Atomausstieg: In the middle of the European energy crisis and rising electrical demand from stupid energy transition policies, Germany takes its last three nuclear power plants offline forever
Atomausstieg: In the middle of the European energy crisis and rising electrical demand from stupid energy transition policies, Germany takes its last three nuclear power plants offline forever
Is it me, or does anyone else get the idea we are intentionally destroying ourselves and just as intentionally setting up communist China as the world's leader?
That's a good article. If you look up Anthony Sutton on Youtube I think you will find his take interesting. Also his book "National Suicide".
Someone else to look at is Otto Scott. He pointed out that the communist countries could not compete with the US, so they did all they could to cause our own govt to stymie our economy (think regulatory agencies).
I hope it is understood when I use the collective term "we" I mean we as in the west. I am in the US, but I include Europe, Canada, Australia. etc.
Yes, it is our "leaders" doing this.
You can look up a quote from Maurice Strong from the 1980's? Look up who he was and this quote: "What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?...In order to save the planet, the group decides: isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring it about?"
I disagree entirely , it’s the easily placated , sleeping sheep that are to blame . The sheep refused to recognize that re cycling , driving less in smaller cars was a really good idea. Just as they now refuse to see that they the sheep are being cut off . Consuming blindly , making babies all have costs. It’s freaking over for the sleeping , they just aren’t as usual aware .
90% of the sheep serve no further purpose and will be eliminated sooner than anyone understands.
Elites have always viewed humanity as their orchard , to be pruned , watered , feed and destroyed as the economics required . Too funny!
Yes! Those useless eaters- if only they had recycled and driven smaller cars when they were told to, we wouldn't be in this mess! The sheep deserve to be culled, it's their own fault.
So Germany needs no nuclear power plants .The gas pipelines from Russia where a luxury ,that Biden took care of and to the Germans good luck ,all the electricity Germany needs can be imported from France .But what if the power transmission from France is also taken care of by Biden ? The wood in the Black forest could provide all the energy Germany needs ,unless it was already all used up last winter for fire wood .
The laptop is real. Everybody knows it. It proves that Joe Biden is bought and paid for. Now it’s time to ask the hard questions: What would a bought president be doing? Cutting our energy independence? Hurting Americans by cutting off trade via sanctions? Pushing us into a war we can’t possibly win that would likely lead to the rise of China as the world’s superpower? Devaluing the dollar and gutting the middle class?
Maybe the better question is: If Biden’s goal was to wreck the economy and enable the rise of China, would he be doing anything at all differently?
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And in the year since, I haven't seen anything to change my mind.
Someone as amoral as Joe Biden (who has shown himself as not only being quite stupid over the decades, but utterly devoid of all morals in all parts of his life), is led solely by money and power without a second thought to consequences. I absolutely believe he and his family take the money and will do whatever is asked of them. It’s kind of like CEO’s at places like IBM. They know having production plants in China makes all sorts of conflicts like Intellectual property theft, military technology exposed, less jobs in the US, etc, but they just don’t CARE. They want to show stockholders that they can make their widgets cheaper in China and lead to a temporary higher profit margin. Then, when the SHTF and products suck, their quality is poor, and sales fall, the CEO aims for the proverbial golden parachute. So many of these parasites are the elite in the boards leading to the moronic decisions like Anheuser-Busch made.
In thinking about how insane and entrenched DIE and its climate and transexual religious foci are in American and UK universities, and how the university presidents meet with the WEF, I started wondering what is going on in universities in Asian and majority Muslim countries and in India. The whole pronoun thing and the deconstruction of English that is occurring, some writing labs with a mission to "degrease" the language of the oppressor, seems like it couldn't work in languages that have gendered nouns, but who knows. What is occurring in the rest of Europe? Will the only educated people come from non-Anglosphere countries? In particular, majority Muslim countries? What does that lead to?
Correlation is not causation, true, but when so many incompetent, self-destructive governmental decisions support China's interests, it's hard not to wonder if that is their ultimate purpose.
No, I think we are in the hands of fanatics who think they are NOT destroying us but are unintentionally setting up communist China as the world's leader.
We don't colonize either. That is what I heard my entire life - The US was the most powerful nation in the world at the end of WW2. We had the most powerful military, the A bomb, a strong economy, the country was untouched, while every other nation lay in ruins. We could have conquered the world and didn't, therefore we were morally superior.
None of us realized the US understood early on that you don't need to invade a country to control it.
Once we had control of the world reserve currency we used the money to control the economies and nations around the world.
Be our friend and you will get cash grants to trade with; low interest rates to borrow - all so you can trade with the world and grow your economy.
Be our enemy and we will punish you with high interest rates, allow you to default and take over your industry, (sound familiar?), or we will stymie your economy or even destroy it. It used to all be done in secret, but now in the open.
I don't want war anywhere. I don't want to be a puppet of China, either. I don't want to be tracked, traced, or controlled either; but all this crap is exactly what China does, and we are copying it. Why?
The wealthy of the world have made their investments in China, and if you think they are willing to lose money by not letting China take the lead, I think you are blind - willfully or otherwise.
I'm happy to leave China to its own problems. I just want the US and the West to be what it once was - free, minding its own business - particularly when it comes to its own citizens.
I agree entirely. I'd like to dial it back to 1973, the last year before Peak Oil and trade surpluses..
Unlike us, Chinese are tracked, traced and controlled only as much as they collectively want to be (all parents, and all children with elderly parents want LOTS of tracking and tracing!)
Also, the Chinese trust their tracker and tracers because, unlike ours, their government has never lied to them nor broken a promise.
When Harvard's Ash Center surveyed them, the Chinese praised their justice system above all government services. Lowest violent crime rate, lowest incarceration, lowest recidivism, unarmed cops, safe streets...
It's a different world, and we're not supposed to know it exists.
You can't possibly be that naive or ignorant? China has never colonised? It never looted?
What do you think it has done just in the last 70 years alone in places like Tibet and Xinjiang? Literally importing Han chinese to eradicate the locals and colonise.
Did you know that China was once part of Tibet? That the Dalai Lama still claims half of China? Or that Tibet has never been recognized by anyone –including the USA – as a state?
Xinjiang has been part of China longer than Wales has been part of Britain and, again, has never been recognized as a state.
Don't believe the nonsense in our media. You know perfectly well that they lie to you all the time. And they lie 10x more about 'enemies' like China and Russia and Venezuela and Iran and...
While singing China’s praises, you are aware that China’s aim for 80 years has been to replace the USA as the hegemon, I hope. Their goal is 2050. They on on track for an early arrival. And there is that small matter of removing organs from alive, awake people who are out of order in their thinking or worship, so that the hoi polloi can live long lives, or the state can sell them on the open market. Being born of a different ethnicity is worthy of lifetime in a prison camp, as well. All in all, a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there, or in any facsimile thereof.
I will recommend “The Hundred Year Marathon” by Michael Pillsbury to understand the 5000 year warring states of the Chinese Empire, and how hegemony there has always been a matter of victory in war.
I was unaware that China aims to replace the US as hegemon! Can you provide a link to the PRC Government statement to that effect, with a link? Thanks.
As to removing organs from live people, again, even the US State Department says that's nonsense, and so should anyone familiar with Falun Gong and organ harvesting.
You right, however, in implying that China has civilizational goals and dates by which to accomplish them.
Its politicians call the goals, collectively, the Chinese Dream and, though it is two-thousand five hundred years old, it still attracts the loyalty and sacrifices) of 95% of citizens, since they have shared those goals for 2,500 years. Ninety-nine percent of Chinese willingly forego present indulgences – a cultural characteristic we find puzzling – so that future generations will achieve them.
The goals are sequenced according the Confucius' Instruction to Rulers in The Analects: "First enrich the people, then educate them." Mao adopted them as strategic goals in 1950 and that has not changed.
China reached Confucius' first stage, xiaokang, in 2021, becoming ‘a society in which no one is poor and everyone receives an education, has paid employment, more than enough food and clothing, access to medical services, old-age support, a home and a comfortable life’.
Confucius' next goal is more ambitious because it was about emancipating people from egoic bondage (all Chinese goals, including liberation, are collective!) by creating a society he called dàtóng.
