I took a few minutes off between my day job and my other tasks yesterday and decided to scroll Facebook. It is something I usually try to avoid doing since it only takes a few seconds for me to lose all faith in the intellectual future of humanity. And of course, yesterday I was not disappointed. Or maybe it would be better to say that my previous disappointment was given new life when I saw the words below over the colors of the Ukrainian flag:
YES, GAS PRICES ARE HIGH
We can choose to travel less
We can choose to carpool
We can choose to bicycle
We can choose to walk
We can choose public transportation
Ukraine cannot.
And there but for the grace go we.
As a side note, it is worth mentioning that the writer did not say whose grace was in question. It may be by the grace of God, Baal, Buddha, Gaia or even Xochipilli. But while speculation is interesting, that isn’t important right now.
What is germane to this particular piece is the fact that a friend of mine reposted it. Not just a friend but a good friend. He is blatantly anti-Trump, a hardcore leftist, and also very, very wealthy. I go to church with him, and since I believe that politics has no business in the Body of Christ, I usually hold my tongue. But something about that post just… pissed me off. Sorry. I wish I could phrase that more eloquently, but it did.
Let’s be clear. No one with a modicum of a conscience believes that the invasion of Ukraine is a good thing. But it is also entirely possible, and I think true, that people of ill-will, greed, and ambition can exploit a tragedy for their own ends. And the fact that the administration has sought to replace Russian energy sources with those of Iran and Venezuela while ignoring the energy resources lying fallow within our own borders shows just that.
Related: Peter Doocy Humiliates Psaki Over Gas Prices, and It’s Glorious
I don’t pin this on Biden. There is a reason he is carted off to Delaware on a regular basis to play Connect Four and Yahtzee with the fam. The real power brokers needed a grandfatherly white face to get rid of Trump. I have no illusions that anyone in the White House is actually seeking Biden’s input on anything. And if you do, I have some prime ocean front property in Middletown, Ohio, I’ll let you have for a song.
No, this like everything else is being driven by people who stand to gain politically, socially, and financially from green energy. Not that it won’t work some day. It might, and when that day comes, fine and dandy. But we just aren’t there, yet.
For tone-deaf, cloistered, self-centered elitists like Stephen Colbert and the person who composed the post above to bleat about the need to sacrifice at the pump is not just vain and altogether obnoxious, but arguably sinful. It shows not just their disregard for the common man and woman, but their outright contempt. Not everyone is able to take public transportation to their jobs, and a hike in oil prices means a hike on the price of goods and services. And unlike Colbert and those who see themselves as the above the proletariat, the rest of us cannot afford to see prices go up. Not everyone has the wealth to wait it out.
Take, for example, my daughter. She was laid off from her job and entered the food-delivery business. What do increasing energy prices do to her? She and her husband have two kids to raise, and the money she will need to spend to keep working will outstrip her income fairly quickly at this rate. My wife and I help out where we can, but no one has much money to spare these days. But apparently, it is okay to put the screws to my daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids so leftists can feel good about themselves. And my family is just a drop in the bucket. Those stories are, or will soon become, legion.
There is no reason why we cannot ban Russian energy and at the same time increase our own production. It lowers prices and creates jobs. As far back as 2007, the Heritage Foundation reported that there was 21 billion barrels of untapped oil in the western half of the Lower 48 and Alaska. Of course, we all know who was elected after that, and what happened to energy production.
I was living in an energy town when Obama took office. I watched the layoffs, the foreclosures, and the human wreckage that came with the decimation of the energy industry. I hear the sounds of the coal trains moving product at night and wonder at how the horns sound more than anything else like a funeral dirge for a country.
Of course, there are signs that the Biden Administration will begin to increase domestic production and open fracking under pressure from Democrat legislators. But as Rick Moran pointed out, as soon as it is politically and financially beneficial and expedient, the hammer will be put down once again. After all, there are lobbyists to consider, and the fact that the media and a vocal minority can caterwaul about climate change plays no small role in this affair. Let us not forget that this is the same administration that choked off energy development on federal lands just last month.
So what fuels the Left’s fascination with killing off domestic energy? In some cases, they truly don’t get it. Back in my quasi-liberal days, my wife and I went to a music festival in a very exclusive Colorado ski town. We decided to grab a bite on the last day, and I listened to the woman at the table next to us practically panic because she could not decide if her family was going to have Christmas at Martha’s Vineyard or not. Some of them honestly cannot understand what reality means for most people.
For others, it is equivalent to the sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages. If they force the Great Unwashed to adhere to strictures to which they themselves will never be subject, they are somehow absolved of all sins.
And finally, there is the dopamine hit.
Year ago as a single man, I was up late one night watching “In the Heat of the Night” with Sidney Poitier. My front shades were up, and I watched as someone mounted my porch. He began trying the door knob and so I casually knocked on the window and demonstrated that in no uncertain terms, dire consequences would ensure should he opt to continue his endeavor. He looked at me, blinked once, and then began trying the window, of all things. I said loudly, “I’m on my way.” At that point, something finally kicked in and he ran off into the night. The cops picked him up and told me that he was a known meth addict and that there was nothing he would not do for a fix. He had stolen from his family, everyone he knew, and a slew of people he did not know for drugs.
Such is the case with the Left. So long as leftists get that feeling of belonging and superiority, there is nothing they will not sacrifice for the rush. That includes you, me, and our children. The fact that none of them (or very few of them) will be invited to the after-party in Aspen or the Vineyard is lost on them. As long as they have our backs to stand on, they will suckle at the desiccated teat of superiority for as long as they can hang on. Sinistram delendum est.
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