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Inundated by the constant tidal wave of horrible news hitting us here at home, as well as abroad as the world finds itself in the express lane toward a massive regional Middle East War that could easily blossom into a global conflict, the relief and schadenfreude that comes along every once in a great while these days with even the smallest scrap of good news is always welcome. In fact, there are a couple of such stories that have been flying under the radar that certainly could fall into this category. What’s more, many of my estimable colleagues believe they’re not merely anecdotal but strongly indicative of major societal trends that have the potential to blossom into popular movements to stop and perhaps reverse our seemingly inexorably leftward trajectory.

At least, that’s what they appear to be on the surface. I too am desperate to cling to these and any optimistic predictions, but my optimism is tempered by the knowledge that the ideologically driven incompetence and lust for absolute power of the anti-American Democrat-Left flies in the face of all logic and reason. The era of Bill Clinton-esque “triangulation,” even if it meant just a temporary retreat or just a short pause of that leftward trajectory, is now an unacceptable price to pay by those who now run that party and movement. They’re within a red nether hair’s breadth of grabbing the brass ring of permanent absolute power, and because they have the instrumentalities of government and the private sector at their command to achieve it—and have wielded them nakedly and shamelessly—traditional political considerations are not only moot, but could be toxic, politically and otherwise.

The first case in point is the full-court press by the Joey Sponge-Brain Sh*ts-Pants Junta to dismantle the fossil fuels, abolish the internal combustion engine, and replace both with electrically powered vehicles. Regardless of the fact that the infrastructure to charge millions of EVs is nonexistent, ditto battery technology in terms of range and safety, and most of all the cost of owning an EV makes them out of reach of the average consumer, they are hell-bent on imposing them on America. Because of this, the American consumer has rejected EVs to the point that every major manufacturer, from Mercedes-Benz to Toyota and GM, is either massively scaling back or outright eliminating EVs from their lineups.

And perhaps the best-known brand in that sector, Tesla, is now following suit:

Tesla, the most iconic of EV manufacturers, seemed to be avoiding this skid. Unfortunately, the realities of being a niche market with every increasing cost associated with production have caught up with the firm headed by billionaire Elon Musk.

“Tesla will lay off more than 10% of its global workforce, according to a memo sent to employees by CEO Elon Musk. The company’s shares closed down more than 5% on Monday. ‘As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity,’ Musk said in the memo obtained by CNBC. ‘As part of this effort, we have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally,’ the memo said.”…

Furthermore, EV sales continue to decline and other car companies are beginning to make alternative production plans as a result. Until there is a charging infrastructure network that can accommodate the entire American public, an electric grid that can handle capacity, enough natural resources to build models at a moderate price, and technology that doesn’t ignite when it gets wet or won’t start when it gets too cold, this may be the beginning of the end of the road for EV-mania.

Well, except for in the minds of lunatic eco-activists who are pushing their insane “Net Zero 2050” agenda. If we could power cars with their hot air and smugness, then we would be able to run our vehicles forever.

On a recent Cut Jib Newsletter podcast, historian and science blogger Bob Zimmerman and I affirmed that we’re actually fans of Elon Musk, mostly because SpaceX is a giant thumb in the eye of the Junta’s drive to wipe out independent, free-market entrepreneurialism as well as for X/Twitter being perhaps the last large bastion of free speech open to conservative voices of opposition. As for Tesla, well, EVs are nothing more than souped-up golf carts; status symbols that at present are just not capable of supplanting gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. That assessment is the sane, rational one. And yet, the Junta and the enviro-Marxists persist. Hint: They do so for anything but altruistic reasons like saving the planet by stopping so-called “climate change.”

Hold that thought for a while as we examine another category entirely, the entertainment industry. The collapse of the movie industry as a whole, with Disney being the prime example, as a result of backlash from ticket buyers and content subscribers against “woke” agitprop strangling golden-egg-laying geese from the Marvel Universe to Star Wars to James Bond and everything in between, should be seen as a lesson to the Bob Igers and Kathleen Kennedys of this world. Should be.

Before answering that question, here’s another little bit of schadenfreude to dunk into your mug of “covfefe”:

Left-wing billionaire Jeff Skoll’s woke film studio Participant is reportedly shutting down operations and eliminating most of its staff—the latest victim of Hollywood’s sharp downturn that has seen a bloodbath of layoffs and budget cuts.

Participant, founded in 2004, often financed projects with social justice and globalist themes, including former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth and its sequel. Other titles include the Obama’s Netflix documentary American Factory and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc RBG….

Hollywood’s tectonic shift to streaming entertainment has wreaked havoc with the specialty movie model that depends heavily on theatrical distribution to generate word-of-mouth business and awards-season buzz. Specialty titles that would once have received a theatrical release now almost all end up on streaming platforms in lieu of cinemas.

Participant also experienced a number of high-profile box office flops—including the environmentally themed Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo, and the Matt Damon thriller Stillwater…. Hollywood studios have been hit hard in the past year, enacting deep budget cuts amid a perfect storm of economic chaos that includes Americans continuing to cancel their cable TV subscriptions, the steep downturn in TV advertising, and streaming losses in the billions of dollars.

