An interesting essay written by “Zombie” of Zombietime fame has a climate change component worth noting. I don’t agree with all of it, but it does explain some behavior we have seen in the past decade.
“Zombie” writes:
I recently wrote an essay called “Progressive Racism: The Hidden Motive Driving Modern Politics”, and in the essay I had a section about “climate change” with a thesis you might find intriguing.
CLIMATE CHANGE
- Progressive position:
- Institute a variety of penalties, taxes and incentives all designed to discourage production and use of carbon-derived energy by industrialized nations.
- False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:
- This is not a political position: it’s simply a scientific fact that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels then the resulting greenhouse gases will render the planet uninhabitable.
- Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:
- This so-called “crisis” is just the latest in a long series of fabricated environmental pseudo-crises not based on fact but on an irrational Luddite loathing of civilization; your wildly exaggerated hysteria about “global warming” is merely a mechanism to manipulate and control the citizenry and cripple the economy.
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Viewed globally, the real long-term consequence of all the “climate change”-related policy proposals is to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the First World developed nations to the Third World underdeveloped nations, while simultaneously crippling the ability of the developed world to maintain its economic dominance.
What could motivate this seemingly suicidal economic policy by First-World progressives? In a word: Guilt. Specifically, “white guilt” by Europeans (and those descended from Europeans) for having unfairly exploited backward regions and non-white peoples over the last few centuries to establish white economic hegemony over the rest of the world.
This rationale is openly discussed at the annual United Nations Climate Change Conferences, where representatives of Third World nations demand payback and reparations for colonialist exploitation, and where the descendants of those colonialists grovel in abject apology for the wrongdoings of their ancestors.
But deeply embedded in those apologies and guilt is a racism that far surpasses even the naive racism of yesteryear.
If you enter into competition with a rival you deem approximately equal in skill to yourself, and then you win fair and square, then it would never occur to you to apologize for winning nor would you feel guilty about it — because it was a fair fight. On the other hand, if you compete against and then easily defeat an opponent whose very nature you believe makes them inescapably inferior to you — for example, getting in a fistfight with a small child — then afterwards you might very well feel guilty and apologize for taking advantage of a lesser opponent who had no chance against you due to their inherent inadequacy.
So when a modern progressive apologizes for his ancestors’ past colonialist dominance, he is really saying: “I’m so sorry that we smart organized aggressive white people took advantage of you lesser peoples whose inherent cultural and intellectual shortcomings made you incapable of fending us off: it wasn’t a fair fight, and I apologize.”
In other words: Apologizing is an unconscious backhanded way of declaring your innate superiority.
If these modern progressives felt that their ancestors had achieved global dominance by defeating rivals of equal stature, then there’d be nothing to feel guilty about, and thus no need to pay reparations and hence no need to devise the “climate change” crisis and attendant suicidal economic policies.
Full essay here:
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2014/03/10/progressive-racism-the-hidden-motive-driving-modern-politics/
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Too complicated. Throw out all that cultural marxist talk, it was only designed as a memetic weapon in the first place.
Control freaks love to plunder the taxpayer while telling him it’s for a worthy goal. That’s all.
There is no society as unequal as perfect socialism – because the state owns everything – and at the top of the socialist state is the socialist leader.
And the worlds 2nd largest economy and world’s largest polluter isn’t a “white” nation…….
I believe there is a big component of this in the Climate (and other “Progressive” issues) discussion.
The real problem is that we in the “Thirld World” need that the “First World” succeeds. In a globalized economy, your success is our success. We need a strong US / Europe economy to import the goods we export. US / Europe failure will doom first under-developed countries like mine (Brazil). This guilt / shame thinking / behavior is infantile and the net result is more poverty to “non-western” populations.
I disagree. There are two ways to not “fight fair” – one is by fighting someone inferior to you like a small child, the other is by fighting someone who is your equal but with an unfair advantage of weapons, or deception by breaking promises, etc. By intrinsically assuming that First World apologies must be of the former kind and not the latter, the author betrays a severe misunderstanding of the Third World critiques, which renders the assumptions about guilt rather useless, in my opinion. Let’s get back to discussing the data…
“white guilt” by Europeans. I agree that’s a big part of current thinking on CAGW. However it’s not as common as the elites like to think it is, which is why, as a goad, it’s not working. A lot of those people who are descended from poor or non English ancestors are getting pretty sick of it as an argument. I suppose a new Scotland, free of the UK might demand reparation too? At such a point I might compose my typed reply with my middle finger.