Mao's favorite definition of dàtóng, which he quoted often, is from Kang Youwei’s Liyun zhu, (Commentary on Liyun), here abridged: Now to have states, families, and selves is to allow each individual to maintain a sphere of selfishness. This infracts utterly the Universal Principle (gongli) and impedes progress. ...Therefore, not only states should be abolished, so that there would be no more struggle between the strong and the weak; families should also be done away with, so that there would no longer be inequality of love and affection [among men]; and, finally, selfishness itself should be banished, so that goods and services would not be used for private ends. ... The only [true way] is sharing the world in common by all (tienxia weigong) ... To share in common is to treat each and every one alike. There should be no distinction between high and low, no discrepancy between rich and poor, no segregation of human races, no inequal- ity between sexes. ... All should be educated and supported with the common property; none should depend on private possession. ... This is the way of the Great Community, dàtóng which prevailed in the Age of Universal Peace.
In 2017 President Xi announced two intermediate goals on the way to dàtóng: the world's best Gini Coefficient by 2035 and, “By 2049 we will reach new heights in every dimension of material, political, cultural and ethical, social, and ecological advancement: we will have modernized of our system and capacity for governance; we will be a global leader in composite national strength and international influence; everyone will be prosperous and enjoy happy, safe and healthy lives and our nation will be a proud, active member of the community of nations.”
Every leader since Mao has reiterated Mao's dàtóng pledge, as Taiwan's national anthem does, but the Party has not set a deadline for it because they are still crossing the river by feeling the stones. But they <i>have</i> set some intermediate goals.
Until 2035, China will focus on becoming more egalitarian–in both wealth and income–than Finland, the current leader. (In 2012 Xi began promoting provincial officials based on their GINI stats and progress has been rapid, so that the 2035 GINI goal seems doable).
The second goal, another necessary precondition for <I>dàtóng</I>, is more ambitious and is set for 2049: “Making China a great, modern socialist country, prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful, and building a world without conflicts, with equal development opportunities for everyone and all peoples be blessed with happiness.”
I think that will keep them pretty busy at home, don't you?
China "never colonized???!!!!!" What drugs are you on? Or are you just a paid shill for the Chinese Communist Party? Their entire history is one of successive colonization invasions leading to amalgamations. Go ask the Tibetans and Uighurs if they are feeling free TODAY to manage their own affairs. Ask the Koreans about their centuries of experience with the Middle Kingdom. All China has ever done is loot; their explicit intentions have for millennia been to bring the world under subjugation to the Dragon Throne. Thanks for the silliest post of 2023 thus far. I bet you have a good shot at being in the top three by New Year's Eve.
Our entire history is one of successive colonization invasions leading to amalgamations. Their's, not so much.
Tibet once ruled most of China and His Royal Highness/Holiness the Dalai Lama still claims much of it. That's a big stopper in his desire to die in Lhasa, but he insists.
Xinjiang has been recognized as part of China longer than Wales has been part of the UK
Neither Xinjiang, Tibet nor Taiwan has ever been recognized by anyone as a nation.
In Alex Epstein's book - Fossil Future - he frames the conversation in the form of Values and Knowledge Systems
In a nutshell, the German and other soon-to-be-no-longer industrialized nations have set the highest virtue in Conservation, Environmentalism, and Social Issues. Development, Industry, Technology and so on are far down the line because any Human Impact on the world is by default, bad. Hence, although policy makers are creating a future which will be objectively worse for all humanity, this is actually not an accident because the objective is to minimize impact on Mother Earth at all costs, and doing things like producing good and machines and all that awful stuff is just so 20th century
Of course, it won't work. But thats what they are doing. And don't be surprised if they "succeed". Humanity can endure and adapt to some god awful stuff, and then it sticks for decades
The German sociologist Max Weber coined the terms "value-rational" and "purpose-rational" ("wertrational" / "zweckrational" - probably they are better translations)
"value-rational" is when you want to appear to do the right thing; "purpose-rational" is when you do to achieve the right thing.
Germans have always been big on being value-rational, no matter the costs. This is why the world was once afraid of us, because we were prone to follow any idea fanatically to the end.
This was devastating, when our fanaticism was paired with our superiority in the applied sciences, as in the beginning to middle of the last century.
Luckily, this time we are weak and as society we have become stupid. So the world does not have to be afraid, but can grab some popcorn and watch our descend into idiocracy.
You are neither weak nor stupid as a society, you just suffer from PTSD.
I highly recommend you watch this because this shows that a lot of the brainwashing and conditioning that took place in Germany began many long years before the actual Holocaust began, it was a long slow process to get there to getting people to behave absolutely beastly towards the Jewish people their own families their neighbours and their friends and just like the covid plandemic was used to facilitate the exact same kinds of toxic negative human responses between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. I don’t blame the German people then nor the western countries people now I blame the globalists as they are the ones behind this engineering of turning everything bad that is happening now and before the globalists came Hitler and many similar likeminded power mad sadists. We are in another death spiral but this time there are many more of us that need to be taken in and this time there are many more of us who are watching and are wide awake to the constant brainwashing and we can see the conditioning for what it is, so we have a far better chance of survival and not giving in to the madness we see all around us. Humanity is so worth saving while the globalists deserve to reap what they sow and karma is very real so while I may not live long enough to see it being in my mid 60’s now I feel we the people will win this war eventually.
"Indeed, in the age of Puritan environmentalism, we can barely even express the thought that a human alteration to the environment might be in some sense benign."
It will work after a mass reduction/elimination of its citizens. Its sick and woke. God didnt make it awful, the elites do that all on their own. When they are done they can start in fighting, playing king of the hill. So ignorant and self destructive. But they are psychopathic, power and control hungry.
Fun thing: nothing destroys an environment like poor people without sophisticated methods that need basic needs met no matter what way. They will cut the last tree to get warmth, till the last bit of ground to grow wheat, kill the last wolf that destroys their sheep and so on. They will HAVE to do so.
Thanks for the outline of Epstein's argument - very true. I remember reading a paper about how the Industrial Revolution is taught in German and US history classes. US version: "WOW! Human ingenuity! Chances! People lifted out of poverty! Genius ideas!" German version: "Child workers, four-year-olds in mines, poverty, hunger, slums, deprived female workers, horrible industrial accidents, pollution, awful, awful, bad". Looking at German history books - that is mostly true.
It takes time for had decisions to affect people. The reality is that people will carry on and manage, and the folks who will freeze first are the ones who are already voiceless and at the bottom rungs of society. It will be a long time before the laptop class experience brownouts or blackouts
-Reply to Andreas Stullkowski- sometimes the Substack reply function obscures the intent of the comment-
I will use a different set of quotation marks-"they"- rather than yours on succeed. I keep seeing Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" as a potential "success."
Look at Jeffrey Epstein's "Fantasy Island" and the WEF -connected players involved. Really the 0.01% if you will, and the "They" who control the conversation.
Look at the "virtuous" as effectively anti-humanists. It will be interesting to see how RFK Jr. (assuredly one of the 0.01%) manages his presidential campaign in view of his vaccine revelations versus his earlier anti-industrial environmental campaigns.
Anyone who has endured a crowded airport or who has had to stand in a long line feels pretty anti human! The problem is these type of psychopaths have extended that reasoning to an inexplicable endpoint
The strange suicide of German industry seems of a piece with the suicide of German culture and demography. The country is in the hands of fanatics determined to abolish every trace of it ... not that the rest of the West is much better.
I suppose what died was their sense of positive expectations for the future, the idea that the story could end well for them.
Then they had the inflation in 1923, the world economic crisis starting in 1929, artificially whipped up patriotic frenzy in the 1930ies and utter, devastating destruction from 1945 to 1950.
Such catastrophies must leave an imprint on the thinking of the involved and following generations, although I would say there was a lot of optimism from 1950 to 1990 or 2000.
Until the first World War, Germany was #1 in the sciences. German was as much a lingua franca in science as English or French was.
I am partial because I am German, but from the 1650s (Bach) to the 1900s (Wagner), German and Austrian composers reached the heights of music, which I doubt will be ever attained again.
German literature was also among the greatest in the world.
All that stopped after WW1. The scientists and artist from before still existed, so there was some overlap and still creativity, but after WW2 it all fell to ruins.
You are right, the "common man" was hard hit by first WW1, then hyperinflation, then 1929 and depression, then the Nazis and WW2. The optimism afterward was just material, the "Wirtschaftswunder".
But something happened in the spirit. It all went away.
Probably the Nazis erased it all, but it started with WW1, the industrial killing of people killed their spirit.
And now there is no creative culture more in Germany. No history, and no future.
It went to the USA, and flourished there for a while.
You're right, and what makes this "German miracle" of the late 19th/early 20th century so remarkable is that the Germans didn't even attain statehood ("Reich") until 1871. This is really a remarkable feat. Plus they started their Industrial Revolutions decades after the English did, from a more unfavourable position (fewer colonies, fewer ports, fewer easily accessible resources).
