Protester yells at cop in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing
Have you ever been confronted by young activists with a cocksure belief in their righteousness and your malevolence? I have as an academic of way too many years. Unbeknownst to the youthful firebrand, their understanding is as shallow as a street puddle, and filled with rhetorical generalizations for which they have devoted too little time and thought to review.
Shout the slogans and it’s off to the barricades. It’s the plague of our time, the plague of arrogance of the young and too many adults who should know better.
Of course, I am referring to our woke moment. Being “woke” is the neo-Marxism (often called post-modernism) of reducing all our social reality to a dialectic of oppressor/oppressed with power, explicit or implicit, covert or overt, governing all relationships, public and private. Karl Marx devised the scheme for socioeconomic class. Others in the 20th century chimed in with race, gender, and sexual orientation. It’s the same old spiel of reducing everyone to faceless groupings by pigment, genitalia, and bed partner.
There’s no need for individuals in the paradigm. Toss out the corpus of Christianity, the Ten Commandments, and individual accountability and redemption while you’re at it.
Our time is lacking humility, especially among the youth on our college campuses. While shouting down an appeals court judge – as what happened recently at Stanford – the disruptors were consumed in their self-anointed rectitude and acted like it. Their condemnations of American and western man past and present are absent any of the reserve of the thoughtful.
The indispensability of humility was captured in the music of Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V”, particularly “Non Nobis Domine” after the Battle of Agincourt. The piece stems from a composition by Philip van Wilder in the 16th century to commemorate the advent of Christ and thanksgiving. The line in the lyrics from Psalms 113:9 that captures the theme is “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give the glory” (KJV) (Latin: Nōn nōbīs, Domine, nōn nōbīs, sed nōminī tuō dā glōriam).
It’s an admonition against pride and its accompanying arrogance. Today’s young campus extremists would do well to take notice.
“Give me the man, and I will find the crime [for him].” Stalin’s chief prosecutor, Andrey Vyshinsky, or Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s head of the NKVD (secret police)
Which one made the historic quote from the 1930’s in Bolshevik Russia? Possibly both, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the official governing philosophy of a country that long ago aborted the rule of law. The law is whatever those in power say it is, a classic definition of tyranny. Welcome to the USA, circa 2023.
Beria and StalinAndrey Vyshinsky
Execrable people do execrable things, such as pretend to use the law, absent any law, to target a person, just like the Stalin gang. To be honest, though, Donald J. Trump is an execrable character. Well, to be honest, Jack Smith, Special Counsel, is an execrable character. Well, to be honest, the entire cabal of talking heads of the Democratic Party and their media sycophants are pretty execrable characters. If for no other reason, this is damning proof of our descent to the level of governing respectability of the Assad regime (without the barrel bombs and poison gas) or Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan (from Freedom House’s list of the worst of the worst). Execrable potentates produce execrable government.
As such, banana republic may not go far enough in describing our fall from grace.
“Execrable” behavior, it must be admitted, is not necessarily a crime. Marriage infidelity is not a crime (ergo Bill Clinton and Donald Trump), but it certainly is ruinous to the pocketbook in divorce court and lawsuits. Ask them. Politically, the only decent way to remove execrable characters is to vote them out of the way, and hopefully not empower other execrables in the process. If a narcissistic, self-serving blowhard is not to your liking, here’s a clue, don’t vote for them. But don’t take a law and stretch it to the breaking point around the necks of the detestable-but-politically-viable, as is the habit of Jack Smith and his discreditable Washington, D.C., grand jury.
But such is the modus operandi of the Democratic Party. In the latest episode of the execrable targeting the execrable, Smith laid before us a third indictment of Trump. Read the monstrosity here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.232192/gov.uscourts.dcd.232192.275.0.pdf.
In the plethora of Trump verbalisms since the 2020 election, Smith (er, Vyshinsky) thinks that he found the smoking gun of Trump’s state of mind, because Smith’s overly distended application of the law demands clairvoyancy of the inner recesses of Trump’s brain. In a discussion with senior advisers, Trump alludes to a matter being turned over to the next president. What a thin reed to hang a political rival. Do I really need to go over this flimsy thread of legal mishmash?
Yesterday (8/2/23), Bill Barr, Trump’s ex-AG, went on CNN to declare that the indictment has validity. Hogwash. Entering into state-of-mind divination is a dubious gambit, and doubly so when aimed at one’s political rivals. Now, Barr may be right in that the indictment presents only a bare-bones preview of the case against Trump. Regardless, the appearance of impropriety will do more damage to our national reputation than any actual impropriety. If actions aren’t clearly illegal, delving into the equivalent of psychological augury won’t make them smell any better.
The administrative state’s open Democrat favoritism, the Russia Collusion hoax, the chicanery of the tech biggies and politicized intel heavies to shove Hunter’s laptop down the memory hole, the obvious double standards so numerous as to boggle the mind, etc., should make any sentient adult cringe. We have disqualified ourselves as assessors of any other nation’s governing practices. We should be under international observation, not be the observers. And I don’t need Barr’s mumbo-jumbo, whatever Barr’s state of mind might be, to mask the stench oozing out of this indictment.
The second impeachment had legitimacy, mostly because impeachment is as much a political act as anything. Trump’s behavior post-election was, and continues to be, reprehensible. Reprehensible behavior is impeachable. For all practical purposes, a legal pretext is nice but not necessary. Not everything can be innocently written off as Trumpiness.
The documents indictment similarly has legal legs. But prosecution for expressing a belief about some set of circumstances, whether actually believed or not, takes us into very dark and unsavory places. It’s the stuff of governance in most countries of the UN General Assembly and Putin’s Russia. Are poisonings and mysterious falls from 15-story windows next?
Are we a banana republic or something worse? What’s even more troubling is the fact that many of the people on the public stage and with ultimate authority are either supported or elected by us. Is this the best that we can come up with?
J. Robert Oppenheimer is back in the news with the movie “Oppenheimer” hitting screens across the country. As a movie, I give it “thumbs up”. It was well-scripted, acted, and moved at a captivating pace. Hats off to Christopher Nolan.
As history, I have my doubts.
Oppenheimer’s place in the period before, during, and after World War II is a much more contentious topic and should be. Was he a man of dubious loyalty, maybe even going so far as to engage in espionage? More interestingly, could his philosophical sympathies cloud his judgment in managing Los Alamos? These questions cannot be answered in a movie. Sympathy for the man abounds, possibly richly deserved, but some aspects of the real story are missing. One thing is glaringly clear: nothing, absolutely nothing was mentioned, or in any way referenced, of the Venona project and its WWII decrypts of Soviet communications from the US to Moscow, or the confirmatory information gleaned from the briefly opened Soviet archives after the downfall of the Soviet regime in 1991.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
PBS added to the Oppenheimer lore with a recent American Experience documentary, “The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, with the same blank spots as the movie. Number one, the “trial” wasn’t a trial. It was a panel to determine whether to pull Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Step back one moment from the Hollywood-made aura about the man, however, and look at the facts. Fact number one, no evidence has come to light of Oppenheimer’s involvement in espionage. So, as a matter of law and logic, the claim of alleged treason is simply a suspicion at best. On the other hand, the raw insights gleaned from Venona and Soviet archives presents a more complicated picture.
