OPINION: Remember Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if…
Submitted by Martha Scoggin
Dear Editor,
Readers may recall the popularity of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck” jokes, such as “If you’ve ever cut your grass and found a car, you might be a redneck” and several others. The ponderance today is not whether “you might be a redneck”, but “you might be a useful idiot”. Only you know if the term applies.
Where did the term “useful idiot” come from anyway? A quick search on Google, from Merriam-Webster, defines the term as “a naïve or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda.” Further Google research uncovers the term as “Useful idiot refers to people who are easily manipulated, brainwashed. People who are a great way to propagandize a cause without fully comprehending the cause’s goals, and the entire ideology behind it.” What is happening in our world these days? Let’s take a look at a likely culprit.
Climate change: According to “experts” who are pushing this narrative, the planet is going to burn up unless we stop using fossil fuels. Recent studies show that more people die from cold than from heat; conduct your own research on that. We have been hearing for years that CO2 is causing “global warming”. What is the so-called culprit? Fossil fuels.
Many have jumped on the bandwagon; demanding to do away with fossil fuels. Let’s all start driving electric vehicles, give up our gas stoves and gas hot water heaters. Let’s convert to electric! Hogwash!
Those advocating the push to electric seem to forget SOMEONE HAS TO MANUFACTURE the products. “They” don’t tell us about the destructive environmental impacts of mining for lithium, copper, cobalt, and nickel, which are used to manufacture “all electric” items. Strip mining to extract minerals requires 900-gallon diesel equipment….useful idiots?
Bjorn Lomborg from the Copenhagen Consensus Center recently published “Thinking Smartly About Climate Change” wherein the conclusion was that “some of the typical solutions Western countries have embraced have very poor impact.”
The article mentioned the EU initiative and the Paris Climate Accords. As we all know, China and India signed on to the Paris Accord. Assuming ALL PARTIES do as they promised, an unlikely prospect, it will only deliver about 11 cents of climate benefit for every dollar spent. The article went on to explain that “…by far the best investments governments can make is in something THAT IS NOT NEW but is quite old: innovation.”
An example is the invention of the catalytic converter, which removed most air pollution from car exhaust. Another cost-effective solution (return on investment) is to do as the National Geographic suggested years ago; plant more trees. Trees take CO2 from the air to make oxygen…duh!
Our ponderance today is not “you might be a redneck if” instead it is “you might be a useful idiot if”. Let’s demand our politicians fund innovation and less “environmental policies” and regulations.
