I’ve been contaminated by the Hillary quip from a few weeks back and am guilty of tossing too much lefty behavior into the “who gives a crap” bucket where upon further inspection it’s just their ideology on display.
Al Gore was in Concord, New Hampshire the other day punishing the ears of those sensitive to the pang of blatant hypocrisy as he spoke for 45 minutes. After which he went on to punish a chair as he signed books for awhile. Punishing both the animate and the inanimate, that’s our former Vice President. Always looking out for number one, while holding an equal disregard for all of those receiving number two.
It was an instructive reminder as to the nature of the climatemonger movement. What caught my attention was not the sheer brazenness of the Former Veep coming to speak on what he thinks is the future “Drivers of Global Change” which includes the subject of his most naked dalliance with hypocrisy. It was the report of how he was received by those attending the illustrative event, illustrative of the seemingly cravenness of the crowd.
They listened as if they not only ingested, but completely digested Hillary’s jaded “what difference..” riposte from a few weeks back and its insouciant matter sedated their sense of judgement and corroded their principles as it was absorbed into their bloodstream. The adoring crowd expressed Hill’s phrase in applause and more. From the Concord Monitor:
“Forget the grilling he took during recent interviews… for selling his network to Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is based in and financed by Qatar, an oil-rich nation.
Gore says he stands for a greener planet, for alternative energy sources.
No one cared about the apparent hypocrisy at the Grappone. This crowd fed the former vice president grapes, fanned him with a big palm leaf, basically gave him a backrub.”
A “backrub” for the man that appeared to abandon their movement if not in words, in deeds only to enrich himself? That doesn’t make sense at all? I thought that was a “What difference at this point does it make” expression, but it turns out I was too quick to categorize.
My first take was that this crowd was obviously replete with deranged and deluded Al Gore fans. Maybe for being an ardent Dem, but most likely they don the liberal climatemonger infantry cap and they’re paying homage to the “…the face of a movement that believes climate change and corporate greed are dragging down the country, not to mention the planet.”
But there had to be more to it than that, because he just sold out. It’s really hard to believe the true climatemongers were ignoring this man’s actions of, “…doing business with this country that is enabling your ultimate foe, climate change,” as David Letterman said to Gore. Gore’s actions are an exemplar of one thing that movement claims to be against: whoring out the earthly green for the money green. And in his case, it’s hitting the enviro movement directly. How can they forgive that? But they did and do. The article stated, “… the controversy surrounding Gore’s business deal, for a reported $500 million, with an organization fueled by Qatar’s fuel, never came up. Not by the audience and not by Gore himself”.
That made no sense until I re-read the article. And there they were. Leftist principles sprinkled among the pixels, all coming from the head monger.
“…new technology is stealing jobs,” Gore explained. This canard has been around at least since the horse and buggy industry went belly up because of the auto industry. It’s a leftist argument for government intervention in the market. See Hazlitt for the legacy of this argument and it’s dismantling.
Gore then mentioned, “…inequality of the nation’s income”. Here’s a twofer.
First, the “inequality” trope most of us are familiar with. He means this as the left does. The left defines equality as the equality of results or outcome, not equality of opportunity. In other words there is inequality if Bill Gates who built a software empire has more money than you and your neighbor do because you don’t have a software empire. That’s inequality and injustice and something must be done about it. If you embrace this twisted vision of equality, you necessarily must surrender liberty, as the right has correctly pointed out for centuries. But to the dumb or the lazy, the left’s definition makes sense because it’s easy to find vicitims: you have something that I don’t, and I want it, I’m not able to get it on my own, that’s unfair, so I’ll get Big Gov to make you give it to me.
The other part is more telling, “nation’s income”. That translates into government property not private property. Again, another lefty big government principle.
Gore continues down ideology road, “Capitalism doesn’t work as well, when most of the benefits go to the very top, and it’s contrary to what our country is supposed to be about”. This is a nice one cloaked in class warfare. But what’s more interesting is that this nicely packages the other leftist principles just mentioned, i.e., private property should be government property to ensure that all the “benefits” don’t “go to the very top” but are redistributed, and equality of outcome is thus assured for all.
Why did he mention these things? Gore understands that these resonate with the enviro crowd. They agree with this worldview and he needs them to agree with it and be engaged so that he can continue selling. They also understand that most Americans do not see the world in this way and want their private property and won’t surrender liberties easily (ok, I should change that to “some Americans”, given the last election, but stay with me). Therefore these problems Gore outlined are not easily solved. Solving them is the trick.
Which brings us back to climatemongering in Concord. The left needs to invent ways to “protect” the people from one crisis to another, as cover for expanding the state in numbers and breadth so that it can remedy deplorable conditions as they see them. One of said crises is climate change.
The people listening to Al weren’t paying homage to the face of the enviro leader because of the veracity of the environmental cause itself, they were paying homage to the enviro leader because of the formidable political tool he helped to create and foist on the public to further their cause. Gore is not just a climatemonger; he’s a trendmonger (to borrow from Frank Zappa) and this trendmonger has a sinister purpose to expand the state by selling his trend by the term of the day: i.e., global warming, climate change, environment reform etc.
The upside is huge for the left. The environment is everywhere. Convince people that Big Gov must have a say in every nook and cranny that is the environment, and you convinced them that Big Gov has a say on everything that can affect every particle, molecule, insect, animal, person etc. on the planet. It’s scope is almost limitless (except for some human behavior, but that’s where the Healthcare trend comes in.)
Most climatemongers and lefties know what many of their critics know, but much of the public in general does not: global warming / climate change / enviro crises is just another Trojan with a tear in it so the insidious Big Gov propaganda can squirt into the unbeknownst newly impregnated and expand the state. (Too blue? I bet ya thought I was going to fling the Trojan Horse cliche didn’t’ ya?). That’s why they applauded. That’s the reason for the standing ovation. Applauding not the environment as a cause, but the environment as a Big Gov tool. Applauding its chief trendmonger.