“Guilt”
Not so much. My take is the need to prove their moral superiority…their essential “goodness. This is a universal human impulse leading when given full rein, to all sorts of mischief down through the ages…
“It’s always the good men who do the most harm in the world.”.
Henry Adams
Pascal Bruckner has two interesting books on that topic:
The Tyranny of Guilt
And
The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings
What he is missing is that in the process of that wealth transfer, goverments and banks will be taking most of it. Guilt is being used as an excuse to allow them to try to control the world’s economy by controlling the use of fossil fuel.
Data, “discussing the data”… Would we presume that much of Africa had been exposed to many aspects of modern culture, by WWII?
Now, I’m not grinding an AXE here, but the 1953 “King Solomon’s Mines” is a MARVELOUS perspective. The producers went to almost all regions of Africa, south of the North African countries to film “tribal life as it had been for “thousands” of years.
You go to Nirobi, Cairo, even Entebee (Uganda) and you find relatively MODERN cities, with cars, good houses, electricity, and even internet. And that came about because “we” stopped “oppressing” them? NONSENSE. It came about BECAUSE, the elevation in standards, the production, the improvements in: USA, Europe, China, and even India…have all “spread”..as the world evens out. No tawdry “Marxist theories” needed (May he rot in Hades!! And his intellectual followers!)
However, I agree..the ENVIROMENTAL/GREEN movement, is a “self imposed” (I don’t have it!) guilt trip, and..in many ways, a LUDITE reaction (at heart) to keep the “STATUS QUO”.
For that, the promoters of such…deserve the highest condemnation.
It has been an act of indulgence cf the old catholic indulgences to expiate guilt over success. When it was just lip service and didn’t actually hurt it was fine and people engaged in it. But as the costs of the indulgences actually start pinching you see more and more people who no longer feel the need for it.
Basically it was a luxury that you could for mouthing the right things feel good about yourself. Now of course the price tag of that is coming due and pinching and people do not actually want any part of it.
Sure for some portion of these pushing CAGW I suspect Zombie’s arguement is valid but then the reasons people go along with it have been complex and generally come back to when it didn’t hurt them it was fine to take that position. Or when it wasn’t flying in the face of what people where experiencing.
This is retarded.
There never was any intent to transfer wealth to the third world.
There were only empty promises designed to allow domestic political space for corrupt third world despots so they could go along with the genocidal AGW agenda.
Carbon taxes, cap and trade, you name it, the proposals all result in rationing energy by price. Eugenics in disguise.
Skeptics need to quit being so gullible as to fall for PJmedia’s ideologically driven disinformation.
This is a link to a paper that came out this week with Ford Foundation financing announcing “The Progressive Potential of a Race-Conscious Society: Addressing Racial/Ethnic Inequality and Embracing the New Racial Order.” http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/seeing-past-the-colorblind-myth
From the National Education Policy Center it also emphasizes the potential of the new Common Core Standards to push desired beliefs on both race and the environment. The environmental false beliefs get created via simulations that are also assessments for a grade. Do students have the desired ecological beliefs and values?
Remember Van Jones also hyped the ability of Green Energy to allow governments to dictate who gets what jobs, where they get located, and how much they pay. Green Energy needs the CAGW hype as justification, but the real goal is redistribution to favored groups within the developed world and to developing countries.
Race and the environment–the two dominant themes of virtually every classroom going forward in the 21st century. “Lenses’ is the term used in the actual frameworks. Themes that guide perception of the world and how it works.
Influential on future behavior and voting patterns even if demonstrably false.
Zombie just explained John Kerry.
This also explains why there is no fight against Russia and China as they take over superpower status from the USA. They are seen as equals and therefore beating us fair and square.