For a clearer assessment of the period, PBS ironically came to the rescue some years back with Nova’s “Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies” which was primarily based on the historical work of John Haynes and Harvey Klehr (watch it below). The documentary and the book, “Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America”, point to serious Soviet penetration of the US government and the Manhattan Project. The movie mentions the espionage of Klaus Fuchs, but the reality is that the illicit activity didn’t end there.
Arlington Hall, Va., where the decrypting took place.
Americans acting as Soviet agents were littered throughout Roosevelt’s administration. Lauchlin Currie, FDR’s chief economic adviser, Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Alger Hiss at the State Department, and a smattering of others in intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies were identified in Venona decrypts and later confirmed in Soviet archives as sources of America’s most important secrets. Some 300 Soviet cover names were identified in the decrypts with only about 100 attached to specific individuals. One of the unidentified was “Quantum”, and he was clearly somebody very, very important at Los Alamos.
The movie to its credit mentioned Klaus Fuchs, but there was more at Los Alamos. One such person was Theodore Hall and his friend and Harvard confidant, Saville Sax. Fuchs and Hall, independent of each other, provided sketches and descriptions to the Soviets of the plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki. Shortly after the successful Trinity test in July 1945, the Soviets and the head of their nuclear effort, Igor Kurchatov, had in their hands what we had achieved and how. Possibly this explains Stalin’s nonchalance when informed by Truman of this “super weapon” at Potsdam.
Lauchlin CurrieTheordore Hall
For me, the media productions unwittingly say more about the cultural milieu in our academic communities at that time as well as today. Already left leaning, the onset of the Depression confirmed Marx’s critique of capitalism for many academics, just like today’s Great neo-Marxist Awakening on our campuses. Is it all that surprising that Oppenheimer, like many others, was swimming with the subcultural current?
Who was “Quantum” and what role did Oppenheimer’s well-documented interaction with known communists and involvement in communist front activities have on his standing as a possible security risk? Suspicions were heightened, especially after the Venona decrypts were making the rounds through federal authorities.
Yet, until informed otherwise, sympathies doth not necessarily make a traitor. Oppenheimer was a man constantly torn between his deep-seated beliefs and his work. It was probably true for many at Los Alamos. Some let their sympathies get the better of them. Fuchs was captured at Heathrow airport trying to escape. Ted Hall escaped prosecution most likely due to the difficulty of using the decrypts in court and the reluctance of US authorities to expose our decrypting activities. Many others were fingered but avoided the bar of justice for the same reason.
It’s a story that at the very least would add greater depth to the movie, not only making a good movie but also better history.
Please watch “Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies”. You’ll find it interesting in light of the movie.
Audi’s Hildegard Wortmann, Audi’s head of sales and marketing
Electric vehicles are still nuts, and still useful to make revolution pay. Some titans of industry will smatter themselves with ill-repute to make a buck from current revolutionary fad-thoughts. For instance, the junk-thought associated with the religio-ideological cult of climate change. For instance, the corporate heavies angling for advantage at Audi and most of the rest of the auto industry.
Revolutionaries don’t care one twit about the bigwigs except as useful idiots. How useful? Lenin put it quite succinctly: “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Right now, the fire breathing zealots of the cult are oblivious of your needs to get to work or have a little vacation happiness to make life a bit more pleasant. They want to shackle you to the ev whether it works for you or not. And there is no shortage of corporate honchos who, like vultures, would like to ride the wave for fun and profit. Some may actually believe the jargon.
Case in point: Ms. Hildegard Wortman, Audi’s head of sales and marketing, who said,
“. . . why we are doing this. Not to sell another technology; we are doing this to decarbonize, and we need to come to an end with fossil fuels.”
I’m skeptical. The cult dominates the state and then uses the state to make the people conform. For Wortman and Audi, why not hitch a ride on the crusade, because the commissars are going to force the folks into buying them anyway. Push the propaganda for it will contribute to the bottom line. Heck, it’s been done before. It’s the tried-and-true practice of crony corporatism to ally with the ruling zealots with the guns.
If you are going to cater to the revolution for fun and profit, may as well go all the way. May as well patronize the whole program, including the Frankfurt School/Marcuse/Gramsci neo-Marxism that is reflected in the wokedom of “critical (race, legal, gender) theory”. Go to the Audi website and you’ll find:
“The colonial mythology of technology that saw us as superior to nature and shepherded only the Eurocentric technologies through to the present was wrong. Rather than continuing a narrow view of technology informed by our distance from nature, we must acknowledge that the Enlightenment mythology of technology was just one way and not the only way for humankind to progress.”
Is this from Audi, or the Princeton’s ASB?
An electric vehicle with its humungous batteries will span our “distance from nature”? Take a look at the pictures below. Is this uniting us with nature or gouging into it?
This and the two following images: Lithium mines for those ev batteries
Two of 40,000 children working in lithium mines in the Congo.
Pardon my cynicism but what happens after they’ve forced us into filthy, foul-smelling mass transit, sitting beside injecting drug addicts and the psychotic, and into an ev, and then pull the rug out from under us with blackouts and mandatory closures of the mines producing the battery materials? The same people who want you in the ev also don’t like cars, electric or fossil fuel, period. Their crocodile tears come to mind in regard to your predicament.
Indeed, rope selling for Audi and a descent into the 19th century for the rest of us.
RogerG
Read more here:
* Audi’s Hildegard Wortmann interview at “Audi’s Hildegard Wortmann: ‘Edutainment’ needed to boost consumers’ confidence in EVs”, Larry P. Vellequette, Automotive News, 7/30/23, at https://www.autonews.com/executives/audi-sales-marketing-exec-says-ev-marketing-must-change
* The Audi statement of wokedom: “Five theses on progress”, in interview with New York-based Julia Watson, at https://www.progress.audi/progress/en/julia-watson-describes-her-stance-using-five-theses-on-progress.html#:~:text=The%20colonial%20mythology,humankind%20to%20progress.
* A general overview of Audi and the ev craze: “EVs Aren’t Undercooked, You’re Just Stupid”, Luther Ray Abel, National Review Online, 7/31/23, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/evs-arent-undercooked-youre-just-stupid/
Dr. Meredithe McNamara testifies as an “expert” witness on gender-affirming care to Congress, July 12, 2023.
As if to warn us of the “expert” trap, Christopher Baur of University College London wrote in Research Square,
“Expert opinion is the lowest level of evidence because it is highly prone to bias. Compared to all levels of evidence above, experts are more likely to selectively choose evidence that confirms their prior assumptions or beliefs, may be more prone to conflicts of interest, and may be so selectively focused on one field that they lose sight of the broader picture, which biases their perspective. Expert opinion should be viewed cautiously and not necessarily taken at face value.” (see below)
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Please watch Rep. Dan Crenshaw take apart Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an “expert” of gender-affirming care – i.e., chemical and surgical interventions in adolescents. If you want to see an example of an “expert” debasing themselves, the clip is very enlightening.