I am Austrian and I think we suffered this loss of self-confidence after 1918 much as you guys did, but I don't think it affected us as much in the long run. Austrians are good at muddling through and we never were an economic, scientific, or military powerhouse the way the Germans were in the 19th century. We'd been through some sort of imperial decay already. So we sort of took the loss of international importance in our stride and shifted our pride towards culture and the old imperial glory of architecture, music, and so on. We've continued to muddle through since 1945 and are not doing as spiritually badly as the Germans are. But then, maybe, it's our awareness of how unimportant we are in the general theme of things, that we don't have to and won't save the world, which seems to be a major impulse in German politics.
As to the creative spirit - I think it's leaving much of the US, too, apart from some thriving pockets on the West coast. The decline of the middle classes and the working class could play a role in this. Don't know if China can hold on to it, due to demograpic reasons.
Yes, you are right, Austria was already through the decline as a Reich.
Possibly it was lucky that you did it before, so your decline did not coincide with the height of industrialization, and you did not run into the industrial atrocities that happened in Germany and the Soviet Union.
Also Austrians are much more graceful than Germans, even today. Probably because you were much more open for centuries to foreign cultures. I very much like music, and there is nothing more beautiful than Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert.
But then again the guy who destroyed Germany was Austrian....
Actually, no, he wasn't...you guys naturalized him in 1932. So technically speaking, he was Deutscher mit Migrationshintergrund. In your crime statistics he would only be classified as "Deutscher".
"some thriving pockets on the West coast" - Perhaps to get rephrased "ONCE some thriving pockets on the West coast". At one point CA was highly innovative and valued that culture. No more. As money gravitated to grow itself via that innovation it contaminated everything becoming more important than the innovation itself. Not clear if Apple can continue to redefine itself, but the rest seem more more like drones trying to figure out how to ad more ads and track interests. Social media might be fun but of little real importance to people beyond entertainment; but now government has decided social media useful for control will we still enjoy our idle pursuits? And as real income falls can we afford idle pursuits?
Ultimate penance for WW2. Not only must the kids be subjugated into watching all things Schindler’s List (great movie but enough of making the great grand kids having their head hang in shame already), all things created from the Weimar Republic up to Hitler must be destroyed and forgotten.
Weird anecdote. I built a house in Germany and we found a WW2 bunker in the back with a large ilex (holly) growing on top of it. My Dad was in the Korean War and was buddies with a bunker architect and he helped me find 2 others, they were small stations guarding a nearby creek where a work camp was located nearby. Every single German wanted me to destroy it- immediately. Erase it. I preserved it and filled it with sand and also preserved the lovely holly.
When I was young and did that hitchhiking backpacking hostel-staying thingy, I was painfully impressed by how the European kids I met, some of whom were still high schoolers or recent grads, had the education and sophistication of people who'd already been through college. I felt so ignorant and uncouth in contrast.
Lotta good all that's done you guys. Still hard to fathom.
They all did seem very sensible and competent people. It's taken me lo these 50 years to learn the value of the ruffian American temperament. You gotta live long enough to learn enough.
Your anecdote reminds me of a time when I was sleeping in a train station in Paris, way back in 1990. There was a little encampment of us, among which this Canadian kid who seems older and cooler at the time.
It was a long night, so we got talking about how you needed your headlamps on in the daytime in Canada. I opined that that seemed like an excessive law, and he shut me down with an argument that landed at the time: "Well, if it saves even *one* life, it's worth it."
I was 15 at the time, so not fully able to articulate why that was wrong, even though I felt it was. Anyway, his sophistication won him the argument. And it's because of people like him that Canada is now an authoritarian shithole.
My younger self believed a lot of foolish things. It's true I resisted a lot of foolish things too, but life is complicated like that. Perhaps what's saved me is not being afraid or ashamed of changing my mind when evidence requires that to happen.
It's the lack of the maturing process in so many today that's scary. One is supposed to be an idiot about a lot of things when young. Many of us have been lucky to survive that phase. But if you get through you ought to have a broader perspective than from where you started.
And every cult movement engenders its own heretical cult retort. I would just like some normalcy. Enormous families of the conservative faithful--whatever their particular faith community--have as little appeal to me as these Manhattanite types you describe.
Two kids, mom and dad who each have their game nights with their cronies, a nice comfy unmodern sofa and a VCR/DVD player kept alive by any means necessary so the family can sit together eating pizza and watching classic Bugs Bunny cartoons together. Let us pray this breaks out everywhere before they can stop it happening.
I lived in Sweden for ten years in the 70’s and have visited on a regular basis. The societal values and direction have changed enormously during that time. It’s been pushed from the top but surprising to me was how easily the broad middle class accepted, and even embraced it.
All these anti human policies are simple opportunistic power grabs.
The craziest part of all this is watching in real time as they resolve their cognitive dissonance by modifying their beliefs to justify these incoherent policies.
I don’t think they have cognitive dissonance at all. They’re just twisted in their desire to rule the world. They’re manipulative, greedy, and care not for the common man. Elitist and ugly. Killing us is like stepping on ants.
Everyone perceives themselves to be the hero of their own story.
When we do something that goes against our conscience, it creates cognitive dissonance.
A person of integrity would modify their behavior to align to their conscience.
These people are modifying their consciences (beliefs) to align with their behavior.
What's even more disturbing is that these obviously immoral and anti-human modified beliefs are then parrotted by the media and gain traction in the general public.
What if a some individuals among the population have no conscience. What if these individuals are part of a larger group which also has no conscience. What if this group has over several thousands of years experienced that a conscience is an impediment to power over others, mostly non members of this group. Material success in wealth and especially money comes at a price if that is the only objective and is used to control others.
I think that you know of what group I speak of. The greed has gone to seed, by which I mean marriage among their own and thus controlled reproduction of new beings among the clan who will basically be clones of the original template.
This clan is now the boss of the planet in all aspects of human activity. They are the only movers and shakers on the planet now.. Not a single act of theirs is anything but another wound to the flesh of those not of their group. Forget about the Germans, the Anglo Saxons, the Austrians, Americans, Russians and so on, their destiny was to bleed and bleed in the name of freedom and liberty.. even the Chinese are clan owned.
The actors dragged onto the stage from these groups may have COGNITIVE DISSONANCE but the clan which I just described is not burdened by such a silly notion.
I don’t buy that people change their beliefs to be consonant with evil acts. Nor do I believe that evil is percolating upwards. All these sinister ideologies are crafted at the top by the psychopaths and sociopaths who are the influencers to the lower ranks. You have it upside down.
Germany already lost a major petrochemical manufacturer, that could not keep production up due to power and ingredient supplies. If some there do not arrest the trend, they will end up like other 'first world' areas that only have water and power for part of the day.
There are a lot of us self thinking humans right now who realize the insanity and complete bollocks of the period we are living in. Seems we have not been able yet to do much about it?
Most of the discussion by politicians and the media about green or renewable energy is mind-numbingly stupid and ignorant of both economics and physics. I joke to my friends that my role in life now is to educate "climate changers" on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. If you take a cold hard, unbiased view of energy sources you would stop everything and start building nuclear power plants. The long term cost for nuclear power is about 3-4 cents per KWH if you take even a mild reduction in the regulatory overhang (vs about 30 cents for a windmill). If we had invested the money we have spent on renewable subsidies the past 25 years in nuclear power R&D and construction incentives the western world would already be at "net-zero" carbon. The readers of this blog may know this, but wind energy is and always will be the most expensive form of energy (except for the crazed boondoggles like "green" hydrogen). Solar is OK, still expensive, but not very dense, so you will have to cover up a large chunk of your country to get close to the energy you need and then shiver in the dark at night.
Absolutely yes! I've always said that if the climate activists were actually serious, they would fully embrace nuclear power as the best for the environment. That they don't do this shows what they are really about, and that their climate hysteria is merely a means to power.
There is a prevalent view from the mainly arts educated main stream media that energy is magic, and one can gain energy with less input that output. The statements made are literally mad.
Similarly net zero, a term best suited to matters of accounting, is widely flung about with open confusion as to the meaning. Again, this is literally mad.
In the UK we have not had an industrial or energy policy for more than 5 decades.
Now, this vacuum is filled with empty words - more empty dimensionless words than ever before.
As I say to friends in South Africa, the chaos they have is what we are about to see. Few in the UK or Europe are prepared to consider the prospect of power cuts lasting between 2 and 8 hours every single day, or take steps to ensure it does not happen.
I saw a graph from the 1970s somewhere showing what planners expected the sources of energy would be in Germany. Nuclear was supposed to dwarf all other energy production within about 30 years. They obviously forgot to add the "human stupidity" variable to their calculations.
