Dr. Changebluff: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The CO2. (Part I)

For 28 of my 30 years on this planet, I have been an ardent supporter of theories of global warming and, later, “global climate change.” Well, during the years in the beginning I wasn’t really an ardent supporter of anything, but I accepted the wisdom of the prevailing theory of the day and had no particular objections.

I had long been taught those theories (in my youth it was only “global warming”) exclusively and had no idea that any dissent was possible, much less credible. I distinctly remember covering the chapter on “the greenhouse effect” in Mrs. Williams 7th grade science class, although I was already familiar with virtually every one of the definitions and concepts already. I also distinctly remember watching the tailpipe of a parent’s car idle at the bus stop one winter morning in second grade and trying to imagine how much greenhouse gas they were putting out (although the alarm was being raised on aerosol cans equally with cars back then, or so it seemed to me).

In fact, when I started to become more politically involved after the 2000 election, it was a point of disagreement between myself and the conservative “pundits” who seemed to have a more sensible philosophy on government, economy and foreign policy in virtually all other areas. Another personal experience I distinctly remember was a 2007 conversation with my brother in which I expressed concerns that conservative voices – which had wonderful ideas that would increase our prosperity, security and prestige – were relegating themselves to irrelevancy by clinging to such a ridiculous position as that of a global climate change skeptic.

But the more research I did, the more convinced I became that the skeptics at least had concerns that both seemed reasonable and, rather than being addressed in scientific manner, were simply ignored by the western governments, scientists beholden to those governments, and the education and media institutions that I was finding were even more beholden to those governments.

The more I looked, the more “manmade global climate change” seemed to be a house of cards. Sure, once the fundamental assumptions are accepted, it all seems very consistent and reasonable, but I have yet to come across a “manmade global climate change” supporter who has ever questioned or looked into those fundamental assumptions apart from pulling up the government-produced reports used to justify their bids to increase regulations (the very things being impeached by the objections).

In the coming weeks, I intend to walk you through my journey, as best as I can remember the major twists and turns that it took, in an effort to explain how I personally went from global warming supporter to skeptic.

Ahead of the Curve

I’d just like to note that I was ahead of the curve on The Matrix metaphor:

The US Free Market Allows Others To Practice Socialized Medicine

You know, places like the UK and Canada manage to make due with socialized healthcare.  But anybody who knows even the slightest bit about how those systems work knows that it can take years to get a GP, and most citizens are reduced to going to clinics and hospitals whose efficiency makes the waits at even our overtaxed ERs look like the local fast food drive-thru.

So what do they do when they want medical care but can’t afford to wait for their governments without, you know, dying?

They come to the US and pay out of pocket.

So it’s good to know that when we have a gravely flawed system like theirs, we can still get quality healthcare by going to the United – oh, damn…that’s us…

Well, at least wealthy Canadians can go to private clinics and buy private health care (provided they can afford it after paying for the insane state system, one which its architect  has declared a failure and calls for re-privatizing).  So, at least those with money to burn can still shop around for better choices and buy the care they believe best serves them.

Oh, damn…maybe not…looking at the now-infamous “Page 16″ of the health care bill discussion draft, it seems that private insurers in the US will be prohibited for signing up new customers for, well, everything.

Now, the whole plan is a two-step to a single payer system (which is a disaster EVERYWHERE it’s tried, without exception). And considering the mentality of those given unelected yet powerful positions, like Pres. Obama’s “Science Czar,” there are some very dark things on the horizon for the sick, poor, elderly and disabled.

Once a government-controlled single payer healthcare system is in place, the next step to “control costs” is full-blown eugenics….

And I’m sorry, but given the Democratic Party’s mentality in the last 15 years, and their respect for life in general, if you think it will be any other way you’re absolutely dreaming…

This is nothing less than a struggle for our very survival and the survival of the Republic based on the personal liberties and rights for which so many have bled and died.  It is not very often that a person or organization strikes me as literally “evil,” but I’m afraid that the Democrats are getting dangerously close to joining the ranks of Al Quaeda, the Nazi’s and Caligula.

And beware – even if this particular bill is killed, ANY bill which involves a “public option” will put us on that same road, just at a different speed.

If the Democrats continue to get what they want, there will no longer be an America to save.  Sure, the borders may be there, and the flag and an all-powerful government administrating an Orwellian nanny-state from Washington DC, but “America” will effectively be dead.

