Living in the Land of Lies. Part One Victor Davis Hanson
https://victorhanson.com/living-in-the-land-of-lies-part-one/
In reading and listening this holiday week I encountered nothing really other than outright lies.
I was sitting on a farm buffeted before Christmas by near record cold temperatures and after Christmas by near record precipitation. Yet almost weekly we receive stories about California’s “permanent drought” of hot/dry weather and an environmental Armageddon that only precivilizational scarcity can avert.
This fated doom means we in California have been outlawing gasoline-powered yard tools and new natural gas ovens and heating systems, and must always suffer fuel prices 30-40 percent above those in the rest of the nation—due to special green blends and restrictions on refinery operations and new gas and oil leasing.
So, no matter: all of these recent stories of near-record cold and precipitation, as well as fated new cutbacks are followed by warnings of imminent global warming catastrophes. Apparently, if Californians do not use fossil fuels at all, but, as the largest state importer of electricity in the nation, buy out-of-state electricity (much of it generated by coal or natural gas) then we at least can feel better about ourselves.
But more to the point, before the recent week of intense cold storms, giving ample rain and snowfall, California was already experiencing in most places a 100 percent-plus December precipitation rate. By New Year’s Day we may well have 100 percent-plus of the season’s entire average annual precipitation. Apparently, the harder the rain falls, the colder the days become, the more Governor Newsom and the Bay Area “scientific” community insist we need to return to a premodern lifestyle of mass transit transportation, unaffordable gas and diesel, and wind and solar generated, sky-high electricity rates.
We are told yet again by President Biden, by Vice President Harris, by their Pravda megaphone, Karine Jean-Pierre, and perhaps by soon-to-be-impeached Alejandro Mayorkas that the border is “secure.” And any who object that 5-million entries since January 2021 prove that it is not, is well a Great Replacement Theory racist.
Yet, living the lie proves otherwise. Here in Central California, I’ve noticed a substantial new surge and influx of illegal aliens. On my avenue a recent sheriff’s raid surrounded a nearby house, where neighbors long suspected gang chop shops, drug dealing, and other unmentionable trafficking.
The amount of trash on the farm is greater than usual, and the paper/trash is of exclusively Spanish language matter (but, alas, carefully sifted to exclude any address or names on envelopes).
The number of parked cars in the orchard of occupants variously shooting drugs, scouting out copper wire thievery, fornicating, or engaging in illegal shooting (e.g., red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, anything that moves), and those walking cross-country, through the vineyards and orchards, who do not speak English is on the rise as well.
In the papers, there are increasing stories of outraged parents from Oaxaca who are not provided Spanish translators at school board meetings, ironically often overseen by Latino citizen board members who do not speak Spanish fluently. To suggest that if someone comes illegally into the U.S. without the permission of the host, and does not know or quickly learn English, then one should not make costly demands on the citizen population, is proof of racism (Imagine a U.S. expatriate who sneaks across the southern border and does not acquire a resident visa or green-card, continues to reside illegally in Mazatlán, and then goes to a city-council meeting to demand his Mexican hosts provide for him an interpreter in English—or else!).
Occasionally even the Fresno Bee notes that illegal aliens (“undocumented migrants”) have been arriving in Central California. But again, we are told by Californians that the border is secure just as we must return to our pastoral past given the constant doom of permanent scorching heat and unending aridity.
Comments are closed.
