I’ve seen several posts from the Right on social media over the past few months, though increasingly recently, of people now eschewing the Conservative label. This does not surprise me because I pretty much dropped it years ago – after all, what has Conservatism conserved? But the latest raft of them seems to be people who want to take a more Libertarian label, with a very firm rejection of the Populist label. Populism: that is the real bad thing. I mean, seriously: Left and Right people are saying endlessly that we must crush Populism.
Some seem to be impelled by a desire to put a huge distance between those Right voices who have gone overtly anti-Semitic since 10/7 (a not insignificant number; vastly less than Left voices going overtly anti-Semitic, but it is there) while others just don’t like the idea of having, for lack of a better phrase, supernatural moral codes – you know, codes that are based upon a belief in God and revealed Truth.
The one I saw today – until today I never knew the person existed but her account has many tens of thousands of followers – took both tacks: she didn’t want to be associated with any Right anti-Semitism and she didn’t want to be associated with Christians who take it seriously (she did assert her Christian faith). And then it sort of struck me: outside the far Left kooks, she’s probably where the vast majority is…socially Left, economically right, rejecting the latest Leftist fad of transgenderism and claiming she just wants to move on and have a good life. Yeah. Sure. Seen this movie before.
She was basically being a rock-ribbed Conservative from any time 1950 to 2020.
Sure, to her - and many like her – this was like a new discovery but the primary reason Conservatism hasn’t conserved anything is because of people on the Right dispensing with this or that aspect of what was to be conserved…until, decades on, there’s nothing left to conserve. And what really flashed in my brain is that the basic person on the Right hasn’t the foggiest notion of what they believe. In fact, it mostly seems now to just be a distaste for the latest bit of Leftist drivel. And so the lady’s assertion that she rejects transgenderism but has nothing but praise for LGB. You see where its going, right? Ten years from now people like her will be seeking to conserve “gender-affirming care” for minors.
And I understand it. Heck, I can even sympathize with it. It is all for the quiet life. After all, here in 2024 to point out the obvious – that two men cannot, in fact, get married no matter what the law says – would outrage most on the Right. Easier to just accept that Progressive innovation…and stand tall against 11 year olds getting sex changes. Until 2034. Then the story will be how, hey, I’m totes cool with all the wonderful LGBT but I just can’t go with those who are marrying their cats.
For now.
Give it a little while.
Here’s our real problem: the Left, when it doesn’t have the power to have you shot for Wrongthink, has this particular cachet which is irresistible to Fallen humanity: the getting of one off the hook. If you really want to boil it down, the appeal here is the endless reasons for getting out of going to Church on Sunday. I know that sounds trite, but think about it: it is the Left which said it was ok to break your promise (get a divorce!). Left said it was ok to get a girl pregnant and not “do the right thing”. Left said it was ok to be on welfare. Left said it was ok to lie. On and on and on like that – and what a relief! Don’t have to go to Church. Don’t have to actually care for the poor. Don’t have to stick with the guy/gal once they’ve become a little boring. Off the hook! And even better for those of the Right/Libertarian views…because they don’t immediately approve of the latest, worst thing the Left is doing, they can pretend they have morals. What fun: being a completely amoral piece of garbage and thinking you’re smart and good!
If you really do the full Libertarian-Right thing then not only all that, but you can pile up money by any means necessary, grind the faces of the poor and still feel good about yourself.
But here is something I’ve noticed among those dropping Conservatism (and condemning Populism) as they take up some sort of Libertarian label…they’re all well off but don’t do any particularly useful work. In other words, among these Libertarian-ish Populism-rejecters what you won’t see are plumbers. Farmers. Stay at home moms. Truckers. You know: the people who actually make things work and who are raising up the next generation of people who make things work.
Donald Trump’s constituency.