Our self-inflicted destruction will never end, but it will peter out, because there will be increasingly less to be destroyed.
Forcing people to install the heat pump will probably be the last great action.
After the Ukraine war is over (it will be a hug loss for Germany, but not be mentioned at all anymore), especially if the next winter is not as warm as this one, it will become clear to most people that we will have lost much of our wealth, and are marching in a very uncertain future.
The Greens will lose their mandates, and those flashy political maneuvers will not be longer necessary.
I wager that the next government will be again SPD/CDU, who will preside over German's decline, which has been ensure years ago already via demography.
The vast majority is very anti-nationalistic. Even if they become more nationalistic in the next decades, demography will ensure that there will not be a majority possible.
The only way to nationalism would be a Big Man (or Women), like Trump, Le Pen, but this is not possible in our party system.
Yes, democracy turned out to be destructive, leading to totalitarism and idiocracy.
I have no idea how the future will be, but nationalism doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. Probably some form of dictatorship that calls itself nationalistic, but will be corpocratic. Maybe Elon will decide to buy Germany.
Don't think so - there is no entrenched idea of nationalism as a beneficial force in German society, and society is becoming fragmented at an increasing rate. I could imagine society turning more tribalistic and hostile to other groups and indifferent to the whole of society, the country, or the state. Still, a spicing up of things would result of this as well.
The awful thing is that these people are well used to failed states and the ensuing chaos - they HAVE survival tactics. We don't, which puts us at a serious disadvantage.
Exactly. And this is the default state of the pre-modern world and basically everywhere except in the West. The modern western model has resulted in a slow shift of loyalty from family, clan, and tribe to the state because the state became powerful to take the place of family, clan, and tribe as protector.
If states crumble, ties of blood are left and can often be relied on (which of course means another kind of obligation, much more personal and, possibly, restraining than between citizen and state where the citizens pays taxes and the state will make sure the citizen gets childcare).
You have to stop thinking of this as "stupid people doing stupid things". This is intended destruction of Europe's largest economy. The WEF/Oligarch/Technocrat goal is power and control over the general population. China without the totalitarian "bunny suits". On any issue, just ask yourself "What side of an issue will result in the government getting more power, and consumers having less?" Then just figure the evil ones are working towards that. Simple. It saves all the time of writing things like "Don't they know their policy ____ won't work? Are they stupid?" They want a new techno-aristocracy. Greed. Power hungry. They don't care how they get it. And Europe keeps showing it has no will to actually fight back. Just whine and complain about more lost economic and personal freedom. It's so predictable.
I traced all the steps out for you, of how this came about. It was done to appease specific German cultural and political constituencies, and not from the outside.
If there are broader forces at work here, it's the fact of the rapidly ageing population and the enormous amounts of political influence accumulating with people who are retiring, withdrawing from public life, and no longer really thinking about the future except in moral terms.
Yes, and this demographic in politics/public life don't NEED jobs or favourable conditions for starting a family any more - they're over that phase of their life. If they don't have children (and many German politicians don't have children), they may be completely out of touch with their children and grandchildren's needs.
indeed, we are simply seeing the political consequences of an aging population, of the dominant voting bloc being people who no longer work, are worried about their health, who think that they are paying more and sacrificing for their grandchildren (in this way the ‚Energiewende‘ is brilliant propaganda, as it suggests pain in the moment as an investment in future generations ).
You just wrote in detail how it makes no sense, yet you cling to the idea they're just "dolts botching shit', as a fat guy pretending to be young woman used to say?
Can trace it back all the way to the old Soviet Union. Marxists wanted to control everything. The leadership was "enlightened". All were "equal" but some more "equal" than others. Saul Alinsky learned many of their techniques. He put it in a book, "Rules For Radicals". It reads like a primer for the Left. Hillary studied under Saul. Obama studied under an Alinsky acolyte. Move forward to the late 1980's. Soviet Union crumbling. Yet there were still people here in the U.S. saying their way of life was just as good as ours. Then the wall came down. Those Marxists here in the U.S. and abroad didn't just say, "Oh well, guess we were wrong. Let's adopt capitalism!" No, instead they radicalized the "green" movement into the "Green" movement. They were "watermelons" (Red on the inside, green on the outside.). They continued to fight capitalism and individual freedom but from a different angle, via anthropomorphizing the environmental. They used useful idiots like Al Gore and Prince Charles and Bono to scare up the population. They worked on getting the 'greenies' to look at nuclear power as bad, instead of as the best source of clean energy. Then, to use another Alinksy/Clinton cronie's saying, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste". I was working at a Japanese-owned company when Fukushima occurred. When there after I saw Germany say it was moving away from nuclear, I knew then that German leadership had been corrupted and co-opted. It was only a matter of time before it would do serious harm to itself. It's not about voters getting older. It is about a lack of good education, not the garbage people are force fed through all levels. There is a lack of wisdom. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Too many of the people of the West decided to trade God in for anything but. People now know more about trivialities than natural law, true rights, and self determination. When they think of "Rights" now, it revolves around sexual deviancy and license. The "Watermelons" will continue "winning" for their agenda, because the fight isn't in the general populace any more. We see it in the U.S. Unelected Biden and his controllers will continue to push via legit and illegitimate means the Marxist agenda, knowing the Republicans have no real power now, and lost the game when they didn't push back against the steal in 2020, nor the voter fraud uncovered in many key states. They foolishly think they will win in 2024, but the key states to win in our electoral system have become more hardened Leftist and more easy to cheat. They only question is which emergencies come along in the second half of 2023, and 2024, to further erode citizen freedom here and in Europe. The Left knows the Right won't really fight. Read the Alinsky book and use that as the ruler to judge future events.
Exactly. That’s why it’s painful to read essays in which this pivotal fact is not recognized. THEY ARE TRYING TO KILL US. Starve us, freeze us, take away our jobs and income, reverse our life expectancy which is already on the decline, deprive us of quality medical care, tax us into oblivion, mandate poisonous vaccinations (oh wait, that’s an oxymoron), pervert our sexuality, hamper our reproduction, kill the unborn, brainwash our children in degenerate public schools.......
Is it me, or does anyone else get the idea we are intentionally destroying ourselves and just as intentionally setting up communist China as the world's leader?
i am not sure about "we" ....
You for the "F" in WE--F?
We are too
As someone else put it, "globalism is actually Chinese nationalism":
https://reactionarythought.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/globalism-is-actually-chinese-nationalism/
this is so completely true!
That's a good article. If you look up Anthony Sutton on Youtube I think you will find his take interesting. Also his book "National Suicide".
Someone else to look at is Otto Scott. He pointed out that the communist countries could not compete with the US, so they did all they could to cause our own govt to stymie our economy (think regulatory agencies).
not all of us are participating in those 'we' ideas and actions
Our governments elites are the we.
I hope it is understood when I use the collective term "we" I mean we as in the west. I am in the US, but I include Europe, Canada, Australia. etc.
Yes, it is our "leaders" doing this.
You can look up a quote from Maurice Strong from the 1980's? Look up who he was and this quote: "What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?...In order to save the planet, the group decides: isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring it about?"
Notice how he capitalizes the "Earth"
Not at all surprising. Maurice Strong was “on board” rather early. Infamous.
Recall, for non-Canadian readers, that Maurice Strong was promoted by Pierre Trudeau.
I disagree entirely , it’s the easily placated , sleeping sheep that are to blame . The sheep refused to recognize that re cycling , driving less in smaller cars was a really good idea. Just as they now refuse to see that they the sheep are being cut off . Consuming blindly , making babies all have costs. It’s freaking over for the sleeping , they just aren’t as usual aware .
90% of the sheep serve no further purpose and will be eliminated sooner than anyone understands.
Elites have always viewed humanity as their orchard , to be pruned , watered , feed and destroyed as the economics required . Too funny!
Yes! Those useless eaters- if only they had recycled and driven smaller cars when they were told to, we wouldn't be in this mess! The sheep deserve to be culled, it's their own fault.
Wait, er, where have I heard this before? ...
Too funny, indeed.
Go take a look at the quotes from Maurice Strong on the link I posted. Insane!
So Germany needs no nuclear power plants .The gas pipelines from Russia where a luxury ,that Biden took care of and to the Germans good luck ,all the electricity Germany needs can be imported from France .But what if the power transmission from France is also taken care of by Biden ? The wood in the Black forest could provide all the energy Germany needs ,unless it was already all used up last winter for fire wood .
