The Great Reset

[We w]ill at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play,

or film as soon as [we hear] the speaker utter a lie, ideological

drivel, or shameless propaganda.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There was once a guy in a small southern Utah town who made the news all over the place because he put up a sign in his front yard that declared his property a UN-free zone.  Lots of people made fun of him, wondering what impact the UN could possibly have on a guy with a few acres of land in the sticks in southern Utah.  Given that the UN operates some programs that provide medical aid and food to those in need or preserve cultural heritage sights, albeit in a bureaucratic and inefficient way, alongside some of truly inefficient things they do in the general assembly, at the time, I had no real opinion either way, but always felt the guy probably understood things better than I did.  A decade or so later, with the international community firmly entrenched in the big-government control movement and its many tentacles creeping farther and farther into our everyday lives, it seems the guy who wanted to keep the UN (and other global elites) out of his back yard was on to something.

The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of 21st-century Fascism by Glenn Beck with Justin Haskins (ISBN:  978-1-63763-059-4) provides an overview of just what the Great Reset is.  Beck and Haskins view it as an attempt by elites on the global stage to take over and subsequently control people politically and economically.  They note that this is a plan that has been in the works for much longer than just since the coronavirus happened in 2020, although that served as a crisis that could be used to further many of the goals of those pushing for the Great Reset (Leftists around the world, not just Joe Biden as the title might lead one to believe).  Other things that have served as a way for Klaus Schwab, George Soros, and others to further their agenda include environmentalism and the rise of national debts and inflation, which many Leftists want to combat by employing something called “modern monetary theory,” which states that national debt doesn’t really matter, only inflation does, since governments have the ability print the money they need (taxation is used to control (read: punish) people or organizations, not necessarily to raise revenue).  Another economic tool of those pushing the Great Reset, which is a politically loaded term these days, although one that the book includes in direct quotations from the horses’ mouths, is environmental, social, governance (ESG), a system that the elite wants to use to evaluate business and individuals the way in essentially the same way credit scores are used, just without so much worry about credit and more worry about those more political factors.  The system was designed to counteract the Right’s call for business to self-regulate and not have the government involved.  With ESG involved, big investment firms can buy shares in a company and then demand that the company adhere to ESG standards, thereby causing, ostensibly, business to drive the ESG agenda and not government.  Beck and Haskins finish the book with some policy prescriptions, almost all of which are calls to action on a local level in most cases: support small businesses, be politically active on the local level, don’t live lies in our personal lives.

The book was an interesting read.  It was written a in 2022, but is especially relevant given the rise of ESG and organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF), which push the Great Reset.  The history of the Great Reset, relevant quotations from those pushing it, not just spouting off about it (all extensively noted in endnotes), and solid explanations of just what these terms refer to and how they apply to the common man, make the book worth a read.  I am not a huge fan of the book’s subtitle, although I understand it given that many of the Great Reset players have ties to Biden.  Beck does note that the Great Reset is not necessarily a partisan issue as there are culprits normally associated with the American Right, too.  However, he focuses on those tied in some way to Joe Biden and the U.S. Democratic machine.  I think that section could’ve been a little better.  Some readers may not appreciate some of the humor in some of the sections.  I was kind of on the fence about some of it — it was all appropriate; I just usually appreciate a more serious tone, but I think regular Beck listeners will get it and appreciate it.  In the end, I thought the actions the authors suggested we take were all very solid.  They were all things that people can do.  I found the extensive quotations from Russian dissident Solzhenitsyn to be powerful, especially the one asking us to not live a lie.

 

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Red-handed

Corruption has been around as long as politics have been around, which seems to be pretty much since the beginning since the Old Testament is full of politics, often of the lying, sneaking, and back-stabbing variety.  As a missionary in Russia and then in a couple classes in college, though, was when I was introduced to corruption.  It didn’t seem to play a large role in the American politics that I knew from the 1980s and 1990s.  Russians, though, constantly complained about corruption, and textbooks and articles in college expanded my understanding of the scope of corruption all around the world.  Sadly, as time has gone on, corruption has continued to expand and not retract like most hope it would.

