Weird is when you offer comfort and anger comes back. Weird is also when the state becomes a predator.
In situations where there should be no political conflict, today’s weird involves belligerence. And then there are bullying governments. But history records that the default position of ordinary people has been as little intrusion as possible. Departure into intense intrusion by power-mad governing classes has been rare. And eventually, when pushed too far – self-correcting.
After dark and driving in a drizzling rain you stop to make a right turn off of a boulevard and discover a cyclist on your left. In the bicycle lane. It’s a long signal light so you open your window and ask the biker why, when outfitted in black, he doesn’t have lights or reflectors? Instead of courtesy, the handle bars are turned and the tire is banged against the car. Accompanied by vile language.
Reckless behavior is violently defended and it is not limited to road rage.
You have formerly amiable friends who became very anxious about “Global Warming” whereby the Earth is “going to fry”. Personal relief can only be found through massive increases in taxation and regulation, not through advice on the physics of climate. In so many words, such anxieties can’t be eased by understanding that CO2 is not a problem. Relieving enlightenment is not on, but forcing others to amend their deplorable behavior is on.
Democrats in the US have their Green New Deal demanding impossibly massive changes. In Canada, the governing Liberal Party has been dedicated to bringing back the old controlling socialist experiment tried so adamantly in the late 1960s.
Evidence be damned, “everyone must change their ways!”.
That bad behavior causes bad weather is not new.
During the politically-troubled 1500s, thousands of witches in Northern Europe were legally executed for causing dreadful weather and crop failures. Estimates are as high as 40,000, and it is worth noting that prosecutors were highly educated men. Understandably, punishing witches was futile. The world was suffering climate cooling as temps plunged to severe lows in the late 1600s. Later identified as the Little Ice Age. Perhaps those executions were the ultimate in relieving personal anxieties through modifying someone else’s behavior. Well, until the horrors of national and international socialism imposed during the most recent experiments in totalitarian government.
The widely followed Paul Ehrlich has been calling for crop failures, famine, death and depopulation since 1968.
Almost as a fad, each country explored authoritarianism, each in its own way. And under different political banners.
In Biblical times, the concept of original sin involved morals. Today’s original sin is living a modern life. The biggest political “Gotcha” in history.
Another turn to global cooling started after 1300, when crop failures and famines prompted radical political movements. Later called “Peasant Bread Riots”. At the time, bad weather was God’s punishment for sinning. Flagellation became a fashionable way of expiating sin. They whipped themselves and such manias were frequent particularly with the Black Death of the late 1340s. Thousands would gather in the streets with crosses, placards and distinctive hats to publicly flog themselves. In some cases the mobs became deadly in murdering those who criticized, or would not participate.
Today’s flagellants wear identifying hats and condemn ordinary life as sinful and scourge both themselves as well as heretics with soaring taxes and energy costs. As in earlier times, their leaders thrive in power.
In 1349, the Church banned the mania. It is uncertain if it was through wisdom or changing political fads.
There have been periods in European history when lengthy experiments in authoritarian government became too much and prompted popular uprisings. These have been understandable as a response to the distortions caused by the governing classes, well, becoming ungovernable. Venezuela is an outstanding example. Ordinary gets overwhelmed by weird. Since Rome’s heyday, there have been three such experiments and highlighted by unrelenting intrusion and inflation they are readily identifiable.
Support Canada Free Press
They ended as bureaucratic ambition went unlimited and trashed the economy.
Endless warfare, taxation to the point of confiscation, forced government to finance ambition through currency depreciation, which is state theft. In-your-face and in-your- wallet government has always been accompanied by chronic inflation. Eventually in order to secure the hearts and minds of their subjects, the governing classes granted themselves the privilege of state murder.
Rome’s police state collapsed because it was seen not to work. But the road to freedom was not direct, as that reformation was varied and lengthy.
The next experiment brewed up in the 1500s with a murderous bureaucracy corrupting the Church. This, by the early 1600s had become too much for ordinary people and the great reformation that followed is best viewed through England’s history.
That reform was also lengthy and completed in 1688 when the “Glorious Revolution” bypassed the last absolutist king. A very successful popular uprising.
Even with a full understanding of the two previous political horrors, in 1900 no researcher could have predicted another dreadful century, plus, of tyranny. It has afflicted all levels of government and all classes of society.
Al Gore as well as too many “experts” and even too many people you know suffer anxieties about Global Warming. Trying to ease their stress by explaining that CO2 has very little to do with actual climate variability should bring a smile of relief. But no – it provokes anger. Often rage. High-profile climate activists, Robert Kennedy Jr, Paul Krugman and David Suzuki would put skeptics in jail.
Why?
Difficult to explain, but similarly destructive manias have climaxed and collapsed. Ordinary folk, in defying global intellectuals, took down the Berlin Wall and Communism. Intrusion had become too much. While currently stylish, political anger is inherently unstable, as is bureaucratic economic intrusion. Indicating a weak hand, vile expression, only provides punctuation.
To look to the brighter side, nihilism has been imposed but it will soon be seen not to work.
Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.
Weird is when you offer comfort and anger comes back. Weird is also when the state becomes a predator.
In situations where there should be no political conflict, today’s weird involves belligerence. And then there are bullying governments. But history records that the default position of ordinary people has been as little intrusion as possible. Departure into intense intrusion by power-mad governing classes has been rare. And eventually, when pushed too far – self-correcting.
