obvious attacks on social foundations is deemed to be “racism,” a strategy that has silenced many and intimidated our political and corporate “leadership.”

The speed and success that woke politics has had in redefining the political debate in America and Western democracies has been remarkable. The rapid shift toward authoritarianism has been alarming. The corrosion of the rule of law is depressing. The cowardice and opportunism among the political and corporate elite is expected, but sickening.

Putin should have just pulled up a comfortable chair, eaten popcorn, and watched the West self-destruct. But, he’s an impatient guy — a would-be “man of history.” Impulsively, he has, in a single stroke, managed to reverse the Western woke political tidal wave and set the stage for destroying his own energy-based economy.

Almost instantly, everyone in the West has become aware of the central importance of energy to national security and the overall economy.

It is obvious that America cannot be held hostage to foreign sources of oil and gas and must return to energy independence. It is obvious that Germany made a colossal error in precipitously shutting down its nuclear power generation and becoming dependent on Russian gas — not unlike California, which has done the same, only to be forced to import energy from other states. It is obvious that European energy prices are skyrocketing because of policy mistakes. It is obvious that America can best support NATO by producing and exporting oil and gas to Europe. But American energy prices — and the prices of everything else — are skyrocketing because of poor economic decisions, especially in regard to energy production.

And this brings us to Joe Biden. Will the president continue to allow the price of energy to soar to squeeze the American people into accepting his flawed, woke vision of rapid decarbonization? Or, will he understand that he has undercut our national security, NATO, and our economy and quickly move America back to energy independence?

If not, the midterm elections will present a stark choice between the woke and destructive authoritarian vision of the Democrats, or a strong economy, true freedom and strong democracy.

Thank you, Vlad, for the great reset — let’s hope you woke us all up.

 

How Wokeness Divides and Destroys

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A.J. Rice explains in his American Greatness article BrokeBatch Mountain.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Sam Elliott is not a conformist. The Hollywood legend still thinks for himself and isn’t afraid to say so. How very American.

What exactly is “toxic masculinity?” Is there a corresponding “toxic femininity?” Or is it just another shape-shifting cudgel used against men in the tedious culture wars?

Sam Elliott certainly isn’t toxic. For years, the actor has been a meme representing manliness. Dry humor, courtesy, and gallantry, slow to wrath but by God get out of his way if you stir him to seek justice or vengeance. Everybody loves Sam Elliott.

Most movie fans also love Benedict Cumberbatch from his days as Sherlock Holmes through his turns as Dr. Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cumberbatch can portray thoughtful weirdness better than anyone else. These are two great and very different actors. They don’t have to agree on everything, or even anything, just because they’re two men at the top of their craft.

Elliott recently appeared on Marc Maron’s podcast and slammed Cumberbatch’s latest film for Netflix, “The Power of the Dog,” for what he calls homosexual themes deconstructing the archetype of the American cowboy. Cumberbatch does play a repressed gay rancher in the 1920s, in a film about the American West that was actually filmed in totalitarian New Zealand. “They’re running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the movie,” Elliott said of the film.

“The Power of the Dog” was nominated for an astounding 12 Oscars this year. But that doesn’t mean a thing about artistic merit anymore. Recall that during the great moral panic of 2020, the Academy announced that films will not even be considered for awards unless they meet certain racial and gender quotas. With that news, Oscars are no longer signs of quality. They are signs of conformity. They are a super expensive United Colors of Benetton ad.

Elliott is a Democrat but he’s not a conformist. Prior to the Twitter-mob-years, nonconformity was a sign of individuality and strength in a man or woman. His recent comments reveal that the Hollywood legend still thinks for himself and isn’t afraid to say so. How very American.

Cumberbatch, who is a British man playing an American gay cowboy on a movie filmed in New Zealand written and directed by New Zealand’s kooky Jane Campion, has lashed out at Elliott for criticizing the film.

“These people still exist in our world,” Cumberbatch told the British Academy of Film and Television Arts about his “Power of the Dog” character.

“Whether it’s on our doorstep or whether it’s down the road or whether it’s someone we meet in a bar or pub or on the sports field, there is aggression and anger and frustration and an inability to control or know who you are in that moment that causes damage to that person and, as we know, damage to those around them. . . . [There is] no harm in looking at a character to get to the root causes of that.”

“This is a very specific case of repression, but also due to an intolerance for that true identity that Phil is that he can’t fully be,” Cumberbatch added. “The more we look under the hood of toxic masculinity and try to discover the root causes of it, the bigger chances we have of dealing with it when it arises with our children.”

Thank God we didn’t try to win World War II with this mindset.