First, notice the “expert’s” self-confidence bordering on arrogance when she began a response to Crenshaw with “Sir, are you aware . . .”, when he was. Many “experts” aren’t aware that they are partisan activists for an ideology. Yes, ideology. Break it down; it isn’t rocket science, or any other real science. The care begins with a child’s self-diagnosis and from there many children could very well be placed on a treadmill to transition, i.e., puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and the removal of body parts. If it was my child, I wouldn’t let the kid come within 10 degrees of longitude of that “doctor”.
People like McNamara aren’t “experts”. Truth be known, they are social revolutionaries. She couldn’t, when pushed, name a single scientific review of extant studies to buck up her opinion. Her only refrain was a banal recourse to “Standards of Care” of the movement’s evangelists in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Given the group’s stridency, it may as well be WARPATH.
Dr. Meredithe McNamara tried the same schtick in testimony before the Florida joint medical board committee on her favorite hobby horse: gender-affirming care – i.e., chemical and surgical interventions in adolescents. You can read about it here: “Pro-Pediatric Gender Transition Doc Gets Slammed By Medical Professionals For ‘False Claims’”, Christina Buttons, Daily Wire, Nov. 19, 2022, at https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-pediatric-gender-transition-doc-gets-slammed-by-medical-professionals-for-false-claims.
With “experts” like these, we might be better off with tribal shamans.
RogerG
Read more here:
* Christopher Baur can be read at “What is the Hierarchy of Evidence?”, Research Square, Nov. 17, 2021, at https://www.researchsquare.com/blog/what-is-the-hierarchy-of-evidence
Transgenders going topless at the White House recently
Iran’s ruling class of fanatical mullahs regularly bashes the United States as the Great Satan. The question is, are we at this juncture trying to prove the rabid imams right?
American embassies display the LGBTQ+ flag throughout the world, including societies who maintain millenniums-old proscriptions on homosexual and other unconventional sex-related behavior. Such norms are deeply, culturally embedded and thus resistant to change by embassy flag waving or ambassadorial pronouncements. U.S. government interference in domestic affairs will probably be met with a native-born counter revolution. An Ibo tribesman walking the streets of Lagos might not give much thought to the rainbow flag on the U.S. embassy building, but once informed, chances are, he’ll meet the flag’s meaning with disfavor, and, by so doing, begin the long mental process of seeing America as the enemy of his way of life.
The pride flag on the US embassy to the Vatican, of all places
The view of the United States in these traditional societies may emerge as one resembling Babylon in much traditional Christian eschatology. Babylon symbolizes evil. God’s wrath awaits it in the last days. Similar apocalyptic scenarios exist in Islam. Certainly, discrimination, execution, and torture of homosexuality is an affront to decency, but don’t expect societies with little in common with San Francisco to be so gung-ho in embracing our sexual revolution.
Are we alienating more than the vast majority of the world’s population who live in traditional societies? On many fronts such as pushing pernicious pedagogy, glamorizing our hedonistic cultural revolution in our movies, the propagation of our faddish neo-Marxist “equities” nonsense (the woke stuff), greenie extremism, etc., America is at the tip of the spear. And, now, we have staked out the most extreme position on transgenderism and “gender affirming care” (GAC), far beyond where our European colleagues in western civilization are willing to go.
Consider: gender dysphoria is the only branch of health care in which a self-diagnosis is the basis of treatment. More commonly, your doctor’s most requested input from you is, “It hurts there.” Then, he would apply his training, knowledge, and experience. In many places today, anyone, a kid or adult, can come into a health care facility and express disenchantment with their gender and from there it could easily be a quick path to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and reassignment surgery – the so-called “gender-affirming care” (GAC). It’s the kind of logic-jumping that one associates with an ideologue, for that is what transgenderism is. How do you turn the self-diagnosis of “I feel” into objective, physical, empirically-validated truth? It’s nonsense. It’s simply the possession of a strongly-held belief and it’s off to radical action. Caution, alternatives, and disagreement cannot be tolerated, the true signs of an ideology at work.
As one would expect, California has its fingerprints all over America’s newfound sexual extremism. As is true with all extremists, there’s no room for other views, which leads the radicals to try to control the state in order to criminalize disagreement. “Gender-Affirming Care” (GAC) is all the rage for America’s progressive ruling class. The treatment formula is simple: GAC = drugs and surgery, with a little psychological push known as “counseling” for good measure. Those who disagree may even lose their kids. California is busy passing laws to lay the long arm of the law on parents who dissent from the California legislature’s party line.
More about California in a moment but one thing must be made clear: unsurprisingly, many of its most enthusiastic proponents come from people who’ve “transitioned” or parents who encouraged their own children to embark on this irreversible course. The transgender Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine is the current US Assistant Secretary of Health, and vocal advocate of doing to kids what he/she did to himself/herself. To keep justifying his decisions to himself, and seeking solace in making it easier for others to follow the same path, he engages in outright lies when he says, “. . . there is no argument among medical professionals about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.” Anything goes for an ideologue. The lie is obvious, as you’ll see in a bit.
US Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine
Such arrogant and condescending overconfidence is displayed by California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson. So strongly does she seek reaffirmation for her encouragement of gender transition for her own child that she wrote AB 957. Her choice, her opinion of “gender affirming care”, is written into the bill, and parents who favor a different approach could lose custody of their children in divorce proceedings. If it’s such a good idea for custody battles in cases of divorce, there’s no obstacle to its application to all families. Previously, the California Department of Social Services issued a mandate for fealty to “gender-affirming care” (drugs and surgery) for foster-parent applicants. Anything goes for an ideologue like Wilson and California regulators. These zealots reside in a state whose governing class thinks – or, more honestly, wishes – that the issue is settled when most clearly it is not.
California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson
Wilson’s legislative monstrosity is the latest in a line of California-sponsored extremism on transgender experimentation, with our kids as guinea pigs, sometimes over the protests of the kids’ parents. Residing in another state is no protection. If your child in Florida is bombarded with hints of gender dysphoria on TikTok and is anxious about his or her parents’ reaction, that anxiety can find a release without parental consent or knowledge in an underground railroad to California under SB 107 (2022, effective Jan.1, 2023). Your kid arrives in California, God knows how, the state takes your kid into “protective custody”, the child can undergo “transition”, and the Golden State’s authorities are prohibited from notifying the parents if the offending state restricts the medicinal and surgical mutilation of adolescents.
In an act of life imitating art, California has turned itself into H.G. Wells’ “Island of Dr. Moreau”, a place where a Dr. Moreau creates hybrid animal/humans by vivisection. California has turned itself into an island where hybrid boy/girls with an irreversible chromosomal composition in almost every cell of their body will now be subjected to puberty blockers, constant and life-long infusions of cross-sex hormones, and extensive reconstructive plastic surgeries to create XY girls or XX boys. Call it human gender vivisection.
A scene from 1977 film adaptation of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”
Of course, the zealots need a crisis to stampede an unknowing public into accepting these drastic measures. An alleged epidemic of teen suicide fits the bill. There simply is no credible evidence that anything pushed by Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine or Lori Wilson – their “gender-affirming care”- has any positive effect on the suicidal tendencies of self-proclaimed gender dysphoric teens. Historically, the crisis-of-the-moment tactic is a favorite of radicals wishing to rationalize their extremism. But if you strip away the rhetoric, stare at the issue with strict rationality, it’s horrific.
