Energy, The Machine and a Song
“The eastern world, it is exploding.
Violence flarin’. Bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’.
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun your totin’.
And even the Jordan river has bodies, floatin’.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say.
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today.
If a button is pushed, there’s no running’ away.
There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave.
Take a look around you boy, it’s bound to scare you boy.
And you tell me, over and over and over again my friend.
Ah, you don’t believe, we’re on the eve of destruction.
No, no you don’t believe, we’re on the eve of destruction.”
Three separate topics today. So, let’s get right into them.
Energy: Energy is essential for almost all human activity. From basic needs like cooking food or moving from place to place or keeping warm at night to all the things in a modern lifestyle like computers, you need energy to do any of it.
Growth in societies and improvement in standards of living are directly tied to how efficient and cheap that energy production is. Man first had only wood fire and wind and maybe a river flowing through a mill. For thousands of years, these basic and inefficient forms of energy production limited what societies could do. The next big leap came with coal, which was many times over more productive than burning wood. Oil and gas were the next massive moves ahead. Harnessing the power of those carbon-based fuels in the last 150 years or so has enabled almost all of the advancements in modern society from travel to medicine to technology. If we were still burning coal or wood, most of these advancements could not exist. The next leap in efficient energy production has been nuclear. Nuclear would be such a huge advancement, if it were not choked by the environmental left.
Each of these new methods of producing energy was many times more efficient and produces many times more energy for a fraction of the cost of the method that preceded it. Without more abundant, reliable and inexpensive energy, economies cannot grow and the standard of living cannot rise.
This is why I believe the “green” climate religion adopted by the Democratic Party in the United States, and similar leftist parties in other countries, may be the most pernicious force in world politics today. Kamala Harris says she is “unburdened by what has been.” But the policies she supports are going back to what existed hundreds of years ago in order to burden the future. I understand that the technology in modern windmills and solar cells are better than were in the 19th century. But they still do not work when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. And in terms of efficient production of energy, they still take us back to a time before humans discovered the benefits of burning coal.
And since it is “global” climate change that the climate worshipers want to tackle, it does not help if California stops all energy use and China, Iran and India produce more. The “evil empire” countries do not care about any environmental anything. And over a billion people in India would all like to have a 2000 square foot house with air conditioning and an F150 in the driveway, like Americans and Europeans do. When John Kerry flies his private jet there, or Greta Thunberg sails her $20 million sailboat there to tell them they can’t have any of those things, they are unmoved.
The “green” agenda will not save the earth. It will destroy it. By taking western civilization backwards in every metric, economies will shrink and the west will not be able to afford or create the military structures that keep us safe. That will allow the forces of radical Islam and/or communism to defeat democracies everywhere. They don’t care about the environment or women’s rights or anything else. They only care about spending their power and control around the world.
This is not theory. We already see how slavish devotion to climate worship is destroying the German economy. Reagan warned us of “a thousand years of darkness” that losing the world to the Soviet Union might have brought forth. We are not safe from something like that yet. To keep the “darkness” at bay, we must have vibrant energy, economies and militaries. We can save the planet, by stopping those who claim they are trying to save it, but will actually destroy it.
The Machine: Nobody is going to vote for Kamala Harris. Well, OK, a few people are. But most who will pull the lever for her are either voting against Donald Trump or they are voting for the Democratic Machine. It doesn’t matter to these voters who the person is. Kamala, Joe, Tim, Gavin. Whoever it is, they are in the machine and the machine will actually run things and that is what they trust. The person is somewhat irrelevant.
Joe Biden has not been “all there” for some time. But, yet the Democratic base was fine with it. Have you seen Jill Biden in the cabinet meetings and now signing official White House documents? Joe is sinking fast. Similar to the last year of Woodrow Wilson’s failed presidency, it appears that the president’s wife is really running things as the president is incapacitated. Kamala, who had been invisible, was adored and adopted in just a couple of weeks with no dissent and without a public vote. Kamala is incompetent. Many elected Democrats privately acknowledge that. But it doesn’t matter. She is just an “historic” figurehead.
So who is and who runs the machine? Jill and Joe Biden did not want to go. Look at who pushed them out. The NY Times editorial board for one. They seem to get the Democratic Party to do whatever they say. The Clintons, Obamas, Pelosi and their advisors call shots too. And major donors and constituencies like Hollywood and Big Tech are in the mix as well.
The Democratic Party has always been a “union shop.” Dissent is not permitted. This has been a strength in legislative bodies as it is rare that any Democrat strays from the party line like many Republicans visibly do. The Dem party bosses will dictate what is best for you. And it has gotten much worse of late. Look at what happened to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin when they would only vote with Biden 90% of the time instead of 100%. There are no debates inside the party anymore and the actual candidates don’t matter. As long as they follow the orders of the machine, they are in.
The framers of the constitution (white, racist, colonists that they were) imagined rule of law governed by men. Not by machine.
The Eve of Destruction: The 1965 song that opens this missive was a huge hit in the US and UK, hitting #1 in the US. The Vietnam war was heating up. We were all being taught drills in the event of a nuclear attack. The Soviet threat was real and there was unrest on college campuses.
Substitute ‘Soviet” for “China,” Ukraine or the Middle East for Vietnam and it doesn’t sound too different from today, does it? Bodies are still “floatin’” in the Jordan River.
It was a hit because the message that we were on the brink of destruction resonated with people. But as great as the song was, Barry McGuire was wrong. Destruction did not come in 1965 or 1966 or any time thereafter.
Later in 1965 a song came out by a group called The Spokesmen that was a response to the Eve of Destruction. It laid out a much more positive future. It did not achieve anywhere near the chart success of “Eve,” rising only to #36. But it was more accurate in its assessment of the future.
I will be traveling and, absent some event that cannot go without comment, I will not be sending you another missive for a couple of weeks until October 17th. The final sprint to the election will be in full stride by then. I will begin with the lyrics and the story of The Dawn of Correction song.
It may not surprise you to know that I had, and still have, both tunes on 45 records.
Until next time, I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free