Direct Action; Boris & Net-Zero; and Codevilla on Education.

Jul 25, 2022

In his editor’s column this week, Michael Walsh took a look at the origins of our present state of national disorder.

'By Any Means Necessary'

Those of us who weathered the Sixties as teenagers well remember the fraught nature of American society in the annus horribilis of 1968. The Tet offensive in Vietnam. The asssassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. Riots in dozens of cities across the land. The self-immolation of a president, Lyndon Johnson. The ongoing mess in Vietnam, a war we didn't have to fight and didn't want to win.

The "student" riots at the Democrat convention in Chicago, at which the donkeys chose LBJ's vice-president, Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the quintessential "Minnesota Nice" representative of that quirky state's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party—which believe it or not, still exists and dominates formerly German-Scandinavian and now Mogadishustanian politics to this day. The election of Richard M. Nixon, back from the political graveyard, in November of that year. And much, much more.

One of the ringing phrases of that decade was "by any means necessary," which originated in in a 1960 speech by the black French West Indian radical Marxist Frantz Fanon, "Why we use violence." The phrase may have had its roots in the 1948 play Dirty Hands (Les mains sales) by the Existentialist French playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre ("It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary") and then widely popularized by Malcolm X in 1965 (the year of his own assassination): "We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary." ….

In case you haven't figured it out yet, "by any means necessary" means violence, otherwise known by the 1960s' euphemism, "direct action."

Well, what goes around comes around and here we are, more than half a century later, as the passions that inflamed Americans back then, while different somewhat in their particulars, are still burning bright. We saw "by any means necessary" and "direct action" in action during the George Floyd summer of 2020, when cities burned during "mostly peaceful" protests over the death of a hitherto obscure minor career criminal who expired while under restraint by the hapless Minneapolis police department. Does anyone even remember who George Floyd was? But his death birthed the Black Lives Matter movement, and his memory still graces a couple of blocks of 16th Street NW in Washington, D.C., just steps from the White House.

Things fall apart: when one of the capital's main streets, leading directly to the front door of the White House (hence the address, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.), boasting some of the city's leading hotels, including the Hay-Adams, are effectively closed to through traffic, the rule of law no longer obtains. On both sides: who can forget the colossal error in judgment (at the very least) of the January 6 demonstrations, which has resulted in hundreds of arrests, with many people still sitting in prison, and an ongoing show trail run by the Democrats in Congress designed to punish their mortal enemy, Donald J. Trump?

Just last week, former presidential adviser and campaign guru Steve Bannon was convicted by a kangaroo court for "contempt of Congress," a "crime" one or two rungs lower on the tort list from spitting on the sidewalk or picking your feet in Poughkeepsie. (Former Obama attorney general/wingman Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress in 2014, but amazingly the administration declined to prosecute.)

The old Soviet Union or National Socialist Germany would have been proud of this farce: unable to mount the defense he and his lawyers sought thanks to a series of adverse rulings by the judge, Bannon's team chose no defense at all, but instead will appeal the conviction to a higher court.

At this point in the sad history of the decline and fall of the American republic, what patriotic citizen doesn't have contempt for Congress and just about every other institution of government that's been corrupted by money, power, unaccountability, and an unabashed loathing for the nation and its people? Forget home rule; Washington is now run by mob rule, and the government's part of the mob. When things go this wrong, who isn't tempted to agree with Al Pacino in this clip from Norman Jewison's 1979 film, "... And Justice for All"?

….

Americans have been driven crazy by events since the election of 2000, which has called into question the validity of every election since, and also by developments abroad, starting with the George W. Bush administration's profoundly witless response to the attacks of 9/11. A long, pointless military exercise against backwater places that had little or nothing to do with Osama bin Laden's private—and extraordinarily effective—jihad against the West culminated in the Biden administration's criminally feckless pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, elevating a rag-tag band of razorless primitives to the best-equipped private army on the planet.

On the home front, a steady diet of woke enormities regarding deviant sexual grooming in the schools, surgical disfigurement and chemical castration of children, the perversion of both biology and the language by woke ideology, the president's son Hunter Biden's open cavorting with hookers, snorting coke, and brokering deals with unsavory places like China and Plucky Little Ukraine, the breakdown of public order, the belated acknowledgment by the media that the Covid "vaccines" neither prevent or ameliorate the damages caused by the virus and may in fact be harmful, and that the entire totalitarian overreaction of 2019-2022 was a great big joke—on us. Not that they're sorry about it, however, because the beta test of tyranny taught the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party that Americans were sheep and can in the future be stripped of their rights and liberties with impunity.

And then there's the entire "Green Energy" hoax, an all-purpose pretense to raise the cost of fuels, restrict your mobility, and cripple agriculture, all in the name of a demonstrably untrue and malicious Luddite fantasy aimed directly at your survival.

