The Calculated Infliction of Misery

The sudden recent fatwa declared by the great and good in the Biden Administration against the less-expensive gas ranges was … really rather curious – and for what purpose? Cooking (and heating) with gas is (or was) relatively cheap, energy-efficient, beloved of cooks for generations. It has the advantage that if you have an older stove, you can still cook with gas in a power outage. I lived for six years in Spain, where both the stove and the flash hot water heater were powered by propane bottles, and a power outage (which occurred regularly) was only a relatively mild inconvenience. I could cook a hot meal, and we could take hot showers. An all-electric home, such as the one I live in now is miserable, to the point of being unlivable, without consistent electric power, as my neighbors and I were swiftly reminded during the Great Texas Snowmagedden, two years ago. And from this story, linked on Instapundit, one can’t help wondering if the geniuses in Biden’s government are demonstrating trying again, with the so-called safety benefits of locking hot-water heater thermostats at 110-120. The ostensible reason given for these two quasi-campaigns is a tender concern for the ‘health and safety’ of the general public and the best of intentions, but the way to hell is paved with good intentions.

I have become convinced in the last few months that the real intent isn’t ‘health and safety’ at all – but the systematic immiseration of everyone but the comfortably ruling class elite. Oh, they didn’t really care much at all and haven’t for the last couple of decades, about the convenience and conditions for the ordinary citizens, except save when they were rolled out by their handlers to make a few remarks to housebroken establishment press representatives, especially at election time when they had to be seen to throw a bone or two in the direction of the electorate, or make the correct sympathetic noises after a natural disaster. It was necessary that they be seen to care … care deeply, just make a shallow pretense of deeply caring. They don’t care, and perhaps have never really cared, beyond making the proper noises in the established media – the credentialed elite in their glass-walled corner offices in the bicoastal ruling class enclaves, and their lushly-paneled and carpeted Congressional office.

But the brutal fact is … they don’t. They don’t give a couple of satisfactory bowel movements about the ordinary electorate, the regular, law-abiding middle and working class out in Flyover Country, the class that pays their modest taxes, runs the business that keep all afloat, volunteer for the military and everything else – and I believe the goal for the elite ruling class now has gone beyond indifference into active malice. They wish to see us impoverished, dirty, miserable, cold and starving, because that makes such obedient servants, of course. A powerless peasant class doesn’t make so many demands on their rulers – and that’s the point at which we may have arrived – not when election results can be called up and organized to give the satisfactory (to the ruling class) result. What need have they of voters then, when the results can be automatically jiggered to give the correct result?

They hate us, mostly because we don’t obediently fall in line, like medieval serfs, tugging our forelocks and saying, “Yes, Sir, Yes, My Lady, whatever you wish, My Lord.” It’s really kind of sad, that the ruling class of a nation should hate the ordinary population so. The Victorians were brutal in their class snobbery – but they didn’t at least hate the ordinary citizens and cheer for their continued immiseration and disenfranchisement.

Comment as you wish, and while we still can.

18 thoughts on “The Calculated Infliction of Misery”

  1. Always remember, the purpose of inflicting propagada on someone is to humiliate them. They can lie to your face, and you can’t do anything about it.
    Recognize a theme?

  2. No disagreement here, but there is a lot more that can be said about this topic.

    I note the drive- ha ha – to force expensive battery-powered cars upon everyone who can still afford any vehicle at all, all while shutting down a significant fraction of the electrical grid supposedly intended to charge them. Plus they’ll all have a built in cutoff switch by 2025 or 2026, just in case someone gets uppity and wants to visit someplace they shouldn’t. I’ll further note that the putatively American auto makers are all-in for this and the CEO of Toyota looks to have been forced out because he wasn’t. Ford fired thousands of employees to focus on electric vehicles, GM appears to be starting mass firings for the same reason- and I’d bet that they’ve been told by their masters in DC that the vehicle market will be much smaller when all is said and done.

