Leftist Bafflegab; ESG in Court; & What Happened to Nord Stream?

Oct 03, 2022

Michael Walsh’s Editor’s Column this week focused on the Left’s efforts at reshaping our language.

DEI, Monster, DIE

Who would have thought that the essence of our modern cold (so far) civil war would not be capturing the radio stations and newspaper offices to proclaim the revolution but rather the acronyms, abbreviations, and contractions—the language itself? During the Eisenhower administration, the newly coined term "bafflegab" was often employed by the pro-Democrat media to describe Ike's often circumlocutory way of speaking. They thought Eisenhower, the victorious Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, was "stupid," especially as compared with their poorly shod wonderboy, Adlai Stevenson, whom Ike beat twice. Little did they know that Eisenhower was deliberately obfuscatory, to keep his real intentions and meanings private.

Milton A. Smith, assistant general counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the inventor of the word, defined it as: “multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilized for promulgations implementing Procrustean determinations by governmental bodies.” Today we recognize it as the lingua franca of the bureaucrat-educator class, especially those involved in mid-levels of government and those studying for their master's degree in education. A casual glance at the academic writings of Michelle Obama and "doctor" Jill Biden will immediately grasp its essence.

Ah, but such sesquipedalianism and deliberate obfuscation is rapidly going out of fashion, mostly because the TikTok generation can barely speak English, much less comprehend words with Latin roots. Among the young, Ebonics has combined with elision to create a whole new cant, slang, patois and vernacular designed to be understood solely by its adherents and meant to mask its real meaning. But rather than use long, real words, they now create new ones by means of contractions , abbreviations, acronyms, or simple neologisms. If, for example, you don't know what "Yeet the Teet" means, you could look it up. Indeed "transgenderism" will open a whole new linguistic world for you.

Acronyms, of course, date far back—think of Gerald Ford's WIN campaign, "whip inflation now"—but one of the most recent, and insidious, is DEI, which stands for "diversity, equity, and inclusion," the latest totalitarian assault on professional standards. For a time it stood for "diversity, inclusion, and equity" until one of the few non-illiterates on the Left realized that its acronym spelled out DIE," which after all is what they really want us to do. (It reminds me of the scene in Dr. Strangelove, in which Gen. Turgidson wonders what kind of name that is, and gets this response: " He changed it when he became a citizen. Used to be Merkwürdigliebe." To which Turgidson, played by George C. Scott, replies: "a Kraut by any other name, huh?")

Maybe they should have gone with IED, for improvised explosive device, which is really what the whole thing is: a Strangelovian domestic terrorism bomb, which we've learned to stop worrying about and instead love. In any case, here's what they want:

Diversity is the presence of differences that may include race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, language, (dis)ability, age, religious commitment, or political perspective. Populations that have been-and remain- underrepresented among practitioners in the field and marginalized in the broader society.
Equity is promoting justice, impartiality and fairness within the procedures, processes, and distribution of resources by institutions or systems. Tackling equity issues requires an understanding of the root causes of outcome disparities within our society.
Inclusion is an outcome to ensure those that are diverse actually feel and/or are welcomed. Inclusion outcomes are met when you, your institution, and your program are truly inviting to all. To the degree to which diverse individuals are able to participate fully in the decision-making processes and development opportunities within an organization or group.

I've bold-faced the bald-faced cultural Marxist argot of their terms so you might see through the benign mask of caring and sharing and see the nasty monster's puss beneath it. You will notice that exactly none of these things contributes anything to the advancement of the enterprise; they're simply more Marxist revanchism for the Lost Cause of their beloved Soviet Union, which died of incompetence in 1991, and for which they have never forgiven the Russians.

Joan Sammon looked into attempts to push back on ESG.

Main Street v. Wall Street on 'ESG'

While constituting competing frameworks, reporting systems, and scoring systems for environmental and social reporting for companies, the ESG construct lacks any quantifiable or worthwhile measurements. Put plainly, it is an entirely subjective scheme, created and funded by political activists. Under the pretense of environmental protection and social diversity, these activists recognized that they had allies in the financial services and banking sectors who could be incentivized to do via the capital markets that which the activists knew they could never achieve using traditional market forces or democratic institutions. In short, voters would never agree to ruin their own economies, livelihoods and futures in the name of political ideology. To be successful, it necessarily needed to be stealthy and unchallenged.

