March 15, 2013

The Underpants Gnomes' environmental - immigration strategy

A commenter replies to environmentalist Bill McKibben's call to replace white Americans with Mexicans for the good of the environment:
Cail Corishev said... 
There is method to his madness. He won't say it outright, but knee-jerk Democratic votes, he presumes, will bring liberal Democratic policies including, presumably, environmental ones. 
Exactly. Liberals are much better than conservatives at keeping their eye on the prize, and they know that they can't work toward that prize unless they're in power. With apologies to Futurama [South Park?], their plan looks like this: 
1. Take power
2. ?
3. Live in Utopia 
They know that if they can accomplish #1, #3 is just a matter of time, because #2 is just minor details that they can surely work out because they're just so smart and pretty. 
So it doesn't matter if they have to flood the country with unskilled mouths to feed and criminals, or if they have to subvert the voting process, or if they have to destroy the Constitution and the balance of power between the branches of government, or if all their efforts tank the economy. They can fix all that in step #2, no problem. But only if they get step #1 done first.

Perhaps, although that 3 Step Strategy sounds like a rationalization for a more primal motivation: plain old Step 1 -- taking power for the sake of taking power. I've used this analogy a million times, but LSU doesn't want to defeat Alabama in football to Bring Peace to the SEC or any other high-minded rationalization. LSU wants to defeat Alabama because LSU wants to win and LSU wants Alabama to lose. (The good news about college football is that there isn't much disinformation about the Higher Purpose of LSU beating Alabama. And, LSU and Alabama agree to reciprocal limitations to make things more sporting: no machine guns, players must theoretically be students, players can only be paid in free leases on cars and the like.)

In contrast, much of politics consists of people who really want to defeat the other team for perfectly natural human nature reasons, but spend vast amounts of effort convincing themselves the other team deserves to lose. Therefore, even obvious cheating, like giving millions of foreign ringers the vote, is morally justified in The Big Picture because the fate of the world depends upon you winning the next election.

I'm reminded of a famous quote from 1984:
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.

Orwell turned out to be wrong about secret policemen: over the course of the 20th Century, even they tended to get tired of killing and beating massive numbers of people. 

But Orwell's real subject, the one he knew best from introspection and socializing, was intellectual journalist mind (e.g., Eric Blair). And, for his kind, he hasn't been proven wrong yet about the metaphorical "intoxication of power, ... the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless."

Granted, vastly swelling the population of America with disposable diaper-dropping Mexicans in the name of protecting the environment sounds pretty prima facie stupid. But that's not the point. The point is to grab any available tool to hammer The Enemy: i.e., other white people whom you find disagreeable. 

And that never gets old.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

In a rare moment of candor, senior Labour Party apparatchik, Andrew Neather, admitted as much, by writing an article in the London Evening Standard in which the divulged the minutes of cabinet meetings in which the Labour Party's (unannounced and kept secret until the last minute), policy of unlimited, uncontrolled massive third world immigration were discussed. The phrase 'rubbing Britain's nose in diversity' was bandied about and also the notion that only in 'a truly multicultural Britain' will minorities feel 'safe' and 'racism will cease'.
The irony is that due to mass public discontent and the UKIP phenomenom (from which all UK political parties are running scared), the Labour Party has done an apparent Damascene conversion and repudiated the policy of 3 years ago.
The leopard does not change its spots.

Bobby said...

Exactly. The wrong kind of white people are the nail that needs to be hammered. Once we're in our place with no real power, then Step #3 is just a matter of time, plus they'll always have to keep hammering us to keep us down. They get both.

They blame us for everything that's wrong. Defeating us and keeping us down is the ultimate moral cause in their belief system; it can only lead to Step #3. It's insane, but they just come right out and say it in their writings.

Rasputin said...