I asked that question last year:
----------------
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/now-that-were-done-pretending-hunters
The laptop is real. Everybody knows it. It proves that Joe Biden is bought and paid for. Now it’s time to ask the hard questions: What would a bought president be doing? Cutting our energy independence? Hurting Americans by cutting off trade via sanctions? Pushing us into a war we can’t possibly win that would likely lead to the rise of China as the world’s superpower? Devaluing the dollar and gutting the middle class?
Maybe the better question is: If Biden’s goal was to wreck the economy and enable the rise of China, would he be doing anything at all differently?
----------------
And in the year since, I haven't seen anything to change my mind.
Someone as amoral as Joe Biden (who has shown himself as not only being quite stupid over the decades, but utterly devoid of all morals in all parts of his life), is led solely by money and power without a second thought to consequences. I absolutely believe he and his family take the money and will do whatever is asked of them. It’s kind of like CEO’s at places like IBM. They know having production plants in China makes all sorts of conflicts like Intellectual property theft, military technology exposed, less jobs in the US, etc, but they just don’t CARE. They want to show stockholders that they can make their widgets cheaper in China and lead to a temporary higher profit margin. Then, when the SHTF and products suck, their quality is poor, and sales fall, the CEO aims for the proverbial golden parachute. So many of these parasites are the elite in the boards leading to the moronic decisions like Anheuser-Busch made.
It's called The Great Reset. The WEF plan.
The center of the universe is being shifted to China because they are communist and can be controlled.
China is not a communist country. It is a deeply authoritarian system, government and private enterprise work together. Fascism....
Fascism & Communism are brothers, joined at the hip by a need to control.
Fascism? So they're the same as us.
Communism leads to transhumanism. That is the goal.
Agree!
It’s as though China has a “spell” over all the world leaders.
Many are enforcing policies that the citizens DO NOT WANT.
Yet, do it anyway!!
How are millions of people going to voice/show their displeasure to the few elites??
By waiting for another election cycle, the damage has been done.
In thinking about how insane and entrenched DIE and its climate and transexual religious foci are in American and UK universities, and how the university presidents meet with the WEF, I started wondering what is going on in universities in Asian and majority Muslim countries and in India. The whole pronoun thing and the deconstruction of English that is occurring, some writing labs with a mission to "degrease" the language of the oppressor, seems like it couldn't work in languages that have gendered nouns, but who knows. What is occurring in the rest of Europe? Will the only educated people come from non-Anglosphere countries? In particular, majority Muslim countries? What does that lead to?
It has penetrated non-English countries as well, with a 5-10 y delay.
Correlation is not causation, true, but when so many incompetent, self-destructive governmental decisions support China's interests, it's hard not to wonder if that is their ultimate purpose.
Lackeys on Xi’s payroll.
It's not just you.
In the immortal words of Cmdr. Geordi LaForge:
"Who's 'We'?"
It appears to me they are already the leader without being acknowledged by the masses. It appears to me America is Xi colony now.
No, I think we are in the hands of fanatics who think they are NOT destroying us but are unintentionally setting up communist China as the world's leader.
One world government? China?
Do seriously think that the Chinese government has time for that, given its 2049 deadlines?
China has been there for 4000 years. It hasn't budged. It never colonized. It never looted. All it ever wanted and wants is to be left alone.
But no no no no no.
We don't colonize either. That is what I heard my entire life - The US was the most powerful nation in the world at the end of WW2. We had the most powerful military, the A bomb, a strong economy, the country was untouched, while every other nation lay in ruins. We could have conquered the world and didn't, therefore we were morally superior.
None of us realized the US understood early on that you don't need to invade a country to control it.
Once we had control of the world reserve currency we used the money to control the economies and nations around the world.
Be our friend and you will get cash grants to trade with; low interest rates to borrow - all so you can trade with the world and grow your economy.
Be our enemy and we will punish you with high interest rates, allow you to default and take over your industry, (sound familiar?), or we will stymie your economy or even destroy it. It used to all be done in secret, but now in the open.
I don't want war anywhere. I don't want to be a puppet of China, either. I don't want to be tracked, traced, or controlled either; but all this crap is exactly what China does, and we are copying it. Why?
The wealthy of the world have made their investments in China, and if you think they are willing to lose money by not letting China take the lead, I think you are blind - willfully or otherwise.
I'm happy to leave China to its own problems. I just want the US and the West to be what it once was - free, minding its own business - particularly when it comes to its own citizens.
I agree entirely. I'd like to dial it back to 1973, the last year before Peak Oil and trade surpluses..
Unlike us, Chinese are tracked, traced and controlled only as much as they collectively want to be (all parents, and all children with elderly parents want LOTS of tracking and tracing!)
Also, the Chinese trust their tracker and tracers because, unlike ours, their government has never lied to them nor broken a promise.
When Harvard's Ash Center surveyed them, the Chinese praised their justice system above all government services. Lowest violent crime rate, lowest incarceration, lowest recidivism, unarmed cops, safe streets...
It's a different world, and we're not supposed to know it exists.
Uh, I know better than this.
As do millions of other intelligent people.
Do tell..
You can't possibly be that naive or ignorant? China has never colonised? It never looted?
What do you think it has done just in the last 70 years alone in places like Tibet and Xinjiang? Literally importing Han chinese to eradicate the locals and colonise.
Did you know that China was once part of Tibet? That the Dalai Lama still claims half of China? Or that Tibet has never been recognized by anyone –including the USA – as a state?
Xinjiang has been part of China longer than Wales has been part of Britain and, again, has never been recognized as a state.
Don't believe the nonsense in our media. You know perfectly well that they lie to you all the time. And they lie 10x more about 'enemies' like China and Russia and Venezuela and Iran and...
While singing China’s praises, you are aware that China’s aim for 80 years has been to replace the USA as the hegemon, I hope. Their goal is 2050. They on on track for an early arrival. And there is that small matter of removing organs from alive, awake people who are out of order in their thinking or worship, so that the hoi polloi can live long lives, or the state can sell them on the open market. Being born of a different ethnicity is worthy of lifetime in a prison camp, as well. All in all, a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there, or in any facsimile thereof.
I will recommend “The Hundred Year Marathon” by Michael Pillsbury to understand the 5000 year warring states of the Chinese Empire, and how hegemony there has always been a matter of victory in war.
I was unaware that China aims to replace the US as hegemon! Can you provide a link to the PRC Government statement to that effect, with a link? Thanks.
As to removing organs from live people, again, even the US State Department says that's nonsense, and so should anyone familiar with Falun Gong and organ harvesting.
You right, however, in implying that China has civilizational goals and dates by which to accomplish them.
Its politicians call the goals, collectively, the Chinese Dream and, though it is two-thousand five hundred years old, it still attracts the loyalty and sacrifices) of 95% of citizens, since they have shared those goals for 2,500 years. Ninety-nine percent of Chinese willingly forego present indulgences – a cultural characteristic we find puzzling – so that future generations will achieve them.
The goals are sequenced according the Confucius' Instruction to Rulers in The Analects: "First enrich the people, then educate them." Mao adopted them as strategic goals in 1950 and that has not changed.
China reached Confucius' first stage, xiaokang, in 2021, becoming ‘a society in which no one is poor and everyone receives an education, has paid employment, more than enough food and clothing, access to medical services, old-age support, a home and a comfortable life’.
Confucius' next goal is more ambitious because it was about emancipating people from egoic bondage (all Chinese goals, including liberation, are collective!) by creating a society he called dàtóng.
Mao's favorite definition of dàtóng, which he quoted often, is from Kang Youwei’s Liyun zhu, (Commentary on Liyun), here abridged: Now to have states, families, and selves is to allow each individual to maintain a sphere of selfishness. This infracts utterly the Universal Principle (gongli) and impedes progress. ...Therefore, not only states should be abolished, so that there would be no more struggle between the strong and the weak; families should also be done away with, so that there would no longer be inequality of love and affection [among men]; and, finally, selfishness itself should be banished, so that goods and services would not be used for private ends. ... The only [true way] is sharing the world in common by all (tienxia weigong) ... To share in common is to treat each and every one alike. There should be no distinction between high and low, no discrepancy between rich and poor, no segregation of human races, no inequal- ity between sexes. ... All should be educated and supported with the common property; none should depend on private possession. ... This is the way of the Great Community, dàtóng which prevailed in the Age of Universal Peace.
In 2017 President Xi announced two intermediate goals on the way to dàtóng: the world's best Gini Coefficient by 2035 and, “By 2049 we will reach new heights in every dimension of material, political, cultural and ethical, social, and ecological advancement: we will have modernized of our system and capacity for governance; we will be a global leader in composite national strength and international influence; everyone will be prosperous and enjoy happy, safe and healthy lives and our nation will be a proud, active member of the community of nations.”
