Railing Against Reality

Last week, protests broke out again in Europe, from Rome to London. The monthlong Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York have spread. The current unrest follows this summer's riots in London and flash mob incidents in U.S. cities. In 2009 and 2010, Tea Parties turned out hundreds of thousands in protests against the Obama administration's policies and eventually gave him the largest midterm rebuke since 1938.

Ostensibly, the Wall Street protests rail against a small elite who makes a lot of money lending, investing and speculating -- although the protestors don't seem to worry much about the mega-salaries of actors, professional athletes or sympathetic multimillionaires like Al Gore, George Soros or John Kerry. American flash mobbers and London hoods thought it was OK to take things that were not theirs, since they have less than others. The Tea Partiers were simply tired of paying more taxes for big-government programs that they thought only made things worse.

In the current left and right anger -- somewhat analogous to the upheavals of 1848 or the 1930s -- the common denominator is frustration that Western upward mobility of some 60 years seems to be coming to an end. In response, millions want someone or something to be held accountable -- whether Wall Street insiders, or wasteful and corrupt governments, or the affluent who have more than others.

Unfortunately, political leaders -- unwilling to risk their careers by irking the people -- have offered few explanations for the root causes of all the various unrest. Instead, they assure us that Social Security is solvent, or that pensions and wages can remain sacrosanct, or that billionaires and millionaires are alone culpable. Sometimes they exploit race and class divisions in lieu of explaining 21st-century realities.

So here goes an explanation for the multifaceted unrest. For the last six decades, constant technological breakthroughs and growing government subsidies have given a billion and a half Westerners lifestyles undreamed of over the last 2,500 years. In 1930, no one imagined that a few pills could cure life-threatening strep throat. In 1960, no one planned on retiring at 55. In 1980, no one dreamed that millions could have instant access to civilization's collective knowledge in a few seconds through a free Google search.

Yet, the better life got in the West for ever more people, the more apprehensive they became, as their appetites for even more grew even faster. Remember, none of these worldwide protests are over the denial of food, shelter, clean water or basic medicine.

None of these protestors discuss the effects of 2 billion Chinese, Indian, Korean and Japanese workers entering and mastering the globalized capitalist system, and making things more cheaply and sometimes better than their Western counterparts.

None of these protestors ever stop to ponder the costs -- and ultimately the effect on their own lifestyles -- of skyrocketing energy costs. Since 1970 there has been a historic, multitrillion-dollar transfer of capital from the West to the Middle East, South America, Africa and Russia through the importation of high-cost oil and gas.

None seem to grasp the significance that, meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Westerners are living longer and better, retiring earlier, and demanding ever more expensive government pensions and health care.

And now it has. Federal and state budgets are near bankrupt. Countries like Greece and Italy face insolvency. The U.S. government resorts to printing money to service or expand entitlements. Near-zero interest rates, declining home prices, and huge losses in mutual funds and retirement accounts have crippled the middle classes.

Bigger government, marvelous new inventions and creative new investment strategies are not going to restore the once-taken-for-granted good life. Until "green" means competitive renewable energy rather than a con for crony capitalists, we are going to have to create and save capital by producing more of our own gas and oil, and relying more on nuclear power and coal.

Westerners will have to work a bit longer and more efficiently, with a bit less redistributive government support. And they must confess that venture capitalists, hedge funds and big deficit-spending governments are no substitute for producing themselves the real stuff of life that millions now take for granted -- whether gas, food, cars or consumer goods.

Otherwise, a smaller, older and whinier West will just keep blaming others as their good life slips away. So it's past time to stop borrowing to import energy and most of the things we use but have given up producing -- and get back to competing in the real world.

Suggestions and ideas are solicited and appreciated.

"Railing Against Reality"

This highly astute and laconic phrase caught my eye.

Then I saw Hanson's name and thought: I should have known.

As usual he zeros in on the truth and phrases it well.

Refusal to face truth is the fundamental evil in the world today.

The Left is mendacity. Leftists cannot and will not be truthful.

This is not an across-the-board failure. The Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and others are ruthlessly truthful. This is why they are so hated, feared, and maligned by the mendacious and delusional.

The mendacious and delusional hate and fear anything that threatens their paradigms, and they will literally stop at nothing to protect their paradigms.

I think that most of those responsible for the Mainstream Newsmedia and benevolent Leftists everywhere probably believe that they are speaking the truth. I think that they are incapable of understanding what's going on because they are not as intelligent as Victor Davis Hanson and the rest of us who see it all so clearly.

Of course, there are many psychopaths and other disfunctionals who exploit the situation for their own benefit, and they concentrate in the Left and Leftist "causes".

But most of the people responsible for the decadence that is overwhelming Western Civilization and the world are merely their enablers, and I think that their fundamental flaw is an inability to comprehend and see reality clearly.

The biggest question that most of us, who can comprehend reality and truth and see them clearly, is where to go and what to do to protect our children and grandchildren from the folly of those who cannot.

Suggestions and ideas are solicited and appreciated.

Those are the moderates and independents that lean or can swing elctions to the left. They are our targets. If they can understand that the Great Recession is rooted in the subprime loan debacle, they will vote for their wallets, IMHO.

You're absolutely right.

Its enablers are the moderates, independents, and swing voters who are either too lazy or too stupid to comprehend what decadence is and what's going on.

I think there are also committed Leftists who are too lazy or too stupid, of varying degrees of benevolence and malevolence.

But those pushing this decadence are sociopaths and other evil and/or disfunctional people, including people who are just plain lazy and stupid.

I know one man who is pushing it and who is an intelligent, well educated man (probably more than one!). His motivation is social acceptance. He lives in a Leftist enclave, and I think he would do anything to prevent ostracism. I suppose he falls into the category of intellectual and moral laziness, but he cannot seem to be honest about all this with himself. Such moral laziness and sloppiness is an evil in itself.

Leftists will not understand the pubprime loan debacle and its significance because they will not face truth and reality.

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