There is also no harm in criticizing a film for its story choices, its costume choices, its themes, or its lead actor’s failed attempt to come up with a convincing Western American accent. It’s all fair game.

Then there’s the question of authorship and direction. Of late, the Twitter mob has suggested Gal Gadot can’t portray Cleopatra because she isn’t Egyptian. Neither was Cleopatra—she was Macedonian Greek—but why is no one questioning whether Campion can be allowed to write about American cowboys? She certainly isn’t American by any stretch. The mob says non-trans actors are not permitted play trans roles, but here we have a straight man playing a gay American cowboy in a country that’s thousands of miles from America. Hello, double standards.

Is any of what Cumberbatch describes above confined to repressed gay men, or men, at all? Can women not lash out in rage? Can they not stir up trouble and be toxic, too? Ever heard of “Mean Girls” or watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez snark at the capitalism that makes her free and rich? And again, just what is “toxic masculinity,” especially if a fictitious gay rancher can exhibit it and end up winning a trophy for the actor who got richer portraying him while taking swipes at his critics?

Cumberbatch is entitled to promote and defend his film, though the dozen Oscar nominations will do the heavy lifting for him. Elliott is entitled to criticize the film and question why Hollywood keeps deconstructing and destroying icons in the name of pushing its toxic politics on everyone else, under the pen and direction of someone who clearly hates the archetype. No one should be forced to like a movie if it doesn’t suit them, for whatever reason.

As for the film itself, Kirsten Dunst is underused and stares a lot. The color grading is muddy, wasting the power of your 4K HDR television. The pacing is slow. The spare score is reminiscent of a 1960s “Twilight Zone” episode. Cumberbatch’s cowboy speech is uneven. But go ahead and hand it a bunch of trophies for sticking to Hollywood’s political script.

 

 

WEF is Not Your Friend

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Roger Koops has done his homework and explains what he’s found in his Brownstone article The Next Step for the World Economic Forum.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

First, a quiz:  What do all of the following have in common?

If I give you the names of the following people – Biden, Trudeau, Ardern, Merkel, Macron, Draghi, Morrison, Xi Jinping – what do you think that they have in common? Yes, they are all pampered and stumble over themselves, but that is also not the connection.

One can see very quickly that these names certainly connect to lockdown countries and individuals who have ignored their own laws and/or tried in some way to usurp them. But, there is more to it than that and I will give a hint by providing a link with each name.

They are all associated with the World Economic Forum (WEF), a “nonprofit” private organization started (in 1971) and headed by Klaus “You will own nothing and be happy” Schwab and his family. This is a private organization that has no official bearing with any world governance body, despite the implication of the name. It could just as well have been called the “Church of Schwabies.” The WEF was the origin of the “Great Reset” and I would guess that it was the origin of “Build Back Better” (since most of the above names have used that term recently).

If you think that the WEF membership ends with just leaders of countries, here are a few more names:

Allow me to introduce more of the WEF by giving a list of names for the Board of Trustees.

  • Al Gore, Former VP of the US
  • Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action
  • T. Shanmugaratnam, Seminar Minister Singapore
  • Christine Lagarde, President, European Central Bank
  • Ngozi Okonja-Iweala, Director General, WTO
  • Kristalian Georggieva, Managing Director, IMF
  • Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Minister of Canada
  • Laurence Fink, CEO, BlackRock 

If you want to really see the extent of influence, go to the website and pick out the corporate name of your choice; there are many to choose from: Abbott Laboratories, Astra-Zeneca, Biogen, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Serum Institute of India, BASF, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Blackrock, CISCO, Dell, Google, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Zoom, Yahoo, Amazon, Airbus, Boeing, Honda, Rakuten, Walmart, UPS, Coca-Cola, UBER, Bank of China. Bank of America. Deutsche Bank, State Bank of India, Royal Bank of Canada, Lloyds Banking, JP Morgan-Chase, Equifax, Goldman-Sachs, Hong Kong Exchanges, Bloomberg, VISA, New York Times, Ontario (Canada) Teacher’s Pension Plan.

The extent of reach is huge even beyond the worldwide leader network. For example, we all know what Bill Gates has been doing with his wealth via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). But, the Wellcome Trust is equal to the task. Who is the Director of the Wellcome Trust? One named Jeremy Farrar, of the United Kingdom SAGE and lockdown fame – arguably the architect of the US-UK lockdowns in 2020 – is closely associated with WEF. 

The questions now have to be asked: 

  • Is this some beginning of a controlled authoritarian society intertwined via the WEF? 
  • Has the Covid panic been deployed to set the stage? Please note, I am not a “Covid Denier” since the virus is real. But, has a normal seasonal respiratory virus been used as an excuse to activate the web?