Because that is another thing about these people condemning Populism: they don’t like Trump. And it has puzzled me but I think I can see that the reason they hate Trump isn’t anything Trump has done (in fact, these people desperately crave being just like Trump) but the people who support Trump. That’s who they hate. That is who they want to keep down and keep out of power. Why? Because such people want there to be rules – basic rules of human decency which have been rejected by the Left and the Right. They aren’t against Populism – in fact, they probably don’t even know what it is. But they are against the Populists. Likely from a deep understanding that the Populists, triumphant, would hold them in as much – or perhaps even more – contempt as they hold the Left.
The good news is that this species of people is shrinking. No surprise, really; who the heck wants people like that? Don’t let the door hit ya, as far as that goes. The bad news is that they are going to do everything they can to help the Democrats. This is because, at bottom, they’re really rather stupid, silly people. I saw one such account the other day going on about how everyone should vote for “moderate Democrats” until the GOP and the Far Left are destroyed…as if there is such a thing as a moderate Democrat! I mean, other than Fetterman and he’s already being attacked for going off the ranch about Hamas…while the other moderate Democrat, Sinema, isn’t polling 20% in her re-election bid. I mean, just stupid to think you can help Fetterman take over a Democrat party which considers AOC to be a worthy member. Give it up – Fetterman is a Left Socialist Revolutionary trying to make nice with the Bolsheviks. Ain’t gonna happen.
But that is how very stupid these people are – and wow have they dragged us down over the past few decades. Good riddance to bad rubbish. If we can somehow get a Populist win in 2024, that will spell the end of them. Before the next Presidential cycle they will announce their conversion to the Left and that will be that.
Blogs For Victory 
I’m more convinced than ever that it’s going to take some kind of cataclysmic event or events to shake those in several different camps into re-thinking their view of things. You’ve got those who believe they are more powerful than nature, those who are fiscally responsible but believe socially and morally that anything goes, and those who subscribe to both plus think that money grows on trees. Add to that those who don’t believe in much of anything and those who can’t seem to mind their own business, and, in the end, something has to give. It’s like a giant powder keg with multiple, different length fuses.
Very much so – the level of varied silliness in the world is amazing. We are way too rich! A corrective will be applied – call it the Wrath of God or whatever, but that which can’t go on, won’t.
But I have to say that Governor Abbott has given me some hope – his move in simply taking charge of the border is excellent. Naturally, Pudding Brain’s people want to fight it…but, OTOH, if it calms the border crisis without them having to do anything to anger the Left, maybe they’ll let it go for now? But it shows what can be done.
The next step to be taken is Red State governors and city mayors simply ignoring federal court orders. This is more tricky bu necessary. Recently in front of the 9th circuit was an appeal of a federal court ruling which essentially held that public health and safety laws which prevents homeless camps amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the 8th Amendment. Yes, it is stupidly absurd – but it is what a federal judge ruled and so everyone in California who wants to get any sort of control of homelessness is barred from acting (the ruling essentially says that you can only move homeless people off the streets if you have a house to put them in). The 9th (naturally) upheld it and now it is on its way to the Supreme Court where the ruling will likely be struck down, or at least greatly modified. But here’s the thing: there is no warrant in the Constitution for the federal government to have a say in the health and safety laws of a city or other local government. It just isn’t in there – and so under the 9th and 10th, it belongs to the people or their local governments. Anyone bringing a federal case about homelessness should be laughed out of federal court with the judge saying, “hey, I get you don’t like this: please apply yourself to the State or local government; we have no jurisdiction here”.
Of course the Constitution is the paramount law of the land – but that doesn’t mean every bit of State and local law is under its purview. If a city was proposing to hang people for being homeless that would be an 8th Amendment violation…but telling homeless people they can’t eat, sleep and defecate in the streets is just basic, common-sense local health and safety…it benefits the homeless as much as everyone else. It isn’t even a punishment. But here we are having to go all the way to the Supreme Court to ask if public defecation may be banned. Just absurd. So, as I said, next step: just ignore such absurdities.
Federal judge: rules your town can’t ban camping on sidewalks.
Local town: whatever, and just keep enforcing it.
What the heck are the courts going to do?
