You are part of the problem
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, who is currently competing somewhere in the middle of the pack of lies that is the Democratic presidential nomination process, says that if you have used a plastic straw or eaten a hamburger, you are “part of the problem.”
Specifically, a CNN bimbo who wears grown-up glasses for that “serious look” — the kind they used to put on the handsome man playing the role of “four out of five doctors” in all the acid relief and headache medication commercials, in an effort to make a struggling young actor look like…a struggling young actor in a doctor costume — but who hasn’t bothered to bone up on her perfect tense grammar using irregular verbs, commented to Mayor B. that, “I haven’t drank out of a plastic straw for the past six months because I’m so worried about what’s happening in the ocean.” She’s worried about what’s happening in the ocean? Did she discover she had drank too much ocean water? Did someone tell her she had throwed too many straws into the ocean over the years? Did she hear that the ocean water she was drunking was full of stinky old plankton and whales and stuff? I guess we’ll never knew.
In any case, in response to this fabulous pose of responsible citizenship from the grown-up-glasses-wearing bimbo (in flouncy miniskirt with stiletto heels and dyed blonde hair styled in a Charlie’s Angels feathered sweep), Mayor Pete said Americans could come together to solve this enormous problem by “summoning the energies” that helped America overcome the Great Depression, win World War II, and put a man on the moon — which is Democratic Speak for increasing the power of government. In the context of this rousing and inspiring call to crush even more individual liberty in the quest to create the absolutely unlimited government required to tackle “this huge problem,” Buttigieg mused in passing, “Right now we’re in a mode where I think we’re thinking about it mostly from the perspective of guilt — you know, ‘From using a straw to eating a burger, am I part of the problem?’ In a certain way yes, but….”
Does Pete Buttigieg use plastic straws? Of course he does. Does that hypocrisy bother him while he speaks about this subject? Of course it doesn’t. Why not? In general, it is for the same reason that Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio, and the various British princes feel no twinge of discomfort as they fly around the planet in their private jets to pontificate about how you should stop using commercial air travel. In particular, it is because Pete Buttigieg is a liar and blowhard who will say anything to further both his immediate short-term agenda, which is to win the presidential nomination of the Communist Party USA, and his long-term agenda, which is to move a former limited republic ever-closer to the ultimate CPUSA dream of a totalitarian world state. In short, his premise — and Gore’s premise and DiCaprio’s premise and Prince What’s-His-Name’s premise — is that you are the problem, whereas unlimited government authority to control the economy and restrict personal behavior is the solution.
As I have observed in the past, it is not an accident that you never hear — and will never hear — a “global warmist for freedom.” There are no global warmists who simultaneously support individual liberty, limited government, private property rights, constitutional restrictions on the reach of the administrative state, and equality before the law. You never hear anyone talking about “this enormous problem” as one that requires a voluntary change in human behavior and attitudes, but that must never become an excuse for tyrannical violations of the basic principles of freedom that make human coexistence livable and good.
Isn’t that strange? How are we to explain this anomaly? If you still haven’t figured it out, keep thinking.
Just a thought: As I write this, and while North America is mired in the news of Hurricane Dorian, we here in Korea are currently battening down the hatches during the early stages of a near pass by Typhoon Lingling. It simply never crosses my mind to equate this or any typhoon with the man-made climate change agenda. Typhoons have occurred here on a regular basis, every year, pretty much forever. This is a strong one — just downgraded to Category 2 within the past hour — though luckily it won’t hit my neighborhood directly this time. There has been damage along the path of this storm, because that is the nature of such phenomena, and always has been. I ate at McDonald’s just last week, but I would like to think my dinner wasn’t much of a contributing factor. I might say it was, however, if I craved the authority to regulate the manufacturing sector of the economy and normalize the criminalization of non-aggressive human behavior.