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January
16
2023

Target: Civilization
Jeffrey Tucker

Two weeks ago, Southwest Airlines had a massive meltdown but they weren’t the only airline affected. Flight delays ruined vacations and travel plans for millions the world over. It was never clear why.

Oh sure, blame the weather but that has become a strangely opaque excuse. You look outside and the weather seems fine but then someone snaps at you: Can’t you see that the snow is bad in Buffalo?

So on it goes and when the weather excuse runs out, they blame the airlines themselves. And I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around. One party that always seems to evade responsibility is the FAA itself.

The other morning the FAA itself grounded all planes in the U.S. for three hours. Why? It was some computer glitch. We still don’t get it really. It sure felt like a lockdown. Maybe it was all deliberate to get us used to a system that doesn’t work. Maybe we’ll travel less. Maybe we’ll just give up.

OK, you can call me paranoid, and maybe I’m wrong in my speculations about this incident but look at the bigger picture, whether it is forcing electric cars on us or floating the idea of banning gas stoves. The bottom line is that there are people out there who want to control how we live.

Burn No More

The latest thing on the chopping block is the gas stove. The Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission has floated the idea of a national ban on them based on some cockamamie study that they cause health and respiratory problems.

You say that they can never get away with it? Think again. These regulators are unbearably powerful. They have every intention of carrying out their wishes, and are enjoying every minute of it. They have disdain for Congress and scoff at your protests. They believe they alone are in charge and you have nothing to say about it.

Think of all the stuff they have already wrecked. Look around at your household appliances. Energy-use and water restrictions have degraded the washing machine, refrigerator, dishwasher, the shower, the toilet, clothes dryers, steamers and irons, dishwashers, freezers, and so much more.

Even the refrigerators are shrinking in size, all in the interest of institutionalizing austerity.

The clothes washers no longer use enough water to get things clean. The result is that our clothing is dull and dirty compared only to a generation ago. You can add all the liquids you want and it still won’t work. Sure, you can add bleach but that only wrecks the fabric.

When was the last time you saw sheets that were truly bright white? There is a reason for this. It’s all deliberate, and caused by overregulation of appliances. Really clean absolutely requires roiling hot water and lots of it, plus phosphates to whisk the soap away. Without that, you get what you have today: dull and dirty everything.

Sadists in Charge

All this should be a clue about what’s going on. There are sadists in charge of the regulatory apparatus. It’s not really about saving water and energy. Even if it were, that alone would be objectionable. The whole point of energy and water is to serve the human experience, not to impose privation on the planet.

Then there’s the attack on the gas-powered car, which allows us to drive long distances even in cold weather and fully control the machine. The electric vehicle is another matter. It makes us wholly dependent on the grid and limits our mobility. In cold weather, it is worse.

You end up having to stop every few hours to beg for a charge and wait another hour if you are lucky enough to find a working machine. After a while, demoralization sets in and you decide it is not worth it.

Sure, there are things you can do to outsmart this imposed impoverishment, such as hack your showerhead with a corkscrew to remove the flow stopper. But there is no fixing the toilet, the dishwasher (which now runs for hours just to leave spots), or the refrigerator (which will break in five years anyway).

In time, they want now to get rid of your ability to cook with fire, thus removing from our lives a crucial primal connection to our roots and innate desire to be around it. Ever sat by a bonfire? Everyone stares for hours because it meets an inner need. No one stands around an induction stove. They’re downright creepy.

The only technology these people approve of is a thoroughly censored smartphone. They want everything to work like that: centralized, anodyne, and feeding you nonstop propaganda.

How Will We Cook Our Bugs?

The very notion that an electric stove is better than a gas one would be disputed by any competent chef in the entire world. Instead of cultivating instincts based on what you see in the flames, you must trust some digital display to know the temperature, which is absurd. I can’t prove it but the heat itself seems different, like the difference between incandescence and fluorescence. One seems real, the other fake.

I’ve cooked on both and absolutely dread electric stoves. There are loads of dishes that require real fire, all of which would be impossible to make otherwise. I was just in a Mexican restaurant that put their chefs on display using stoves with flames that lap up 14 inches over the air and sear the fresh-made pasta as it is swished around in the pan. There is simply no way to do this otherwise.

Fine, if you want some new tech, great. Go for it. But don’t pretend that you are really cooking. You are buying into the baloney. Also, I’ve met very few people who have used both gas and electric who would honestly choose electric. But if they do, again, fine. But don’t force that choice on everyone else.

That regulators say it is bad for our health tells all that you need to know about them. They want us living in a fully sanitized, boring, and unworkable environment in which we never have contact with anything real.

Above all else, they are somehow out to demonize fossil fuels, as if electricity doesn’t use coal too and the trucks that transport it and deliver it don’t use gas.

They have even degraded the basic gas can so that it no longer works properly. Oh, we should also mention that gas itself, which now includes corn which is sticky, wrecks engines, and causes the gas itself to degrade over time.

Burning Down the House

Do you see what’s happening here? It’s all deliberate. All the things we love and that make life grand are being taken away from us. The larger truth here is that this war on civilization has been going on for decades. History is supposed to move forward with ever higher living standards.

That progress has stopped!

The trajectory must end now. Decades of regulations need to be repealed. The whole population needs to rise up and say no to the forced austerity and rule by the elite cadre of techno-primitivists. They have driven down the standard of living by force and are far from done with us yet.

Some good news from the GOP-controlled House: they’re talking about abolishing the IRS and maybe the income tax itself. Neither will happen of course, but such ideas were never in the public sphere in my lifetime.

There’s a mighty revolt afoot in the land today. It’s about time!

 



 

 

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research.

He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email.  Tw | FB | LinkedIn

 

 

 

   

  

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