Weaponized Etymology

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Who needs government regulations when you have General Motors?

The world’s once-largest automaker and now world’s second-greatest rent-seeker (after Tesla Motors) says it wants even tougher federal “emissions” standards – in order to “ensure at least 50 percent of the new vehicles sold by 2030” are . . . yup  . . . . EeeeeeeeeeeVeeeeees.

And it just so happens that GM has already said that EeeeeeeeeeeeeVeeeeeeee are all it intends to offer by right about then.

GM made the announcement in tandem with the Environmental Defense Fund – which defends the “environment” in the same way that Twitter “defends” free speech. The EDF is in fact a Leftists front that uses shibboleths about “the environment” to further the spread of Leftism.

One of the most powerful weapons in this arsenal is weaponized etymology.

The framing of thought – and thus, of action – via the manipulation of definitions. Specifically, the redefinition of definitions. The psychology behind this is masterful in its understanding of how people think.

Or rather, how to get them to think.

Key to this is getting to them to think what they used to think.

For example, when most people hear the word, vaccine they automatically think about immunity – for that is the defining of attribute of a vaccine. If that attribute is absent then it isn’t a vaccine anymore than a dog is a “fish.” Or a man who insists on his being a “woman” is one  . . . because he insists he is.

But – here’s the trick – if you can get people to use the word when it refers to something it didn’t used to mean, you have succeeded in getting to think it means a different thing – and without most of them even realizing it.

This is why they – Leftists and their dupes, the latter category encompassing the Orange Man, among others – deliberately and maliciously use the word “vaccine” to get people to think they mean what people have always thought it meant; i.e., something that confers immunity by taking it. In order to get them to accept something that isn’t a vaccine.

And – much more significantly – get them to think in those terms.

Just by thinking the word – vaccine – when thinking about the drugs being pushed – one is unconsciously thinking along the lines desired by those pushing these drugs; i.e., that they are necessary as a way to stop the spread of a dangerous sickness.

It is certainly more difficult to speak cogently against these drugs when you speak of them as vaccines. It is like trying to form an argument in favor of a republic by referring to it as a democracy.

Similarly – to return to where we began – this business of using the word emission to manipulate people into thinking about pollution. Which is no longer what is meant by the Left – which encompasses GM – when the word “emissions” is used by them. They mean carbon dioxide, which is “pollution” in the same kind of way that you are a “customer” of the EyeResss, another example of the weaponization of etymology.

Carbon dioxide is a gas. One that has never been regarded as a pollutant because this gas does not cause or worsen smog, the defining attribute (heretofore) of pollution and thus – previously – of emissions.

The federal apparat given authority to regulate vehicle emissions – the EPA – used that definition of emissions as the basis for regulating them. And most people accepted these regulations as needful because most agreed that pollution wasn’t needed. That it was bad for us all.

Then – watch the hands – the regulators simply redefined “emissions” to encompass carbon dioxide, exactly of a piece with the way “vaccines” were redefined to be something fundamentally different than everyone once understood them to be – in order to get them to accept what they aren’t.

The “vaccines” do not immunize – and carbon dioxide “emissions” do not pollute. But the genius of the thing is that people equate the word with its former meaning and are thus gulled into accepting that which they otherwise might question.

“General Motors has the ultimate goal of eliminating tailpipe emissions from new light duty vehicles by 2030,” says the rent-seeking head of General Motors, Mary Barra. But this will not result in the elimination of pollution from new light-duty vehicles. That was effectively achieved decades ago – a thing they do not want you to know.

Because it might cause you to object.

There is almost no pollution emanating from the tailpipes of any vehicle made since the late 1990s, by which time exhaust had been scrubbed of literally 97-98 percent of the pollution that previously emanated from there. It is why the EPA granted the appellation – Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle (PZEV) to hundreds of thousands of new cars beginning in the early 2000s, none of which were EeeeeeeeeeeeeeVeeeeeeeeees. Or even hybrids.

They were simply almost emissions-free vehicles. If by that word one meant pollution-free.

Note that the PZEV designation kind of faded away. That it is not touted anymore. The reason for that is it doesn’t fit the new definition. Which provides the justification for “the ultimate goal of eliminating tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2030.”

This “elimination” to be achieved not by persuasion, either.