Recognizing this reality, attorneys general Jeff Landry and Todd Rokita of Louisiana and Indiana issued a letter earlier this month warning their states’ pension boards that ESG investing is likely a violation of fiduciary duty and potentially opens their investment staff and investment advisers to liability if they continue allocating funds to ESG-promoting asset managers such as BlackRock.

The Landry and Rokita letters follow another letter sent last month from them and seventeen other state AGs to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. That letter warns the asset management giant that BlackRock’s ESG investment policies appear to involve what they describe as, “rampant violations” of the sole interest rule, a well-established legal principle. The sole interest rule requires investment fiduciaries like BlackRock, to act to maximize financial returns, not to promote social or political objectives.

Yet, it is clear that BlackRock and industry counterparts are doing precisely that. They are attempting to use the ESG pretext of "protecting the environment" to re-orient trillions of dollars of their clients’ capital toward what are unquestionably their own political and social objectives. This effort is borne out in the companies in which they invest and the trends they curate and then fund. As is repeatedly touted in the literature of the most prolific ESG advocates, they believe that because their asset management partners, including BlackRock, manage such a substantial percentage of the total investment market, their ESG world view is above constraint of law, or beyond the reach of the institutions that have traditionally protected investors from dubious investment schemes.

Tom Finnerty contributed several blog posts this week, including one on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.

Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipelines?

The Nord Stream pipelines, which run under the Baltic Sea, have been severed by an explosion, causing huge amounts of natural gas to spill out into the ocean. That much is certain. Moreover, sabotage was the most likely cause. After all, one pipeline being breached by an explosion would be suspicious. But two? In three separate places? Especially with those pipelines being a bone of contention between major powers in the midst of a war? High unlikely.

And it isn't just the multiplying of coincidences -- according to Bloomberg, there is hard evidence that it was not an accident:

Germany suspects the damage to the Nord Stream pipeline system used to transport Russian gas to Europe was the result of sabotage. The evidence points to a violent act, rather than a technical issue, according to a German security official, who asked not to be identified because the matter is being probed. In response to the pipeline leaks in the Baltic Sea, Denmark is tightening security around energy assets.

So who is responsible? Early statements from Western leaders have pointed the finger at Russia, but it seems extremely unlikely that Vladimir Putin would order the destruction of his own pipeline. Especially since he has been using Nord Stream to remind German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the cost to his country for the continuation of the war in Ukraine into the winter months. As this author wrote recently, the Russians have "cut down natural gas flows to Germany by 60 percent, blaming mechanical problems while ostentatiously burning $10 million worth of natural gas per day at the mouth of the Nord Stream pipeline rather than sending it to Germany."

Why would Putin cut off his own pressure point? And if not him, who? Tucker Carlson has a theory. Perhaps it was the Biden White House. It sounds crazy: could Biden, Carlson asks, and his merry band of environmentalists intentionally leak millions of gallons of liquid natural gas into the ocean, and from there into the atmosphere, when they are always going on about the horrible effects of gas on the environment?

At the same time, Carlson and his team have unearthed footage of President Biden and the State Department's Victoria Nuland (who always seems to be caught up in the affairs of Ukraine) assuring the American people that if Putin invades, than (in Biden's words) "there will be no longer a Nord Stream... We will bring an end to it."

Moreover, Carlson points to a tweet from Polish politician Radek Sikorski, who is overjoyed by this development and clearly thinks it has Biden's fingerprints on it.

Sikorski is a member of the neo-liberal Civic Platform party (which the Biden administration would love to see come back into power in Poland) and previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Donald Tusk, who went onto become president of the European Union. He's also married to The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum, who Carlson rightly refers to as the liberal world order's "regime stenographer." All of which is to say, he's very well connected and this is more than conjecture on his part.

Finnerty also wrote about Belgium’s insane decision to push ahead with de-nuclearizing in the midst of an energy crisis.

'Green' Belgium Nukes Itself

And a more light-hearted one pointed to the climate skepticism of the libertarian Leftie comedian, George Carlin.

'Save the Planet? Are You Effing Kidding Me?

Jack Dunphy considered the unreality of modern liberals in the face of unacceptably high crime rates.

