by Thaddeus G. McCotter
When I was in Congress, I once went on a fact-finding trip to Pakistan. At the time, the country was being wracked by a terrorist bombing campaign intended, in large part, to destabilize the government of President Pervez Musharraf. What I found, however, was that President Musharraf was facing another threat to his rule.
During a brief stay in Islamabad, my hotel room suddenly went dark one evening. It wasn’t terrorism. It was a rolling power blackout. Earlier, I had heard firsthand accounts of the dissatisfaction this caused Pakistanis, including how the rolling blackouts facilitated extremism’s spread and tactics. The blame for the blackout was placed squarely on Musharraf. As I looked out my window across an eerily darkened capital city, given all the challenges facing them, I couldn’t help but pity the Pakistani people for having to endure yet another tribulation: having to live with such a substandard power grid.
Now, the Pakistani people can pity me.
Per Fox News, the apocalyptic climate cult is bringing their rolling blackouts to Michigan to benight the state whose ingenious, hardworking people and the unparalleled industrial prowess they built and operated had once put the world on wheels and kept the world safe.
For those paying more than performative attention, the climate cult has openly waged war on fossil fuels, the internal combustion engine, the Industrial Revolution, and capitalism in general. That these discoveries, inventions, and means of production spurred the largest and widest increase in prosperity, life expectancy, and personal comfort and safety matters little to these zealots.
Somewhere in the dust bin of history, America’s historic mortal enemies like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union must be applauding the apocalyptic Left’s progress in devolving Detroit (the “Motor City” and “Arsenal of Democracy”) into a candle-lit urban farm. After all, destroying America’s manufacturing productivity had long been these heinous regimes’ dream, too: the evisceration of American prosperity and national security. Communist China and barbarous Iran are certainly pleased, too.
Awaiting the climate cult’s dawn of darkness, one is left to ponder a few ramifications of these true deceivers’ drive for green lethargy.
First, it is patently socialistic. As we have seen with the two most recent leftist administrations, high energy prices for fossil fuels are not a bug, but a feature of the plan. Thus, the government injects itself into the marketplace to constrict our nation’s abundance of fossil fuels to subsidize the use of less efficacious renewable energy.
Employing the hoary political scare tactic “the world will end unless you do what I demand,” the Left’s national transmogrification to green lethargy is being imposed by a political elite in conjunction with the apocalyptic climate cult while the public is merely along for the ride—or rather the walk, given Joe Biden’s gas prices. Though, in all candor, perhaps I missed the Democrats’ campaign ads promising voters rolling blackouts and endless summers of “staycations.”
Second, the climate cult’s narrative includes the notion that the earth belongs to everyone. This ostensibly benign sentiment is designed to buttress the climate cult’s demands to coercively impose its green lethargy agenda by undermining the very concept of private property. If the earth belongs to everyone, so must all real property and, ultimately, the means of production, as these also impact the earth.
By the same reasoning, all personal rights and private actions can be controlled, curtailed, coerced, and canceled by the “collective”—i.e., government. As the sage among us are gratefully aware, private property rights and personal rights are the mutually reinforcing, twin pillars of liberty. The climate cultists know this, too.
Third, if a rogue nation wanted to decimate the national security of the United States—and plenty of rogue nations do—they would strive to distract us from developing the new weapon systems needed to defend our nation. What better way than to divert our innovators and resources into an insane transitioning of our existing weaponry into a green lethargy future?
Already, as Brandon Weichert and others have warned, our nation lags behind Communist China in next-generation hypersonic weaponry. One should think long and hard about allowing our national security priorities to be determined by the climate cultists who brought you rolling blackouts. “We can’t advance, Sarge! Our tank’s becalmed!”
Finally, the apocalyptic climate cultists aren’t fond of humanity. They have perverted the historic understanding of humanity as stewards of the earth and, instead, view humanity as the scourge of the earth. No longer is conservation policy based upon the proper way to interact with nature; human use is now subordinate or excluded from the equation. In sum, nature is an end unto itself. As for humans, the climate cult views them as despoilers; and, in their Malthusian view, there exist too many people, anyway.
The apocalyptic climate cult knows the American people would never accept socialism on its face. But put some green perfume on that economic pig while scaring people witless? They’ll literally be slippin’ into darkness. Better to funk the climate cult and their green lethargy future.
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The Hon. Thaddeus McCotter is the former chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, current itinerant guitarist, American Greatness contributor, and Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Show.”