A warning label should be affixed to California: “Warning: this state is dangerous to your mental and physical health.” One California State Senator, Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita, put it succinctly on June 13, 2023, in referring to Wilson’s bill, “If you love your children, you need to flee California.” Los Angeles resident and journalist Abigail Shrier, who is facing social persecution for not adhering to the party line, advises parents with children in schools afflicted with a transgender social contagion, “The moment you hear that [your child’s friends are transitioning or using “non-binary” language to describe themselves], get your kids out of that school!” To effectively do that, you may have to go state-shopping.
California State Senator Scott Wilk (R, Santa Clarita)
California has become a threat to the nation and world because what you see passing through the state legislature and across the governor’s desk is also the official outlook of the state’s fellow travelers running the show in the federal government. It’s going national. The loyal opposition is cornered in a narrow majority in one half of Congress. The executive branch and its ruling donkey party ape the donkey party’s super-majorities in the California legislature. And what they are doing is swimming upstream as our cultural amigos in Europe are having second thoughts about the transgender zealotry.
Clearly, for many in the European continent’s health care establishments, this rush to malform a child’s body has become deeply troubling. While formerly in the forefront of “transition” therapies in “gender-affirming care”, lately they have decided to pull back. In the UK, the brakes were put on it by a lawsuit. 23-year-old Keira Bell sued the National Health Service (NHS) and its Tavistock Centre gender identity clinic for improper care and treatment of her gender dysphoria beginning at age 16. Other young victims are waiting in line to take their crack at the country’s medical malpractice.
Keira Bell, as a boy after transition (r) and now after detransition
An independent investigation by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass chronicled practices at the clinic like the hurried and inordinate use of puberty blockers – by the way, originally used for chemical castration – which were prescribed for Bell after only three visits. In a report, the BBC’s Alison Holt wrote of Tavistock, “Former staff at the clinic have raised concerns that teenagers who want to transition to a different gender are being given puberty blockers without adequate assessment or psychological work.” It’s been a persistent complaint going back to at least 2009. A year of puberty blockers for Bell was followed by three more years of male hormones and a double mastectomy (breast removal). Indeed, “without adequate assessment” appears to be the nature of “gender-affirming care” at Tavistock and elsewhere, and the core complaint of the suing victims. Bell won. In the end, after the Cass report, the July 2022 obituary for the Tavistock Centre was announced by the UK’s National Health Service.
The Travitock Centre in London
Scandinavia, long a pioneer in transgender treatments, is having serious second thoughts and is making a mockery of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine’s boast of one mind among “experts” in lockstep support of drug and cutting-induced changes to a child’s body. The Dutch let loose the tiger of “gender-affirming care” (GAC) for children in the 1990’s, but now are saying “Whooooaaaaa”! They are in the process of revising their earlier enthusiasm for what later came to be called “The Dutch Protocol”. As Dutch researchers Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman wrote in their report on “The Dutch Protocol” about the use of puberty blockers, the first medical intervention in “transition”,
“More and more is becoming known about the long-term side effects of puberty blockers. They interfere with physical sexual development, hinder the development of the bones, can cause anorgasmia and infertility and interfere with the ability to make rational decisions.”
The Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians haven’t ignored the mounting evidence by 2022. A Finnish review of “gender-affirming care” recommended restrictions and a preference for talking therapy. Sweden’s medical authorities warn that the risks of GAC “currently outweigh the benefits.” Norway’s health care regulators expressed similar caution. French medical authorities chimed in with much the same worries. As it turns out, America stands out as the “wild west” in nearly unrestrained teenage genital mutilation in service of a radical ideology.
The appearance of a rising number of detransitioners and a growing recognition of a social contagion in gender dysphoria is making the contentions of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine preposterous. Many young people regretting the hash that people like Levine have made of their lives will end up ranking “gender-affirming care” right up there with the race theories of Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial Policy. Studies of detransitioners are all over the map but one U.S. study found that nearly 30% of transitioners stopped and reversed their medical interventions within 4 years, this in spite of the great social pressure to go through with it. For the push for transition, we don’t need droplets to spread a virus since the cell phone will do quite nicely.
Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial PolicyNorman Spack of Boston’s Children’s Hospital and an early enthusiast of “gender-affirming care”
The social pressure comes in the form of a social contagion. Unlike COVID-19 whose vulnerable are older adults, the vulnerable are the impressionable, the young who are digitally getting the gender dysphoria virus. All of a sudden, it’s tween and teen girls, instead of boys, who are overpowering the stats according to Lisa Littman, formerly of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and currently Director of The Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research. How did this happen? The culprit rides in that rectangular device planted in your teen’s pocket. Social media on that screen plays to the comorbidities of gender dysphoria such as teen girls’ insecurities, mental conditions like autism, an exaggerated sense of envy, etc. Gender-affirming care’s reliance on teen self-diagnosis skips over the real problems. The mask is mistaken for the real face and off we go into the mutilation of children.
Any adult worth his or her salt, particularly those who raised kids, would know that kids aren’t very good at medical analysis. But the official policy of the U.S. is to not know any better than a teen as we push the rest of the world to join us in treating children as lab rats. Worse: practice gender vivisection to create hybrid boys and girls out of our offspring. Imagine America as the avatar of teenage genital mutilation. I’m sorry but that’s not a good look.
RogerG
Read more here:
* California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson’s AB 957 can be accessed at https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB957/id/2698894/California-2023-AB957-Introduced.html
* California’s SB 107 is described at “Newsom signs bill to make California a refuge for transgender youth and families”, Brooke Migdon, The Hill: Changing America, 9/30/22, at https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3668922-newsom-signs-bill-to-make-california-a-refuge-for-transgender-youth-and-families/. The bill can be read at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB107.