GM – which might as well be the EDF – intends to use the government to force its “zero emissions” EeeeeeeVeeeeee portfolio on the market, emulating the rent-seeking of Tesla Motors. To varying degrees, other car companies are also piling on the “zero emissions” EeeeeeeeeVeeee bandwagon, thinking it’s better to join ’em if you can’t fight ’em. They also think, no doubt, that they can make more money by doing so, which is always at the bottom of corporate virtue-signaling.

But they will not “make” money – as in earning it.

That is the old definition of that word. Instead they will take it, by getting you to think they are earning it. They will use government to take it, as by taking away your option to buy what you’d like to buy. And they will – they hope – take away your ability to ever own it, in favor of serially renting access to it.

“Transportation as a service.”

That is how they will “make” money, in the almost-here future. Just the same as drug-pushing companies have made lots of money on “vaccines” that aren’t but which they succeeded in getting millions to think they were.

. . .

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44 COMMENTS

  1. Hey Eric. I’m Jerod from Omaha Nebraska. You and me see eye to eye on many important subjects—green energy/ESG chicanery, pandemic / vaccine / mask / lockdown pseudoscience, Bayesian data crime, iron curtain, Big Pharma / technocratic tyranny, stakeholder socialism, etc…

    Since we agree on a lot of vital issues that are rendering us more and more automatized but by the day and increasingly eviscerating our imprescriptibility and lifeblood, I wanted to know what your thoughts are on Trump overall.

    I wanted to start by telling you my thoughts on Trump and then asking you for your retort/assessment on it.

    So, I made a comment about Trump on social media, and some Trump ideologue messaged me on Facebook and said:

    “Trump is ‘a deeply flawed and unsympathetic character’. Seriously? Why do you people always feel compelled to make such comments? It’s baseless and just shows that the last 7 years of leftist propaganda worked on you as well. You don’t know him personally, and unlike most people, he has actually done something to change things. Unless you were referring to someone else…”

    Because THAT’S how I view him and always have.

    Trump is vain, dumb, and tends to be impulsive and half informed. He bullies people and makes piles of outrageous statements as provocation and gambit. There’s nothing sympathetic about him and he’s never more dangerous than when he gets the right answer for the wrong reasons (which is often) and then winds up discrediting the idea because his rationale gets clowned.

    Trump is famous for not grasping nuance and for tantrums.

    I’ve just always had antipathy for the guy.

    And all these MAGA people telling me that the only reason why I could possibly hate Trump is “because I got fooled by leftist propaganda” is just lazy thinking and argumentation.

    You’re falling into the trap of “no reasonable person could disagree with me”.

    Trump did terrible irremediable damage and at the moment his character was really tested under covid, he folded like a cheap card table and handed the wheel to Fauci and Birx. He’s not a man of courage or character. That, to my mind, is profoundly flawed.

    Trump financially incentivized lockdown tyranny with his executive order which emboldened already authoritarian governors to perpetrate any tyranny they wanted by fiat.

    Trump collaborated in a technocratic, pseudoscientific, data-rigged public-private partnership with Big Pharma to railroad a completely untested, deadly, immunocompromising, gene-therapy inoculant onto the general public, using them as guinea pigs—an inoculant that he STILL crows about today.

    He’s narcissistic and shameless.

    Trump had a chance to lead, to stand up and say “this is not a federal government issue, we’re here to help, not to tell you what to do, these are the evidence-based pandemic guidelines of the last 100 years. They say ‘don’t do this’.”

    The colossal damage he did by making all kinds of bad claims early on, then totally folding on his principles because he got scared is incalculable.

    What we need are leaders of courage, precept, and intellect.

    This is NOT Trump.

    I’ve heard countless people say “the media and Big Tech won’t let anyone see anything positive about Trump.”

    And MANY of his adherents will not allow anything negative to be said.

    He seems so polarizing that having any sort of balanced discussion of good and bad becomes near impossible.

    You have to lionize or demonize him.

    Neither really paints the picture.

    He had some good ideas originally (as candidate Trump) but had little idea how to really make them work and his shock-jock personality let the politicos run rings around him.

    Getting the right answer for the wrong reason is tricky in the public sphere because this gets devilishly double-edged.

    If you get the right answer for the wrong reason and then use that reason to seek to get people to back your plan, you tend to get gutted in the public debates, and because your reasoning is shown to be faulty, people assume your conclusions must be as well and thus you wind up tainting the right answer and making it more difficult to coalesce action around.

    I think Trump was never more dangerous than when he was right but could not make the case.

