Jacinda and the Kinky Thrills of Western Masochism

During her recent spat with Scott Morrison, our prime minister revealed something of herself. In claiming Australia had to ‘answer to the Pacific’, she made it plain that she is a Western masochist.

It is an odd fetish, formerly restricted to the groves of academia but now gaining common currency in the real world, perhaps due to the ubiquity of sociology graduates. The basic mechanics are those of guilt. Guilt for the current prosperity of the capitalist West based on its supposed sin-ridden past. The erotic charge presumably comes from wielding the studded leather whip of historical revisionism on your own tradition, thrilled that your culture, your identity has been very, very naughty.

Well mercy, mistress, mercy.

In its environmental form it holds that the West owes non-western nations the reduction of carbon emissions because of two original sins: colonialism and the Industrial Revolution. China, now emitting almost twice the carbon of the US, is considered innocent of these crimes (someone tell Tibet) and given a free pass. The economic success of western capitalism is seen as only occurring due to the exploitation of both nature and the non-western world.  Alternative interpretations – that the Industrial Revolution that began the West’s inexorable rise in living standards was due to human technological genius and that colonialism was the basis for free trade systems that have benefitted the entire globe– are never considered. The warped demands of masochism mean that these sins can only be expiated by self-flagellation such as the Paris Accord that punished the US but went easy on China and India. 

If further evidence is needed that the radical environmentalist movement (groups such as Extinction Rebellion) are fundamentally ideological rather than practical then here it is. If the earth really is doomed by carbon emissions, surely Chinese CO₂ does as much damage as the American variety?

As my platonic political man-crush, US Congressman Dan Crenshaw recently pointed out, the vaunted ‘Green New Deal’ ignores fracking, clean-burning natural gas and nuclear power in favour of quixotic plans for wind and solar power, despite the success of these (gas and nuclear) technologies in reducing US emissions. The US Department of Energy has predicted that if the US exported clean-burning natural gas tech to China and India it would reduce their coal-burning emissions by 43%.

(Check out Crenshaw’s masterful demolition of Greenie hot air below.)

But the masochists would rather see the US economy, which Crenshaw calls ‘the greatest innovation machine the world has ever seen’ supine and begging for forgiveness than harness it to actually solve the problem.

Pure Western masochism.

Similarly, what other explanation could there be for the strange moral terms of the immigration debate? The U.S takes in more immigrants than any country on Earth (with a 46 million foreign-born population as of 2015) and Australia is eighth in the world (with a 7 million-strong foreign-born population). Whereas becoming a Chinese citizen is as difficult as sitting through one of their operas. In the Middle East, the source of most recent immigration into Europe, you can forget it unless you have some great connections and are keen on a lot of Allah Akbarring. Despite their wealth, Qatar naturalizes fifty foreigners a year, and even then they are not eligible for government benefits. In Kuwait, you must be born a Muslim or convert to the ‘religion of peace’ before even joining the queue.

And yet when the US and Australia make reasonable attempts to restrict illegal immigration, the media and the Left (sorry, I repeat myself) work themselves into such a lather of indignation you’d have thought someone had burnt their vegan sausages. Our Western societies are apparently the only ones that need suffer the cultural and economic strains of an influx of immigrants because hey, some of our ancestors were a little too good at the invading and plundering that has gone on since Eve wondered what apples tasted like.

So Jacinda, please dispense with the nipple clamps, undo the choker and put down the whip. You and Mr Morrison are not the inheritors of guilt and shame but upholders of a tradition of reason, liberty and economic progress that has been and will continue to be the light of the world.

Act accordingly.