Some Shady Cunning Plans - an opinion piece.

Baldric was a character in the British TV series Black Adder. Baldric was the idiot to Edmund Blackadder's seemingly witty schemes and efforts. While Edmund typically failed in his strategic moves Baldric always failed more so. This article is going highlight some recent social and political moves with a sarcastic/sardonic tone where applicable. Let's get started...

Degeneracy:

Back in the days of the KGB, the spies would do their research and find politicians, typically men in that time, who liked to wear dresses, was a homosexual or pursued sexual relationships with minors. This was a big problem for a number many a politicization over time. 

So here is the cunning plan directed mostly from the political left, turn all of the gotcha items into being normal so no-one has to worry about being embarrassed by the FSB or any other county's spy services and thus the politicians are no longer able to be threatened. 

Next to no consequence:

In Canada political ethics is taken seriously. There is a special department of the government, which is implied to be non partisan and is supposed to be beyond the reach of the sitting Government, which has not been born out to be true. 

So here is the cunning plan and this one comes from both sides of the aisle. No politician seems to want to step forward and change the ethics penalty to above $500.00 CAD. An actual ethical person would have no trouble with raising the roof on the penalty if it would never apply. The reader must not align this point with the idea that an innocent person would not mind being under surveillance because they are innocent; the difference here is that the innocent person did NOT thrust themselves into the public domain and therefore don't deserve scrutiny. 

We all must DIE:

Diversity Inclusion Equity (DIE) has long been touted as a social strength, or to quote the now classic phrase, 'diversity is our strength.' Inclusion is a quota based system based on immutable characteristics and equity is the outcome of any effort over an equality of opportunity.  

So the cunning plan here has been to dehumanize the individual and only measure the worth of people based on skin colour, gender/sex or sexual preference. Any talent or merit of the individual has been wiped away in favour of the immutable previously mentioned. This cunning plan also included institutions of  higher education by demanding that universities and colleges build a push/pull grading systems for students based on both race and gender. The system as implemented, means that when the student is black and or female they get bonus points on their entrance exams. 

This bigotry of low expectations has two knock-on effects; the first effect is that some students are entered into programs where they are bound to fail and drop out of, and the second impact is going to be that many of the students will take note of the first effect and then stereo-type the people who fail-out.  This sort of problem is not limited to just education, when there is a diversity hire program in the corporate world one doesn't know if someone was hired on their merit or because of the skin colour. Simply put - why are there no white midgets in the NBA? 

Familial Ties:

It has long been understood that a good and happy family makes for good and happy people and that the inverse is also true. Post WWII brought many challenges to countries and families alike. The men were sent off to war, where many of them died or seriously injured. For the most part many of the women stayed behind and help with the war effort and raising the children on their own. Ad campaigns like 'Rosie the Riveter' brought many women into the work force and after the war many had to stay there in the working world because their man simply didn't come home. 

This cunning plan while born out of a short term need created a law to solve the problem, but these laws lacked the one thing that all government programs seem to lack - a sunset clause. For those who got lost with the term, a sunset clause is like an expiry date, in that an act of Parliament unless voted to continue will expire on a specific date. The most notorious Canadian enactment of this sort of thing was the Business Profits War Tax Act of 1916, which was a tax levied on the businesses to pay for WWI, and is  now known today as income tax. 

So what happened, many governments handed out cash to those then single mothers.This author does not think that this activity as a short term solution to minimize or eleviate a potentially bigger problem. During the early years of this program, while still a struggle, life for single mothers could have been worse. Of course once the governmental mechanics were put in place, like every government entity things could only grow and couple that with what is now referred to as second wave feminism and the door to disaster was left unlocked and ajar. 

As with all things on this planet the welfare state, also known as the nanny state, is a work in progress and what a piece of work it is. Three things happened almost simultaneously: in no particular order, there was a realization by some men that they could abandon their families as the government picked up the yoke of financial responsibility, secondly some women sorted out that they could have a steady income by being a breeder and the final piece is that the feminists of the day encouraged women into the works place by convincing them that 'work sets one free' (Arbeit macht frei) and so far all the feminist efforts achieved was to make women taxable. 