    I further note that I’ve read that one tactic employed against the Franco regime in Spain was for everyone to turn on their appliances all at the same time, which created problems for the electrical grid. I find it interesting that one built in assumption here was the belief that the regime actually cared if the people of Spain had electricity, because if the Spanish public believed otherwise this tactic made no sense.

    Compare and contrast with the present American regime, which displays indifference to the failures of the grid, occasionally spiced up with the sort of mealy-mouthed apology Janet Reno offered up after Waco. Not only that, but it has lately decided that natural gas is double plus ungood too, as already noted by Sgt Mom. I’ll extrapolate to the obvious next step and predict that soon they’ll decide that backup generators are bad and require modifications such that only the rich can afford them. Emissions, you know. Bad for Gaia.

    No one should imagine or pretend that this is being done for any other reason than to put a metaphorical boot on the metaphorical neck of an increasingly hostile public. If everything is powered by electricity then the regime can quite literally pull the plug on any area that refuses to obey, leaving the people freezing or sweltering in the dark, living in those unlivable houses.

    I’ve previously written here that we’re on the path to another civil war. Well, this is how we get to it. The regime is busy teaching its chosen enemies that it hates them, which is something most people did not suspect, which will lead people to hate the regime right back.

    Interesting times, etc.

  3. The war against the use of natural gas is being waged specifically because it IS clean, efficient, safe, and easily distributed. All of these are the exact opposite of what they want. Plus, natural gas gives us a good start at being energy independent with the remainder largely coming from other petrochemicals. That is forbidden because, well first it makes America independent, and second because it is such an obviously superior alternative to solar and wind. What they want is the ability to easily and quickly, for lack of a better term “besiege”, areas where the plebeians live to force us into submission at will if we get uppity.

    We are functionally two or more countries, with an invading and occupying force pouring across our borders. Marshal Petain would be embarrassed to submit to foreign rule as blatantly as our current masters.

    The divisions between our “countries” are not racial, nor by state. If you look at the urban/rural division in our country you will find that most of our other differences are reflections of it. Cities are more Leftist and less likely to be self-governing in the real sense. Ballots are manufactured and counted instead of real votes voluntarily cast by real resident citizens, and used to impose rule on rural areas. Most urban dwellers have less reverence for our country, its history, and those who do not live in cities. In fact, they have hatred and contempt for them all, especially us.

    The war on energy sources is a war on all of us, and actually is their attempt to imperfectly mirror the reality of the situation.

    Consider that reality. If you have a couple hundred thousand people crammed together in a limited acreage, you are not going to be able to feed them on what you grow in raised beds in your back yard. [Nothing against raised beds. We use them in our garden, but purely as a fresh vegetable supplement.] Especially in winter.

    Before the collapse of our supply chains when the current regime came in, cities were fed on a just-in-time model. In stores and warehouses there was about a 3 day supply of food in a city, and trucks stocked stores nightly. Other trucks brought food to the warehouses in processing and distribution center around the country. Now, less stock is kept on hand, AND stores are not stocked nightly. Which is why empty shelves are common sights today.

    How do the trucks of food get to cities? Highways. Most of which are in areas not under the immediate control of urban folk. And the drivers may well decide that they do not want to go to cities, especially with the possibility of being looted and pillaged by “dazzling urbanites”.

    There is a thing called the rule of threes. You can live 3 minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Where do cities get their water? Not out of the faucet as most city folk seem to believe. How did the Ostrogoths finally remove Rome as a power in 546? Oh yeah, that is another thing they don’t teach in schools any more.

    In modern times, electricity is necessary to live in cities. Where do most cities get their electricity? Some have their own generating plants, but even those need imported fuel. Once again, roads and railroads that cross non-urban areas and drivers for either. Otherwise, it comes from generating plants far, far away with the lines having to cross those same non-urban areas.

