Matches Made in Hell

Of political matches made in Hell, Marx and Engels would surely qualify albeit less viscerally than Hitler and Goebbels. Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) would certainly make the cut. Don’t want to be unkind but as inept as they are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would not nearly make the cut. On the other hand, general Mark Milley and admiral Rachel Levine is a hellishly woke coupling to conjure up in one’s hallucinogenic imaginings. But, really, I am not thinking of these kinds of matches. I am thinking of Scotland still, which I mentioned in my previous Pipeline piece.

If you recall, and why should you, the Scottish government, dependent on the English taxpayer for its supper, recently declared that it was abandoning its climate goal of reducing emissions by 75 percent by 2030. Getting in, as it were, before inconvenient reality trumped aspirations. Such backsliding made the Scottish Greens Party, a junior partner to the Scottish National Party (SNP) in government, really mad. It came to a head. As the BBC put it:

The first minister has ended the SNP's power-sharing deal with the Scottish Green Party. The move follows the government's decision to scrap climate targets and a pause on the prescription of puberty blockers for under-18s.

Humza Yousaf, the then-First Minister, had taken time off from yearning for independence from the perfidious English to kick the Greens out of government. That is before Mr. Yousaf was in turn deposed for deposing the Greens. Like praying mantises, eating their own is a specialty of the Left.

Marx and Engels: architects of human misery.

I saw the co-leaders of the Greens Party, Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie, giving several interviews after the breakup. Here and here are a couple. Their basic claim is that the SNP will now be at the beck and call of “reactionary” elements within their party. Apparently progressive ideals will now be on the chopping block. The truth is rather different. Only wholesale alien body snatching could transform the bunch of collectivists who overwhelmingly populate the SNP into moderates, never mind reactionaries. According to Ms. Slater, backsliding on climate action apart, other calamities to be visited on the Scottish people by the “reactionary” SNP include the abandonment of rent controls and of puberty blockers. Rent control and puberty blockers?

You really have to give it to Green parties wherever they exist. They clothe themselves in virtue when they are the most wretched of people imaginable. Rent controls end up producing misery for those in need of cheap housing. Puberty blockers end up producing damaged people, as laid bare by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass in her final report to England’s National Health Service. As you would expect, Slater and Harvie peremptorily dismissed the evidence in the Cass report. It simply does not accord with their aim to create the despair upon which they can ply their victimhood trade.

The last thing Green parties want is people pursuing happiness. Which brings me to the match made in Hell that I have in mind. That is the political environmental movement and the political left.

Greens latch themselves to whatever is the mainstream party of the left. This is not as evident in the in the U.S. because the Dems already have AOC and company inside the tent. They are so green and left that they take oxygen away from any third radical force. After all, once you have sponsored the Green New Deal there is no more outlandish territory to occupy. That’s not the case in Australia where the Greens as a separate political party hold the balance of power in the upper house, or in Ireland where by joining the ongoing racket of a Fine Gael/Fianna Fail government, they were rewarded with ministries they wanted, including the environment, transportation, communication, tourism, media, children and youth, equality, integration, and land use.

In Oz, the Labor government is left and green but not nearly so left and green as the Greens would have it. Inevitably the Greens drag the agenda leftwards and green-wards. Inner-city electoral contests are fought on the issue of which party will best combat “climate change.” There is only one winner. That is the party that deals in fantasy. Inner-city elites seem ever ready to give their votes to whomever promises most to save the planet. In my own federal electorate a so-called Teal won. While not formally part of the Greens, the Teals are nevertheless first cousins backed by climate activist Simon Holmes à Court, the rich son of a billionaire.

Even more potent than Charles III.

It’s hard to understand the dismal state of politics in the West without taking account of radical third-party forces leveraging their positions to blackmail mainstream parties into adopting common causes. In this age of confected climate alarmism, environmental political movements have come into their own. Influencers from King Charles to Greta Thunberg have managed to warp the minds of the university educated clever people. They believe in catastrophic “climate change” and, faced with imminent Armageddon, vote accordingly. Mainstream politicians take note and, as they have no principles to speak of, they adjust their positions and become bedfellows with fanatics.

You see the same kind of thing happening in order to curry favor with Muslim communities. The Labor government in Australia has sold out Israel to hold onto electorates with large Muslim populations. It is not even disguised. Former prime minister John Howard spells it out.

Muslims and greenies equally subvert and corrupt politics. Of course mainstream politicians of the left and right could come together and marginalize destructive radical movements. But, let’s face it, that would require courage, patriotism and statesmanship; relics of the past.