Red-handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win by Peter Schweizer (ISBN: 978-0-06-306114-9) chronicles corruption among American elites as it pertains to China.  The book shows how many facets of American society are compromised because of their deep, corrupt financial ties to China.  Both major political parties (already for decades) have been selling out to China along with big business, the green lobby, the American entertainment industry, and even America’s sports leagues.  While the Clintons and the Bidens headline the political corruption, the Bushes and Mitch McConnell are also exposed.  Politicians and diplomats consistently use their time in office to make connections with high-ranking Chinese, then cash in on public service, brokering Chinese access to American halls of power.  Some, like the Clintons, Bidens, and McConnells, don’t even bother waiting until they’re out of office.  The worst part about it from an American security standpoint is that many of the deals involve dual-use technologies, defense industry, and hi-tech products that, when protected, protect America’s edge and advantage in the world.  The NBA has sold out to China for the billions of dollars it can make there.  In turn, players, coaches, executives, and even fans are prevented from expressing certain views.  The same holds true for Hollywood, where anti-American messages are de jour, but the studios must walk on eggshells when it comes to China, Taiwan, and Tibet.  A short section at the end talks about what can be done and passes out a little praise to the few to whom it is due.  Ultimately, American political discourse is constrained, and American national interests are subjugated to a country that does not, according to the statements of its own leaders, believe in a positive-sum game, but a zero-sum game, and it’s willing to do what it takes to be the one on top.

The book was very interesting and worth one’s time.  Schweizer is a long-time crusader against corruption in government and has written a number of tomes on the subject, including Clinton Cash.  Schweizer is not political in his writing or research: all sides are fair game, and this was particularly evident in this book.  I also appreciated the look beyond politics and into the culture and business worlds, which play a major role in American life and in American politics.  Politics in America would not be what they are if it wasn’t for the way those on top in the cultural and business worlds acted.  The book is well researched (the scores of pages of endnotes point to this), although all the names and figures can seem a little convoluted at times.  If one reads for the overarching points, this does not inhibit the reading experience.  The facts and figures are there for those who want the minutiae, though.  The other strong point of the book was that it explained what some of the risks are from this corruption, which helps us understand the immediacy of the concern.  The prescriptions at the end seemed realistic, although maybe too little, too late.

 

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Flashpoints

In the end, the problem of Europe is the same problem that haunted its greatest moment, the Enlightenment.  It is the Faustian spirit, the desire to possess everything even at cost of their souls.  Today their desire is to possess everything at no cost.  They want permanent peace and prosperity.  They want to retain their national sovereignty, but they do not want these sovereign states to fully exercise their sovereignty.  They want to be one people, but they do not want to share each other’s fate.  They want to speak their own language, but they don’t believe that these will be a bar to complete mutual understanding.  They want to triumph, but they don’t want to risk. They want to be completely secure, but they don’t wish to defend themselves.

Europe has always been a hotbed of military activity.  I never really understood that in the 1700s and 1800s because so many of the nobility were related.  Even as World War I approached, the situation was much the same, and the leaders England, Germany, Russia, and others were all related in one way or another.  I would think that would’ve kept things calmer, but it didn’t.  Obviously, World War I and World War II followed the pattern of violence.  From then on, though, Europe has been relatively stable or, at least, the famous parts that people want to visit have been.  Always lurking under the surface, especially during the Cold War, though, was the threat of war.  It makes for interesting study and reading.

In Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe by George Friedman (ISBN: 978-0-307-95113-7), the author examines the history of Europe between the great wars and then wants to know if Europe will continue in its post-World War II ways or return to its long history of war.  He argues that Europe’s history of conflict has not come to an end.  The war in Bosnia & Herzegovina after Yugoslavia disintegrated and Russia’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine are given as the most prominent examples of how Europe has not been very peaceful since the fall of the Soviet Union, and that’s relatively recent.  He discusses many of the problems Europe is facing, such as immigration from predominantly Muslim societies, the UK’s distance from the EU (the book was written before Brexit was finalized), friction between northern Europe and southeastern Europe, and economic concerns throughout the European Union.  Friedman bases a lot of his analysis on what he calls borderlands, which are areas where cultures, nations, and ethnic groups meet and mingle.  People grow up speaking three or four languages and are involved in cross-border trade, but always seem to maintain some sort of identity, be it religious, ethnic, or national.  When conditions get worse, such as when the economy takes a hit, these borderlands can turn into flashpoints that have the potential to turn into war (or a larger war if multiple flashpoints go off at the same time).  The book is predictive in nature, so only time will tell.