Nothing. There is nothing they can do unless the Executive elects to enforce the order…and I’d like to see federal marshals standing guard over a homeless camp on the sidewalk!
The Courts are not all powerful. They were never meant to be, and never meant to dictate to us how we organize our local lives.
Good article
Meme creators continue to be one of the few groups to thrive under the Biden economy.
OK, slow Friday, snow is blanketing my woods with a frigid blast on the way and 50 mph winds tonight. I’ve been playing around with this new format and finally figured out how the link function works. It’s actually pretty cool.
finally figured out how the link function works. It’s actually pretty cool.
Better than the old way? How about spacing/paragraphs? It strikes me as a solution to a problem that didn’t really exist.
I’m still not sure about spacing/paragraphs, or why you would want to align text unless you’re just OCD. To do an embedded link just copy the URL of the linked article, then type the sentence you want to put the link in, highlight the word or words you want to represent the link, click on the “link” icon, and hit enter. Easy-peasy. The one thing the new format is missing is a one-step block quote function, which I use more than anything else. Oh well.
“A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be very liberal, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth.
She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch conservative, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.
One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school.
Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn’t even have time for a boyfriend, and didn’t really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.
Her father listened and then asked, “How is your friend Audrey doing?” She replied, “Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She’s always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn’t even show up for classes because she’s too hung over.”
Her father asked his daughter, “Why don’t you go to the Dean’s office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.”
The daughter, visibly shocked by her father’s suggestion, angrily fired back, “That’s a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I’ve worked really hard for my grades! I’ve invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!”
The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, “Welcome to the conservative side of the fence.”
If you ever wondered what side of the fence you sit on, this is a great test!
If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.
If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him..
If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and Jesus silenced.
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.
If a conservative reads this, he’ll post it. A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended.”
😉😉😉”
I remember reading a story, supposedly true, about a college course where the students were staunchly Liberal. So the teacher announced, after a test had been graded, that the grades would be averaged and everyone would get the average grade. That wasn’t too bad—the students at the top of the curve got downgraded some, but it wasn’t dramatic. But as this practice continued, the curve went down more with every test, because the students had learned they didn’t need to study because the good students would pull their grades up, while the good students got tired of working so hard to help those who wouldn’t do the work, especially if they wouldn’t get the better grades as a result. It took very few test cycles for everyone to get a failing grade.
What’s really sad is that you never hear a Liberal say, “I heard this analogy about collectivism, and it got me to re-evaluate my thought process.” They’re just wired wrong, or it really is a mental disorder.
And you are right. I doubt that the students in that experiment ever applied that lesson to the realities of governance.
It’s not that Liberals can never change. I did, but then I was not a committed Liberal, just what I call an “unexamined Liberal’ or someone who just found the propaganda appealing but never gave the slightest thought to how the country should be run. As I have said, I would listen to Libs who called in to attack a local conservative radio talk show host, hoping to hear someone explain why I “believed” what I did (“belief” is far too strong a word) and no one ever could. When given air time to explain a Leftist concept, every caller would start to try to filibuster on a whole laundry list of Leftist themes, and when the show host would demand that a question be answered before moving on to the next thing on the list the question would invariably be met with a different question. I not only never got a coherent explanation for what I thought I believed, I realized I wanted to be on the side that could answer the questions.
Some change for other reasons. David Horowitz, born to Communist parents and a hard-core believe in the Left, turned his back on them when they refused to hold Black Panthers accountable for the brutal murder of his secretary. It took hypocrisy to shift him off his bubble, or at least provide a big nudge. (The same was also true of me. While I had been becoming more frustrated by the lack of coherence from otherwise intelligent-sounding Liberals, it took the hypocrisy of the “feminist” support for Clinton to provide that final nudge.)
So some, hopefully a lot, of unexamined Identity Politics Liberals will see the error of their ways. It will probably be due to the increasingly blatant excesses of the American Left and its betrayal of the American people more than the kind of awareness we should get from stories like those of the students.
