“Energy,” quoth William Blake, “is eternal delight.”
Blake was right about that, and it’s worth noting that the observation is true in more senses than one, as anyone who can pronounce the words “gas prices,” “fracking,” “inflation,” “Russia,” or “Ukraine” will understand.
And the contrary is also true: A lack of energy is eternal pain.
No one in the Biden administration seems to be a reader of Blake.
Sad, isn’t it?
When Donald Trump left office, America wasn’t only energy independent, it was a net exporter of energy. One of the first things Biden did upon taking office was to sign on to the green “climate change” agenda.
He shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, thereby losing a mighty source of energy, and tossing thousands of workers out of a job.
He touted wind power, solar power, and battery power over “fossil fuel,” which he disparaged as dirty and politically incorrect.
Nuclear power, too, he sidelined, not because it was unclean, but because the green lobby, to which he is beholden, doesn’t like it.
Now America has been reduced to begging the Saudis for oil.
I am not sure when Vladimir Putin’s birthday is, but Joe Biden could hardly have given him a more welcome gift.
I have often observed that the modern world has made things difficult for satirists.
The realities of modern life outrun satire and make it indistinguishable from sober documentary.
What could a Juvenal, a Jonathan Swift, an Evelyn Waugh do with a society that is so thoroughly self-satirizing as ours?
Satire depends upon a recognizable distance between reality and the caricatured or satirized exaggeration.
Consider John Kerry, the first (and, Deo volente, the last) “United States special presidential envoy for climate.”
I had to check that this bijou wasn’t from The Babylon Bee or some other source of satire.
Nope. Kerry really said that.
What he said was solemnly reported. He was vigorously criticized, but not laughed out of office—which would have been the only adequate response.
It gets even better.
Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine isn’t quite the “shock and awe” blitzkrieg he had anticipated.
The “international community,” too, has been posturing vigorously on behalf of Ukraine and against the mean, nasty dictator Putin.
Various economic sanctions have been imposed, and most Western countries are clicking their tongues in disapproval.
Result? Comedy hour in our federal government.
“Get inside the nearest building to avoid radiation,” they advise.
Okay. What then?
Try this on for size: “Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not a part of your household.”
Really. You can’t make it up.
But at least Jeb, though an indigenous swamp creature of impressive tenure, was reasonably coherent.
Trump’s label really fits Joe Biden much more completely.
Biden is “low energy” in about 18 different senses.
I leave out of account the hypocritical posturing by spokesmen who think that Ukraine should be part of NATO, a moribund pact whose pertinence came to an end when the Soviet Union ended.
Meanwhile, newly minted Ukrainian apologists are swooning over pictures of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in military garb. There he is “on the front lines, fighting for his people” after the Russian invasion, says social media.
A young and silly William Wordsworth, recalling how the beginning of the French Revolution impressed him, said:
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!”
That dream didn’t turn out so well, either.