And once that happens, the dark age to follow will make the one that followed the fall the western Roman Empire look like a walk in the park…

Greetings from the Matrix

You know, the more I think about the political events and discuss them with Democratic Party supporters, the more I sympathize with Joe Pantoliano’s character, Cypher, from the film The Matrix.  This is not to say that all the Democrats I’ve been talking to have made me feel this way, but more on that a little later in this blog.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, the Matrix was a vast dreamworld in which all but a few human beings on earth were living.  We all thought we lived in the “real” world, but that “real” world was just a virtual reality illusion in which we were placed by our overlords to keep us from seeing the real reality and fighting back.  The leader of the resistance would meet recruits in the Matrix and offer them a symbolic choice, one of two pills.  If they took the red pill and they would get an answer to the question “What is the Matrix?”  If they took the blue pill they would go back into the dreamworld and forget that they had ever met with the resistance leader.

The people who selected the red pill didn’t know that they would get their answer in the form of being physically ejected from the machine and being forced to live in the real real world, a dark and unpleasant place where humanity was weak and dirty and on the brink of extinction.  Everything they thought they knew about the world was wrong, and the real picture was very bleak.

One member of the resistance, a man named Cypher, came to regret his decision to live in the real real world and eventually betrays the resistance to the overlords in exchange for being put back into the dreamworld of the Matrix, along with promises of prosperity and that he would not remember anything of his time in the real real world.  In short, he wanted to voluntarily subscribe to a lie that was actually placing humanity in peril, because he could be happier living the lie rather than grasping the full scope of how bad thing were and fighting what seemed to be a losing battle.  His famous line, “I should’ve taken the blue pill,” has become synonymous in some circles for choosing not to get involved in a cause, and forgetting that there even is a cause to refuse.

I see great symbolism in the choice of the red/blue color in the pills.

And I’ve sometimes envied those who wake up in the morning and take the blue pill for the day.  The more I look at everything from global warming to government healthcare,  the more I see duplicity and ulterior motives coming from the Democratic party.  I have come increasingly to see them as part of a global political movement, truly Orwellian in scope, that leans toward socialism and the statism that is required to keep a socialist system afloat.  The more socialist the system, the more statism is necessary.

This global political movement is driven by several key points of ideology.  Now, I won’t go into this any farther here, as each of those points will become essays in their own right.  For now, I’d like to stick to my metaphor.

It’s not limited to politics, however, the mechanism by which people imperil themselves for a comfort zone seems to be psychologically common.  For instance, when discussing with a relative simple steps she might take to deter a break-in after there were a couple in the neighborhood, she grew very uncomfortable at the prospect of replacing windows or altering any part of her daily routine.  Whereas a break-in would be devastating for her (she’s very sentimental and attached to the things she owns), going out of her way to take any steps to avert such a disaster were out of the question.  She preferred to rely on the statistic (now no longer accurate) that break-ins were rare in her nice neighborhood, that her neighbors (most of whom spend the daylight hours at work) would call the police for her, and a bumper-sticker motto of dubious veracity that, “if somebody really wants to get in, you can’t stop them.”

The only thing she would consider at all was an alarm system, basically abdicating her other responsibilities to protect her own property and put complete faith in a team of strangers to do it for her.

This is where we come back to politics.  We are in a struggle for our prosperity and our very way of life.  There are some in high levels of government who are out to abrogate our national sovereignty much like leaders in the EU nations have done, others who mean well but whose ideas are myopic in that they provide band-aid fixes for symptoms of problems while destroying safeguards against tyranny and individual liberties.  Both groups know that the rank and file voter would never support the full extension of what they are trying to bring about, and so they craft the “good reasons” behind their “real reasons” for advocating certain policies.

That way, global cool- er, -warm, er, “global climate change,” for the supporting voter, is about saving the planet, for most of the Democratic politicians is about revenue for wasteful, failing social programs that keep them in power, and for the true puppet masters is about control, statism and diminishing the overall prosperity, influence and power of Western nations in favor of an “egalitarian,” utopian global agenda.

Healthcare follows a similar tack.  For the supporting voter it’s about believing their costs will go down and preventing millions from dying in the streets (which doesn’t happen) for lack of lifesaving care.  For the rank-and-file Democrat it’s about solidifying voting blocs in their favor by making a dependent class out of virtually every American (much more than the smaller dependent classes manufactured by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Welfare…ever wonder why recipient groups are those most “in the bag” for Democrats?), while for the bigwigs it’s again about global control and moving the US one step closer to an economic and political EU-style “union” with neighboring countries who already have disastrous social healthcare.  Getting to dictate social policy through such a system is an added bonus.