    Do you agree with me on this? Please be as objective, aloof, and with-no-axe-to-grind as possible.

      • Well said! That answers my question. Even if you had said “I’m a huge Trump supporter”, I’d still read your pieces every day, because everything I’ve read from you is spot-on—but now—knowing your perspective on Trump is practically tantamount to mine—convinces me that you’re eclectically a man of intellect and principle. Not to say that you need my validation on that. It’s just exceedingly difficult to find people like you these days.

        • Thanks, Jerod!

          As with the “masks” – and “vaccines” – I have shed friends over Orange Man. People I have known for decades have dumped me because I do not bask in the orange glow, dare to ask questions and make observations about the man. It’s wearying – but on the other hand, it does leave you with the happy knowledge that the friends you still have are actually your friends. It is one of the few silver linings to these dark clouds.

          Good to have you with us!

          • **”because I do not bask in the orange glow, dare to ask questions and make observations about the man.”**

            Amazing how much alike the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ are, isn’t it? Neither can stand the light of day/scrutiny; both shy away from anything which might summon actual logic, etc. etc. because in the end, it’s just like two sides rooting for their respective fooooooooootball teams, in that the only reason a particular person may support a particular team might be because of where that person lives, or because their father rooted for that team, etc.- but in the end, which team wins the game won’t affect the spectator one iota, except in the spectator’s own mind- and some big dumb jocks will make millions playing children’s games, enabled by the spectator’s patronage. (But at least in spoats the patronage is voluntary….).

            “Ask no questions, I’ll tell you no lies!”.

            • Hi Nunz!

              Yup. I have been having a kind of serial “debate” with an old friend who loves him some Orange Man. Every time I point out some inarguble fact – such as Orange Man’s ongoing pushing of “vaccines” or his banning by decree of bumpstocks or some other thing – my friend deflects or rationlizes. The Orange Man is “letting the enemy show himself” . . . I reply with: At what point does what the man actually says and actually does take precedence over what you think his motives might be?

              No answer.

              It is like playing whack-a-mole and exactly like trying to discuss the absurdity of “masks” with a True Believer.

  2. ‘The framing of thought – and thus, of action – via the manipulation of definitions.’ — eric

    From the New York Slimes:

    ‘In 1981, a 14-year-old Mx. Gessen, who uses they/them pronouns, emigrated from Moscow to Brookline, Mass. …’

    https://archive.ph/xrPkV#selection-627.0-627.106

    ‘Mx.’?? WTF is that? She don’t sound Mexican.

    And ‘they/them,’ my language text insists, is plural.

    Are we obliged to mangle grammar and forms of address because some exotic creature of indeterminate gender demands it?

    For her part, the Old Grey Lady, once a bastion of prissily correct usage, now flops down like an aging demimondaine before the fickle winds of fashion.

    • Jim, it’s literally become a case of the inmates running the asylum- and it was only made possible by the shrinks making it so, and by the sane people listening to them and believing that to not allow the inmates to run not only the asylum, but the whole world, that they would be doing them a disservice. The same way rampant violent crime perpetrated largely by one group is tolerated lest the non-criminal majority be classified as ‘racist’- which I guess they have come to believe is worse than suffering a culture of murder, robbery and violence.

  3. Another reason to ban ice vehicles, no more living down by the river in a van, with the freedom to go anywhere anytime you want, there is a lot of people living in cars, rv’s, camper trucks and vans, it is a cheap place to live, rents are very high for an apartment or a house, poor people can’t afford high rents. These people will be herded into 150 sq ft gov’t dumps, in big cities, where they are totally dependent and can be controlled until eliminated.

  4. There is one thing I hate, how the press says that when our nation murders others in a war they call it collateral damage, or that the dead person was “mortally wounded”.

    CIA wordsmiths do this we good things also, like “peace out” which means out with peace, or “peace protesters” which should be war protestors because they are protesting the war.

    Obviously they do this to negate any positive resistance to their endless evil.

    During the Vietnam War, they called it a military action, and the war protestors were called peaceniks, which is the negation of peace.

    I believe the CIA mocking bird media laughs their asses off when they come up with a new one.

    ————————

    I have a personal rule, never park within 100′ of a Tesla.