Every leader since Mao has reiterated Mao's dàtóng pledge, as Taiwan's national anthem does, but the Party has not set a deadline for it because they are still crossing the river by feeling the stones. But they <i>have</i> set some intermediate goals.
Until 2035, China will focus on becoming more egalitarian–in both wealth and income–than Finland, the current leader. (In 2012 Xi began promoting provincial officials based on their GINI stats and progress has been rapid, so that the 2035 GINI goal seems doable).
The second goal, another necessary precondition for <I>dàtóng</I>, is more ambitious and is set for 2049: “Making China a great, modern socialist country, prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful, and building a world without conflicts, with equal development opportunities for everyone and all peoples be blessed with happiness.”
I think that will keep them pretty busy at home, don't you?
China "never colonized???!!!!!" What drugs are you on? Or are you just a paid shill for the Chinese Communist Party? Their entire history is one of successive colonization invasions leading to amalgamations. Go ask the Tibetans and Uighurs if they are feeling free TODAY to manage their own affairs. Ask the Koreans about their centuries of experience with the Middle Kingdom. All China has ever done is loot; their explicit intentions have for millennia been to bring the world under subjugation to the Dragon Throne. Thanks for the silliest post of 2023 thus far. I bet you have a good shot at being in the top three by New Year's Eve.
Our entire history is one of successive colonization invasions leading to amalgamations. Their's, not so much.
Tibet once ruled most of China and His Royal Highness/Holiness the Dalai Lama still claims much of it. That's a big stopper in his desire to die in Lhasa, but he insists.
Xinjiang has been recognized as part of China longer than Wales has been part of the UK
Neither Xinjiang, Tibet nor Taiwan has ever been recognized by anyone as a nation.
That's because they're all part of China.
Bingo. I hadn’t read your comment and posted the same theory above, albeit more verbose.
In Alex Epstein's book - Fossil Future - he frames the conversation in the form of Values and Knowledge Systems
In a nutshell, the German and other soon-to-be-no-longer industrialized nations have set the highest virtue in Conservation, Environmentalism, and Social Issues. Development, Industry, Technology and so on are far down the line because any Human Impact on the world is by default, bad. Hence, although policy makers are creating a future which will be objectively worse for all humanity, this is actually not an accident because the objective is to minimize impact on Mother Earth at all costs, and doing things like producing good and machines and all that awful stuff is just so 20th century
Of course, it won't work. But thats what they are doing. And don't be surprised if they "succeed". Humanity can endure and adapt to some god awful stuff, and then it sticks for decades
I think I've read this book before. It was called Atlas Shrugged. And the majority of people didn't fare well.
Exactly . What do I owe you for repairing my airplane . Like ten dollars
More like 10 Gold Eagles if know what I mean. (HINT: This was a major theme in the TV series Hell on Wheels)
The German sociologist Max Weber coined the terms "value-rational" and "purpose-rational" ("wertrational" / "zweckrational" - probably they are better translations)
"value-rational" is when you want to appear to do the right thing; "purpose-rational" is when you do to achieve the right thing.
Germans have always been big on being value-rational, no matter the costs. This is why the world was once afraid of us, because we were prone to follow any idea fanatically to the end.
This was devastating, when our fanaticism was paired with our superiority in the applied sciences, as in the beginning to middle of the last century.
Luckily, this time we are weak and as society we have become stupid. So the world does not have to be afraid, but can grab some popcorn and watch our descend into idiocracy.
https://rumble.com/v2htkfq-vera-sharavs-historic-nuremberg-speech-eugenics-then-and-now.html
You are neither weak nor stupid as a society, you just suffer from PTSD.
I highly recommend you watch this because this shows that a lot of the brainwashing and conditioning that took place in Germany began many long years before the actual Holocaust began, it was a long slow process to get there to getting people to behave absolutely beastly towards the Jewish people their own families their neighbours and their friends and just like the covid plandemic was used to facilitate the exact same kinds of toxic negative human responses between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. I don’t blame the German people then nor the western countries people now I blame the globalists as they are the ones behind this engineering of turning everything bad that is happening now and before the globalists came Hitler and many similar likeminded power mad sadists. We are in another death spiral but this time there are many more of us that need to be taken in and this time there are many more of us who are watching and are wide awake to the constant brainwashing and we can see the conditioning for what it is, so we have a far better chance of survival and not giving in to the madness we see all around us. Humanity is so worth saving while the globalists deserve to reap what they sow and karma is very real so while I may not live long enough to see it being in my mid 60’s now I feel we the people will win this war eventually.
"Indeed, in the age of Puritan environmentalism, we can barely even express the thought that a human alteration to the environment might be in some sense benign."
Exactly right.
It will work after a mass reduction/elimination of its citizens. Its sick and woke. God didnt make it awful, the elites do that all on their own. When they are done they can start in fighting, playing king of the hill. So ignorant and self destructive. But they are psychopathic, power and control hungry.
Fun thing: nothing destroys an environment like poor people without sophisticated methods that need basic needs met no matter what way. They will cut the last tree to get warmth, till the last bit of ground to grow wheat, kill the last wolf that destroys their sheep and so on. They will HAVE to do so.
Thanks for the outline of Epstein's argument - very true. I remember reading a paper about how the Industrial Revolution is taught in German and US history classes. US version: "WOW! Human ingenuity! Chances! People lifted out of poverty! Genius ideas!" German version: "Child workers, four-year-olds in mines, poverty, hunger, slums, deprived female workers, horrible industrial accidents, pollution, awful, awful, bad". Looking at German history books - that is mostly true.
Examine Haiti vs Dominican Republic https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/12/05/haiti-vs-dominican-republic-a-tale-of-two-nations/. Same island but Haiti burned nearly every thing that grew which next door they discovered propane.
Fuck that nonsense, there is nothing virtuous about shivering in the dark.
It takes time for had decisions to affect people. The reality is that people will carry on and manage, and the folks who will freeze first are the ones who are already voiceless and at the bottom rungs of society. It will be a long time before the laptop class experience brownouts or blackouts
-Reply to Andreas Stullkowski- sometimes the Substack reply function obscures the intent of the comment-
I will use a different set of quotation marks-"they"- rather than yours on succeed. I keep seeing Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" as a potential "success."
Look at Jeffrey Epstein's "Fantasy Island" and the WEF -connected players involved. Really the 0.01% if you will, and the "They" who control the conversation.
Look at the "virtuous" as effectively anti-humanists. It will be interesting to see how RFK Jr. (assuredly one of the 0.01%) manages his presidential campaign in view of his vaccine revelations versus his earlier anti-industrial environmental campaigns.
Anyone who has endured a crowded airport or who has had to stand in a long line feels pretty anti human! The problem is these type of psychopaths have extended that reasoning to an inexplicable endpoint
The recent explosion in Texas of 18000 dairy cows
The strange suicide of German industry seems of a piece with the suicide of German culture and demography. The country is in the hands of fanatics determined to abolish every trace of it ... not that the rest of the West is much better.
IMO, German culture died in 1918.
The rest is the aftermath. Society do not die, but vanish over generations.
I suppose what died was their sense of positive expectations for the future, the idea that the story could end well for them.
Then they had the inflation in 1923, the world economic crisis starting in 1929, artificially whipped up patriotic frenzy in the 1930ies and utter, devastating destruction from 1945 to 1950.
Such catastrophies must leave an imprint on the thinking of the involved and following generations, although I would say there was a lot of optimism from 1950 to 1990 or 2000.
Until the first World War, Germany was #1 in the sciences. German was as much a lingua franca in science as English or French was.
I am partial because I am German, but from the 1650s (Bach) to the 1900s (Wagner), German and Austrian composers reached the heights of music, which I doubt will be ever attained again.
German literature was also among the greatest in the world.
All that stopped after WW1. The scientists and artist from before still existed, so there was some overlap and still creativity, but after WW2 it all fell to ruins.
You are right, the "common man" was hard hit by first WW1, then hyperinflation, then 1929 and depression, then the Nazis and WW2. The optimism afterward was just material, the "Wirtschaftswunder".
But something happened in the spirit. It all went away.
Probably the Nazis erased it all, but it started with WW1, the industrial killing of people killed their spirit.
And now there is no creative culture more in Germany. No history, and no future.
It went to the USA, and flourished there for a while.
You're right, and what makes this "German miracle" of the late 19th/early 20th century so remarkable is that the Germans didn't even attain statehood ("Reich") until 1871. This is really a remarkable feat. Plus they started their Industrial Revolutions decades after the English did, from a more unfavourable position (fewer colonies, fewer ports, fewer easily accessible resources).