* An examination of gender dysphoric suicide can be read at “Does ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ For Trans Kids Actually Prevent Suicide? Here’s What The Data Say”, Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., Heritage Foundation, 6/15/2022, https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/does-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids-actually-prevent-suicide-heres-what-the
* Scott Wilk’s comment on the danger that California poses for the state’s children can be found at “State Senator Warns About New Gender-Affirmation Law: ‘If You Love Your Children, You Need To Flee California’”, Real Clear Politics, 6/15/23, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/06/15/california_state_senator_warns_if_you_love_your_children_you_need_to_flee_california.html
* The story on Keira Bell and the UK’s Tavistock gender identity clinic:
• “Tavistock transgender clinic could face mass legal action ‘from 1,000 families of children who claim they were rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers’ weeks after NHS shut it down in wake of damning report”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 8/11/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11101661/Tavistock-transgender-clinic-facing-mass-legal-action-1-000-families.html
• “UK court rules against trans clinic over treatment for children”, Rachel Savage, et al, Reuters, 11/20/2020, at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-lgbt-transgender-trfn-idUSKBN28B3AV
• “NHS gender clinic ‘should have challenged me [Keira Bell] more’ over transition”, Alison Holt, BBC News, 3/1/2020, at https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51676020
• “Shuttering the Tavistock”, Bernard Lane, Quillette, 8/5/2022, at https://quillette.com/2022/08/05/closing-the-tavistock-is-an-important-step/
• “Courage of the parents, patients and whistleblowers who refused to be silenced is revealed as controversial Tavistock children’s transgender clinic is to SHUT after damning report warned it was ‘not safe’”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 7/29/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11059641/Courage-parents-patients-whistleblowers-revealed-Tavistock-childrens-clinic-SHUT.html
* National Review has been forthright is presenting counter-arguments to the ones advanced by transgender activists:
• “California Is Losing Its Mind”, the editors, 6/14/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/california-is-losing-its-mind/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second
• “The World Is Turning against Gender Experiments on Children”, the editors, 6/13/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/the-world-is-turning-against-gender-experiments-on-children/
• “The U.S. Is an Outlier in ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors”, Madeleine Kearns, National Review Magazine, 5/25/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/06/12/the-u-s-is-an-outlier-in-gender-affirming-care-for-minors/
* The Dutch are beginning to recognize caution in regards to “gender-affirming care”: “The Dutch Model is falling apart”, Rose Kelleher, Genspect, 1/2/23, at https://genspect.org/the-dutch-model-is-falling-apart/#:~:text=The%20decision%20of%20the%20well-respected%20Dutch%20newspaper%20NRC,and%20impairs%20their%20future%20ability%20to%20have%20children.
• The Dutch rethink about GAC began with a report in the Dutch newspaper NRC: “Trans Care Must Also Meet Medical-Scientific Standards”, Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman, NRC, 12/30/22, at https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/12/30/ook-transzorg-moet-aan-medisch-wetenschappelijke-standaarden-voldoen-a4152945
* A review of the issue of detransition, though generally supportive of transgender treatments but acknowledging the persistent presence of large numbers of people who regret their “transition”, can be read here: “Take Detransitioners Seriously”, Daniela Valdes and Kinnon McKinnon, The Atlantic, 1/18/23, at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/detransition-transgender-nonbinary-gender-affirming-care/672745/
* Lisa Littman’s groundbreaking report on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read at “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria”, Lisa Littman, PLOS ONE, 8/16/2018, at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330
* More on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read in “Study of 1,655 Cases Supports the ‘Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Hypothesis”, Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), 3/30/23, at https://segm.org/study-of-1655-cases-lends-support-to-ROGD
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company founder Morris Chang (Sam Yeh/Getty Images)
Mr. Chang’s comment in the title came a mere matter of months after a much-ballyhooed opening of a new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) facility in Phoenix, Arizona, a heavily subsidized joint effort with the state of Arizona and the federal government’s CHIPS Act. President Biden gushed during the opening ceremonies that manufacturing in the U.S. “is back, folks.” However, Mr. Chang had a hard look at the financials and concluded that the Arizona plant was a loser and the CHIPS Act ($52 billion in chip subsidies) was a “very expensive exercise in futility.” TSMC is scaling back operations at the new plant.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is building its first fabrication plant in North Phoenix. (TSMC)
Why the harsh assessment? The “folks” at TSMC came to realize that business activity in America is a much more expensive proposition than they had earlier contemplated. We are simply uncompetitive and the freebies – free infrastructure, other giveaways, tax goodies, etc. – can’t make up for the cultural, social, political, and economic deficits. The Rust Belt, California’s economic decrepitude, and the other blue states’ dismal economic futures are not magical, accidental happenstances. They are a byproduct of America’s current – and past – infatuation with government intervention for an ever-expanding list of excuses.
The Democratic Party is the institutional gatekeeper of this our bumbling central planning, with some Republicans tagging along in the hope of sharing in the reflected glory of a big and splashy event. But for the donkey party, they see themselves as the keeper of the lodestar – a sort of Ark of the Covenant – of their vision, and it is none other than the New Deal. It’s a forever template to be repeated endlessly. Of course, one must ignore the fact that it was a disaster. The depression became a Great Depression which persisted for a decade, was interrupted by the emergency of World War II, and was set to resume if subsequent Republican Congresses in the late 1940’s hadn’t interceded to quash much of the madness
Men pushing wheel barrows in Civil Works Administration project in the 1930’s.In spite of the tremendous federal government interventions, unemployment remained high throughout the 1930’s. One can conclude that FDR’s New Deal was a massive failure, hugely ineffectual, or helped to prolong the Depression. Whichever, it was a disaster.
Whenever the donkey party ascends the grimy pole of power, their favorite ploy is to imitate FDR. So, concerns of declining domestic manufacturing – which, if true, was a result of government interventions – is to be addressed by . . . more government intervention. Thus, the CHIPS Act is just another exercise in flooding the zone with taxpayer moneys like in the heady days of FDR’s meddling.
True, today, Trump and his cadre of “populist” Republicans also love the idea of slathering gobs of the public treasury on favorite obsessions such as manufacturing and employing the stick of government intervention in tariffs to protect their golden boy. They don’t have the smarts to understand that it’s central planning by another name. Call it “industrial policy”. It’s a rebranded New Deal for a new era of demagogues and nitwits.
Why did this latest effort at what doesn’t work fail? Mr. Chang belatedly noticed that he entered the snake pit that is America. The Rust Belt of the Upper Midwest became a rusty belt of abandoned factories, expanding slums, chronic unemployment, and a declining tax base because of the unrestrained greed of government-empowered labor unions, onerous taxation, and the country’s ascent to the zenith of reregulating its economy. Much of what made the Rust Belt rusty remains, and gets a boost whenever the donkey party is granted the keys to the kingdom.
Think about all the ways that America is an economic snake pit. Ever since FDR’s New Deal lavishly spent and bullied farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs for a decade, Democrats have assiduously worked to revive the monster. The 1970’s rise of environmentalism replaced the 1930’s corporatism and socialism as the go-to excuse to bring back the Leviathan. Out came the well-intentioned Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and their subsequent amendments, and herd of agencies and regulations.
California has a housing crisis for the same reason that Mr. Chang has a gloomy attitude about chip manufacturing in Arizona, or any other place in America. Permitting and the host of other approvals easily doubles the cost of plant construction as compared to Taiwan. Additionally, labor costs are through the roof: triple, maybe four times the cost of Taiwanese workers when you factor in all the mandated benefits alongside the higher wages and salaries. Don’t expect these numbers to remain the same for long if local lefties discover America’s proven appetite for hiking the minimum wage. The jump in wages for fast food workers ripples through the economy all the way to the plant floor.
The quality of what economists call human capital is another troubling factor. Chief among the attributes of human capital is a robust work ethic, which includes timely, quick responses to problems at work. Shang-yi Chiang, TSMC’s head of research and development, was quoted as saying, “people worked so much harder in Taiwan.” He cites the example of an equipment failure at 1 a.m. being immediately repaired by 2 a.m. in Taiwan. In America, the plant has to wait till 10 a.m. He concludes about the island’s workforce, “They [workers] do not complain, and their spouse does not complain either.”