    Tesla owner has to kick out window to escape when the locked doors wouldn’t open when his EEEEEEEVEEEEEEE caught fire

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/IhqUSucglDcn/

  5. The rush for corporations to jump on board with nonsense like eveees can be tied back into the fact that they no longer have to please customers to the degree they once did to succeed. The incestuous relationship between gov/Corp makes for crazy profits and subsidies, a circular finger pointing session where everyone is “subject to the market, or the regulations, ” everyone “is just following the rules,” and nobody is actually responsible for the crap that nobody really wants.

    James Corbett did an excellent documentary on big oil and the Rockefeller types whose main go was large centralized monopolies hence their heavy investments in green tech and enviro-nonsense of all sorts. Their ultimate product is the farming of the human race. Per usual Corbett does a deep dive into all sorts of as of the Leviathan that is doing the doing.

    Linking the bitchute version because YouTube is fake and gay

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/0wlNey9t7hQ/

  6. Once upon a time, businesses sought to pander to what their customers in the free market wanted; Those which did a good job of that could prosper. One had to be careful not offend the sensibilities and morals of one’s customers, otherwise they would cease doing bidness with you.

    That arrangement gave us the greatest material advancement in the history of the world, enabling the highest standard of living for the most people. In the 20th century, the poorest of people in the developed world could live better than royalty could throughout most of earth’s history.

    Now, thanks to government education, agendas, and redistribution of wealth, businesses now dictate to their customers, and demand that the government limit and regulate one’s choices; These non-businesses rather than worrying about not offending the majority of their customers by doing things which are hostile to their morals and culture, instead now preach perverted philosophies which have nothing to do with business or the market, and openly are hostile toward the majority of their customers.

    Not to mention that they are no longer even good at making things or doing what they’re supposed to do to earn their keep.

    This whole thing is going to come crashing down very soon, and very suddenly- and there will be no going back, as the interim processes leading up to the conditions we now blatantly see have been operating for several decades now, virtually destroying the ethic and infrastructure which we had during the 20th century, which took millennia to arrive at.

  7. True, but we endured two forms of prohibition in this country: 1. Prohibition of alcohol which lasted 15 years and the 55 mph national speed limit which took 21 years to get rid of. It’s going to be a long haul

  8. Clot-shot mRNA injections are every bit 100% vaccines in the truest sense of the word.

    The root vaca- is Latin for cow. Cattle.

    So think of all vaccines—not just these newfangled nano-juicers—as “cattle-izers” or “bovinators”.

    “Vaccines” have always been a grotesque pseudo-scientific way of treating humans as livestock. To blunt our senses and shorten our lifespans. Many newborns get instantly gorked by the bovinators they are plugged with, within hours after birth, including inoculations of Herpes-C fragments, a sexually transmitted disease.

    We should all drop this talking point of “these-aren’t-really-vaccines” because not only does that implicitly defend other bovinators, but, actually, they are really vaccines. They just are.

  9. Mongolia has plenty of coal, 95 percent of generated electricity there comes from coal-fired power plants. You use the most abundant resource and make hay with it.

    Manitoba has water resources, 95 percent of the electricity generated in Manitoba is from hydro-electric dams. Manitoba makes the best use of the most abundant resource, water lifts the barge and totes the bale in Manitoba.

    Management of the Cedars of Lebanon began in 1295 CE. Something had to be done. Can’t mow down all of them, it’ll be too late then.

    Mary Barra must live in La La Land.

    Mars has a problem with its atmosphere, it is 95 percent carbon dioxide.

    How’d it get to be so much? Somebody has to do something, has to be done.

    Somebody should call the cops!

    The DOW is crumbling, it is now at the 20 percent correction range and it is looking kind of grim. It has lost more than 7000 points, quite a few there. Holy smoke!

    It’ll be a good buying opportunity, getting to that spot soon enough. A liquidity trap, always happens every once in a while.

    Almost time to start drinking.

    “Got my paycheck today, I think I’ll spend it like a crazy fool. Or I’ll give it all away, something like the golden rule.” – Dan Hicks, Payday

  10. The problem with GM is that the car guys or girls don’t run the company. How can you be the CEO of a car company and hate cars like Mary Barra does? It’d be like running a winery and hating wine or coaching a football team and hating football or…you get the idea.

    No one who really likes cars likes eeeeeveeees. They’re as charming as a root canal and as fun as trying to drive a stick shift with a broken ankle to get to the emergency room, which I had to do with a racing clutch.