I am Austrian and I think we suffered this loss of self-confidence after 1918 much as you guys did, but I don't think it affected us as much in the long run. Austrians are good at muddling through and we never were an economic, scientific, or military powerhouse the way the Germans were in the 19th century. We'd been through some sort of imperial decay already. So we sort of took the loss of international importance in our stride and shifted our pride towards culture and the old imperial glory of architecture, music, and so on. We've continued to muddle through since 1945 and are not doing as spiritually badly as the Germans are. But then, maybe, it's our awareness of how unimportant we are in the general theme of things, that we don't have to and won't save the world, which seems to be a major impulse in German politics.
As to the creative spirit - I think it's leaving much of the US, too, apart from some thriving pockets on the West coast. The decline of the middle classes and the working class could play a role in this. Don't know if China can hold on to it, due to demograpic reasons.
Yes, you are right, Austria was already through the decline as a Reich.
Possibly it was lucky that you did it before, so your decline did not coincide with the height of industrialization, and you did not run into the industrial atrocities that happened in Germany and the Soviet Union.
Also Austrians are much more graceful than Germans, even today. Probably because you were much more open for centuries to foreign cultures. I very much like music, and there is nothing more beautiful than Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert.
But then again the guy who destroyed Germany was Austrian....
Actually, no, he wasn't...you guys naturalized him in 1932. So technically speaking, he was Deutscher mit Migrationshintergrund. In your crime statistics he would only be classified as "Deutscher".
Bad luck, guys. :-)
"some thriving pockets on the West coast" - Perhaps to get rephrased "ONCE some thriving pockets on the West coast". At one point CA was highly innovative and valued that culture. No more. As money gravitated to grow itself via that innovation it contaminated everything becoming more important than the innovation itself. Not clear if Apple can continue to redefine itself, but the rest seem more more like drones trying to figure out how to ad more ads and track interests. Social media might be fun but of little real importance to people beyond entertainment; but now government has decided social media useful for control will we still enjoy our idle pursuits? And as real income falls can we afford idle pursuits?
It sounds so 1984 when you put it that way... :-)
(Not sure whether a happy or a sad emoji is more fitting)
Ultimate penance for WW2. Not only must the kids be subjugated into watching all things Schindler’s List (great movie but enough of making the great grand kids having their head hang in shame already), all things created from the Weimar Republic up to Hitler must be destroyed and forgotten.
Weird anecdote. I built a house in Germany and we found a WW2 bunker in the back with a large ilex (holly) growing on top of it. My Dad was in the Korean War and was buddies with a bunker architect and he helped me find 2 others, they were small stations guarding a nearby creek where a work camp was located nearby. Every single German wanted me to destroy it- immediately. Erase it. I preserved it and filled it with sand and also preserved the lovely holly.
When nationalism fails, Insane Clown Posse comitatusism will be the way.
When I was young and did that hitchhiking backpacking hostel-staying thingy, I was painfully impressed by how the European kids I met, some of whom were still high schoolers or recent grads, had the education and sophistication of people who'd already been through college. I felt so ignorant and uncouth in contrast.
Lotta good all that's done you guys. Still hard to fathom.
Sophistication is not the same as competence and common sense.
They all did seem very sensible and competent people. It's taken me lo these 50 years to learn the value of the ruffian American temperament. You gotta live long enough to learn enough.
Your anecdote reminds me of a time when I was sleeping in a train station in Paris, way back in 1990. There was a little encampment of us, among which this Canadian kid who seems older and cooler at the time.
It was a long night, so we got talking about how you needed your headlamps on in the daytime in Canada. I opined that that seemed like an excessive law, and he shut me down with an argument that landed at the time: "Well, if it saves even *one* life, it's worth it."
I was 15 at the time, so not fully able to articulate why that was wrong, even though I felt it was. Anyway, his sophistication won him the argument. And it's because of people like him that Canada is now an authoritarian shithole.
My younger self believed a lot of foolish things. It's true I resisted a lot of foolish things too, but life is complicated like that. Perhaps what's saved me is not being afraid or ashamed of changing my mind when evidence requires that to happen.
It's the lack of the maturing process in so many today that's scary. One is supposed to be an idiot about a lot of things when young. Many of us have been lucky to survive that phase. But if you get through you ought to have a broader perspective than from where you started.
This is the fact of it. A lot of self-eugenicizing going on and it may be very well for the good.
Yes but they are going to run out of morons.
And every cult movement engenders its own heretical cult retort. I would just like some normalcy. Enormous families of the conservative faithful--whatever their particular faith community--have as little appeal to me as these Manhattanite types you describe.
Two kids, mom and dad who each have their game nights with their cronies, a nice comfy unmodern sofa and a VCR/DVD player kept alive by any means necessary so the family can sit together eating pizza and watching classic Bugs Bunny cartoons together. Let us pray this breaks out everywhere before they can stop it happening.
I lived in Sweden for ten years in the 70’s and have visited on a regular basis. The societal values and direction have changed enormously during that time. It’s been pushed from the top but surprising to me was how easily the broad middle class accepted, and even embraced it.
There's a regular commenter from Sweden who writes quite illuminatingly of that and boy has that smashed some of my few remaining illusions.
You know the saying, "stupid should hurt"? Well, Germany is about to be in a lot of pain.
wonder what will happen with all their imported residents who don't get all the utopia they came for
White Germans will be forced to work like slaves to support their imported residents.
Historically, there's no part of that sentence that makes me feel warm and happy.
All these anti human policies are simple opportunistic power grabs.
The craziest part of all this is watching in real time as they resolve their cognitive dissonance by modifying their beliefs to justify these incoherent policies.
I don’t think they have cognitive dissonance at all. They’re just twisted in their desire to rule the world. They’re manipulative, greedy, and care not for the common man. Elitist and ugly. Killing us is like stepping on ants.
Everyone perceives themselves to be the hero of their own story.
When we do something that goes against our conscience, it creates cognitive dissonance.
A person of integrity would modify their behavior to align to their conscience.
These people are modifying their consciences (beliefs) to align with their behavior.
What's even more disturbing is that these obviously immoral and anti-human modified beliefs are then parrotted by the media and gain traction in the general public.
greensocks
Well now... Herr Professor.
What if a some individuals among the population have no conscience. What if these individuals are part of a larger group which also has no conscience. What if this group has over several thousands of years experienced that a conscience is an impediment to power over others, mostly non members of this group. Material success in wealth and especially money comes at a price if that is the only objective and is used to control others.
I think that you know of what group I speak of. The greed has gone to seed, by which I mean marriage among their own and thus controlled reproduction of new beings among the clan who will basically be clones of the original template.
This clan is now the boss of the planet in all aspects of human activity. They are the only movers and shakers on the planet now.. Not a single act of theirs is anything but another wound to the flesh of those not of their group. Forget about the Germans, the Anglo Saxons, the Austrians, Americans, Russians and so on, their destiny was to bleed and bleed in the name of freedom and liberty.. even the Chinese are clan owned.
The actors dragged onto the stage from these groups may have COGNITIVE DISSONANCE but the clan which I just described is not burdened by such a silly notion.
WBJ
Ok, let's make sure I understand you correctly.
You think this German chancellor and Joe Biden have no consciences because they are (checks notes) Jews?
I suppose that's a theory.... It's not one I would've gone with....
No, I don't think that.
You sir are not a historian....
WBJ
Please educate me then... Unless you just want to keep sending cryptic signals to your in-group.
I don’t buy that people change their beliefs to be consonant with evil acts. Nor do I believe that evil is percolating upwards. All these sinister ideologies are crafted at the top by the psychopaths and sociopaths who are the influencers to the lower ranks. You have it upside down.
Maybe
*they're
Germany already lost a major petrochemical manufacturer, that could not keep production up due to power and ingredient supplies. If some there do not arrest the trend, they will end up like other 'first world' areas that only have water and power for part of the day.
That is the plan, yes.
Tell that to greensocks above.
Never underestimate the power of large groups of stupid people.
-- George Carlin
There are a lot of us self thinking humans right now who realize the insanity and complete bollocks of the period we are living in. Seems we have not been able yet to do much about it?
I haven’t noticed anyone trying. We read and interact with our computer devices. Then we vote in fraudulent elections for someone to save us.
Most people are too busy with their jobs, their kids extracurricular activities and Netflix to notice anything. Sad.
Consider it is by design, even the part where you resign yourself to give up on your fellow humans.
Totally insane. I am in the process of writing a piece promoting nuclear power. That initial shutdown in Germany was what damned Angela Merkel for me.