But now there I go sounding like a conspiracy theorist.  It’s downright uncomfortable to have an inkling of big, evil things coming to destroy everything you know and love, and the only possible defense being like-minded people banding together and, against great odds, fighting a multi-generation effort to erroneously re-educate Americans about their rights and render many Democratic Party dependents.  It’s so much easier to dismiss it all as nonsense – without ever doing several hours of research yourself in sources neither owned by the government or taking an avowedly pro-administration stance – than it is to truly wrap your head around the peril in which you now live your life.  In your lifetime you may well see the end of this Republic, not in name, but in every meaningful way that made us a free, productive and prosperous people.

Now, there are many of you Democrat supporters who are not simply Kool-Aid drinkers.

But being truly informed about things like global climate statistics, economic effects of cap-and-trade, the true cost of government meddling in housing markets, banking, and all quarters of American private industry take  a lot of time and effort.  And surely those in government couldn’t possibly be out to hurt the country, right?  Well, I’m telling you that they can and they are.  Don’t simply look to politicians’ spin statements, or shamefully biased “news” sources like cable news networks or the New York Times and call it a day.  Do the digging.  Many of you with whom I’ve spoken aren’t happy.  The political and economic things that have the opportunity to permeate your everyday lives perturb you.  You know something is wrong.

You now stand at a crossroads.  You can do one of two things.  On one hand, you can take the easy route.  Do nothing you’re not doing already.  You can simply try to ignore it, or occasionally check MSNBC or the Times long enough to assuage your suspicions and go on about your life.  On the other hand, you can start to independently educate yourself about these matters, and perhaps you will find that you’ve been rooting for the wrong team.  Why is it you pull the blue lever every time anyway?  Do you really agree with that party’s policies?  Including their effects?

I don’t think that most of you really do.  The bumper-sticker slogans sound good – that’s what they’re designed to do.  But they mask things like real costs, real effects and real effectiveness (or complete lack thereof).  But that’s also what they’re designed to do, oversimplify and distract from “inconvenient truths.”  What if you don’t like what you find?  Will you simply reject it and go back to life as usual?  Ignoring that little voice nagging in the back of your mind would make you a conscious Kool-Aid drinker, far worse than the poor slob who really doesn’t know any better.  Or, do you fight?

And you fight in the voting booth, starting in 2010.  You fight by attending your town business and planning meetings.  You fight by running for local office yourself if you don’t like the choices that keep appearing on the ballot time after time.

Yes, it’s hard.  Yes, it’s uncomfortable.  Yes, it’s unpleasant, inconvenient, aggravating, frustrating, dirty work that nobody really wants to do except those who have agendas to push.  So soon you will step into a voting booth and again be faced with a red and a blue lever.

Which pill will you take?

Teatime

I’m updating this blog early, because this week’s essay is about my experience at the Middletown, NJ tea party.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, NJ pays some of the highest property taxes  in the country.  This is not due to wonderful services, mind you, but rather because the state finds itself awash in waste and corruption.

A situation very much like that with the federal government.  So, at its heart, those who organize and attend these tea parties are those of us who are dissatisfied with what we see in our governments (state and federal) on this note and feel unrepresented by both parties.  With the exception of a brief spate of welfare reform in the 1990s, many conservatives feel they have not had a voice in government since 1988.  “Republican” does not necessarily (or even often) equal “Conservative.”  And if you think that the Evangelicals in the Mid-West represent “Conservative,” or that they comprise a majority of the Right, then you have bought into the misinformation and have no clue what the difference is between Right and Left.

But that is a subject for other essays.  Back to the tea party.

There were many patriotic people there from both major political parties as well as numerous people who were unaffiliated, or affiliated with smaller parties.  Far from simply being a “Republican Pep Rally,” these were people who deeply believe in America’s founding principles and want America to once again stand astride the world as the land of liberty and prosperity.

After interviewing me, several people asked me to speak when an open mic was declared later, and so I did.  My comments are below:

“Where do we go from here?  We have an ideological fight on our hands.  The Left has made a concerted effort for the last few generations to re-educate the American people in terms of the nature of our rights and the role of responsible government.  We are now at the point where entire generations are wholly ignorant of the nature of our rights and the role of responsible government – the reason there is an America to begin with.  Worse yet, they now have a belief entirely at odds with our founding principles.  You can’t argue something is unconstitutional to a person who doesn’t care about the Constitution.

“Yes, we need to fight them on the issues, but we cannot only focus on them.  We must fight their re-education and re-principling of the American people.

“It won’t be easy; we must compete with public education, the universities, media and Hollywood.

“We have a long road ahead of us, re-asserting justification for the Constitution and the United States, but if the Left were able to pervert it in three generations, surely, right-thinking, sensible Americans can turn the tide and save the greatest experiment upon which humanity has ever embarked.

“Start with our children – the Left already has…”