    Leftist and foreign TWANLOC think that they can reduce us to submission. I submit that once a sufficient fraction of the country realize that electoral integrity no longer exists and comes to believe that the Social Contract has been broken that things will become far more untidy than ivory tower Leftists think possible. YMMV

    Subotai Bahadur

  4. Sgt Mom: “It’s really kind of sad, that the ruling class of a nation should hate the ordinary population so.”

    It is a good thing we live in a “democracy”, where the ruling class continuously trembles in fear that we ordinary people will vote them out of their comfortable self-enriching jobs-for-life at the next election. That is why the ruling class is so sensitive to public opinion — and why the re-election rate for the ruling class is asymptotically approaching 100%.

    Or, to put it more bluntly, we are getting the government we deserve.

    Fortunately, the incompetence of the Political Class ensures that Total Collapse is barreling down the road towards us. After a lot of misery, along with a lot of ropes & lampposts, our descendants will have the opportunity to try again.

  5. First: “to the warehouses in processing and distribution center around the country.

    Oops. Meant that to say “to the warehouses from processing and distribution centers around the country.” Typing too fast. My bad.

    Second: Gavin Longmuir- I think we are on the same page, it is just that I see that the incidence of election fraud has reached the point where there can be no real confidence in the “results” reflecting the consent of the governed.

    Which takes us to your last paragraph by a shorter path.

    Subotai Bahadur

  6. We’re getting three gas outlets in our house – you can’t tell me that we are such idiots that Texas is going to not use natural gas and, yes, electricity goes out and my husband’s bedridden uncle does quite well with gas heaters – without, well, I can’t imagine the difficulty of moving him somewhere – and where would that be anyway that was warm? And this is Texas. Farther north?

    Half this country appears to be really and truly nuts – people that want others to define them as they want to be defined (how many of us listening to gossip wish the power to make others see us as we think we are would love tha dispensation – one before only due those like Saddam Hussein and his chldren who could deposit citizens in a shredder (and even such tyrants could not control minds). Personal responsibility, seeing coveting as a sin rather than the model for redistribution, seeing inappropriate and unearned pride as a virtue rather than a vice. Sure we living up to that cool, assured, self sufficiency was never easy but at least we thought that rather than dependance was the goal.

    But the most obvious nuttiness surely comes from destroying energy – the energy that made for the servantless house, for sections of land put to plow, for goods driven from coast to coast and and shipped across the world. And every day a new way to corral, diminish, denigrate that energy comes out of Washington.

  7. The initial move here is the Consumer Product Safety Commission issuing an Request for Information to the public at large regarding the danger posed by gas stoves. The CPSC has been quick to deny that it wants to do anything regarding gas stoves, saying it just “welcomes the public input and data” and goes on to state that no regulatory action is planned. Nothing nefarious, all just harmless, a regulatory asking for info it needs to make informed decisons. Yeah right.

    Keep in mind that CPSC commissioner Trumka (what would his father think of this)has already made.public comments regarding regulating gas stoves, from which he, other commissioners, and Biden Admin officials either quickly denied or.backtracked. Also there has been a.large number of.blue cities banning gas hook ups for new.construction and California will ban sale of new gas furnaces and water heaters by 2030, all for climate change

    Well climate change reasons and banning gas appliance sales won’t cut it on a national level but saving the children by slowly squeezing gas appliances might. I would expect the report from the CPSC RFI to highlight dangers from gas stoves regarding juvenile asthma; Trump’s has basically signalled it.That will provide the basis for the CPSC to regulate gas stoves outside of the ability of us to afford one. So no the CPSC can claim today they don’t want to regulate gas stoves, but they then starts process that will end up requiring, such regulation in the future. That’s how bureaucratic politics works

    This more than just gas stoves. The CPSC report will be the trigger for a media frenzy regarding the danger of gas appliances in general, with all sorts of interviews with experts, human interest stories of kids on respirators. Think “Shark Week” but with killer appliances instead of killer fish. Maybe Hollywood will get involved with the next horror movie having Jason burst through the door, but instead of a bloody axe he’ll wield a.6-burner range top

    How dare you put the children of America at risk for your.cooking convenience.