    Language is important. That’s why our “friends” on the Left are constantly throwing a barrage of what to us normies is meaningless babble. The pronoun thing adds confusion. Gender vs. sex, same thing. It’s all about leaving any normal, rational person in a permanent fog of confusion.

    I had a 1995 Pontiac Firebird Formula and I loved that car, even with the cheap Fisher-Price plastics of early 1990s GM cars. It was relatively inexpensive, was fast as hell and cornered like it was on rails with a few suspension mods.

    To think the same company that built that great machine is now part of the Borg Collective seeking to enserf and enslave most of the population in the service of the ruling class is beyond me. I hope those rent-seeking sons of bitches fail miserably and the day the wrecking ball hits RenCen in Detroit will be a day I’ll celebrate. The good GM I knew from my grandfather, a life-long Chevrolet man, is dead and never coming back.

  11. One talking point that’s used to tout EeeVees is how much you’ll save on charging, compared to filling a tank. This savings is ephemeral, I have argued. Now the proof is rolling in.

    National Grid, a major electric supplier in Massachusetts, has filed for a 64% rate hike. Eversource is expected to follow with a similar-sized hike.

    ‘Charging’ may still be cheaper. But the margin is shrinking fast, as electric bills spike and crude oil falls below $80 a barrel this morning.

    Peeps will be sorry if gasoline prices should ever drop back to a $2-handle, while their ‘sticky’ electric bills remain astronomical.

    Bait and switch … surely ‘good government’ wouldn’t do that to us, right?

    • A large percentage of the cost of a gallon of gasoline is taxes. As EVs take more market share the tax on gas will increase as budget shortfalls become prevelent due to loss of revenue. Thus guaranteeing gasoline will always be more expensive than electricity. This has been telegraphed already with “studies” that float the pay-by-mile tax for drivers, which goes over like a lead balloon.

    • National Grid is also my gas supplier here, they recently sent a notice that the price of natural gas they provide is going to almost double. Guess I’ll be wearing a hat and gloves indoors this winter 🥶 and my cat will be spending more time in her heated bed.

      • Last autumn, my pre-buy of propane was at $2.45 per gallon.

        This autumn, the pre-buy price (300 gal minimum) is $3.35 … and the spot price is $3.90.

        Looking at closing off an opening to the loft with plastic sheet, since heat rises and no one is up there very often.

  12. When Michael Savage was on the local radio here in DC, his tagline was, “Borders, Language and Culture”. How true that is! That is why the PC’ing of words is so odious. In my day to day life, I try to avoid that as much as possible. If the word I’m using makes you uncomfortable, then that’s your problem. Used to be that THE TRUTH needed no defense. You could call a spade a spade, if it were true. Sad to say that now it does not.

  13. OT: I’ve been traveling this week. Flight from DEN to ASE was sitting at gate B51 (jetway gate), which is a little odd because it is an regional jet and they’re normally at outdoor access gates downstairs. OK whatever. Means I didn’t have to sprint through the airport to get my connection so I settle in. Gate attendant annouces departure will be 30 minutes late because of a delayed connection. OK no big deal, go for a little walk. Happen to notice two police officers standing around. We load up the plane, then sit for another 20 minutes “just to give these folks a little more time to make it.” Finally Nancy Peloci (she has a little place in Woodycreek) and her entourage get on the plane. Flight to Aspen uneventful. Two black Surburbans waiting on the tarmac at Sardy Field speed her off with police escort. Don’t kid yourself, the United States has a monarchy.

    In other aviation news, Kittyhawk shuts down. They were developing an electric electric powered aircraft for “urban air mobility.” The electric boondoggles are all going to end badly.

    https://aviationweek.com/business-aviation/kittyhawk-shut-down-wisk-aero-continue

    • Guess globe-trotting Nancy’s back from Armenia, where she probably promised billions to its shaky government.

      Doubtless she’s in Aspen to collect loot from its well-heeled inhabitants. Not that she needs it, facing John Dennis, chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party (whose members you probably could count on one hand).

      Pelosi has raised over $19 million peddling her ass … sorry, ‘clout,’ … whereas Dennis has pulled in only $804,000.

      https://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary?cycle=2022&id=CA11

      But too much ain’t enough. $19 million is but pocket change for Nancy, a reward for her celebrity. It’s good to be queen.

  14. It’s a pity to see how far GM has fallen. I still love my 22-year-old Sierra –which my brother claims smells like pipe tobacco, farts, & beef jerky. Oh well.

