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/
“This saying was coined by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919) in her novel, Mrs. Dymond (1885):”
Guilt. If you want a better word SIN is an essential component of every Leftist worldview.
We need to understand that GUILT is an essential tool to achieve power over other people.
Without GUILT is very difficult to dominate others like the LEFT needs.
Marxism and its control over others can’t survive without implying Guilt.
Most leftist automatically assume that if someone prosper it at expense of someone else.
That is a world vision made in guilt. And it is essential for its power needs
That is why is essential for a Leftist: failure, victimhood and poverty.
Without them there is no reason for them to be preachers. Their reason of existence would vanish. So they have to invent problems and turn those that exist 10 fold in size, at same time blocking any fix or even adding to them.
I’m sure Zombie can support his ideas with empirical evidence and solid reasoning. After all, no reader on this site would accept a claim simply because it sounds “truthy”, or appeals to their political inclinations, or is in some way what they want to believe, would they?
@ur momisugly sadbutmadlad: Why should I be forced to live the lifestyle YOU like? Who made you the arbiter of what living a good life means?
Your right to swing your fist ends several inches short of my nose. I won’t try to take your factories away from YOU — not UNTIL you try forcing ME to work in them. Kick me off my land and I might not work in your factory. I might join up with the crazy-fanatic guerrillas instead. Capiche?
” I won’t try to take your factories away from YOU — not UNTIL you try forcing ME to work in them. ”
Does “force” mean offer to pay money or are talking about working in a Russian Gulag for the good of the State?
@ur momisugly RoHa
March 23, 2014 at 4:18 pm
You said: “I’m sure Zombie can support his ideas with empirical evidence and solid reasoning. After all, no reader on this site would accept a claim simply because it sounds “truthy”, or appeals to their political inclinations, or is in some way what they want to believe, would they?”
You say that as if it’s a bad thing.
Of course some reader would.
That’s a natural human tendency. Anthony’s commenting policy is open to all the world except for specific reasonable exceptions, stated ahead of time.
This means that fools can comment.
This also means that everyone else can point out their mistakes. Steve Mosher preceded me in pointing out the problems of this opinion article. I myself critiqued it.
Unlike other Climate Blogs where any sort of nonsense that adheres to the dogma gets published while corrections are censored.
Error thrives in secrecy. It withers when exposed to free comment.
“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
I doubt the looters have one iota of guilt, but they play on the guilt of others to their advantage.
Gary Pearse says:
March 23, 2014 at 8:37 am
David, my not realizing it is an ancient and worthy Chinese proverb would appear to accord me more subtlety than I deserve. Notwithstanding your sensible interpretation of the proverb, I’m sure you can see that too zealous and all encompassing application of it does say something about how the giver judges the receiver (and vice versa – hence my slap-in-the-face comment above). The UN (and other aid organizations) were preceded by, and took their early cues from well-meaning missionaries – preachers anachronous in their own countries accompanied by pleasant virgin middle-aged ladies in white ankle socks, there to save the heathen from continuing to go to the devil (ironically, I learned from a Tanzanian who had studied in China, that the name for his race in Chinese is “black devils”).
I hadn’t planned to go too deeply into all this but how you teach the person is also an important part of how the actors are perceived. The most respectful and effective method is exchange. I will invest in development of your copper, train and pay your countrymen to assist us and pay taxes and royalties for your sovereign mineral resources. NGOs have put up a lot of resistance to this scheme mainly because it is powerful competition to their safari lifestyles and controls (UN, World Bank, etc.).
I read a critique on your system about a dozen years ago essentially saying that too little has been achieved at a cost of over 50 trillion dollars since independence. Depending on your reply, I will know if my effort has been worthwhile or not.
Gary, you’re waffling now. There is absolutely nothing racist in the proverb “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he feeds himself for life.” To quote you: “When I first heard that piece of hubris, I was amazed at its blatant racism. Yeah, it’s there.” So I hope you are able to tell us where in that proverb the racism is, or else admit you were talking nonsense.
Although racism is one possible explanation for a need to apologize for past colonialism, it is not the only one.
Another explanation is a belief that it is wrong for one group of people to initiate force against another, or to subjugate another. That aggressive expansion is wrong, regardless of race.
To add to the comment I just made….
Really, I find the presumption of racism quite offensive. Usually it’s liberals doing it, now some conservatives are on a race to the bottom.
If you’re going to accuse an entire group of people of racism, you need a heck of a lot better evidence than this.