Joseph Goebbels, infamous publicist of Hitler’s Nazi regime, was a fan — some say the father — of The Big Lie. You proclaim an untruth often enough, and loud enough, he said, and pretty soon people come to believe it. And so the Nazis did — convincing Germans that Aryan purity required killing Jews, Slavs, gypsies, gays and political foes.
After the war, George Orwell published his famous 1984, a novel that envisioned a world where the government’s Ministry of Truth erased history, disappeared critics and banned free speech. The novel’s omnipresent leader, Big Brother, has since become a symbol for intrusive government and bureaucratic regimes everywhere.
Rarely do we track the toll on all of us of these lies. But it is worth contemplating.
The most obvious lately was been the decline in our aviation safety. On January 5, an Alaska Air jet from Portland flew up 16,000 feet before a door panel flew off. The NTSB grounded all 200 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft as it conducted an investigation. Conclusion — the four bolts normally used to secure the door were all missing. Apparently they had been removed to repair five damaged rivets, and never reinstalled.
There followed other incidents of hazards in the air. On January 19, a small plane carrying seven people had to make an emergency landing on Loudoun County Parkway in Virginia after taking off from Dulles Airport. On January 22, a New York-bound flight was canceled on Virgin Atlantic after a passenger spotted parts missing from the aircraft’s wing. That same weekend, a Delta flight from Atlanta to Bogota, Colombia, was taking off when the Boeing 757 lost its nose tire. On February 8, two JetBlue planes collided in the de-icing area at Boston’s Logan, their wings clipping.
Blessedly, no one was injured. But wither our meritocracy?
Amid the near-misses in the skies, the FAA boasted that it will reduce the number of white males in its employ, and focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities. Under the leadership of Transportation Sec Pete Buttigieg, this initiative is part of the FAA’s push for “diversity and inclusion,” which the agency insists “is integral to ensure safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”
The private sector is also embracing racial discrimination. Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, announced recently he is throwing out hiring for merit in hopes of filling 50% of all new jobs with women or BIPOC — that’s Woke speak for Black, Indigenous or other People of Color. He sounds proud of hiring based on race and gender — Isn’t that still against the law? — and says that in the future, all interviews will be conducted by — and jobs filled by — women or people of color.
There has been much criticism since about the toll that costly diversity initiatives take on our culture. “Boeing is a wonderful metaphor for our entire society,” observed conservative Glenn Beck. “When we promote people because of their political views or their race or their sex — even if that sex is completely made up — instead of the content of their character, we will continue to have planes fall out of the sky.”
Meritocracy is also on the decline in the military, and of course, in women’s sports.
Outraged by the transgender takeover of women’s sports, one NCAA official recently resigned. “This is massive authorized cheating,” said William Bock, once general counsel for the US Anti-Doping Agency, who left his post after eight years, with one year left on his contract.
“Although I may not have agreed with the wisdom of every rule in the NCAA rulebook,” he wrote in his letter, “I believed the intent behind the NCAA’s rules was competitive fairness and protection of equal opportunities for student-athletes. This conviction changed as I watched the NCAA double down on regressive policies, which discriminate against female student-athletes. It’s a ruse to say testosterone suppression [makes a] a level playing field.”
Amidst this outpouring of angst over the war against women — a war sanctioned by the very feminists who once promoted women and now can’t define one — Big Brother bureaucrats doubled down. These tyrants no long govern our lives by making laws, something dysfunctional governments rarely attempt anymore, but by rules.
The transgender cult denies and devalues the worth of women — the Woke journal Lancet recently warned of “obstetric racism” for “birthing people.” And the British National Health Service recently declared that “chest-milk” — the hormone-filled, induced lactation milk from trans women who are born male is “just as good for a baby as the real thing.” Which prompted a rant on X from Megyn Kelly.
“This is what this madness has wrought, folks. Being “pc”/polite/saying nothing when you know it’s wrong has gotten us to abusing babies. Pls pls pls find your voice. This is sick. It’s mental illness — and we are enabling it.”
Also destablizing were the lies and censorship of contrary views by a corrupt medical profession, which promised us the COVID vaccine was safe and effective, when it proved neither. A recent multi-national study of 99 million vaccinated patients in eight countries paints a different picture of eight adverse effects, including blood clots, neurological disorders and swollen hearts.
Yet another great cult of our time embraces the junk science of environmental alarmism for the Machiavellian purpose of raw power. Recently, green lunatics poured a red powdery substance on the glass case holding the US Constitution at the National Archives. The archives had to close, and the protestors — caught red-handed — said they just wanted to “foment a rebellion.”
Like new voices being raised against biological males in women’s sports or bathrooms — thank you Riley Gaines — some brave scientists are coming forward to expose of the lies of environmental extremists. Ian Clark, emeritus professor at the University of Ottawa, said that if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, the Earth would continue warming, because CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around.
Two leading, also emeritus, professors in physics (Princeton’s William Happer) and atmospheric science (MIT’s Richard Lindzen) recently argued that the EPA’s latest proposed climate regs are a hoax. Guess you can only say that after you retire.
“All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific mode: they grossly over-predict the warming versus actual data. The scientific method proves there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.”
One award-winning journalist, Alex Newman, said three new peer-reviewed papers undermine the “settled science” on man-made global warming. Wow — the narrative is fake. But again, the crazies, led by the Biden administration, double down — offering EV charger subsidies to the “low income” folks in Martha’s Vineyard.
Eventually, Adolf Hitler’s lies crumbled to the ground by the weight of hard evidence of concentration camp evils. Hopefully it won’t take a Holocaust for the lies of our times — that men can be “birthing people,” that global warming is a thing, that it’s better to hire people for their sex and gender, not their qualifications — to come crumbling down. Or maybe, like Megyn Kelly suggested, we can just speak louder.
Smart cookie...And that was before woke!
So interesting your insight that our government is ruling now by putting out RULES instead of making laws!!
I wholeheartedly agree with you on all your stances (except global warming).