    None of this will matter after the predicted doom n gloom of the economy crashing, the dollar becoming worthless, etc.

  15. Years ago , the saying used to be “as GM goes, so does the country”. If it still has any truth to it, the future is looking terribly bleak!

  16. Speaking of vaccines in their previous definition. That is, implementing immunity, those then available were not especially good at it either. What’s the latest and greatest immunity given by the flu shot? About 50%?

  17. Gave up on GM when they took the tainted cash during the great bailout. My Granddad owned a GM dealership way back before I was born, and a GM was the first car I ever owned, Even if I was given a free GM, I would promptly sell the thing.

    Don’t think this whole E-V grift is only about the money, they can and will print truckloads of cash with the click of a mouse. In a fake world of two choice-choices, it comes down to power and control. After all, only so many seats at the rent seekers table. GM just secured theirs.

  18. And guess where the new and improved “definitions” are being taught daily. Public education, doing exactly what its creators openly intended it to do

  19. I’m curious how GM et al are going to “make more money” selling cars people can’t afford to even rent. Looks like Hertz is going to try and show them the way. Given their limited range, the time required to charge them, and the total lack of any grid that CAN charge them, it’s going to be a logistical farce.
    Perhaps that’s the plan. Convince most car makers to bankrupt themselves, thereby completely cutting off the ICV supply, leaving a few EV makers to supply the entire, and much smaller market. Supported by more of the same bailouts we’ve seen previously in the car industry.
    It will be a true test of whether they’re stupid or evil or both. Evil enough to impose it, but too stupid to make it work. Because it can’t.

  20. Why Orwell Matters

    He saw, clearly and vividly, that to lose control of words is to lose control of meaning. That is what frightened him about the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia – these regimes wanted to control the very linguistic substance of thought itself.

    And that is why Orwell continues to speak to us so powerfully today. Because words, language and meaning are under threat once more.

    The importance of words
    Nowadays we are all too familiar with this university-educated ruling caste, and its desire to control words and meaning. Just think, for example, of the way in which our cultural and educational elites have turned ‘fascism’ from a historically specific phenomenon into a pejorative that has lost all meaning,

    to be used to describe anything from Brexit to Boris Johnson’s Tory government – a process Orwell saw beginning with the Stalinist practice of calling Spanish democratic revolutionaries ‘Trotsky-fascists’ (which he documented in Homage to Catalonia (1938)).

    Or think of the way in which our cultural and educational elites have transformed the very meanings of the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’, divesting them of any connection to biological reality. Orwell would not have been surprised by this development.

    In Nineteen Eighty-Four, he shows how the totalitarian state and its intellectuals will try to suppress real facts, and even natural laws, if they diverge from their worldview. Through exerting power over ideas, they seek to shape reality.

    ‘Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in new shapes of your own choosing’, says O’Brien, the sinister party intellectual. ‘We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull… You must get rid of these 19th-century ideas about the laws of nature.’

    But it is language that is central to Orwell’s analysis of this form of intellectual manipulation and thought-control. Take ‘Ingsoc’, the philosophy that the regime follows and enforces through the linguistic system of Newspeak. Newspeak is more than mere censorship. It is an attempt to make certain ideas – freedom, autonomy and so on – actually unthinkable or impossible. It is an attempt to eliminate the very possibility of dissent (or ‘thoughtcrime’).

    The parallels between Orwell’s nightmarish vision of totalitarianism and the totalitarian mindset of today, in which language is policed and controlled, should not be overstated. In the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the project of eliminating freedom and dissent, as in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, was backed up by a brutal, murderous secret police. There is little of that in our societies today – people are not forcibly silenced or disappeared.

    However, they are cancelled, pushed out of their jobs, and sometimes even arrested by the police for what amounts to thoughtcrime.

    Alex Belfield has just been locked up for 5 1/2 weeks for the “crime” of online stalking – he texted/messaged to former BBC colleagues and they felt threatened….lol….. he was exposing the BBC’s double (?) standards and the corruption within. This is the BBC which supported the well-known pedophile, Jimmy Saville.

    “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.” – Joseph Stalin

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-orwell-matters

  21. With carbon dioxide having been redefined as a POLLUTANT, I’m surprised none of the authoritarians who call themselves “Elected officials” or “Public Health bureaucrats” tried to decree that ALL humans MUST wear face diapers permanently to “Saaaaaaaaaaaaaave the planet from Cliiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change”, as according to their OWN definition, every time we EXHALE, we’re “Polluting the planet”.