SEIU picketers chant while sitting and marching during the county union workers (SEIU 1021) strike held at the Solano County Governement Center plaza, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015, in Fairfield. (Steve Reczkowski/Daliy Republic)
Of course, panderers at Fox News or MSNBC, and “populists” everywhere, would counter with something about Americans not being wage slaves, or similar rhetoric. But they ignore the time when Taiwan’s Horatio Algierses were actually Americans of the 19th century. A cursory biographical reading of the lives of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford, etc., reads like Chaing’s depiction of the average Taiwanese employee. Did we lose our va-va-voom in an avalanche of modern self-satisfaction, self-esteem, and victimhood indoctrination?
Indeed, indoctrination is the watchword in describing much of American public education today. As for teaching math, science, reading, history, literature, and civics, the academic core, NAEP scores have stagnated at embarrassing levels if not fallen. Proficiency in U.S. History and Civics by eighth-graders currently hovers around 14% and 22% respectively. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows a significant step down from Taiwan to the U.S. in academic performance in math and science.
The differential would probably be much worse if the U.S. hadn’t experienced a large influx of Asians over the past few decades who are still somewhat immune from our pop-cultural depredations. They dominate enrollments in elite high schools and college programs in math and science to such an extent that Big Academia practices covert reverse discrimination against them, treating them as “white” in this new era of blatant DEI racial favoritism.
Yes, friendly foreign investors face a snake pit of an ill-prepared labor pool, one with a declining appreciation for hard work, and an economic environment plagued by a host of collectivist busy bodies who are heavily bankrolled by the hyper-wealthy possessing the means to insulate themselves from the insipid consequences of their lofty ideals. Analogies work best in describing this state of affairs. A snake pit is an accurate depiction of the economic ecosystem but flies-to-cow-paddies or maybe piranhas-in-a-feeding-frenzy is a much better fit for our government interventions of regulation and subsidies. American government brings to the table its retinue of rent seekers and socialistic/neo-Marxist partisans to muck up the works. Throw out the money and regulatory power and like flies or piranha this brood shows up to feed on the carcass. Apparently, TSMC doesn’t relish being viewed as cold meat on the side of the road.
Welcoming TSMC with the CHIPS Act, our government hid the regulatory “guardrails” (Biden’s word) that turned the well-intentioned into a feeding frenzy. The law to replant chip manufacturing in the U.S. was saddled with mandates for favored demographics, our adversarial labor unions, greenie canards, and DEI and ESG and all the other acronyms of the hard left’s political project. As in “Arbeit Macht Frei” over the gates of Auschwitz, the “CHIPS Act Notice of Funding Opportunity” welcomes recipients of this government largesse. This gamut of insidiousness in the “Notice” was the translation of the Act’s language by the Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology into an expensive regulatory morass.
Since analogies work best, quicksand is more accurate than “revitalization”. “Revitalization” means to make healthy again, but health isn’t the actual goal. The CHIPS Act was just another vehicle to advance a political and cultural revolution. And these revolutions are expensive, and two centuries of experience shows them to be descents into a life of, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.
Beware of our government’s handouts. Our dole didn’t benefit the poor – if their neighborhoods are any indication – and they won’t benefit anyone operating with a bottom line.
RogerG
Read more here:
* For a account of the New Deal, go to the following: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes, Harper, 2008. The “forgotten man” in the title is a reference to the average worker, taxpayer, and businessman, not to the Left’s litany of the “oppressed”.
* The situation involving TSMC’s Arizona chips plant is appraised in “Why the CHIPS Act Will Fail”, Jordan McGillis (Manhattan Institute) and Clay Robinson (Arizona State graduate student), National Review, 5/11/23, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/05/29/why-the-chips-act-will-fail/
* For American student academic performance turn to “US eighth-grade history, civics scores fall to 1990s levels”, NewsNation, 5/3/2023; “Reading and mathematics scores decline during COVID-19 pandemic”, NAEP, National Center for Education Statistics, 2022, at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2022/
* “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology”, Chris Miller, Scribner, 2022.
esla unveils its new electric semi truck at a presentation in Hawthorne, Calif., in 2017. (Alexandria Sage/Reuters)
I begin with a tripartite revolution, of which the charade is a manifestation.
The sudden onset of a cultural and political revolution is bedeviling us. It’s a three-legged revolution. One leg is the “woke” revolution with its reverse pogrom against the vast majority of the population and the entire civilization itself. Think of it as the reverse of the sanctioned riots – pogroms – against Jews, a small minority in imperial Russia. Currently, a resurrected cadre of Red Guards (of Maoist infamy), defames, and defaces our cherished institutions, beliefs, customs, and commemorations, and are on the hunt to eradicate a mystical and vague “privilege” of “whiteness” or the “rich” or whoever they wish to pillory as their enemy. The parallel with Mao’s carnage is stunning.
That’s not all. With the assault of the “woke” comes the second leg: an intensified zealotry for the battle against “climate change” and a newfound veneration of the pagan goddess Gaia. A suddenly intense and fanatical war on man-made carbon is the tip of the spear of the revolution. States like California are leading the way into what will probably result in a decline much like the descent into Medieval times. One of the chief vehicles to undermine our quality of life is the loosely-defined “green energy”, and that means a love affair with “renewables” and electric everything. In the end, it can only produce a broad, sustained misery.
The third leg is the erection of a monster state to make it happen, for without it, the dreams of utopia will not be realized. This turns the struggle into a war against human nature, the existence of which they have brushed aside in congeries of rhetoric in order to reimagine people as fully malleable to their designs. It’s a calamity at the end of the day. Think of it as a full-court, state-sponsored destruction of prosperity.
The vocabulary of “sustainable” or “renewable” is a chimera and an evisceration of our quality of life. Solar, wind, geothermal, and small hydro is the mantra but their enfeebled productivity is the reality. Lenin’s Bolsheviks toyed with the elimination of a financial system (money, banking, etc.), discovered that it only produced chaos, and settled on state-ownership of the economy. In the end, that system collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions. The same fate awaits this latest copy of dreams supplanting reality.
In Bolshevik Russia, a vast array of commissariats was found to be necessary to oversee the state-manipulation of ordinary life. Human beings don’t naturally behave in ways complimentary to the official utopian template. In California and other greenie states, and now the Biden federal government, similar government impositions are required to turn inherently deficient “renewables” into the energy backbone of a state and nation. A flim-flam is necessary to hide the truth, much like the paper-shuffling in the Soviet Gosplan (state economic planning agency). California has AB32 – the official, legally mandated set of commandments for greenie energy – CARB and an assisting regulatory labyrinth of support agencies. Biden has his EPA and the entire federal Leviathan to make the incoherent appear coherent.
Soviet politburo under Gorbachev
How incoherent is the whole scheme in California? One need look no further than the spinoffs and unintended consequences of the greenie energy campaign. To paper over the scant production and the fact that “sustainables” can’t meet energy needs, certificates – Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s) and Environmental Attributes – are issued to solar, wind, and hydro producers in an elaborate carbon-credit scam who then peddle them, independent of their source, to purchase “dirty” power to make up for the abundant shortfalls. “Dirty” instantly becomes “green” with an REC or Energy Attribute pasted over it.