Education:

Education along with fire coupled with the ability to produce and convert energy have long been heralded as the advancement of a society. The fire and power conversion topics will be addressed in the next section of this article. It is important to define terms in a discussion so everyone is working from the same dictionary and so it must be asked; what is education? A dictionary will tell the reader that Education is - 'the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.'

This author disagrees with whatever dictionary the quote directly above comes from and will now offer up a more personalized definition: 'Education is - the act of telling and the receiving of stories coupled with experience.' Over the history of mankind the complexity of the stories has both risen and fallen. Currently it feels that the length and complexity of the stories have dropped when compared to previous generations. 

Yet another cunning plan was put forward for this topic matter by making the declaration that the more people who are educated the better the society is. The proof is being presented via paperwork showing that the numbers of graduates has increased per capita rather than showing the value of the pedigree of said claimed educational value. This has resulted in an education system that has been dumbed-down across the board. Couple the explosion of next to useless degrees, the erosion of some well established degrees and an ever upward spiraling of costs means that the education v. salary relationship now suffers from one of the simplest rules of the capitalistic system these participants seemingly despise - the basic rule of supply and demand. 

 

Climate Change:

A plethora of people have their five minutes of fame though it may last a year or two or even more. Others seek a glimmer of fame just to capture that five minutes of fame by reading their name in the  paper. The climate change advocates have maintained a penultimate themed messaging strategy for decades now. For how long can these climate change advocates hold the people in fear before that fear becomes normal and no-one continues to care. 

Throughout history mankind has refined the ability to make and control an ever hotter flame and has invented ever efficient ways of converting energy into force; the combination of these two while entwined and entangled has reaped different benefits for mankind. Of course all benefits come at a cost and it is the cost benefit analysis that needs to be weighed and measured. 

Fire, a hallmark of mankind's achievement allows for warmth, cooks food and allows for the better refinement of metals and this of course led to the ability to convert energy into force which eventually led to better and better modes of travel.

This cunning plan may be the most cunning even when placed up against organized religion. Organized religion holds the benefit that no-one can come back and complain, while the climate change advocates  must continuously move the goal posts. 

When religion started to decline in the Western world around the beginning of the 1970s the Rapture was quickly abandoned in preference of  a new ice-age which at the time was presented as the end of days. The temperature drop was then quickly followed by the threat of temperature rise coupled with a rise in sea and ocean levels. Eventually the climate advocates dropped their absolute predictions and made all of their talking points fuzzy and vague by shifting to 'climate change'.  

These talking points, of some sort of climate change, were picked up by the political class and that is where and when the wheels fell of the train, as it were. The rapidness that was applied to moving to 'green energy' was done as a result of a moral panic generated by the climate change advocates. At this time the following items should be noted by the reader:

1. Some electric car chargers are being powered by carbon driven generators,
2. In most locations, if 50% of the neighbourhood all had electric cars their local electrical grid would fail,
3. Germany has fired up coal plants as the slightly greener solution from Russia has failed them,
4. Windmills kill birds and only work on windy days,
5. Solar panels only work when the sun shines upon them,
6. Windmills and solar panels have non recyclable parts and rely on fossil fuels for manufacturing, transportation and installation. 
7. The price of gas was on the rise during COVID and definitely before the invasion of Ukraine,
8. Some COVID restrictions are still in place in Canada along with a handful of places in the USA and are based on a lack of vaccination status, all the while the most infected per capita are the vaccinated. 

While item number eight does not have a direct environmental connection it does set the stage for the those are with the narrative and the 'other', showing the majority that there is now an opponent other than the government which must be closely scrutinized. This sort of agenda setting has happened before, most notably in Cambodia and before that in a Germany that was being run by a short failed artist from Austria. 

What does this tell us:

Politics ruins everything or at least many politicians seem to, as do the leaders of global Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). It is the opinion of this author that the main cause of the problems above is the distance between those at the top of the social political tower and those at the bottom standing outside in the mud and the filth of a not-so-privileged life. 

We have been told for many years, 'Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.'* Yet, when so many people so many times look to a political character and repeatedly say - 'that policy was really stupid'; where does the stupidity stop and the malice start?

To give the political class a bit of break, deserving or otherwise, that if the people don't hold their political leaders to task then why should the politicians divert any effort or energy to making the voters happy when the majority of voters simply go along with the narrative and don't complain?

* Hanlon's razor