But it’s science
Most of the discussion by politicians and the media about green or renewable energy is mind-numbingly stupid and ignorant of both economics and physics. I joke to my friends that my role in life now is to educate "climate changers" on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. If you take a cold hard, unbiased view of energy sources you would stop everything and start building nuclear power plants. The long term cost for nuclear power is about 3-4 cents per KWH if you take even a mild reduction in the regulatory overhang (vs about 30 cents for a windmill). If we had invested the money we have spent on renewable subsidies the past 25 years in nuclear power R&D and construction incentives the western world would already be at "net-zero" carbon. The readers of this blog may know this, but wind energy is and always will be the most expensive form of energy (except for the crazed boondoggles like "green" hydrogen). Solar is OK, still expensive, but not very dense, so you will have to cover up a large chunk of your country to get close to the energy you need and then shiver in the dark at night.
Absolutely yes! I've always said that if the climate activists were actually serious, they would fully embrace nuclear power as the best for the environment. That they don't do this shows what they are really about, and that their climate hysteria is merely a means to power.
I keep hoping that we can harness cheap hydrogen production via nuclear or solar furnaces.
The chant of the ignorant learned from the masters of manipulation and deceit.
There is a prevalent view from the mainly arts educated main stream media that energy is magic, and one can gain energy with less input that output. The statements made are literally mad.
Similarly net zero, a term best suited to matters of accounting, is widely flung about with open confusion as to the meaning. Again, this is literally mad.
In the UK we have not had an industrial or energy policy for more than 5 decades.
Now, this vacuum is filled with empty words - more empty dimensionless words than ever before.
As I say to friends in South Africa, the chaos they have is what we are about to see. Few in the UK or Europe are prepared to consider the prospect of power cuts lasting between 2 and 8 hours every single day, or take steps to ensure it does not happen.
I saw a graph from the 1970s somewhere showing what planners expected the sources of energy would be in Germany. Nuclear was supposed to dwarf all other energy production within about 30 years. They obviously forgot to add the "human stupidity" variable to their calculations.
Our self-inflicted destruction will never end, but it will peter out, because there will be increasingly less to be destroyed.
Forcing people to install the heat pump will probably be the last great action.
After the Ukraine war is over (it will be a hug loss for Germany, but not be mentioned at all anymore), especially if the next winter is not as warm as this one, it will become clear to most people that we will have lost much of our wealth, and are marching in a very uncertain future.
The Greens will lose their mandates, and those flashy political maneuvers will not be longer necessary.
I wager that the next government will be again SPD/CDU, who will preside over German's decline, which has been ensure years ago already via demography.
Agree, sounds realistic; I personally think a sort of Black + X + Green coalition is more likely. Decline seems unavoidable, though.
Doubtful, I think.
The vast majority is very anti-nationalistic. Even if they become more nationalistic in the next decades, demography will ensure that there will not be a majority possible.
The only way to nationalism would be a Big Man (or Women), like Trump, Le Pen, but this is not possible in our party system.
Yes, democracy turned out to be destructive, leading to totalitarism and idiocracy.
I have no idea how the future will be, but nationalism doesn't seem to be in the cards right now. Probably some form of dictatorship that calls itself nationalistic, but will be corpocratic. Maybe Elon will decide to buy Germany.
Don't think so - there is no entrenched idea of nationalism as a beneficial force in German society, and society is becoming fragmented at an increasing rate. I could imagine society turning more tribalistic and hostile to other groups and indifferent to the whole of society, the country, or the state. Still, a spicing up of things would result of this as well.
The awful thing is that these people are well used to failed states and the ensuing chaos - they HAVE survival tactics. We don't, which puts us at a serious disadvantage.
Exactly. And this is the default state of the pre-modern world and basically everywhere except in the West. The modern western model has resulted in a slow shift of loyalty from family, clan, and tribe to the state because the state became powerful to take the place of family, clan, and tribe as protector.
If states crumble, ties of blood are left and can often be relied on (which of course means another kind of obligation, much more personal and, possibly, restraining than between citizen and state where the citizens pays taxes and the state will make sure the citizen gets childcare).
You kulaks are in the way of the glorious future. No cheap energy for you!
You have to stop thinking of this as "stupid people doing stupid things". This is intended destruction of Europe's largest economy. The WEF/Oligarch/Technocrat goal is power and control over the general population. China without the totalitarian "bunny suits". On any issue, just ask yourself "What side of an issue will result in the government getting more power, and consumers having less?" Then just figure the evil ones are working towards that. Simple. It saves all the time of writing things like "Don't they know their policy ____ won't work? Are they stupid?" They want a new techno-aristocracy. Greed. Power hungry. They don't care how they get it. And Europe keeps showing it has no will to actually fight back. Just whine and complain about more lost economic and personal freedom. It's so predictable.
I traced all the steps out for you, of how this came about. It was done to appease specific German cultural and political constituencies, and not from the outside.
If there are broader forces at work here, it's the fact of the rapidly ageing population and the enormous amounts of political influence accumulating with people who are retiring, withdrawing from public life, and no longer really thinking about the future except in moral terms.
Yes, and this demographic in politics/public life don't NEED jobs or favourable conditions for starting a family any more - they're over that phase of their life. If they don't have children (and many German politicians don't have children), they may be completely out of touch with their children and grandchildren's needs.
indeed, we are simply seeing the political consequences of an aging population, of the dominant voting bloc being people who no longer work, are worried about their health, who think that they are paying more and sacrificing for their grandchildren (in this way the ‚Energiewende‘ is brilliant propaganda, as it suggests pain in the moment as an investment in future generations ).
that is only the top layer, there are other forces at work, centuries in the making
Nah, it's just Critical Theory, doing exactly what it's intended to do. It's been doing it for decades.
critical theory is not why we are ending nuclear power in germany, no.
You just wrote in detail how it makes no sense, yet you cling to the idea they're just "dolts botching shit', as a fat guy pretending to be young woman used to say?
Can trace it back all the way to the old Soviet Union. Marxists wanted to control everything. The leadership was "enlightened". All were "equal" but some more "equal" than others. Saul Alinsky learned many of their techniques. He put it in a book, "Rules For Radicals". It reads like a primer for the Left. Hillary studied under Saul. Obama studied under an Alinsky acolyte. Move forward to the late 1980's. Soviet Union crumbling. Yet there were still people here in the U.S. saying their way of life was just as good as ours. Then the wall came down. Those Marxists here in the U.S. and abroad didn't just say, "Oh well, guess we were wrong. Let's adopt capitalism!" No, instead they radicalized the "green" movement into the "Green" movement. They were "watermelons" (Red on the inside, green on the outside.). They continued to fight capitalism and individual freedom but from a different angle, via anthropomorphizing the environmental. They used useful idiots like Al Gore and Prince Charles and Bono to scare up the population. They worked on getting the 'greenies' to look at nuclear power as bad, instead of as the best source of clean energy. Then, to use another Alinksy/Clinton cronie's saying, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste". I was working at a Japanese-owned company when Fukushima occurred. When there after I saw Germany say it was moving away from nuclear, I knew then that German leadership had been corrupted and co-opted. It was only a matter of time before it would do serious harm to itself. It's not about voters getting older. It is about a lack of good education, not the garbage people are force fed through all levels. There is a lack of wisdom. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Too many of the people of the West decided to trade God in for anything but. People now know more about trivialities than natural law, true rights, and self determination. When they think of "Rights" now, it revolves around sexual deviancy and license. The "Watermelons" will continue "winning" for their agenda, because the fight isn't in the general populace any more. We see it in the U.S. Unelected Biden and his controllers will continue to push via legit and illegitimate means the Marxist agenda, knowing the Republicans have no real power now, and lost the game when they didn't push back against the steal in 2020, nor the voter fraud uncovered in many key states. They foolishly think they will win in 2024, but the key states to win in our electoral system have become more hardened Leftist and more easy to cheat. They only question is which emergencies come along in the second half of 2023, and 2024, to further erode citizen freedom here and in Europe. The Left knows the Right won't really fight. Read the Alinsky book and use that as the ruler to judge future events.
Exactly. That’s why it’s painful to read essays in which this pivotal fact is not recognized. THEY ARE TRYING TO KILL US. Starve us, freeze us, take away our jobs and income, reverse our life expectancy which is already on the decline, deprive us of quality medical care, tax us into oblivion, mandate poisonous vaccinations (oh wait, that’s an oxymoron), pervert our sexuality, hamper our reproduction, kill the unborn, brainwash our children in degenerate public schools.......
then why are they bringing coal power back online to compensate for the lack of nuclear energy?