Simpler version of this thesis:
1. Ordinary atheist socialists (a.k.a. liberals) feel a spiritual void and fill it with pagan belief in mother nature. Like all religious beliefs, it requires penance to earn salvation. The penance is a carbon tax, the salvation is saving the goddess Earth from death by evil capitalists.
2. Smarter socialists collect the carbon tax from the naive masses and transfer it to African kleptocrats in order to pocket their 5% in a discreet bank account in Dubai.
And I entirely agree that conservatives do not understand the motivations behind this humongous fraud.
I have been using the phrase “Wicker Man Economics” to describe the policies proposed by climate change alarmists for a while now.
When reduced to its basics, their thesis is that the gods are angry at the hubris of the more successful members of the human race, and those people must be humbled in order to appease the gods and avert their wrath.
They’ve changed their language somewhat since pre-Christian Europe, but the basics haven’t changed. That’s why populations who are obviously already suffering under their rulers are exempt from the Kyoto protocols–the goal isn’t reducing emissions, the goal is reducing wealth.
The thin veneer of pseudo-science is simply an appeal to the new priesthood of the white labcoat. Arguing the facts won’t change the minds of the believers, what they know in their hearts is that prosperity will make the sky fall and the sin of pride must be punished.
Climate change alarmism is a purely emotional doctrine. Those who have more than me must have cheated to get it and I have a right to destroy what they have built to make us even. Reason has nothing to do with it.
To actually feel “guilt” requires one acknowledges what they did was wrong and actually care about it.
To try to make people feel guilt for a wrong, real or perceived, that someone else did years or centuries before they were born is itself wrong and a ploy.
Those who use that ploy and feel no guilt in doing so are the ones to be wary of. They are “The end justifies the means” practitioners.
No ethics that don’t stem from their own selfish desires. (Gleick and Heartland come to mind.)
Like a hand in a rubber glove.. Lets promise 2/3s of the planet welfare for a little climate song and dance.. Quiet a bit of support there I would imagine.. Which can be worked to keep the money flowing into the right pockets here in the western democracies.. Nice little take and take with the rest of us locked out..
If we bankrupt ourselves by paying silly money to build inefficient power sources then there won’t be any money, “spare” or otherwise, left to “distribute” to anyone else.
Guilt is not the vehicle that can explain the CAGW ideology’s motivation. Dependence is the necessary and sufficient vehicle to explain the GAGW ideology’s motivation.
John
Anyone who believes that the U.S. became rich and powerful thru the exploitation of others
simply doesn’t know our history. For most of our history, we were a second class power and the object of exploitation, if anything. We were the low priced labor pool that China and Southeast Asia have now become (And China can probably buy and sell the U.S. : So much for being exploited)
The U.S. status as a top tier nation came about by accident – called WWI. And the U.S supremacy in wealth by another accident – WWII. Wealth creation seldom is the result of “exploitation” (often the exploited are actually raised in their SOL) but usually the result of advances in technology
and scientific knowledge. in reality, “exploitation” is the only way for lower labor rate nations to raise their standard of living, as their low labor rates are their biggest advantages in a world of competitive commerce.
“White Guilt” is deliberately manufactured by the Marxist created “Critical Race Theory” as a vehicle to undermine western civilization. Students have been indoctrinated with this for the last 50 years. Therefore Zombies conjecture actually supports the viewpoint he calls inaccurate.
The hubris (or stupidity) is evident when you point out all of the historical disasters stemming from socialist/communist attempts in the past and they reply that “those people” just didn’t do it correctly. (The idea being that “today’s socialists” will do it right.) Since when has even a small percentage civilized society evolved to the point of overcoming its ability to be corrupted by any (and every) means possible? If we cannot even achieve such a thing in OURSELVES, it is illogical and completely bat crap crazy to think it can be achieved on a worldwide basis.
Humanity’s misdeeds was what caused the biblical flood and our crimes against nature is what it is causing global warming, or climate change, or whatevah
Yep, It is gilt, It has been always gilt. That is the way occidental religions have been controlling us during the last 6000 years. Ecologism is just the new flavor.
He who argues we should not judge people by their race, gets called a racist.
Stolen from Jo Nova blog site.