Off topic:

Steve,

Apparently google reader is being discontinued soon
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/03/google-reader-discontinued/

I suspect that might affect this blog's traffic significantly, since there aren't many good options and a lot of people might drop off due to not being willing to expend the time to find a new solution.

Maybe an announcement might mitigate the situation?

PA said...

This is a strange kind of tribalism, with no apparent tribal markings. A far-faced redneck Bill Clinton is an apex-liberal and a cosmopolitan ivy leaguer Jared Taylor is a Wrong Kind Of White Person.

Say, a hypothetical white person who happens to be statistically the most average individual in America - feels strongly in support of all the liberal agenda items. His counterpart across the county is strongly against all of the liberal agenda items. Neither man expresses his opinions. So which one is the right kind of white person and which is the one that needs to be hammered?

What are the visible tribal markings in this intra-white war? Are any of them innate? What if all of us wrong kind of white people declared ourselves liberals but continued going about our lives as before.... will libs declare 3. Utopia "mission accomplished" and call off population replacement?

Anonymous said...

Step 2, always with these types, is to get rid of personal freedom and pass laws that force people to think and act in the ways that produce the utopia du jour.

Tom in VA said...

Donald Trump in a lucid moment:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57574514/trump-immigration-reform-a-suicide-mission-for-gop/

Anonymous said...

" The point is to grab any available tool to hammer The Enemy: i.e., other white people whom you find disagreeable. "

Couldn't agree more, Steve. The more I look at things, the more this seems to be ends of modern day leftism.

jody said...

this is the same argument i made to a mining engineer in colorado who i talk to sometimes. he's specializes in coal, and has worked all around the world for 30 years in various mines. he spent 10 years in australia helping them develop several mines, which australian companies now use to export millions of tons of coal per year to china. politically he is neutral-to-slighty positive on the mexican immivasion, and objects whenever i mention that it's a catastrophe for the US. then i just say stuff like this:

me: "More mexicans means less coal."

him: "That makes no sense at all."

yes, it's not a direct, 1 step jump. in his head, it's probably something like this:

more mexicans = more consumers = more demand for electictricity = more coal!

it takes a few steps of reasoning to understand why it's not like that.

more mexicans = more democrat votes = more liberals in power = less coal.

do mexicans think about coal power plants? do they stay up at night, quaking with anger about how much they hate those combustible black rocks, and can't wait until election day to march straight to the voting booth and vote democrat, to make sure those horrible coal power plants die?

of course not. average mexicans barely think about anything. they just vote democrat because it helps them personally, then they go back to getting fat and working some unskilled labor job for 12 bucks an hour.

my friend is a lifetime democrat, and voted for obama in 2008. he is shocked and dismayed at how much obama has attacked his industry and made it hard for him to do any projects or business (after saying this is exactly what he would do, making me think my friend is not the most politically savvy voter sometimes). my friend actually voted for romney in 2012, the first time he's ever voted republican in his life.

hey, this guy comes from a typical middle class irish family where WASPS and the republicans are considered their mortal enemies, a generational voting pattern passed on for decades.

maybe that will start to change now. it's too late to make any difference of course. but one of steve's previous posts about wild liberal success turning some previously reliable european american democrats into republicans, is on the mark. i've seen these types of guys "waking up" to how hostile the current democrat leadership is to middle class, hard working, tax paying, church going european americans.

Anonymous said...

That was my path, for one.

jody said...

the underwear gnomes strategy does not really work, as i've pointed out many times. liberals don't realize their jurisdiction ends at the border. they have no control over how much coal the rest of the world burns. worldwide coal use went...UP in 2012, by 9%. and it will keep going up every year, far into the future, despite anything liberals do. this is why i don't even think about man made climate change. it might be happening, it might not. if it is happening though, there's nothing anybody can do about it.