The energy deficits are real because renewables are chronically untimely and deficient in their production – solar spikes at around 3-4 pm and rapidly declines after, which doesn’t coincide with actual usage; wind only contributes when there’s wind; and hydro adds only when there’s sufficient stream flow. This certificated wallpaper is peddled by Investor Owner Utilities (IUO’s) – PG&E, Southern California Edison, etc. – and a new organizational Frankenstein called Community Choice Aggregators who are smaller energy collectives mostly composed of counties who virtue-signal their commitment to 100% pure renewables (Community Choice Energy), which isn’t, to their chagrin. In the end, after all the gamesmanship, just as much carbon is released into the air as before, just with more bureaucracy, middle men, and paperwork to turn the simple provision of energy into a more expensive shell game.
Got it? If not, you are not alone. Just remember one thing: all of us would benefit from the acknowledgment of a simple facet of the real world – trade-offs. More resources in time, resources, and capital spent on one thing means that they are not available for other things. Greenie energy is more costly in so many ways. How much have we unwittingly given up in new medical cures, inventions to make life easier and more productive, and greater prosperity as we spin our wheels in pursuit of a costly mirage? This is what declining civilizations do.
So, the effort to make crippled electricity everything gave us the PR stunt of Biden tooling around in a parking lot in an electric F150 and extolling its alleged virtues. It absolutely makes no sense. Without the internal combustion engine, the categories of utility vehicles and freight haulers (18-wheelers) would never have come into existence in the first place. Commerce and ranch work would revert back to the Middle Ages without it. Imagine the food supply more dependent on local production and the return of local famines as natural disasters periodically lay waste to the nearby food supply. The supermarket is inconceivable without the internal combustion engine.
The electric vehicle is a tony appurtenance for people who plan a life in a pampered urban cage, a life lacking in self-reliance and reveling in hedonistic indulgence. It’s a tailor-made booster of totalitarianism, whether of the soft or hard variety, since a cooped-up population is easier to control. It’s easier to make people greenie-compatible and keep them that way. Say goodbye to a real functioning citizen republic.
California, of course, is leading the way to this bleak future. The advances in fossil fuels and power efficiencies from better lubricants, tighter manufacturing tolerances, improved materials, fuel injection, solid-state ignition, and emission controls are now to be junked in an overnight leap into lithium batteries. It’s a disaster-in-waiting.
Think about all the “don’ts” you’ll have to anticipate. Don’t charge the ev overnight. It degrades the battery, without which, junk the $60,000 thing in a few years. Don’t buy one if you live in the routine path of hurricanes. Those batteries ignite if submerged in water. Don’t throw luggage into the trunk at the start of that long-anticipated road trip to Yellowstone. You might have to spend the night in the car waiting to be rescued – charging stations being quite sparse outside your urban cocoon. Don’t mindlessly grab that charging wand at some defaced public charging station. Think of the kilovolts passing through the wires just millimeters from your fingers. Insulation breaks down, especially when exposed to weather, vagrants, thousands of careless users jamming the things into their charging ports, and roving bands of teenage delinquents. The utility companies constantly warn us not to touch or go near downed power lines. What’s the difference? At least with gasoline, you’re safe so long as you don’t play with fire while filling up.
And then there’s the weight of the thing – the battery, that is. Weight matters a lot when getting from point A to point B, and when hauling anyone or anything. The family sedan has a thousand-pound one; the Ford F150, 1,500 pounds; the Hummer, 5,000, the weight of a light tank. The more weight, the less you can haul and the less distance you can haul it, making the trip through flyover country an anxiety-plagued, white-knuckled adventure as we are swallowed up in a geographical vacuum of charging stations.
Batteries for an electric pickup
The asylum-by-the-coast called California is showing the world additional ways to muck things up. Along with shoe-horning soccer moms into ev’s, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state’s preeminent greenie commissariat, is doing the same thing to truckers. It has declared that all new drayage trucks (the ones used around ports) are to be emission-free by 2026. By 2035, all trucks must be. So, getting freight from ship to warehouse could turn into a real comedy skit. No practical alternative to diesel exists to do it.
Better yet, avoid California ports entirely – and while you’re at it, the entire west coast. Gulf Coast governors are waiting to welcome you in open arms. Trucking companies might very well be joining the middle class in fleeing California.
Have you seen the battery-powered 18-wheeler? Tesla has a prototype – MAN, Scalia, Triton, Freightliner, and Volvo too. But what are we giving up as we bow to the climate-change Inquisition? Answer: money (lots of it), reduced hauling capacity, the need for more trucks to make up for the smaller hauls, a vast increase in hauling time, the added expense of a specialized fleet of trucks impractical for anything but specialized use (drayage).
You’ll experience sticker shock at the price of that electric 18-wheeler. Try doubling the price of a new diesel one (around $185,000). A price jump of that nature will limit the number of companies financially capable of competing in a freight hauling market now artificially skewed to the big, big capitalized boys. An already distorted market will be further mangled beyond recognition.
Guess what? That battery powering the contraption makes an ev hauler about 5,400 lbs. heavier than the diesel version. Given the fact that the legal total weight of truck and freight can’t be over 80,000 lbs. without crumbling the roads and bridges, the load in the trailer must be smaller. More hauls, more trucks to do it, and jacked up prices for everything delivered by Amazon and to every brick-and-mortar store. Expect sparser offerings on the shelves and inflation at the register. Out the window goes Amazon Prime’s 3-day shipping and its current price tag.
The whole concept of refueling takes on a new meaning. A diesel truck takes about 15 minutes; the battery-powered behemoth takes hours. The very people driving their trendy Nissan Leaf to Whole Foods will notice the attendant price increases and shortages. Given their pattern of partisan proclivities, the residents have voted to turn their world upside down. Last I checked, Manhattan, or inner-city anywhere, wasn’t famous as a verdant agricultural region or node of food packing and processing. Everything must be trucked into the hipster lair. I wonder how carefree is their lifestyle when scarcity turns from being more than theoretical background noise to real deprivation. Rents may become cheaper since people no longer want to live there, and all of it as a byproduct of hours-long refueling and trucks crippled in their carrying capacity.
Empty produce shelves at Whole Foods Market, Longmont, CO, March 13, 2020
People adjust, and in ways not foreseen by CARB central planners. Their greenie ukases will push the population into crippled transportation and onto a crippled grid. California will have to generate 11.5 gigawatts of more electricity from sources that are already strained to the breaking point to meet the 2026 deadlines. Where’s that coming from? Not from inside the state. More limited and spasmodic energy from wind and solar won’t cut it. I suspect more of the paper flim-flam to disguise the reliance on “dirty” sources. It’s the truth that can’t admitted in polite company.
The state is already experiencing blackouts. Watch produce and other perishables rot as the state scrambles to reenergize the lines. That won’t be the end of it. The ultimate result is a descent by baby steps into a way of life that doesn’t work as well as our grandparents’. The green movement is a social suicide pact.
