“Just because you are paranoid, it does not mean that the world isn’t out to get you.” This humorous axiom points out that internal attitude does not determine objective reality.
Over the past couple of years in this column, I have asserted some pretty disturbing possibilities. Since these “Keep Right” columns are an invitation for the reader to consider the implications of trends that I observed, my goal has not been to prove my assertions beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Being a History Teacher rather than a lawyer, my intent is never to force another person to alter their convictions and adopt my own. I am not engaged in persuasion. My purpose is not to convince.
Rather, I express my insights for readers to consider. It is up to each person who chooses to read my column to determine whether what I am arguing has intrinsic worth or is errant nonsense.
However, there are moments when the news offers evidence that my declamatory screeds may not be completely divorced from reality.
I have asserted that the Cult of Manmade Climate Change has nothing to do with Ecology. Rather, it is merely the latest pretext for Communists to take decisive power from the rest of us and use it to build their false Utopia.
Since last year, regional American power companies remotely locked so-called “smart thermostats” out of the customer’s control. The power company decided how cool homes would be, without consultation or restriction.
This was the Soviet power model. Bureaucrats determined when an apartment would get steam heat, hot water, and electricity. The user was to accept what was bestowed by the powers-that-be, gratefully and without criticism.
Such servility before constituted central authority is alien to the American tradition. Yet, today, our fellow Americans who were foolish enough to cede control over their home systems have discovered that they can no longer can command them.
When the Canadian Trucker’s “Freedom Convoy” reached Ottawa, the participants’ online fundraising account, their personal credit cards, and even their bank accounts were all shut down without notice or recourse. Canada’s ruling party colluded with banks and tech companies to bar citizens from using their own property with no due process.
These truckers were treated as foreign terrorists. The Biden Administration praised such measures. Similar steps seem to be being piloted in the United States.
For decades, California’s government has persistently refusal to build power plants to match their increasing demand. This has resulted in rolling blackouts. Americans in our most populous state have been manipulated into accepting unacceptable Third World standards of electric power availability as constituting some kind of “new normal”.
Worse, a Baltimore man was recently shut out of all access to his home’s “smart” systems for days. The reason why was that the controlling company, Amazon.com, received a report from a delivery driver who “thought” he had heard what he determined to be a racist remark. In fact, the home owner was Black himself, no one was home at the time, and the delivery driver later admitted to having been wearing headphones.
On this occasion, a human agent was part of the chain of events. But, there have been many reports of “smart phones” offering suggestions for restaurants, shopping, and sightseeing based on nothing more than a casual conversation within range of the “smart phone’s” microphone. They, or it, are listening.
Like in George Orwell’s “1984”, microphones in our homes listen to everything we say. But, instead of human beings within INGSOC’s Thought Police determining what such remarks mean, today some computer program determines the acceptability of what it hears.
Our shared toleration of computer-linked cameras and microphones into every aspect of our lives invites such spying and control. We had best adapt to the dangers of technology with new social mores and laws before we reach a point of no return.
We once had to adapt to the printing press. In the 1500s and 1600s A. D., Western Civilization experienced 150 years of religious war as a result of unorthodox ideas rapidly spread by the printing of books. Slowly, we adapted. We learned how to build a vibrant intellectual life with them.
As modern chemistry advanced, we discovered that free access to the original recipe of Absinthe was not in anyone’s best interests. When movies and television became commonplace, society rightly restricted what could be freely broadcast into American homes. We began to rate films by their content. Avant-Garde Bohemians could explore extreme content without destroying the wholesomeness of childhood in family homes.
We may soon determine that restricting access to networked personal electronics to people over the age of 16 would be as wise as restricting Driver’s Licenses and Credit Cards. We may decide that it is not in our interests to permit the development of Artificial Intelligence, or to restrict it closely so that such inhumane intellects cannot judge or destroy us.
We certainly should restrict where we allow cameras and microphones to give strangers access to our lives. We may further decide to ban “smart homes”.
We must make it impossible for an ideologue, or an AI programmed by an ideologue, to scrutinize our every utterance for thought-crime. If we don’t, how long will it be until the World Economic Forum and its ESG-DEI alphabet soup strips us of all of our hard-won civil rights? When will our status as individual human beings possessed of inalienable rights be deconstructed? How long until we, who oppose their elite mindset, become Serfs or Slaves?
No, replacing gas stoves with electric ones is not about the environment. It is about progressively making us ever-more dependent upon a power grid that they can control at will.
The “Green New Deal” calls for us to replace all existent instrumentalities with networked computer-controlled systems dependent upon a central power grid. If we let these would-be Messiahs have their way, we will not be able to heat or light our homes without their approval.
If we permit our own enslavement, neither our money nor our transportation will remain under our own control. As the World Economic Forum proclaimed in their advocacy of a global “Great Reset”, soon we will own nothing. And, they assure us, we will be “happy”. Or, at least, we had better behave as if we were happy lest they bar us from our property and our capacity to go on living.
We dare not give up our control over what Marx called “the means of production”. If we abandon individual control over the many means necessary for our ongoing survival, we will be lost.
Having chosen to read this column to the end, you must now determine whether this dire warning constitutes paranoia or revelation.
