Rex Murphy
Nov 25
In the high and palmy days of Rome, they didn’t have Google.
If a Roman centurion, or his predictably tedious and woke offspring, wanted to check on those damn Gauls and their tripartite province, or the latest woad tattoos from Londinium (heavy on the blue), they either had to unscroll Aristotle’s “Twitter” feed — a laborious process — or check with the local oracle.
Thankfully, we live in much happier times. The oracles are dead, and instead of Aristotle we have Google, the concierge for empty minds. Want to know something trivial or trendy, just tap into Google. So when I wished to learn about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “reset” in the midst of a global pandemic, to Google I went. There they were, a multitude of links, not just about a “reset,” but a “great reset.”
But how could COVID-19, a medical calamity, provide a rationale for a total economic makeover? When someone breaks an arm, who responds by saying, “It’s time to repair the roof”? Does someone with a headache see it as an opportunity to mow the lawn? I think not.
Nevertheless, the raging pandemic, having wrecked the world’s economies, is being taken as a cue by various eminent globalists to pursue a totally unrelated agenda. Rather than being described as an opportunity, this should be seen as opportunism, pure and simple.
A combination of United Nations satraps, tech billionaires and, naturally, the apocalyptic environmental contingent have decided that this time of anxiety and disruption is the perfect moment to push their agenda.
To be sure, the push is not coming from the people bearing most of the costs of the COVID shutdowns. Tellingly, it is coming from a group of people whose wealth and power have exempted them from its stresses — people who are far removed from the day-to-day experience of the masses. Among them, it appears, is our own prime minister, as evidenced by some much-quoted statements he gave in a speech to the UN.
“This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change,” he said.
What a stilted parade of mush. Someone in the Prime Minister’s Office actually had to write those flat, jargon-ripe and ultimately meaningless sentences. Check out some of its particulars.
When Trudeau says “this is our chance,” he’s really saying: “Let’s take advantage of everyone’s preoccupation with COVID and their health to introduce some mad agenda to create a green economy. We could never do this in normal times, but now, I can do it from the steps of my cottage. Green it is.”
And what, in any deity’s name, should we take from this phrase: this is our chance to “accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems”? Stop right there. What were those “pre-pandemic efforts” that now must be “accelerated”?
Most importantly, why is this an “opportunity”? The answer, of course, is because, before COVID, no one wanted the Liberals’ green schemes. Because in normal times, absent some vast crisis seizing everyone’s attention, any announcement of a so-called great reset would be laughed at by every adult in the nation, and all clear-headed children.
Trudeau has no grounds, and certainly no mandate, to “re-imagine” the Canadian economy. And he should be the last person to assume he can reinvent it at will, having plunged the country into a bottomless cavern of debt and deficits. Whatever else COVID may be, it is not a passport to a minority government, of seriously deficient economic competence, to reset, restate or rearrange Canada’s industrial foundation.
Finally, I think the word that should trouble us most in all of this is “imagine.” Think about it. Is it really a good idea to place economies under the servitude of amateur imaginations? You cannot dream an economy (although it is very possible, if you commit to the urgings of fantasy and wishful thinking, to kill the one we already have). And stepping outside Canada, the very last people we want “re-imagining” how the world should be arranged are the over-ardent, unaccountable global warming preachers.
If we are to re-imagine anything, let us re-imagine how to support all of our own citizens, from shopkeepers to farmers to grocery clerks to oil workers to truckers and health-care workers — in other words, all those who have carried the main burdens of this harsh and desperate time.
The government should do its best to work within the economy that actually exists. Because when this wretched pandemic finally dissipates, it will be the ones who have been sweating and labouring this entire time who will build it back again.
nationalpost.com
Nov 25
In the high and palmy days of Rome, they didn’t have Google.
If a Roman centurion, or his predictably tedious and woke offspring, wanted to check on those damn Gauls and their tripartite province, or the latest woad tattoos from Londinium (heavy on the blue), they either had to unscroll Aristotle’s “Twitter” feed — a laborious process — or check with the local oracle.
Thankfully, we live in much happier times. The oracles are dead, and instead of Aristotle we have Google, the concierge for empty minds. Want to know something trivial or trendy, just tap into Google. So when I wished to learn about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “reset” in the midst of a global pandemic, to Google I went. There they were, a multitude of links, not just about a “reset,” but a “great reset.”
But how could COVID-19, a medical calamity, provide a rationale for a total economic makeover? When someone breaks an arm, who responds by saying, “It’s time to repair the roof”? Does someone with a headache see it as an opportunity to mow the lawn? I think not.
Nevertheless, the raging pandemic, having wrecked the world’s economies, is being taken as a cue by various eminent globalists to pursue a totally unrelated agenda. Rather than being described as an opportunity, this should be seen as opportunism, pure and simple.
A combination of United Nations satraps, tech billionaires and, naturally, the apocalyptic environmental contingent have decided that this time of anxiety and disruption is the perfect moment to push their agenda.
To be sure, the push is not coming from the people bearing most of the costs of the COVID shutdowns. Tellingly, it is coming from a group of people whose wealth and power have exempted them from its stresses — people who are far removed from the day-to-day experience of the masses. Among them, it appears, is our own prime minister, as evidenced by some much-quoted statements he gave in a speech to the UN.
“This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change,” he said.
What a stilted parade of mush. Someone in the Prime Minister’s Office actually had to write those flat, jargon-ripe and ultimately meaningless sentences. Check out some of its particulars.
When Trudeau says “this is our chance,” he’s really saying: “Let’s take advantage of everyone’s preoccupation with COVID and their health to introduce some mad agenda to create a green economy. We could never do this in normal times, but now, I can do it from the steps of my cottage. Green it is.”
And what, in any deity’s name, should we take from this phrase: this is our chance to “accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems”? Stop right there. What were those “pre-pandemic efforts” that now must be “accelerated”?
Most importantly, why is this an “opportunity”? The answer, of course, is because, before COVID, no one wanted the Liberals’ green schemes. Because in normal times, absent some vast crisis seizing everyone’s attention, any announcement of a so-called great reset would be laughed at by every adult in the nation, and all clear-headed children.
Trudeau has no grounds, and certainly no mandate, to “re-imagine” the Canadian economy. And he should be the last person to assume he can reinvent it at will, having plunged the country into a bottomless cavern of debt and deficits. Whatever else COVID may be, it is not a passport to a minority government, of seriously deficient economic competence, to reset, restate or rearrange Canada’s industrial foundation.
Finally, I think the word that should trouble us most in all of this is “imagine.” Think about it. Is it really a good idea to place economies under the servitude of amateur imaginations? You cannot dream an economy (although it is very possible, if you commit to the urgings of fantasy and wishful thinking, to kill the one we already have). And stepping outside Canada, the very last people we want “re-imagining” how the world should be arranged are the over-ardent, unaccountable global warming preachers.
If we are to re-imagine anything, let us re-imagine how to support all of our own citizens, from shopkeepers to farmers to grocery clerks to oil workers to truckers and health-care workers — in other words, all those who have carried the main burdens of this harsh and desperate time.
The government should do its best to work within the economy that actually exists. Because when this wretched pandemic finally dissipates, it will be the ones who have been sweating and labouring this entire time who will build it back again.
Rex Murphy: The 'great reset' no one asked for
How could COVID-19, a medical calamity, provide a rationale for a total economic makeover? Does someone with a headache see it as an opportunity to mow the…
nationalpost.com