While already a few years old, the book seemed relevant to today’s Europe.  Bosnia & Herzegovina is still unsettled with the ethnic Serb entity, the Serb Republic, defiantly worked towards ever-greater autonomy.  Kosovo is still a major sore point for the Serbs.  The Greeks and Turks are always on edge with each other.  The Greeks and Macedonians continue to squabble over just who was there first and whether the name of a country can infer violent intentions.  The EU itself has a member in Cyprus that is home to a frozen conflict.  Other frozen conflicts on the European periphery like Nagorno-Karabakh and Russia’s incursion into Ukraine are keeping things warm.  The author placed a lot of weight on Germany’s economic domination of the EU and how other countries resent that (which is likely true — as the story goes, a few years ago, a German missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Athens was beat up when some Greeks learned he was a German, and the Greeks were of the opinion that Germany had caused most, if not all, of their economic problems).  I continue to think Russia, immigration, and energy (all of which Friedman touched on) have the biggest potential to add a spark to the flashpoints.

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An American Life

Ronald Reagan, since he was president for two terms, was president for a significant portion of my childhood.  I was quite young for most of it, so I don’t have a lot of vivid memories associated with Reagan.  Probably the most vivid memory I have is that some of Oliver North’s testimony about the Iran-Contra affair interrupted some cartoons I was watching.  I listened to the hearing for a couple minutes, but found it intensely boring and was mostly upset that I’d miss the cartoon.  I most certainly witnessed some of the events that his policies supported, such as the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War.  People around talked a lot about the economy’s recovery and lowered taxes, although those were less understandable to a kid than the changes on the international scene.

An American Life: The Autobiography by Ronald Reagan (ISBN: 0-671-69198-8) chronicles Reagan’s life from the time he was born to the end of his presidency.  He spends significant time on his childhood, teenage years, and college years.  These formative years provided a strong foundation that would serve as a basis for Reagan’s later success in life and in politics.  He was open about the shortcomings that both he and his family members had (such as his alcoholic father).  He chronicled his entry into the media business, first as a sportscaster and later as an actor, where he had some considerable success.  The major portion of the book, though, is dedicated to Reagan’s political pursuits.  He spends a little bit of time discussing his stint as governor of California.  He talks about political friends and foes, the problems that faced the state, and what he was able to do about them, claiming victory in some instances and admitting defeat in others.  Easily half of the book is dedicated to Regan’s time as president of the United States.  The budget, the Cold War, and foreign policy are the major themes.  In the discussion about budget, there is a major sub-current: liberal bias in the media and the inability of the Democratcs to compromise.  Reagan clearly found the Cold War and his role in it to be extremely important because the book talked about that a lot and included more journal entries quoted on that topic than any other.  He also quoted lengthy passages from correspondence between himself and Soviet leaders.  Here, it seemed, details mattered.  Iran-Contra was dealt with extensively.  Reagan wanted the U.S. to play a major role in foreign policy in Europe and South America, but strove for balance that encouraged the countries in those regions to solve their own problems, much like his economic policy at home tried to encourage the American people to do their part to pull themselves out of their economic hardships.