    • Hi Stephen,

      GM was – once – a fine company. It had fine people working for it. I knew many of them. They are all gone now – at least, from the higher echelons. In their place? People such as Barra – a human resources frau whose proximity would cause men such as Bill Mitchell and John DeLorean to heave their guts. GM has a Vice President for Diversity now. It speaketh volumes about GM…

      • Believe it or not, Mary Barra has an Engineering degree. EE from the early 80s, before a lot of departments in universities around the country started navel gazing about the representation of “disadvantaged” groups in STEM fields.

        • hahaha…an engineer….maybe liar?….lol

          GM CEO Admits Electric Vehicle Is Charged On Natural Gas

          What a moron….lol…she said electricity comes out of a wall plug, when someone called her on it she was forced to admitt where it actually comes from, ie burning natural gas far away at a power plant….

          Most electricity is generated burning hydrocarbons, how green is that?

          90% of electricity is generated by burning coal, gas and oil, so that is what powers EV’s
          5% is nuclear,
          solar and wind turbines are a joke, less then 1% worldwide? they want to ban almost everything else do you will freeze to death…lol
          there is a small amount of geothermal and hydro,depending on the location.
          In U.S. 40% is coal.

          EV’s only 25% efficient actually get 20 mpg….lol

          Thermal efficiency of power plants using coal, petroleum, natural gas or nuclear fuel and converting it to electricity are around 33% efficiency, natural gas is around 40%. Then there is average 6% loss in transmission, then there is a 5% loss in the charger, another 5% loss in the inverter, the electric motor is 90% efficient so another 10% loss before turning the electricity into mechanical power at the wheels.
          33% – 6% – 5% – 5% – 10% = 25% efficiency for EV’s.
          (under not ideal conditions, like when it is very cold it might be 12% efficient).

          NOTE: a diesel is 50% efficient….lol…

          the 2014 Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion diesel, is capable of a claimed 88.3 mpg imperial, or 73.5 mpg U.S.

          The average EV gets 20.5 mpg….lol

          So they are banning all the diesels….

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf3PT-vBDsg

          • 90% of electricity is generated by burning coal, gas and oil, so that is what powers EV’s, which pollute far more then ice vehicles, a diesel is 50% efficient, an EV is 25% efficient (in very cold conditions 12% efficient) so an EV pollutes 2x to 4x more then an ice vehicle. The lying EV pushers claim the opposite because they are skilled liars…lol

  22. This being forced into choices, or restricted from them, through regulatory capture & rent seeking, burns me to no end.

    And it is all being done in the name of money for a few at the expense of the rest of us – that is the real story of governments.

    Though I take comfort in the fact that this being a prohibition, history shows us prohibition doesn’t work.

    • Dan: Though I take comfort in the fact that this being a prohibition, history shows us prohibition doesn’t work.

      Perhaps, but when .gov “offers” people a new “cash for ICE vehicle” program how many will take them up on it. Once the number of ICE vehicles drops below a certain point how hard will it be to get fuel, etc? We will be told to get an EV or use public transportation.

      Mobility has always been denied to serfs and slaves. Most people don’t want to understand this though.

    • Prohibition works very well. If you outlaw a popular activity you’ll make entire populations into criminals. Speeding being the obvious example. Everyone drives +10 MPH or more on dry pavement without incident, even when there’s a cop sitting in the median. Because the cop isn’t there to stop speeders, he’s there to remind everyone that they are “speeding.” At any point he could randomly pick out anyone on the highway and pull them over and sometimes does.

      For whatever reason, even though everyone is speeding, we don’t demand speed limit increases. Back in the 1990s when the 55 MPH speed limit was eliminated by fatwa it just happened. There wasn’t a candidate running for office on the “65 or bust” ticket, there wasn’t a study showing that it didn’t really do anything, it just happened. Everyone always complained about the 55 MPH speed limit amoungst themselves (except for Sammy Hagar), but that was as far as anyone went with it. I’m sure the same thing happened during prohibition too, just like it does with recreational drugs.

      Although it did take a state constitution amendment vote to make marijuana legal in Colorado.

  23. Sounds like another reason not to buy a GM vehicle. They were once a great company. Now not so much. Of course when they ban ICE vehicles for personal use I guess we might be screwed.

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