<b>Dems Move to Outlaw Militias in Violation of 2nd Amendment</b>
<a href= https://headlineusa.com/dems-introduce-bill-to-outlaw-militias-in-blatant-violation-of-2nd-amendment/?utm_source=HUSA_EMAIL_NSP1700&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HUSAemail => Once again, </a> demoncrats show their contempt for the US Constitution and declare its rules as “optional” when they attempt to pass this type of self-serving legislation. This is one of the (many) things I think the left does realizing they have little chance of passing such legislation (but who knows in our crazy times), yet proceed anyways forcing the right to waste time and money dealing with utter nonsense, and prevent them from doing real work that will actually benefit the rest of the US citizens.
Guess I missed something with some new formatting rules?
See my post at 4:47 PM. Bold, italic and embedded links are all simple. Just highlight portion to be bolded, italicized or linked and click the bold, italic or link icon. There’s an extra step for a link. Highlight text that will represent the link, click link icon and hit ENTER.
Did anyone know that buffalo can be silly?
“….. everyone should vote for “moderate Democrats” until the GOP and the Far Left are destroyed…as if there is such a thing as a moderate Democrat!”
The only place the term “moderate Democrat” can exist is in that murky realm of Identity Politics, in which “politics” is very loosely defined as “how I feel about what this person says” instead of an objective analysis of the best blueprint for governing the country. And the same thing is true of “moderate Republican”.
I think the sanctification of the word “moderate” is part of the movement to dilute analytic and objective thought. Look at what a pejorative “opinionated” has become—as if it would be a good thing to not have opinions. Just look at the increasing use of the word “extreme”, as if to convey the message that to be “extreme” (ie: committed to an idea or belief) is somehow to be nefarious.
It’s all part of the Leftist scheme to strip passion and commitment from the mainstream of American society. Oh, they love their puppet mobs of squalling hysterics, but for the most part the Left needs a huge population of people who have come to believe that they should never feel strongly about anything, because that would be “opinionated” and maybe even, gasp! “extreme”. What they should strive to be is MODERATE. Or at least INDEPENDENT. Because the word “independent” conveys all sorts of intellectual virtue, in spite of being, in political terms, unable or unwilling to pick an objective belief and stick to it.
That is, a largely empty shell that can be directed to wherever the Left wants it to go.
And this is what scares the Left about most Republicans and all true Conservatives—-there is no room in Conservatism for being MODERATE. It’s really an either/or proposition. You either believe we have to run the country according to its Constitution, or you don’t. Once you shift off the bubble into being a “moderate” you are no longer a Conservative, because now you think we have to run the country according to its Constitution except when we don’t. Except when we decide we want the federal government to exceed its Constitutional restrictions on its size, scope and power and expand into territory that it is not, Constitutionally, allowed to inhabit.
The American Left has very few who have a strong objective commitment to the government model it truly represents. Most of its base is comprised of people who don’t really have much of a strong opinion on anything except how something has most recently appealed to their emotions, and who have no allegiance to any specific and well-understood political philosophy. In other words, of MODERATES.
So it is essential to the Left to convince the country that being firmly committed to anything—-a political model, faith, marriage, respect for the law, the Constitution—is somehow just wrong. Because we should strive to be MODERATE.
Yep. I mean, what is moderate? Let’s think about that.
The moderate position on criminal justice is that, say, instead of executing someone, give them 20 to life. Ok.
But the guy who was killed remains dead. As we all know, I’m not in favor of the death penalty but that is based on my conception of morality and my doubt that the government should be entrusted with the decision to kill a citizen. But the idea that we can moderate the punishment for someone who takes a life (referring, of course, to first degree murder; where it is entirely intentional and without mitigating circumstances) is just asinine. Of course a person who takes a life must forfeit a life. What other possible just outcome can there be? No matter what you do to the criminal, the victim remains dead – remains in a position of having lost everything. The criminal at least lives some measure of time beyond the murder and so has already gained over what was taken from the victim.