This past week The Pipeline published the fifth excerpted essay from our new book, Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order. The book will be published on October 18 by Bombardier Books and distributed by Simon and Schuster. It is now available now for pre-order at the links above.

This week’s contribution is from Angelo Codevilla, among the last things he wrote before his untimely death.

PART II: THE POLITICAL

Excerpt from "Resetting the Educational Reset," by Angelo M. Codevilla

In 2020, the self-proclaimed “key global governmental and business leaders” who meet yearly in Davos, Switzerland, issued a statement that “the Covid-19 crisis” showed the “inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems—from health and financial to energy and education.” From this, there ensued “global context of concern for lives, livelihoods and the planet.” The statement promises to answer this through a “Great Reset Initiative.” By that initiative the authors intend to change “the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons.” This is to result, no less, in “a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.”

By, of, for Whom? And for What?

The “initiative” does not say what the “inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions” under which Western health economics, and education have been laboring, how or what the Covid-19 episode taught us about them, whose is the “global context of concern,” what that concern and that context might be, how alleged problems ought to be remedied, or what these words might mean. It does not argue for specific measures because it is not about convincing. Instead, it is an attempt to induce, cajole, perhaps force nonstakeholders (i.e., ordinary people), into letting their lives be reordered according to the stakeholders’ judgment. That judgment’s basis is these very stakeholders’ claim that the Covid affair showed Western civilization’s failings, and that they know better ways to improve efficiency and enhance dignity. Their authority lies solely in their claim to authority.

They claim to act on behalf of “a global multi-stakeholder network,” meaning such as Bill Gates and George Soros, Jamie Dimon, and other corporate and governmental figures. But mostly the initiative is by, of, and for whomever hungers for a touch of all that coolness, power, and money. Least of all does the initiative argue why these prominent persons should have any right to change the way we live, or why anyone should follow them. Its boldness and lack of foundation may be exceeded only by the authors’ chutzpah.

Chutzpah, because the initiative’s authors—the lords of Davos—are themselves chiefly responsible for turning a virus with an overall infection/fatality rate well within the range of ordinary flus, into a catastrophe for billions of people. Covid-19’s dire effects came almost exclusively because the government, business and educational leaders, stakeholders, and others of the sort who meet at Davos propagated and weaponized a patent untruth—that the virus is some sort of plague—while knowing and hiding the truth. To promote their own self-interest in power, they lied, causing havoc, pain, and death. Their guilt is very great indeed.

The initiative’s claim to represent something new tops off its fraud. In fact, its august personages have been increasing their near-total control of public life in the West over the past half century. In every field of endeavor, they have set the tone and the reigning priorities. Hence the Great Reset, far from a proposal for new ways of living, is an attempt to tighten Davos Man’s grip on our lives and to foreclose alternatives to the way of life that they have been in the process of imposing on us, and that the rest of us are now stubbornly rejecting.

Education tops the list of the aspects of public life with which Americans are dissatisfied. The Covid affair contributed to the dissatisfaction by forcing millions to become acquainted with what happens in K–12 classrooms. College students’ exclusion from campuses also has led Americans to question as never before how important their sons and daughters actually being there really is.

The closer one looks at education today, the more one sees that the dumbing down and perversion of America to which people object most strongly is the continuation of a century-old decay in our civilization. Problems with education bespeak civilizational ones, of which the phenomenon of Davos Man is but one manifestation.

We were lucky enough to publish two pieces by Steven Hayward this week. The first contained his observations on the ignominious end of Boris Johnson’s career:

Net-Zero and the Fall of Boris Johnson

The hot race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of Britain coincides with a record-breaking (though brief) heat wave that is summoning all of the usual clichés about climate change. But most Britons seem to be treating the heat with a shrug, understanding that heat waves sometimes come with what used to be known as “summer.”

Less recognized in the heat of the moment is the role extreme climate policy has played in the downfall of Johnson. The dominant narrative is that Johnson alienated his Tory colleagues in the cabinet and on the back benches with his hypocritical violation of Covid rules in his private parties, along with some scandal-ridden appointments, while the larger public soured on Johnson’s foolish embrace of draconian lockdown restrictions, along with a tax and fiscal policy one might have thought Johnson pinched from the Labour Party.

But the media, and even most Tory leaders, are reserving hushed tones for the role of Johnson’s fanatical embrace of “Net-Zero” energy policy (meaning a carbon-free energy supply by the year 2050). The energy policy of the Johnson government was indistinguishable from what Jeremy Corbyn’s Labourites would have imposed had they won the 2019 election.