I thought the book was a very interesting read.  It’s an autobiography (although ghostwritten), so it’s obviously going to be slanted, but I thought that Reagan was rather honest about things.  While there were some topics that got almost no attention (his first marriage got one paragraph in a book that had over 700 pages), I found that to honest, too, and something that people nowadays could probably learn from: stuff that happened in the past, especially if there were mistakes involved, is in the past, and to become a better person, we need to focus on learning from our mistakes and improving ourselves going forward.  The book was nostalgic in some senses.  His descriptions of the work, the people, and the finished products, both in radio and on screen certainly hearkened back to a simpler time.  His entry into politics was interesting.  I liked that he first got involved by being involved in the actors’ unions.  This local involvement is still where people can make real differences.  Local politics has a very direct and very real impact on one’s daily life, and it would be to everyone’s benefit to be more involved in those processes.  Reagan talked about the Democratic Party leaving him behind, and people talk in the same way (about both major parties) today.  If that is something people fear, the solution is the same: get involved.  The book didn’t discuss his home life very much, and it seems that his children got more mentions as they became adults.  It was interesting how that was handled, but I don’t mind it.  Modern culture wants to know everything about everyone, à la the Kardashians, but respect for privacy and personal space is something modern culture could learn from Reagan, too.  The criticisms of liberalism were interesting, considering how much more moderate the Democratic party was in Reagan’s time and the fact that the media was, at least in popular opinion, less biased.  Reagan’s criticisms were likely legitimate back then, and it was disappointing to see that not much has changed.  I found the journal entries a little much.  I would’ve liked more on domestic policy (it is here where I disagree with some of Reagan’s policies and would’ve enjoyed hearing about his ideas from the horse’s mouth).

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The Oligarchs

This was a critical decision for the insurgent democrats — they decided
to go local and make Moscow, not the national government, an engine for real change.
When I arrived in Russia as a young missionary, my first month was full of the other, more experienced missionaries telling me of the infamous ruble crash of 1998.  I honestly couldn’t fathom what it meant.  By summer of 1999, things seemed somewhat stable to a 19-year-old missionary from Utah who had never traveled outside the United States before.  I remember that the first time I heard about the crash was as I looked out over a sea of high-rise apartment buildings — the Russians refer to them as “anthills” — from the balcony window of a missionary apartment, also in a high-rise building, in the Vesyoly Posyolok area of St. Petersburg.  It was sunny, warm, and a bit of a sleepy afternoon with a streetcar rumbling by down below.  I was regaled with stories of runs on ATMs, stores, and bakeries.  It all seemed so foreign and so far away.

The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (ISBN: 1-58648-001-4) by David E. Hoffman starts long before the ruble crash and financial crisis, telling the story of how Russia came to that point after the fall of Communism.  The story is told in a very personal way, relying heavily on the author’s many personal interviews with the major players in industry and politics, as well as his and other journalists’ first-hand experiences during the “wild ’90s” in Russia.  The book provides short biographies of the major players, household names in Russia and sometimes beyond well into the early 2000s: Aleksandr Smolensky, Yuri Luzhkov, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky.  The book chronicles these men’s rise to power.  They were entrepreneurs, opportunists, risk takers, visionaries, and criminals all rolled into one.  The book also provides a lot of information on Boris Yeltsin since the story of the oligarchs is inseparably woven into Yeltsin’s story.  From the dying throes of Communism to the dawn of Putinism, the book tracks the actions of the oligarchs and politicians they worked closely with and what the consequences were for Russia, Russians, and the West.  The oligarchs were an interesting group because of the they were at the forefront of a entrepreneurial movement that helped move the country forward, but they were wholly unprepared to play by rules foreign to them.  They cut a lot of back-room deals during Soviet times and continued using that same playbook the farther in the rear-view mirror the Soviet Union got.  To compensate for the changing financial and economic landscape, the oligarchs joined up with Yeltsin, going against he sentiment they had in the quotation above and helping him win a second term in the presidency because it kept the oligarchs in power.  A case is made for the necessity of that maneuver.  Finally, the book presents a few notes about how that move, keeping Yeltsin in power, ended up hurting the oligarchs because Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has worked hard against them.

The book is rather old, written in 2001.  It is still relevant today, though.  It ends with a discussion of Putin and his rise to power and the early signs that his time in power was going to be different.  The book provides some warnings to the West (mega-rich bazillionaire George Soros is quoted in the book saying that some of his early investments in Russia were his worst investments ever) should Russia ever recover from Putinism and thaw like it did after the Cold War.  Hoffman spared no punches, and Western darling Khodorkovsky was shown to be a bit of a slimy rat.  (In fairness, all the other Russian oligarchs were portrayed that way, too, but Khodorkovsky seemed to be the leader of the pack.)  Khodorkovsky took it on the chin from Putin, but he was no angel and likely doesn’t deserve quite the level of adulation he gets from the Western press.  I enjoyed reading the stories from the ’90s and thinking back on the crazy Russia that I knew as a missionary and wishing it could’ve worked out a little better for Russia after the Cold War.  The oligarchs were likely a help and a hindrance.