I’ve talked many times in the past about how I think punishment should go (nutshell, horribly severe for a fixed period of time, becoming progressively lighter as time goes on with in some cases the real chance of walking out of prison entirely free), but the main thing is that we do have to punish. It isn’t deterrence: it is taking a pound of flesh from someone who owes a pound of flesh. That we might not take the criminal’s life is a function of our mercy. But it isn’t moderate.
Moderate is just someone who wants to be excused from making the decision – of doing it and being done with it. An attempt to split the baby as if babies can actually be split.
Moderate is just someone who wants to be excused from making the decision — and that’s really what it comes down to. It’s an effort to tone down “squish”. The squishiness might come from a disinclination to take a stand and be held to it, or it might just come from being too lazy to do the studying and analysis of the two opposing options. And a lot of it is just cluelessness.
I remember some trolls absolutely freaking out when I started saying we really only have two political choices—a federal government restricted as to it size, scope and power with most authority left to the states or to the people, or a federal government which has no restrictions on how much it can expand to meet the wishes of people in spite of Constitutional boundaries. The howling was deafening. I was just so stupid I didn’t understand the broad range of ISSUES blahblahblahblahblah. But this is just a lot of noise to try to disguise the inability or refusal to study and understand the two basic political models, pick a lane and then work on issues within that lane.
When I talk about things like this I am always talking about federal authority. So to go to your example about capital punishment, the baseline is that because it is not addressed in the Constitution it is a state decision. The agreement to let the Constitution say where the responsibility for the decision rests is not subject to “moderate” thinking—it is or it isn’t. Then within the state’s internal legislation one can choose to apply different levels of culpability, etc. on the spectrum of “kill them all” to “set them free”. And on that spectrum one can be “moderate” in choosing a place near the middle. But that’s after the choice of whether to stick to the Constitution or try to expand its authority.
I think one problem we keep running into is definition of terms. A great example is “conservatism”. Yes, it does make one think of conserving things, and yes, there could be an argument that it means to conserve the original ideals of the Founders, but it also seems to get tangled up in thinking it means conserving things like social values, spiritual values, etc.
I think there is a wholly political definition, and then there is a wider definition that covers, in the most general terms, a desire to maintain a condition found to be desirable. When I use the term, I think of it only in political terms—-the belief that our nation must be governed according to its Constitution. While I support and believe in preserving the elements of society that I think are valuable, I don’t use the word “conservative” to define that because I think it confuses things when we are talking about politics.
It’s too bad, because in strictly political terms a conservative supports what was a very radical and profoundly libertarian concept of government when it was developed, and which still stands apart as a bold rejection of all forms of government that had preceded it, while the word itself often conveys blandness, refusal to accept change and stubborn clinging to the past.
The same problem arises with the word “moderate”. It sounds so good when used in one context, about how nearly anything is fine in moderation., but that tends to send the message that we should always be “moderate”. That’s fine if we are talking about moderation in eating, or drinking, or even working out, but it should not apply to the ability or willingness to take a position on matters of faith, morality or politics. Moderation in those areas has unmoored too many of us from conviction and commitment, as we have been brainwashed day in and day out to think there is somehow something wrong with being firmly attached to any idea or belief. That, we are told, is “extreme” and therefore somehow deeply wrong.
So we have people who murmur, almost under their breath, that they probably qualify as Christians but who have no real spiritual anchor, no relationship to any organized religion, do not attend church, do not participate in any religiously-oriented ritual—because they aren’t comfortable with the idea of being “extreme” and cling to the safety of being “moderate”. We have people who are willing to marry, but not willing to go so far as a lifelong commitment. We have parents who kind of think they should guide their children but don’t want to be immoderately demanding so they back away from the hard work of actually setting and maintaining rules and standards, of training their children how to be functional members of society—so eager to prove how “moderate” they are that they take their young children to drag queen shows and demand that they have access to pornographic material in their schools.