The next questions, for those of us who at least pretend to live in “Democratic” societies, have to be:

  • Is this what you expected and/or want from the people you elect?  
  • How many people knew of the “Associations” of the people that they voted for? (I certainly did not know of the associations until I did the searches but maybe I am just out of touch)

Can we anticipate their next moves? There may be some hints.

The Next Move

Jeremy Farrar of The Wellcome Trust recently wrote an article for the WEF with the CEO of Novo Nordisk Foundation, Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen. It is a summary of a larger piece written for and published by the Boston Consulting Group.

In this article, they propose that the way to “fix” the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria is via a subscription service. That is, you pay a fee and when you need an antibiotic, presumably an effective one will be available for you.

My guess is that they have the same philosophy for vaccines and that certainly seems to be the approach with Coronavirus. Keep paying for and taking boosters.

In view of this philosophy, the vaccine mandates make sense. Get society “addicted” to an intervention, effective or not, and then keep feeding them. This becomes especially effective if you can keep the fear going.

This approach is so shortsighted, from a scientific viewpoint, it astounds me. But, like much of recent history, I think science has little to do with it. The goal is not scientifically founded but control founded.

Producing more antibiotics and giving them on subscription to the users is not the answer. That will only lead to more resistant forms and there will be this continuing loop of antibiotic use. But, if the actual goal is societal addiction to antibiotics out of fear, just like addiction to universal Covid vaccines out of fear, then it makes sense.

Finding a few universal antibiotics that deal with the resistant forms is important and it is also important to use those sparingly and only as a last resort. In addition, better management of antibiotic use in our society would go a long way to attenuating the problem.

There is nothing particularly controversial about that observation. It was accepted by nearly every responsible health professional only two years ago. But we live now in different times of extreme experimentation, such as the deployment of world-wide lockdowns for a virus that had a highly focused impact, with catastrophic results for the world.

It was the WEF on March 21, 2020 that assured us “lockdowns can halt the spread of Covid-19.” Today that article, never pulled much less repudiated, stands as probably the most ridiculous and destructive suggestion and prediction of the 21st century. And yet, the WEF is still at it, suggesting that same year that at least lockdowns reduced carbon emissions.

We can easily predict that the WEF’s call for a universal and mandated subscription plan for antibiotics – pushed with the overt intention of shoring up financial capitalization of major drug manufacturers – will meet the same fate: poor health outcomes, more power to entrenched elites, and ever less liberty for the people.

 

Elites War Upon the Middle Class

Posted on by Ron Clutz

David McGrogan writes at The Brownstone Society vs State: Canada Reveals the Core Conflict of Our Age.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Justin Trudeau’s confrontation with the Canadian truckers may be the single most significant event of the Covid pandemic – not because of its eventual outcome, whatever that may be, but because of what it symbolises. It captures, in perfect microcosm, the tensions between the competing imperatives of the age:

♦ freedom versus security;
♦ the rule of law versus flexible ‘responsive’ governance;
♦ the priorities of the workers versus those of the Zooming bourgeoisie;
♦ the need for real-world human interaction and belonging versus the promises of splendid online isolation;
♦ the experiences of the common man, who knows where it hurts, versus those of the professional expert class, who know nothing that cannot be expressed as a formula.

More than all of that, though, it gives us a lens through which to view a much deeper, much older conflict of much larger scope – one which underlies not just the struggles of the Covid age, but of modernity itself. On the one hand, the state, which seeks to make all of society transparent to its power. On the other, alternative sources of authority – the family, the church, the community, the firm, the farm, and the human individual herself.

For centuries, the state has waged a quiet war against those competitors,
and bent them to its will.

It has done this not through conspiracy or deliberate strategy but merely through the single-minded pursuit, across generation after generation of political leaders, of one goal: legitimacy. Governments and other state organs derive their legitimacy, and therefore their positions of rulership, from convincing the population that they are necessary.

They do this by suggesting that without their intervention, things will go badly;
left to their own devices, ordinary people will suffer.

The family, the church, the community, the firm, the farm, the human individual – these are inadequate to the task of securing human well-being. That task, only the state is equipped to achieve, for only the state can keep the population educated, healthy, safe, prosperous and satisfied. Since this is the case, only the state is fit to deploy power – and only those who govern the state are fit to rule.

The logic of this argument is writ large, of course, in the Covid response across the developed world. What will keep us ‘safe?’ Certainly not traditional sources of succour, such as the church or the family. Certainly not individual people, who cannot be trusted to behave responsibly or assess risks for themselves.