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Blue Planet in Green Shackles

When I was a kid I had a book titled something like 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth. At the time, the ozone hole over Antarctica and the impending ice age were all the rage. I remember how there were TV specials on PBS about the ozone hole. We read articles in those little newspapers from Weekly Reader or whatever at school telling us about what could happen to the earth should there be another ice age. The book was one I read through and actually thought some of the ideas were good ones. I think it influenced my life to a certain degree in what I admit is a positive way. I am inclined to recycle things (back when I was a kid there was only one word — recycle — not like the EPA slogan of today: "Reuse. Reduce. Recycle.") and reuse things like garbage sacks, lunch bags, and paper. At the time, the concept of environmentalism wasn’t in vouge, and most people who were trying to recycle or were into protecting endangered species were self-identifying as conservationists, probably because until the 1960s, relatively little in the movement had changed since the days of President Theodore Roosevelt, arguably the highest-profile conservationist in American history. I, too, thought of myself as a 10-year-old conservationist. While the movement has largely morphed into what is now known as environmentalism, a movement driven by much more leftist and radical principles, I still think of myself as a conservationist. There is, however, a large gap between conservation and environmentalism.

In his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? (ISBN: 978-1-889865-09-6), Czech president Václav Klaus presents his reasons for why environmentalism and its liberal, leftist, and radical tendencies is dangerous not only for the planet, but for people who cherish their liberty. The book is largely written from an economic point of view (Klaus is an economist by training), but also includes a chapter on the many scientific fallacies present in various environmentalist arguments for global warming (or, now that global warming has largely been discredited, the environmentalists have changed the label once again, and we have "climate change" to be all freaked out about). The economics-heavy chapters explain why environmentalist policies are bad for the economy and why they also tend to be bad for the planet. There is also a section on how environmentalist policy limits economic and personal liberty. Finally, Klaus gives the reader a policy recommendation regarding so-called climate change: do nothing. Based on his analysis of real numbers (in contrast to environmentalists, who have brought us endless fake numbers, including the famous so-called statistics of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and those rain forest destruction statistics, that if true, would’ve resulted in the complete extermination of rain forests decades ago), Klaus convincingly points out that slow and measured responses to problems are much more effective at preserving solid economic conditions as well as personal liberty. When we look at everything as a crisis, we (or, at the very least, politicians) make knee-jerk reactions that almost universally compound the original problem. When you are facing a problem like global warming, which is far from having a scientific consensus, let alone from being fact, a reaction causes not a worse problem, but new problems.

I enjoyed the book, although I admit I had to spend extra time in the middle chapters where Klaus delved into economic theory. It can be tough to get through, but if one spends the time necessary to think it through and analyze what he’s saying, it makes sense. The book, which is only 91 pages, is put together well, and the argument is laid out well. I also think that it will be unlikely to sway the true believers in global warming, but it should make them think about their position. It most definitely shores up the position of those who just can’t figure out the environmentalist movement. Finally, it really is a great work because the main idea is not necessarily that global warming or climate change doesn’t exist (like all true skeptics, Klaus is simply waiting for proof, not denying any and all possibilities) or that such-and-such economic policy is the one and only, but that without personal liberty, we cannot expect to live the life we want to live. We most definitely won’t have the economic blessings that we currently enjoy, and as poorly conceived policy continues to encroach on our lives, our basic freedoms and rights will also start to be taken away (remember that one of environmentalism’s closest relatives is the overpopulation of the earth and that those who express doubt concerning environmentalism or environmentalist policy are marginalized by the leftists). Given free rein, environmentalist policy has the potential to impact negatively everything from individuals’ decisions about their own families to global financial markets to essential freedoms of expression. This book serves as a solid warning and should be a call to arms for those who prefer to make decisions for themselves.

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