147 Comments
User's avatar
Intelligent Dasein's avatar

Of course, most normal people understood this at the time, but the Eurocrats really are that stupid.

Ray Noack's avatar

I understood it in 1979 when Jane Fonda and Jackson Brown chained themselves to the Diablo Nuclear plant and Hollywood followed with “ The China Syndrome “ . Most people are not smart or educated . They can be led anywhere . Covid ? Transgenderism?

Henrybowman's avatar

His namesake on the Supreme Court?

Epaminondas's avatar

How dare you question the "experts"! /s

Then they wonder why people are losing trust in institutions around the world. Maybe because they are constantly being exposed as being incompetent?

Freedom Fox's avatar

The "experts" did NotSee what was coming. Or maybe them NotSee'ing has been the plan the whole time? Maybe we should start calling them NotSee's? Of course any similarity in the phonetics of such a term is purely coincidental...right?

Ray Noack's avatar

Yes but the people follow like sheep

Gary Edwards's avatar

🎶 its a hard habit to break 🎵

Henrybowman's avatar

When I was young, I thought our Founders' limitation of the franchise to property-owning males was tragically undemocratic. The older I get, the wiser they become.

The Nemeth Report's avatar

This is what happens when a government is beholden to the Green movement. Look at the recent Baden-Württemberg election.

grrlrocks's avatar

What that really an "election" or a S-election???

Gym+Fritz's avatar

Moot point - you’ll never know. No nuclear reactors for you.

Gary Edwards's avatar

Eurocrats? More like Eurotards.

Andrea's avatar

They’re not stupid, they’re evil. The whole point of the exercise was to control the masses.

Franz Kafka's avatar

The tragedy of Democracy is that it must encourage stupidity to survive, and in the end, stupidity overwhelms it.

Kevin Fedon's avatar

I don’t know that to be true about ‘normal people’ even today. I reference this as evidence: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/stupid-people-in-baden-wurttemberg

Ray Noack's avatar

Unfortunately “ normal “ means not very bright and poorly educated

Tardigrade's avatar

'This reduction in the share of nuclear was a choice. And in hindsight, it was as strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emission power. This should change'

Mistakes Were Made! Hopefully you will not remember they were made by me!

Epaminondas's avatar

Don't worry, they'll fall back on the trusty "it was based on the best information available at the time" canard soon enough.

And what's up with Merz? "That decision is irreversible" - really? Did some disaster wipe out all knowledge of nuclear power around the world? Is some divine force stopping Germany from building nuclear power plants?

MST's avatar

It implies that Merz thinks his only chance of surviving the next few years lies with the Greens.

Mitch's avatar

it means that the CCP owns your government leaders and they don't want their industries to have to compete with Germany on equal ground.

Henrybowman's avatar

It means that issues those in power feel strongly about aren't "safe" to leave to democracy to decide.

grrlrocks's avatar

The "divine force" is the puppet masters at the top. But, they, too, are not truly immune from replacement.

Franz Kafka's avatar

All guns have been confiscated. The last ones, in the hands of Canadians are about to be "Voluntarily" surrendered on pain of 5 to 10 years of imprisonment.

Carney knows what Net Zero will be like. People will be angry and dying for the ordinary man will be preferable to a life of slavery and poverty.

KHP's avatar

“that decision is irreversible.”

How a person gets to this level of insanity is a mystery.

How a person with this level of insanity is allowed anywhere near the levers of power is a mystery on steroids.

grrlrocks's avatar

Merz is simply following orders... And, he got placed in that position BECAUSE he would follow orders. As the saying goes, "follow the money".

Indrek Sarapuu's avatar

I was about to comment using that exact quote!

To actually state this is simply insane...

SCA's avatar

Do you think having all of them drawn and quartered would be a little bit of overkill?

[if this comment is perilous to you I will gladly delete it]

SCA's avatar

You should always imagine me saying these things out loud instead of just typing them out on the cyberwebs.

Gym+Fritz's avatar

Total lack of accountability. They can make the biggest, most costly, mistakes conceivable, and then, innocently smile, 20 years later, and say “mistakes were made”. No one should hold her position for more than two years, but I think she wants to do a Putin.

SCA's avatar

They've made it very costly for anyone to hold them accountable. That's why you don't wait for the mice to take the second bite out of the provisions in your pantry.

Franz Kafka's avatar

I think that that kind of performative measure for the first 50 to 100 will be salutary for anyone who thinks of following in their footsteps. After that, ordinary execution will suffice.

SCA's avatar

I'd say they've got admirably firm kishkes if they can hold out beyond the third.

John Wygertz's avatar

When AfD wins, the unthinkable will have become thinkable; the impossible, possible; and the irreversible, reversible. Can't happen soon enough.

