Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Thousands are dying from Russian missiles and bombs in the suburbs of Ukraine.
In response, the Biden Administration’s climate-change envoy, multimillionaire and private-jet owning John Kerry, laments that Russian president Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming.
“You’re going to lose people’s focus,” Kerry frets. “You’re going to lose big-country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact”
“Impact”?
Did the global moralist Kerry mean by “impact” the over 650 Russian missiles that impacted Ukrainian buildings and tore apart children?
Are Russian soldiers losing their green “focus”? When Putin threatens nuclear war is he merely “diverted”? Would letting off a few nukes be “damaging” to the human environment?
Climate-change moralists love humanity so much in the abstract that they must shut down its life-giving gas, coal, and oil in the concrete. And they value humans so little that they don’t worry in the here and now that ensuing fuel shortages and exorbitant costs cause wars, spike inflation, and threaten people’s ability to travel or keep warm.
The Biden Administration stopped all gas and oil production in the ANWR region of Alaska. It ended all new federal leases for drilling. It is cancelling major new pipelines. It is leveraging lending agencies not to finance oil and gas drilling.
It helped force the cancellation of the EastMed pipeline that would have brought needed natural gas to southern Europe. And it has in just a year managed to turn the greatest oil and gas producer in the history of the world into a pathetic global fossil-fuel beggar.
Now gas is heading to well over $5 a gallon. In overregulated blue states, it will likely hit $7.
The result is left-wing terror that the voters in the coming midterm election might rightly blame Democrats for hamstringing the American ability to travel, keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and buy affordable food.
But how will the Biden Administration square the circle of its own ideological war against oil and natural gas versus handing the advantage to our oil- and gas-producing enemies, as Russia invades Ukraine?
Or put another way, when selfish theory hits deadly reality, who loses? Answer: the American people.
Joe Biden lifted U.S. sanctions on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline designed to provide green Germany with loathsome, but life-saving, natural gas.
But first Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. Biden has no problem with pipelines per se, just American ones.
While he doesn’t like the idea of Germany burning carbon fuel, or Vladimir Putin reaping enormous profits from Berlin’s self-created dependency, or Germans importing liquified natural gas from America, Biden also does not like the idea of forcing German families to turn off their thermostats in mid-winter when there is Russian-fed war not far from Germany’s borders.
Here at home, Biden gets even crazier. As our enemies around the world reap huge profits from record high oil and gas prices, did Biden ask Alaska, North Dakota, or Texas to ramp up production?
In other words, did he ask Americans to save fellow cash-strapped Americans from a self-created energy crisis, in the way he assured the Germans that during war reality trumps theory?
Not at all.
Instead, Biden came up with the most lunatic idea in recent diplomatic history of begging autocratic and hostile regimes the world over to pump more oil to lower America’s gas prices.
For years, America has sanctioned the oil-rich Venezuelan dictatorship, a narco-terrorist state that wars on its own people and its neighbors. Now Biden is begging strongman Nicolás Maduro to pump the supposedly dirty fuels America has in even greater abundance but finds it too icky to produce.
Biden also has beseeched the once sanctioned, terrorist Iranian government. He wants Tehran to help us out by upping the very oil and gas production that America has tried to curtail for years. In return, Iran is demanding a new “Iran Deal” that will soon ensure the now petro-rich theocracy the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
On the eve of the Russian invasion, Biden begged Putin to pump even more oil to supplement its current Russian imports to the United States.
Did Putin see that surreal request as yet another sign of American appeasement that might greenlight his upcoming planned invasion? In Russian eyes, was it more proof of American weakness and craziness after the humiliating flight from Afghanistan?
Biden has blasted the human rights record of the Saudi Arabian royal family. Now he is begging the monarchy to pump more of its despised carbon-spewing oil to make up for what his administration shut down at home. Is that why the Saudi royals refused to take his call?
The moral of Biden’s oil madness?
Elite ideology divorced from reality impoverishes people and can get them killed.
Joe Biden should have been shoved into a garbage disposal long ago.
amen to that!!
Biden is a puppet. Someone else is pulling the strings & has orchestrated this disaster for our country. I keep asking why and the obvious answer is that the globalists who are running the country are enriching themselves at the expense of hard working Americans. It is disgusting and wrong. This administration seems determined to impoverish middle-class America. The result will be 2 classes: The Elite Rulers and everyone else. BTW – Everyone else will be poor. It is the perfect Socialist society.
Ms. Rice,
The Great Reset / New World Order is the phrase that you seek. For some reason, VDH refuses to acknowledge the Great Reset by name (have not listened to the last couple podcasts, so apologies if incorrect now).
Having said that, destroying the middle class to ensure the West is subservient and unable to challenge the elites’ power is the goal here. Destroy the US Dollar to usher in a central bank digital currency that can be used to track and control society is the ultimate goal. The inflation today and the pathetic responses from the Fed all but confirm such activity is underway.
They are men beating a donkey drowning in mud and mistaking its pleas to back up as affirmation of their will to drive it forward: “Hyah! Hyah!”.
If you tell them to turn the donkey around or let it have its own head that it may live, the will beat you too and say; “it must go forward! It shall go forward!”
And when they have beaten you and the donkey has died nonetheless, what will you do? I will turn and with my own hands bury the donkey.
Thus Spoke Utnapishtim
Once again, thank you for pointing out how this administration’s actions make me wonder whose side they represent. In the future will the USA be obliterated or just irrelevant because we can’t be trusted to carry through obligations ?
Biden and his “old Democrats” are in a desperate mode of survival of their Democratic Party which has been in gradual decline for decades. Propped up by one scheme and trick after another to stay relevant. Now they are using the age-old tactic of fitting two perceived enemies (the GOP and the AOC left) against one another. It won’t work. Either Democrats will have to arrange another “rigging,” or they are toast in November.
“pitting” instead of “fitting” in my previous comment.
Can someone answer this question? Why are we, in the US, so concerned with protecting & supporting the Ukrainians’ fight to protect their “democracy” and “freedom”, but nobody’s supporting our fighting here, in the US, to protect OUR Republic and freedom, from the enemy already here ???!!!!!
Biden and the left would not have been out of place in the French Revolution.
https://youtube.com/c/TheMaineReset
As a lobsterman here in Maine, we are witnessing Bidens administration attempt to displace our sustainable fishery so they can lease our fishing areas to multinational corporations.
We are fighting and pleading with our fellow citizens to support us by sharing these videos which describe how destructive they are to the ecosystem and what a ripoff they are to the ratepayers.
Feel free to share, we need all the help we can get.
Big fan of Victor, heard about your page on the Bill orielly show and I’m glad I did! Great commentary!
jason