By making “IC” cars impossible – legislatively – electric cars are to be made inevitable. In this way, the practical and functional deficits of EVs become irrelevances. Just as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are irrelevant as a practical and functional matter.

The commonalities – the tactics – are interesting.

Naturally, they emanate from the same place.

In the case of the Fourth Amendment, the government simply decreed it had a “compelling interest” to override it at will, whenever it felt like doing so. The amendment’s crystal clear prohibition of any unreasonable search, absent probable cause wasn’t denied. It was simply swept away because it was in the way . . . of exactly the police state tactics those prohibitions were enshrined to forbid.

Similarly, there is now a “compelling interest” to force-feed electric and automated cars to the public, which hasn’t asked for them. The analog of the Fourth Amendment impediment is the free market, which exists to prevent exactly such force-feeding (and profiteering, which always attends the funnel in the mouth, with the gun pointed at the victim’s temple).

Thus, the free market must be suppressed. In its place, a command economy – Mussolini (or Goring) style. The edicts about what shall be manufactured are decreed; price signals become . . . irrelevant. It is probably only a matter of a handful of years before there is an official Five Year Plan – complete with pronouncements about the overfulfillment thereof.

Electric cars have to be force-fed because there are not enough takers on the merits. It’s a simple statement of fact; no elaboration needed. If this were not so, the force-feeding wouldn’t be necessary. No one puts a gun to people’s heads to buy Starbucks coffee or for that matter, Toyota Corollas – because it’s not necessary. They sell on the merits.

EVs don’t.

It is a bitter pill for their proselytizers – and profiteers – to swallow. In a moral universe, they’d go back to the drawing board, come up with something that could sell on the merits. But that has proved not possible thus far, which drives the proselytizers batty and fails to line the pockets of the profiteers (which includes but is by no means limited to Our Friend Elon).

Thus, the legislative and regulatory attempts to get rid of IC-engined cars. If you can’t build a better mousetrap, illegalize your competitions’ mousetrap.

They tried using emissions regs – but that failed because IC-engined cars got clean. Nearly “zero emissions” clean. That is, almost electric car clean. Very possibly, cleaner in the aggregate than electric cars – which haven’t got tailpipes but do have smokestacks. The government hasn’t – and never will – tally all the emissions produced by electric cars. Unless, of course, they become functionally and economically viable – at which point it will. But that is another story, saved for later.

And so, the government changed the rules. Better example, pulled away the football, Lucy-style, that Charlie Brown was just on the verge of kicking through the goalposts.

Carbon dioxide became a “pollutant.”

Almost at once – and as one – the media orchestra (which is funded by the same philanthropy) began to play the specified tune. It happened in much the same way that – if you were there and recall – the post-911 tune very suddenly changed from a libretto about Afghanistan to eructations about Iraq. It seemed very odd – to those plagued by a capacity for discernment, who knew that Afghanistan was one country (and home, apparently, to “enemies of freedom” who’d attacked the U.S.) and Iraq another – filled with people who had nothing to do with it.

No matter. Switch gears. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Eurasia is our ally – and always has been.

Just so, with C02.

It relies on similar stupefaction – and a reflexive capacity to accept the New Story.

LIke the Iraqis, who played no role in the attacks of 911, C02 plays no role in the problems heretofore attributed to internal combustion, such as smog and respiratory problems. But just as there was a predetermined agenda to “regime change” Iraq, which the 911 attacks provided the necessary hysteria to set in motion, so also the conflation of inert, environmentally inoffensive C02 with things like carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and so on.

All of which have been dealt with. Are no longer meaningful issues, as regards smog or human health.

Enter C02.

Like the “war on terror,” the war on carbon dioxide is a strategically brilliant tactic because it’s impossible to define and just as impossible to win. Both are forever wars which provide an endless pretext for any affront the government cares to rain down upon us.

It will not just be cars, either. Your house has a “carbon footprint.” Have you been using too much electricity? Wait and see.

Eyes should be opening now, even if only a few. It was never about “the environment.” If it had been, there would have been a happy press conference about ten years ago at which a beaming EPA administrator would have said, in effect, mission accomplished – and let’s move on to other things.

This might even include electric cars, assuming they can ever be made economically sensible and practically plausible. There is always a market for a better mousetrap. The problem is the EV isn’t it – and may never be.

And if it ever, by some miracle of chemistry or physics, becomes economically sensible and practically plausible, it will at exactly that moment become a problem. The orchestra’s tune will change again. As quickly as the Tele-Promp-Ter switched from Afghanistan to Iraq, we will begin to have stories about all the Bad Things coming out of the smokestacks that power electric cars. The “free” electricity now available at government-sponsored Fast Charger stations won’t be anymore.

Because the point of the exercise isn’t a better mousetrap, or even “clean air.”

It is shoring up the matrix, maintaining the integrity of the pyramid . . . with guess who at the apex and the rest of us you know where.

. . .

Got a question about cars – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!

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