    They are.coming for your gas appliances, but they just need to.shift that Overton Window first, let the issue evolve first. Watch and learn

  8. Oh, yes – this is a test run for cutting off gas appliances for the proles. Same thing that we saw with light bulbs. I’m certain we’ll see it with hot water heaters as well.

    One of the striking things to me has been the relative indifference of the political class to the train crash disaster – and even to the back-country people living in the mountain towns in So-Cal – now snowed in. No one in Pete Buttigeig’s Dept of Transportation seemed to give a damn until they were shamed into it by local social media. The small mountain towns in the San Bernardino’s are mostly lived in by retirees, vacationers and working-class, it looks like – and no one in California’s governing class looks like they gave a damn either.

    Another front in the infliction of misery on the working class and flyover-country Americans is the war on contract workers, free-lancers and part-time gig workers. (I’m a part-time gig worker myself, as a writer and publisher; I had a couple of regular clients that I did website content for – not much $$, but it was regular, and I worked my own hours.) No – all those freelancers with regular gigs must be considered employees, over their own preferences and objections. It’s insidious – the ruling class is cramming all those square pegs into round holes, all the better to control us.

  9. A couple of days ago, when there was a major blackout in NYC, someone reported that callers to an NPR radio program were saying things like:

    “I’m glad when these things happen, it teaches us a lesson”

    and

    “We deserve this, because we’re so wasteful”

    I doubt these callers were ‘elites’ in any meaningful sense; more likely, people resentful that their own position in life was not what they had expected it to be.

    It’s an especially hypocritical form of sadism–the enjoyment of the suffering of others while using some form of “redemption through suffering” as an excuse.

  10. When I was a little tyke, my dad said that if/when things break down you don’t want to be within 3-4 days walking distance of large metro areas. Liberals seem to think there is strength in numbers but now are busy destroying the infrastructure, which turns that strength into a massive weakness. If they were fanatical death cult members, what would they do differently?

  11. It’s also possible that they truly believe that they are saving the world, and that the rubes are just too stupid to see it (What’s the Matter with Kansas?). They are overconfident in their abilities to mold, shape and nudge human behavior, and they don’t pay a direct price when their plans go awry. In fact, if their plans go awry, it’s surely the fault of the kulaks and wreckers and the deplorables.

  12. 110 degree water heaters, huh. I sure hope you like Listeria, because that’s how you get Listeria outbreaks.

  13. A couple of days ago, when there was a major blackout in NYC, someone reported that callers to an NPR radio program were saying things like…

    I’d really not take callers allowed to appear on an NPR program as representative of anything, anything at all.

    I recall long ago I would listen to C-SPAN call in programs after work, because I was young and dumb. At some point the calls were divided up into republican, democrat, and independent, because too many of the callers were angry republicans. Some of my youthful idealism slipped away, then. Much later, long after I gave up on C-SPAN, I read that they’d done the same thing, because too many callers on their three lines were in favor of Trump. So they divided what appeared on air into pro-Trump and anti-Trump. That made Trump look much less popular.

    When NPR now broadcasts idiots claiming that they’re happy when electricity goes away I’m pretty sure they’ve hung up on dozens of angry callers who aren’t pleased and want the moronic green nonsense to stop.

    Everything about the present regime is a lie, even the call in shows.

    Everything.

  14. 110 degree water heaters, huh. I sure hope you like Listeria, because that’s how you get Listeria outbreaks.

    Well, when that starts happening NPR will tell all the cognescenti that it’s only happening because the d***** dirty deplorables don’t wash.

  15. One of the striking things to me has been the relative indifference of the political class to the train crash disaster…

    The most striking about this for me was that I wasn’t striked at all. This was exactly what I expected from these people, even before it happened. The regime simply isn’t concerned about the people of flyoverland, period, ever, in any way.

    There are about a trillion examples of this I could write about, but at this point I figure everyone likely to read this has their own examples, muy plenty.

  16. I don’t know of any gas range that can’t be lit with a match. My newest range is ten years old and if there’s no power I just use one of those long butane lighters to light a burner. My houses also have gas fireplaces with pilot lights, useful when the power goes out.

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