Possibly because Britain was on tap to host the U.N.’s annual climate shakedown (known as COP 26) in Glasgow in 2021, Johnson somehow thought he had to be a “climate leader,” pledging among other reckless things to close all of Britain’s coal-fired power plants by 2024. Coal plants scheduled for closure this fall are now going to be kept online, even as the International Energy Agency in Paris recommended this week that Europe as a whole burn more coal on account of the soaring price and scarcity of natural gas—a scarcity that is entirely the political creation of western European nations that thought Russia was an honest and reliable partner that would supply the right amount of natural gas while Europe persisted in its fanciful green dreams of running their economies on windmills.

Needless to say, the price of coal has risen more than the price of oil and natural gas in recent months. And how is Britain getting through the current heat wave? They’ve brought on 5 gigawatts of additional natural gas power because wind and solar power can’t be ramped up. Natural gas is currently supplying between 50 and 60 percent of Britain’s total electricity—a source that would fall to zero if “Net-Zero” was really implemented….

Which brings us back to the contest to succeed Boris, who has so far made no acknowledgement that his climate policy was misguided. His aspiring successors are ever so slightly putting some distance between themselves and Johnson on this issue. The New York Times is dismayed that “climate change does not appear to be a priority” in the race for party leadership, and indeed the leading candidates are treading gingerly on the topic, with most affirming their general commitment to Net-Zero, while indicating that they intend to back off somehow.

All four remaining candidates after the first rounds of winnowing said they would at least impose a moratorium on new “green levies” to subsidize more renewable energy. All seemed to recognize that the public does not support the extreme greenery Johnson suicidally embraced, and indeed a recent poll of Tory voters by the Times of London found that only 4 percent thought "climate change" should be one of the top three priorities for the next government. Front-runners Rishi Sunak -- the former Chancellor of the Exchequer whose recent resignation was the proximate cause of Boris' downfall -- and Penny Mourdant, the trade minister, both say that energy policy “shouldn’t hurt people,” which means they are at least paying attention to the rising cost of green ambitions to ordinary rate-paying citizens.

Two candidates have been more bold in breaking with climate orthodoxy. Foreign secretary Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has said she’d lift the ban on fracking for natural gas, but Kemi Badenoch -- now out of the running -- was the only person in the field who has said she might be open to scraping Net-Zero entirely if it threatens to bankrupt Britain (which it does).

And in the second, he dealt with a few EV delusions.

Piercing the Electric Car Fantasy

Electric cars are having a big moment right now, with the supercilious wonderboy of the Biden administration Pete Buttigieg proclaiming last week that we could escape the pain at the gas pump if more people could “access” electric cars (EVs). Very telling that he chose to say “access” rather than “afford” electric cars, because without the $7,500 tax credit, very few middle-class people can afford to buy an electric car. And very few middle-class people do: the lion’s share of “clean energy” subsidies are captured by high-income households.

But press beyond the typical economic illiteracy of leftists like Buttigieg who think having the government pay billions in subsidies makes something “cheaper,” and note that electrons aren’t printed out of thin air by the Federal Reserve like our fast-depreciating currency. With electricity rates rising fastest in those places that have overemphasized “renewable” energy such as California or Germany, it's not clear that consumers will save much by driving a more expensive electric car and paying higher utility rates. And that’s if you can still fill it up with electrons whenever you want to. During recent power crunches, which are threatening to become endemic in the U.S. under the current policies of the Biden apparatchiks, grid operators have asked EV owners not to charge their vehicles in the evening, when power demand is highest and the time of day when most working people will want to charge their cars.

Right now, electric vehicles make up about 1 percent of America’s car fleet. If they pose challenges for the electric grid already, what will the challenges look like if the EV fleet reaches 50 percent of the auto fleet as Biden proposes? No wonder Elon Musk says we’ll need to expand electric power generation by 30 percent or more to meet the demand of a larger EV fleet on the road. And yet it is supremely uncouth to point out that electrons for EV batteries are generated mostly from fossil fuels right now, and thus EVs may not deliver a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when a proper life-cycle analysis is done.

Economist Mark Perry notes that nearly two-thirds of current U.S. electricity is generated by coal and natural gas, and the figure rises to 86 percent if you include nuclear power, which environmentalists irrationally hate and are trying to eliminate. When you raise this problem, you are met with a hail of green indignation about how we’re starting on an “incredible transition” to a carbon-free energy future (a phrase Biden and energy secretary Jennifer Granholm have both used repeatedly with the unsettling grin of the chiliastic fanatic). “EVs are just an early step toward the carbon-free nirvana, which is just a few hundred thousand more windmills and square miles of solar power away!”

Tom Finnerty wrote about the (strangely familiar) causes of the ongoing crisis in Sri Lanka.

Thanks for reading, and keep a look out for upcoming pieces by Joan Sammon, David Cavena, and Tom Finnerty, as well as another excerpt from our new book, Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order. All this and more this week at The Pipeline!

Michael Walsh at The Pipeline

Discussion about this post