No – it is only the state, first with its lockdowns, then with its social distancing, its mask mandates, its vaccine programs, and lately its vaccine mandates and ‘passports.’ It is only the state’s power that saves and secures. And since only the state can save, it is the only legitimate source of authority – along, of course, with its leaders.

The state portraying itself as saviour in this fashion is patently false and absurd given what has taken place over the past two years.

But as false and absurd as it is, it remains the subtext behind all of Covid policy. Justin Trudeau must derive his legitimacy from somewhere to maintain power. And he senses – political animal that he is – that he can derive it from displaying the Canadian state (with himself at the helm, of course) as the only thing standing between the Canadian public and suffering and death.

It is the state, remember – in this case with its vaccine mandates – that saves and secures. Without it, the reasoning goes, the population would suffer and die as Covid ran riot. The political logic is inescapable. For a man like Trudeau, without principle except that he alone is fit to govern, there is only one path to follow. Insist that it is the state that saves and secures, and that anything that stands in its way – truckers beware – must therefore be crushed beneath its heel.

The truckers, for their part, represent everything that the state despises.

They have a social and political power that is independent from it, and hence form one of the alternative sources of power which it hates and fears. This power derives not from some institution which the truckers dominate, but simply from their status amongst what I will refer to as the yeomanry classes – almost the last bastion of self-sufficiency and independence in a modern society such as Canada.

In a developed economy, most of the professional classes – doctors, academics, teachers, civil servants and the like – derive their incomes and status entirely or partially, directly or indirectly, from the existence of the state. If they are not civil servants, their status is built on regulatory apparatus which only the state can build and enforce. This is also, of course, true of the underclass, who are often almost totally reliant on the state for the meeting of their needs. The members of these classes pose no threat to the state’s legitimacy, because, simply put, they need it. It, as a consequence, is perfectly happy to tolerate their existence – and, indeed, it wishes all of society were that way inclined.

A population entirely reliant on the state is one which will never question the necessity of the growth of its power and hence its capacity to buttress its own legitimacy.

But in the middle are those people, the modern yeomanry, who derive their incomes from private sources, as sole traders, owners of small businesses, or employees of SMEs. Independent-minded, seeing self-sufficiency as a virtue, and relying on themselves and their relationships with others rather than the state, these modern yeomen represent a natural barrier to its authority. Simply put, they do not need it. They earn their money through the use of a particular skill which others value and hence pay for on the open market.

Whether or not the state exists is immaterial to their success – and, indeed, it very frequently stands in their way. These are the type of people who, seeing a problem, tend to want to find a solution for themselves. And they are precisely the kind of people who want to make up their own minds about whether to take a vaccine, and to assess health-related risks in general.

The modern state has waged incessant and covert war against the yeomanry in particular.

At every step, it seeks to regulate their business affairs, restrict their liberty, and confiscate their prosperity. There is always a purportedly ‘good’ reason for this. But it contributes to an incessant whittling away of their independence and strength. It is no accident that they are described in British parlance as the ‘squeezed middle’ – squashed as they are between the welfare-reliant underclass on the one hand, and the white-collar professionals who draw their wealth, directly or indirectly, from the state on the other.

It is also no accident that these modern yeomen have gradually seen their political representation diminish over the course of the last 100 years, in whichever developed society one cares to name; the politicians they would elect would be mostly interested in getting the state out of the way, and modern politicians’ incentives all incline in the opposite direction. Their interest is in the inexorable growth of state power, because that is from where their legitimacy derives.

Justin Trudeau’s contempt for the truckers is therefore genuine and profound.

He sees in them not an obstacle to Covid policy or a potential threat to public health. Not even he could possibly be so stupid as to think it matters whether or not these people take their vaccines. No: he identifies in them a barrier to forces in which his political future is entwined – an ever-increasing scope and scale for governmental authority, and the opportunities to buttress his own legitimacy that would follow from it.

And his contempt for them is outweighed, of course, by his fear. Because he surely recognises that his authority is wafer-thin. Legitimacy cuts both ways. If he fails to suppress the truckers’ revolt, the entire edifice on which his authority rests – as the helmsman of the Canadian state and its purported capacity to protect the population from harm – will come tumbling down.

This conflict is therefore not about Covid – it’s existential. Does it matter if the truckers win or lose? No. What matters is what their efforts have revealed to us about the relationship between the state and society in 2022.

See also:

2021 Class Warfare: The Elite vs. The Middle

Modern Politics Seen as Classes Power Game

Washington Capital Overthrowing the United States

More than 25,000 troops from across the country were dispatched to the US capital on January 13, 2021.