For sure, the rise of alternate personal venues from computers to smartphones to streaming services absolutely put pressure on traditional movie theaters. Yet this was a natural evolution and change of the culture as to how the consumer, now younger and more tech-savvy, wanted to consume/experience entertainment. The COVID lockdowns, gradually rising and then skyrocketing costs since the installation of Joey Sponge-Brain Sh*ts-Pants, plus the rejection of the majority of normal Americans of ham-fisted “woke” propaganda are the death knell of Hollywood as it was. Or at least should be. Here too, they still persist.

Yet again, the question is why? Why continue to waste billions of dollars producing films and shows or EVs no one wants to see and no one wants to drive? Why take the far-and-away No. 1-selling beer in the nation and kill it along with tainting all the other labels of Anheuser-Busch?

Elon Musk and Tesla aside, since he is essentially an enemy of the State, the reason is because ideology now trumps sanity. Plus the fact that the corruption that has all but destroyed the American system of government and the Constitution has crept into the so-called private sector mostly via at least three generations of academic brainwashing.

Considering brainwashed Marxist automatons and power-mad venal tyrants control virtually all of the instrumentalities of government that, because of their lack of ethics, morals, aforementioned lust for power, and in-your-face hatred of this nation, people, history and culture as founded, and now their willingness to use it to crush us like insects as can plainly be seen with Donald Trump’s show trials among many other things, nothing can deter them from flooring the gas pedal (or the potentiometer?) and hurtling the car into the Grand Canyon.

Even if woke studios go broke, even if EVs are no longer to be made, that does not mean ipso facto that non-woke if not pro-American Judeo-Christian-affirming or plain old normal stories will be made or that a return to the sanity of gasoline-powered vehicles is guaranteed.

Quite the opposite. It makes no difference. The bottom line is total control of the citizenry by an all-powerful State. How? By seizing control of “the means of production” and prohibiting any alternatives. Any voice that challenges accepted State policy or woke worldviews will be silenced. Total control is the goal. Whether you refuse to purchase an EV because you don’t like it or because you can’t even afford one—coupled with the strangulation of the internal combustion engine, leaving no practical, affordable alternatives—you are essentially stranded in place, so the end result is the same: total control by the State.

Remember, it’s hard if not impossible to subjugate a highly mobile society. QED.

Soon the government might shut down your car. [So-called quote-unquote “president”] Joe Biden’s new infrastructure gives bureaucrats that power. You probably didn’t hear about that because when media covered it, few mentioned the requirement that by 2026, every American car must “monitor” the driver, determine if he is impaired and, if so, “limit vehicle operation.”…

The kill switch is just one of several ways the government proposes to control how we drive. California lawmakers want new cars to have a speed governor that prevents you from going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.

That would reduce speeding. But not being able to speed is dangerous, too, says Fix. If “something’s coming at you, you have to make an adjustment.” New cars will have a special button on the dash. If you suddenly need to speed and manage to find the button when trying to drive out of some bad situation, and it lets you speed for 15 seconds. For all these new safety devices to work, cars need to spy on drivers. Before I researched this, I didn’t realize that they already do….

Biden’s infrastructure bill also includes a pilot program to tax you based on how far we drive.

“A mileage charge seems fair,” I say to Fix. “You pay for your damage to the road.” “Correct,” she replies. “But when you start allowing them to do this, they could say, ‘We don’t want you to buy a firearm.’… ‘We don’t want you to go to that destination. So we’re not going to let you start your car.’ It’s about control.”

I push back. “They’re not controlling me.”

“They can,” she replies. “Wait until you get a bill for your carbon footprint. ‘You’re at your maximum for carbon credits. We’re not going to let you drive today! Take the train. Take the electric bus.’”

“This is paranoia,” I suggest.

“Maybe,” says Fix. “But so far, everything that I’ve said about these things, each step keeps coming through.”

“Control” was supposed to be a Janet Jackson song, not a how-to-do-it manual.

Yakov Smirnoff, a refugee from the old Soviet Union who was Borat decades before Borat, and unlike Borat actually funny, making a highly successful career as a stand-up comic poking fun at the crumbling former communist dictatorship, famously quipped:

In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.

So, a kill switch on a car to prevent you from driving too fast, or even driving at all. Media that prevents you from expressing your own opinion or hearing opinions and messages contra the Junta. Banks and credit card companies that monitor what you purchase and to whom you donate. At some point, if you want to donate to Trump or your pro-life charity, the bank will not process it, via its own “kill switch.” For your own good, of course!

On the classic TV show Get Smart, Control were the good guys and Kaos evil. But in this case, the invisible hand of Adam Smith—the millions of individual choices made by millions of individuals—is in one sense a form of chaos. That is, a controlled form of chaos where many individuals through their freedom of choice control the market and everything that flows from it. That kind of elegant, natural freedom and independence is in direct contravention of those who have unleashed ideologically driven chaos by destroying freedom of choice in the quest to “control” individuals as just one mass of a populace. Again, for our own good because we’re too stupid and unenlightened to know what’s good for us.

Children guided and molded by benevolent parents? Or sheep herded to the slaughter?

(On a point of personal privilege, I have been absent from these pages as well as from my own blog for a few weeks due to a serious medical situation that for the time being is under control—no pun. I’m in good spirits, feeling no pain, and not impaired in any way that impedes my daily activities, at least for the time being. I will continue to post essays until my consult with the doctors next week, to see whatever treatment lies ahead. Hopefully, it will be as minimally invasive as possible, and I can be back up and writing on a regular basis as soon as possible. That said, I can’t begin to express my gratitude for all the prayers and words of encouragement I’ve received and truly believe, God willing, they do work miracles.)