Murder, Inc. Meets 'Calvin and Hobbes'

I recall with fondness the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” in which cartoonist Bill Watterson reminded us of the youthful joys of playing “pretend.” Calvin was a 6-year-old boy; Hobbes was his stuffed tiger, but when Calvin was alone, Hobbes came to extraordinary life, becoming a mordant philosopher, sage, and most of all loyal companion on Calvin’s imaginary adventures.

My favorites appeared on the occasional Sunday, when Calvin, in the persona of his alter-ego Spaceman Spiff, rocketed through the cosmos to battle all manner of hideous alien creatures, smiting them with his “frap-ray blaster." By the final panel, though, Spaceman Spiff most often crash-landed back on Earth, where the space monsters were revealed to be his teacher Miss Wormwood, babysitter Rosalyn, or classmate Susie Derkins. For all the joy we may have experienced in joining Calvin on his flights of imagination, Watterson could always be counted on to bring Calvin – and us – back to cruel reality. How we long for someone to do so today.

Yes, it’s fun to play “pretend,” but one can only play it for so long. For too many people in America today, it has become far too easy to pretend that, to cite just a few examples of fashionable delusions, the president and vice president are competent, that inflation is not a problem, that the southern border is secure, that men can become women and vice-versa, and, most troubling to those in my profession, that crime can be reduced by being kinder to criminals.

The New York Times recently reassured us that murder across the U.S. has trended slightly downward this year after a dramatic rise that began, not coincidentally, in the summer of 2020. This is welcome news, certainly, but there is little to indicate violent crime will return to its pre-George Floyd levels anytime soon.

And why would it? Our media and academic elites, wracked by misplaced guilt over what they have labeled “mass incarceration,” have cowed politicians into enacting policies that have hamstrung the police and emboldened criminals, with the result being an increase in crime, reversing a trend that began when crime peaked in the early 1990’s. Despite the minor decline cited in the New York Times, crime and disorder will in all likelihood increase until those same politicians, like Calvin in the final panel, crash land back in reality, or else are voted out and replaced by others already so grounded.

And David Cavena discussed the cost of vaccine virtue signaling.

What Price Covid Conformity?

For most of us, the worst part of the current social environment created by the Covid-Climate-Party (CCP) government regarding the Covid vaccine regimen is what it is doing to families. Siblings no longer talk to one another. Parents and their children no longer are on speaking terms. Families are preventing themselves from getting together. Even though the government has been forced to back-off their mandates (due to lacking any authority to enact them) people still act as though these "vaccines" are necessary.

The CDC has stated, many times now, that the vaccine does not prevent transmission, infection, or reinfection. Hence, no medical reason for vaccine mandates, or even voluntary vaccine administration, exists, with the possible exception that a vaccine may reduce one’s own reaction to the virus, if infected. They’ve stated that masks are not useful in combatting a virus. They’ve let us know that no medical or scientific reason for the six-foot social distancing rule ever existed. The former White House coronavirus response coordinator even has let us in on her little secret that “[She] knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection," while mandating them anyway, at the cost of jobs, careers, families, prosperity, education, futures, and lives.

For those who have been subscribing to every pronouncement of the CDC since “two weeks to flatten the curve,” this ought to be enough. But, somehow, it is not. Families, children, parents, siblings are still suffering from separation and lack of human interaction based on nothing more than what, realistically, only can be called “superstition.” As above and per the CDC, the science of this vaccine… is that it does not protect others.

What is happening is that the higher the vaccination rate, the higher the infection rate. Insurance companies across the nation and in Europe are reporting huge, unprecedented numbers of “excess deaths,” a term and a category none of us knew existed two years ago. Per the FDA: “The clinical trials of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine found that the all-cause mortality rate of the vaccinated group was higher than that of the control group.” This is the opposite of what is expected due to the increased tendency of people concerned about their health to get vaccinated.

Why are people acting this way? If one wants to get the vaccine – get it. If not, don’t. But as no medical reason exists for it insofar as protecting others, mandates – even personal, family “mandates” have zero medical purpose for those around you.

Thanks for reading, and keep a look out for upcoming pieces by Peter Smith, Richard Fernandez, and Joan Sammon. And don’t forget to pre-order 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

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