plus, there's PLENTY of humans. 7 billion is more than enough. it's NOT AT ALL a bad thing if the climate changed enough that the earth's ability to support humans goes down. liberals act like a 2 degree C increase in global temperature by 2100 is the end of the world. in reality it's mostly a non-event. in fact, won't that make it easier and more pleasant, for "the vibrant" to colonize places like europe, canada, russia, and the northern US? nice, comfy, mild winters, perfect for the brazilian citizens of the socialist police states we're heading towards.

in a similar vein, liberals ALWAYS talk about shutting down coal power plants, but they never do it. for decades, this is the pattern:

1) talk about ending coal during the election
2) get into office
3) realize they had no idea how incredibly important all those coal power plants were to making the entire country work
4) stop talking about coal for the remainder of time in office

now, however, obama might actually be the first liberal in any country in the world who actually will shut down coal power plants en masse. but, he's not doing it because that's his plan, or because he's implementing his green agenda, or because he's following through on his campaign promises. if that were the case, it would have happened during his first term.

no, the only thing which allows this to happen is conservatives figuring out how to dramatically increase the natural gas supply, which makes it economical to replace 50 year old, technologically out of date coal power plants, with new combined cycle natural gas plants. because it's cheaper to operate the gas power plants at this point.

it has nothing at all to do with anything liberals are doing or anything they ever came up with. it's happening due to simple economics from conservative science and engineering.

Brett_McS said...

Underpants Gnomes, and it was South Park.

Harold said...

Has anyone attempted to make a projection of when the majority of democrat voters will be minorities?

Inner Party Member said...

"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

slumber_j said...

"Orwell's real subject, the one he knew best from introspection and socializing, was intellectual journalist mind"

This reminds me of my fascination with Tina Brown and particularly Graydon Carter. To me it's intoxicating to watch Carter (especially...Brown too of course, apart from some details) run from Spy-Magazinish hatred of the entitled to the power-worshipping posture he's adopted in his decadence.

I mean, just look at the fucker! Kissing ass all day long now, when only a couple of decades ago there he was excoriating the same people and those who lauded them. Power-worship has seldom been so open or so hypocritical.

And there was Tina Brown back in the day, turning The New Yorker into a house organ for the rhythmic admiration of Sumner Redstone or whomever. Gross.

These are the supporters of the new elite, aspiring to be elite themselves, and they're utterly disgusting.

Anonymous said...

This commentary overlooks the old Leninist standby: heighten the contradictions. Though that probably can't be at the top of McKibben's oversized head for simple reasons of mental consistency, I'm sure the modern enviro movement is quite saturated with 68ers and New Left types who took up that maxim in their mother's milk.

Anonymous said...

jody: I think you've hit on the reason why turn-of-the-century goo-goo policy management is basically impossible now. Everyone (esp. economics professors) is subscribed to a deterministic theory of what the future holds going from A to B, of course backed by dozens of its own private Gladwells. Nobody approaches a routine problem of uncertain outcomes with an eye toward placating the stakeholders as best possible, in terms of balancing their disparate risks, and then just making the judgment call. The modern ambulance-chaser world inhibits any such kind of social management that usually fell to statesman types in the past.

Whiskey said...

PA asks what are the class markings of the elite. Charles Murray in Coming Apart: White America 1960-2010 does a pretty good job of marking them.

The live in "SuperZips," where everyone went Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford. Clinton, check! They are in the upper 1% of income. Check for Clinton again. They work in Government, or Media, or Politics, or Law. Clinton again, check! Their neighboring zip codes are much like the SuperZips, with high incomes and high education and concentration in Law, Media, Government, and Politics. These guys live in NYC, DC, LA, and perhaps San Francisco.

That's it. Admission is fairly fluid, guys like Obama can easily get admitted, so too rappers like Jay-Z, via his astounding wealth (>500 Million) and fame, despite lack of education.

Who cannot GET IN is: those Whites who did not go to HYPS. Those without a high level job in government, media, law, or Politics. Donald Trump, for example, is NOT a member. Neither is say, Mitt Romney. Religious feelings, entrepreneurship unmitigated by Bill and Melinda Gates anti-White guy stuff and charities are no-go signs.

wren said...