ZuZu’s Petals's avatar

It was a strategic mistake - not “we made a strategic mistake.”

Jack Gallagher's avatar

Yes - maintain third person passive voice at all costs!!

Danielle's avatar

“It wasn’t me, nobody saw a thing “. Bart Simpson 🙄

CamperCO's avatar

Germany continuing its path of enshitification.

Viv's avatar

German government makes irreversible decision, continues catastrophic fight in face of obvious impending doom. History might not repeat itself but it rhymes. Badly.

Danno's avatar

Well then, I guess the answer is coal.

Henrybowman's avatar

How many BTUs in a bureaucrat?

Jack Gallagher's avatar

"That decision is irreversible." Whaaaaaaaaaaat????? (insert my best impression of comedian Ron White here).

The U.S. military has an expression that applies here: don't get stuck on stupid.

Nicholas Edward Bednarski, MD's avatar

“ you might be a redneck….”

Tardigrade's avatar

Technologically difficult and expensive, probably. But "irreversible"?

SmithFS's avatar

It's not technologically difficult, compared to routine tech mass produced today. Far simpler than a Tesla, for instance. The only reason it's expensive is because our governments have deliberately made it so by extreme regulatory interventions. Using the scam: "SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY", as a means to blockade what is the safest form of energy generation on the planet.

I was once a member of a union, and we'd use the "SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY" scam to push management into signing a good contract without having to go on strike. You can slow a job down 4X easily by using the safety scam. Do everything by the book, no shortcuts.

KHP's avatar

But even if expensive, that doesn't make it an unthinkable choice if the alternatives are worse.

Nicholas Edward Bednarski, MD's avatar

Here’s a puzzle from my own ignorance— why don’t the nuclear reactors on board Navy ships and submarines qualify as safe, affordable, SMNRs?

Henrybowman's avatar

Other than the fact that any military system that works really well gets classified for it?

Andrew Devlin's avatar

That decision is irreversible only because they fear a backlash from greenies!

pobrecollie's avatar

Why are the greenies against nuclear?

SmithFS's avatar

Because the Green Agenda, now called UN Agenda 2030, never really was about "green". It always was about subjugation, impoverishment, control, deindustrialization and depopulation. Club-of-Rome, WEF "you will own nothing" goals. Last thing on Earth they want is real solutions. Just listen to what their stooges say:

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) president Philip Mountbatten who stated in a 1981 interview with People magazine:

“Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We’re in for a major disaster if it isn’t curbed—not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they’ll do. We have no option. If it isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily.”..."

" Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it. "

Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

" The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet. "

Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

" Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. "

Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

" A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environ­ment in North America and to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation "

John Holdren Obama Science Czar

Andrew Devlin's avatar

Beats me, it’s the cleanest energy source available when constructed properly!

Slamy's avatar

Because what the greenies want isn’t really clean energy, it’s the dismantling of capitalism and western civilization.

SmithFS's avatar

Took the words right out of my mouth.

William Francis Shadwick's avatar

Decades ago, Douglas Adams proposed the B Ark as a solution to the problems created by useless people gumming up the world. It is no longer clear that we can contemplate this without double letter Arks.

Tardigrade's avatar

I did always think that was a brilliant proposal.

But I'm biased—Douglas Adams is the closest thing I have to a personal deity.

Mike G's avatar

It’s much better to rely on energy pipelines that your allies can blow up for you

Mitch's avatar

and nary a word of complaint

Cynthia M's avatar

So your car is speeding toward a cliff. You've always saved your brakes by slowly rolling to a stop. So your logic tells you to go ahead and careen off the cliff, knowing you've at least saved the wear on your brakes.

"THE GERMAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS ALREADY DECIDED TO PHASE OUT NUCLEAR ENERGY” AND “THAT DECISION IS IRREVERSIBLE.”

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

TriTorch's avatar

It wasn't a mistake, to find the reason behind any government policy, look from the outcome backwards. That outcome is always the goal from the initialization of the agenda—Everything else in between - as the government fumbles the ball over and over like a class-clown idiot leading in a straight line to the horrific result - is theater.

When a country in Europe shuts down a power plant they usually do not just take it offline, and instead deliberately reduce it to rubble so it cannot be restarted:

The leadership of Europe has brainwashed their citizens into believing that green energy is feasible when they know full well it is not. Additionally, they've convinced their population that if they do not act by shutting these power plants down, climate change is going to kill them all.

So they're brainwashing their own countrymen to manifest conditions that will kill them, while promising them salvation for doing so.

eugyppius's avatar

unintended consequences, contingencies also happen. a lot of policies have unforeseen outcomes, so you can’t just reason backwards from what happens.