And to think that I haven’t even mentioned the monumental task of disposing of the batteries, spent solar panels (a lifespan of 10-15 years), and wind mills and their parts. Recycling only eats up more of the grid and consumes other scarce resources. All the toxic materials run the risk of seeping into our ground water. Think of it: we are making such humungous efforts to move our pollution from the air and into the ground, and our way of life will get hammered as never before. Our water supply might end up like the Salton Sea (Remember the MTBE scare? Look it up.). Whew, what a mess.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): “Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive.”
RogerG
Read more here:
* For an account of California’s drayage truck mandates: “California’s latest environmental regulation may have unintended consequences for truckers”, Rachel Premack, FREIGHTWAVES, 5/25/2023, at https://www.freightwaves.com/news/californias-latest-trucking-emissions-regulation-may-have-unintended-consequences
* Thanks to Dominic Pino for his piece of 5/25/2023 in National Review Online, “Electric Trucks Are Worse than Diesel Trucks”, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/electric-trucks-are-worse-than-diesel-trucks/
* For an account of the new electric big rigs: “Semi-truck maker Freightliner has a test fleet of 40 rigs, with availability in 2022”, Mark Vaughn, Autoweek, 5/21/2021, at https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36506185/electric-big-rig-semi-trucks/
* More on the reduced hauling capacity of electric 18-wheelers: “Electrifying trucking will mean sacrificing critical weight for heavy batteries, eating into already-slim margins”, Bianca Giacobone, Business Insider, 2/2/2023, at https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-trucks-longhaul-batteries-tesla-heavy-cargo-weight-problem-2023-2
* Here’s a little synopsis of the MTBE scare: “MTBE controversy”, Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBE_controversy
I have no plans to ever return to California for a visit or otherwise, absent a necessity involving a dear friend or relative. Every visit after my relocation to Montana has only reminded me of the reasons for my departure in the first place, and it’s only gotten worse.
Concerns for the state of my birth are not limited to me. Traditional Democrats of many generations, such as the Alioto family of San Francisco, are shocked by the descent of their city into lawlessness. They have yet, though, to come to grips with San Francisco being the canary in the coal mine. Large swaths of the state are sliding into the same dystopia. The problem is more than San Francisco.
For Angela Alioto, ex-member of the SF Board of Supervisors and Board president and daughter of the famous two-term mayor Joseph Alioto, she exclaimed that “It’s not my city” in a recent interview. You can watch it below. Pay close attention to her description of the near-death experience of a retired SF Fire Commissioner confronting violent homeless drug addicts on the request of his elderly mother just below her window and doorstep. He was more than assaulted. He was maimed with a crowbar and left with probable brain damage.
Not every city in the state has fallen into such despair, but they all experience the decay to some extent. Filth and mayhem, like smog, seldom respects boundary lines on a map. One thing’s for sure: no Californian can escape the state’s predilection to decriminalize various social pathologies, remove vagrancy laws off the books, tax and regulate their residents to high heaven, expunge entire criminal statutes through flagrant non-enforcement, etc., etc. When a person is more likely to face hard time for driving an unsmogged car than repeated smash-and-grabs, you know that a majority of the state’s electorate has edged closer to delusional.
Californians won’t get a better run state until a more well-balanced electorate shows up. One must face up to the fact that this state of affairs wasn’t an accident. It was voted into office. Please grab a cup of coffee and watch the interview. It might influence your decision to pay a visit to the City by the Bay.
RogerG
Watch it here:
* If you have difficulty viewing the video, that’s because it went “private”. It happened after I initially linked it on Facebook.
Screenshot of the Portland Police Bureau “LGBTQAI2S+ and Queer Policy – Introduction and Training” video. (photo from Portland Police/YouTube)
Portland’s cops were subjected to a characterization of life that is stranger than anything in George Orwell’s 1984 from 1949 (see below). The “Pronoun Training” was actually pure indoctrination in a set of highly contestable beliefs where self-delusion is to be treated as non-delusion. This episode is stranger than anything Winston and Julia were expected to believe by their interrogator O’Brien in Orwell’s story.
The “stranger than fiction” notion could be attributed to Lord Byron, or maybe it was Mark Twain when he wrote, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” I guess that Twain meant that good fiction must be believable and therefore must stick to possibilities that are limited to the imagination of the author. Real truth, by contrast, isn’t so constrained.
Of course, you’d have to believe in “real truth” which many younger generations have been schooled to assume doesn’t exist. “Real truth”, after all, is a “construct” of the systemic rule of the powerful over the weak, which is the blind faith on our college campuses, and pure Marxism. The stifling dogma leaves the campus mind-censors free to make truth into whatever they claim. Their “truth” became instantly compelling after they succeeded in their long march through the institutions and into the c-suite, government, media, schools, the NGO world, etc., and it’s everywhere.
In such a world, as in Orwell’s 1984, 2+2=5. It is indeed strange for the life of today to conform in so many unexpected ways to the world of Orwell’s 1949 depiction of his fictious Oceania. Language is deformed to make 2+2=5 the “real truth”, or in our case XY people to be treated as XX (and vice versa). Thus, we have many mini-O’Briens running around as consultants getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to convince us that 2+2=5.
By the use of a rhetorical distinction between “gender” and “sex”, the now inconsequential sex-at-birth is magically replaced by the now more compelling sex-of-the-mind, all accomplished with a little word play. And cops, and everyone else, are expected to act as if the artificial reality is actual reality. Whew, the mind reels at the multiple realities like the permutations of the multiverse coming off DC/Marvel drawing boards.
The understandable reaction when confronted with gibberish is to rebel. Believe me, in the span of the 30-year career in education, I’ve been exposed to a lot of “training” in what was absolute drivel. I have an appreciation for the cops’ critical reaction to this latest blather.
“Patronizing,” “childish,” “offensive,” “garbage,” “unnecessary”, “This training is vile”, and the like were indicative of the backlash from attending cops in anonymous feedback (see below). Rather than exercise a little prudent self-criticism and reexamination, the consultants heaped abuse on the recipients by referring to the comments as examples of “racism, ableism, or white supremacy”, and therefore more “trainings” will be necessary to convert the subjects to the approved way of thinking, and a bigger tab beyond the current $440,000 consultant’s fee on the back of Portland’s taxpayers. The paid consultant Dennis Rosenbaum, the O’Brien in this real life story, stands to get richer as he works to convince others that the unbelievable is believable.
This isn’t “training”; it’s indoctrination of the kind routinely found in totalitarian regimes. One can only hope that the indoctrination remains “nice”, but “nice” frequently morphs into “compulsory” with sanctions for not conforming to the zeitgeist. For not having the approved thoughts, which will always slip out in unanticipated ways, your life may be ruined. We’ve gone way beyond accepting 2+2=5. Indeed, modern life is stranger than old fiction.
RogerG
Read more here:
* Much thanks to Ryan Mills in his article, “Portland Cops Rip ‘Hilariously Ridiculous’ Training on How to Interact with ‘LGBTQIA2S+ and Queer Communities’”, 5/2/2023, National Review Online, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/portland-cops-rip-hilariously-ridiculous-training-on-how-to-interact-with-the-lgbtqia2s-and-queer-communities/
* The actual feedback from the “Pronoun Training” can be found at https://www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Equity_Training_Comments_Redacted-1.pdf
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