(They don’t check these books out and take them home and sit down with little Jimmy and Susie to explain why those boys are doing those things with their peepees, or why it’s OK for that daddy to stare at his daughter’s girl parts and then play with them—that would be EXTREME. But putting it in the schools, under the responsibility of other people, so the kiddos might run across it and might not, is MODERATE and therefore desirable.)
And it gives us people who believe, somehow, that it would be “extreme” to believe in and follow a specific clearly defined political model, so they drift along as “moderates” (or as “Independents”) on a river of indecision, unwilling to land on a bank on either side because that would mean a commitment to those political tenets and beliefs. And this is held up to us as intelligent, as politically wise and virtuous, and encouraged by those who know that close examination of what lies on their side of the river would condemn them to rejection so they depend on what votes they can get from “moderates” and “Independents” drawn to whatever attractions they can devise to get them to paddle closer to their shores.
The only strategy the Left has is to get as many people as possible out in that river, vague and ignorant of the underlying philosophy of either shore but easily blown toward their side by the constant winds of their Complicit Agenda Media. They don’t have to land on that shore, climb up on the bank and actually join the movement—-that is, understand it and accept it and commit to it. They just have to get close enough to make it possible to harvest their votes. And it is these media who constantly trumpet the concept that to be thoughtful and committed to an ideal or a belief system is to be an EXTREMIST and therefore somehow undesirable and even dangerous.
And we end up being governed by people elected by people who don’t even understand what they voted for, but who are smug in their assumed intellectual superiority of moderation, or independence.
Laugh for the day:
(A) study examined how the Pfizer jab affected the brains of neonatal rats, focusing on potential harms to offspring of pregnant vaccinated mothers. The researchers made three key findings:
The researchers cautioned that it is always possible the shots work differently in humans than in rats, but they aren’t aware of what that difference could be
I can’t remember where I read it, possibly Robert Malone’s Substack, but a statement stuck in my mind. I’m paraphrasing: we’re going to look back someday and discover that more people died from the vaccines than died from Covid.
And NO ONE will be punished for mass murder.
To this I would add those who died because politics prevented them from getting quick and effective treatment.
What do we use for inflammation? Steroids—but doctors were told not to use steroids (while those who did had fast, almost miraculous, results using steroids in nebulizers)
What do we use for auto-immune system overreactions? Hydroxychloroquine, which was actually banned by governors in many states, for which pharmacists refused to honor prescriptions, although this drug has been used safely and effectively for almost half a century, all around the world
But Donald Trump said he had heard that hydroxychloroquine was an effective drug, which is when the Complicit Agenda Media colluded with Leftist agenda-driven doctors and health officials to scare people away from the drug (one headline I remember said, in huge all-caps, THIS DRUG WILL KILL YOU!) and non-medical officials like governors declared it illegal to prescribe it in their states. There was no limit to how many had to die to prevent the perception that President Trump had acted in a way that served the public and saved lives.
Doctors using common sense and FDA-approved drugs were sanctioned, threatened with arrest and loss of their licenses. Efforts to inform the public and other doctors of safe and effective treatments were shut down by the colluding Agenda Media. They were shut out of social media and told they would be arrested if they used certain treatment protocols.
And it’s not just the deaths from the vaxx drugs—how many young people will be infertile? What is the cost to our society of a whole generation of weakened men, irreversibly damaged by these drugs? What is the damage to our national security of having a whole generation of what used to provide our national defense fighting force limited in their physical ability? What is the cost to society to have millions of babies born with abnormalities requiring lifelong care, or at the least making them incapable of difficult or complicated work?
So many good ones.
So very many good ones
Scary, but FUNNY.
Yes, but it did seem a little odd for an 80-year-old man to post a scathing take on an 80-year-old man based on his age. I would think the age thing would be avoided by Trump and his whole team.
“Poor Greta. Life without petroleum and petroleum based products.
One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverized with rocks.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Pulverized willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.
“What happened to the carpet?” she asked.
“The carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.
Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.
“Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
“Where’s the water?” asked Greta.
“Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it.”
“Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.
“Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?”
There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and how ore has to be smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .
“What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.
“Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”
“How so, raw?” inquired Greta.
“Well, . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.
“But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.
“Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
“What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
“Not anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing – being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”
This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.
Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesized.”
Excellent, Jeremiah!
I’m glad this is still around
Yup. Some wise person came up with the phrase, “be careful what you wish for” for a reason.
I’ve always liked that, and am coming to a deeper understanding of the Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”.
This reminds me of a Netflix series I have been binge-watching, a few episodes every night. I’m a sucker for time travel, so when I found a series about people from our future coming back to the 21st Century to fix things that made life in the future a living hell, living nearly underground and eating synthetic foods, I was making popcorn and settling in.
Me being me, I have been on alert for wokeness, this being a product of our “entertainment” industry, but I have been pleasantly surprised. The few semi-political messages have all been leaning toward our side, so to speak.
The original group sent back is known as the Travelers, controlled by an AI called The Director, who studies the historical records and sends his teams to try to head off events that seem to contribute to the dystopia of the future. They can only inhabit host bodies of people already known to die at a certain time and place, so they step into other lives, which has its own complications. So far, so good. There are many gunfights, lots and lots of shooting, but also sly humor as the Travelers finally actually get to see trees and live animals for the first time in their lives, and have their first experiences of real food. (One Traveler had the boring job of driving up and down the coast to deliver packages, but the guy is fine with that because he got to see two eagles. A busload of new arrivals is very excited, driving through the woods and arguing if they just saw a dog or a bear—but it doesn’t matter because they saw SOMETHING.) They have never eaten meat and aren’t quite sure how they feel about that, and their education about life in the 21st is not complete, so they are taken aback by a hot dog and then figure who knew dogs were eaten or tasted so good. One tiny vignette tickled me—-one character is extremely food-driven and another brings her a paper cone of some kind of food we never see but that she enthusiastically eats, piece by piece, with her fingers, as he explains that “it’s French”. It took me a few beats to realize he was talking about French fries. (When she was in a hospital she didn’t want to leave because the food there was SO GOOD!!)
There is never an overt description of the future, just references to what they find amazing and wonderful in their past, our present.
Anyway, as they battle events like an asteroid that is going to crash into Earth, etc. a group appears, also from the future, known as the Faction, which is trying to thwart or maybe even kill the Travelers. Here is where some political messaging comes in. The Faction, as it develops, is equally passionate about “saving the planet’ but their methods are in opposition to those of the Travelers. The first hint comes when an extremely unlikable Faction woman snarls that “the biggest threat to mankind is the population of the 21st Century” and it turns out that she and her cohorts have come back to the 21st to create and disseminate a deadly virus designed to kill at least 30% of the world’s population.
Oh. And then they try to destroy the archives of the history of the world up through the 21st Century. Uh-huh. And kill anyone who gets in their way. And pieces start to fall into place.
They don’t rub our noses in it, but to a political junkie like me it sure looks like the show is entering the territory of an allegorical battle between the Left and the Right. When a member of the Faction is given a chance to expound, her heartfelt conviction that what she is doing is “essential to save the Earth” is quite compelling—-but her methods echo those we see in our contemporary culture, with the conviction that our history must be erased and the implication that the killing of more than a billion people is justified—not to mention the use of an engineered virus to do it.
They are fairly subtle about it, probably not wanting to overtly drive off a sizable chunk of an intended audience, but at the same time the underlying current throughout the whole show is contradictory to Leftist narratives and philosophies. The Travelers are subject to what they were taught in their own time and sometimes question things, but never have the goal of destroying, and they are forbidden to take lives except in self defense or to protect someone in danger. And they are very protective of children.
It’s good entertainment, but on another level an encouraging sign that there are some people in the entertainment industry not in lockstep with the anarcho-Leftist mentality that we associate with it.
This is timely, as I have recently had a couple of conversations about this.
Today’s Coffee & Covid is just delicious on several levels.