The Zerohedge guy said something today that I have been vaguely thinking recently.

"The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is clearly sliding toward unavoidable bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are transitioning from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled. We are one crisis away from a police state. All the powers are in place. Someone will flip the switch. Whether a Cyber Attack, escalating Currency War tensions or a 'terrorist' attack by indebted college youth, it is only a matter of time and circumstance..."

Anonymous said...

"the Labour Party has done an apparent Damascene conversion and repudiated the policy of 3 years ago"

Not at all. We've had this before, several times. It's just a soundbite to keep a few more people onside. Fool me once ... but they have the megaphone, in the BBC.

Anyway, the Project is almost complete. In England there's a sudden shortage of primary school places to cope with the non-English baby boom of the last ten years.

The policies of the last 40 years have, intentionally or unintentionally, made things better for the elite and worse for Joe Average. Only one step remains - the abolition of the Welfare State.

http://ukcommentators.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/open-borders-make-eventual-abolition-of.html

Bryan Caplan : "Diversity undermines solidarity. People don't mind paying high taxes to support people "like them." But free money for "the other" leads to resentment and political pushback. If you're a social democrat, this implies a tragic trade-off between social justice for natives and social justice for potential immigrants. But if you're a libertarian, the opposite is true. The welfare state doesn't make open borders impossible. It's open borders that makes the eventual abolition of the welfare state imaginable."

http://ukcommentators.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-end-of-journey-will-soon-be-in-sight.html

"The greatest prize for the very rich would be the total dismantling of the welfare state and the removal of its consequent tax burden ... It's a lot easier to justify a welfare state when the recipients are "people like us" and therefore easier to identify with and to think "there but for the grace of God". Social solidarity among working people, whether it be support for a welfare state or a trades union, will always be stronger in the absence of cultural, religious or racial divisions.

So were I an evil capitalist billionaire looking to reduce the power of trades unions and destroy the welfare state, I'd start by funding Left groups supporting mass immigration.

I'd encourage such groups, and left-wing lawyers too, to support the most outrageous abuses of the welfare system, knowing that it would discredit welfare in the eyes of ordinary working people"


Laban

Snippet said...

I used to think this was paranoid, knowing any number of non-power hungry, sincere liberals who really do want to help the disadvantaged and all that good stuff. But those sincere, well-intentioned, productive members of society are not, of course, the problem. The power grabbers, and morons like McKibben are - the ones who really do want power and control, and who are being give it one election at a time really do seem to be pursuing an unseemly amount of control.

Mr. Anon said...

"wren said...

The Zerohedge guy said something today that I have been vaguely thinking recently.

""The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is clearly sliding toward unavoidable bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are transitioning from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled. We are one crisis away from a police state. All the powers are in place. Someone will flip the switch. Whether a Cyber Attack, escalating Currency War tensions or a 'terrorist' attack by indebted college youth, it is only a matter of time and circumstance...""

I think this is very possible. The 2,700 MRAPs, billion+ rounds of ammo, and TSA conditioning aren't for nothing. We do not now have a police-state, but the machinery for one has been put in place, and could be - as Durden says - turned on with the flick of a switch.

Anonymous said...

my friend is a lifetime democrat, and voted for obama in 2008. he is shocked and dismayed at how much obama has attacked his industry and made it hard for him to do any projects or business (after saying this is exactly what he would do, making me think my friend is not the most politically savvy voter sometimes). my friend actually voted for romney in 2012, the first time he's ever voted republican in his life.Well, some of the complains about Obama by business are true like the halth care plan but business just love to have no taxes and regulations these days, hence the growth of using illegals or moving to a state cheaper to do business or overseas.

Anonymous said...

The Will to Power in the journalistic mind: I can't think of a single MSNBC host that does not validate this thesis.