The Unbearable Lightness Of The Great Reset

I was drawn to some remarks by Democrat Sen John Hickenlooper on CNN discussing the $369 billion BBB-lite bill:

It’s the beginning. It’s the beginning of a long, forced march that we’re going to have to all work together on. But it allows us to imagine a successful outcome. I mean, the modelers are telling us that they think it will reduce greenhouse gases — greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2030. That’s 80% of what President Biden committed to during his campaign, and everyone thought that, oh, you’ll never get there. Well, now, all of a sudden –.”

In many ways, these remarks are a strange mixed metaphor. They allude to Mao Zhedong's Long March, the first step in his rise to power, which consisted of an extended retreat by Communist forces in 1934-35.

The bitter struggles of the Long March, which was completed by only about one-tenth of the force that left Jiangxi (about eight thousand of some hundred thousand), would come to represent a significant episode in the history of the CPC, and would seal the personal prestige of Mao and his supporters as the new leaders of the party in the following decades.

This is not a happy image at all, since it represents extraordinary sacrifice as well as mass death in service of a highly questionable outcome. It also alludes to "forced march",

any march that is longer than troops are accustomed to and maintained at a faster pace than usual, generally undertaken for a particular objective under emergency conditions.

So what on earth is the "successful outcome" Sen Hickenlooper imagines? And the immediate goal he thinks is now within reach, reducing greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2030, is just the beginning. Well, maybe he's been hitting the legalized weed they have there in Colorado, but I don't think this is ever going to get very far in a representative system of government. Just for starters, sacrifice at that level requires leadership (in a representative system) at the level of Lincoln, Churchill, or Roosevelt -- or even in a totalitarian system, at the level of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao -- and remember, Mussolini couldn't even get that far. Right now, we have Joe Biden.

All the Davos types who seem to fancy themselves whispering in the ears of the policymakers are dilettantes, unserious people. I have enormous respect for Hillsdale College's online courses, which collectively can give interested people an idea of what a real undergraduate education looks like, far better than what I got in the Ivy League. On the other hand, it's been advertising a course that represents itself as teaching the Marxist roots of critical race theory, which I don't buy.

The Marxism we see in Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station and Whittaker Chambers's Witness simply isn't the stuff of Hickenlooper-style dilettantism -- the whole subtext of Wilson's argument is that only a thoroughly ruthless figure like Lenin could succeed in advancing Marxism to something beyond the level of parlor fecklessness. Chambers's own path of disillusionment led him to recognze that idealists willing to make extreme, even ultimate sacrifices, were fodder for those same ruthless sociopaths. Having been to hell and back, he preferred the life of a gentleman farmer.

Hickenlooper is unserious. He's advocating a Great Reset agenda that's simply inchoate and unworkable, to the point that I don't believe a Lenin or a Hitler would see a capability in it. Its agenda is anything but Marxist. While there's no single Great Reset manifesto I'm aware of, the key points of the movement, stated clearly or left unsaid, strike me as something like the following:

• An alliance between elte gentry and the petty criminal class, exemplified by the George Floyd riots and the movement to defund the police. This is specifically anti-Marxist; Marx himself saw it was unworkable, and it errs grossly in conflating the interests of the criminal class with the interests of the working class.
• Deliberate reduction of agriculture under the theory that herds of livestock upset the natural balance by, for example, emitting greenhouse gases or putting too many nutrients into the soil and water. Even raising fruits and legumes requires fertilizer that upsets the natural balance. (And what's this business of legalized weed? Isn't that as bad for the climate as any other horticulture?)
• A subordinate goal is nevertheless to impose vegetarianism on the human population, notwithstanding even vegan diets impose too much of a climate load given current population levels.
• An implied corollary is that the current human population is unsustainable and must be reduced.
• This goal is at the root of the Great Reset movement to privilege sexual paraphilias and promote the general availability of abortion. The current fad of inducing pre-teens to take puberty blockers and sterilize themselves is a highly visible aspect of this movement.
• It appears that there is also a theoretical school in the professions that promote transsexualism that undergoing gender reassignment is a "cure" for homosexuality. However, this view is generally not accepted within the gay community, which tends to find same-sex attraction a satisfactory condition as it stands. This is an example of the self-contradictory nature of most Great Reset agenda items.
• All that being said, the level of human population thought to be "sustainable" is far lower than can be achieved via measures like contraception, abortion, transsexualism, voluntary sterilization, or conventional same-sex attraction. Indeed, even depopulation at the 30% level of the Black Death will be insufficient to reach the actual (but never clearly stated) goals of radical environmentalists.
• Notwithstanding the need for severe depopulation, the current living standards of the world middle class are unsustainable and must be reduced. Beyond eliminating animal-based diets, living standards must retrench and eliminate widespread availabilty of mechanized transportation, electric appliances, and communication. Indeed, for much of the population, reduced availability of medical services is highly desirable.
• Opening borders to unrestricted migration from less-developed countries is a primary means of reducing overall living standards. However, this goal is self-contradictory, since the migrants are seeking improved living standards themselves, and if given the vote will inevitably seek policies that reduce crime and increase prosperity.

There are manifest problems with this set of goals that make them unsaleable to any significant part of the population and in fact even unattractive to an elite large enough to seize power. The first is that there is no readily identifiable group that can be demonized -- in theory, everyone must stop reproducing, eating, and pursuing happiness. Thus no Hitler under this paradigm can simply blame everything on the Jews. Everyone must feel guilty for driving a car, while Great Reset policy must allow migration from countries where people want to drive cars. There's no clear target and no clear solution. In fact, as I've noted above, many of the policy prescriptions are self-contradictory.

There's no room for racism or anti-racism; the human population must be reduced drastically across the board, and eliminating any particular race or group won't kill enough to serve the purpose. By the same token, there is no identifiable Übermensch who can justify mass theft or mass slaughter -- in fact, everyone must feel guilty about past racisms, genocides, and slaveries. This illustrates the lack of focus, the self-contradiction, and unseriousness of the whole agenda.

Insecurity and self-hate aren't winners. Poseurs like Hickenlooper and AOC can't close any real sale.