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Biden: The Man Who Cries Wolf
If you’re anything like me, you’ve reached the saturation point regarding the cries from President Biden about the catastrophes, dangers, disasters, and crises that are imminent. At some point, you would think that people would start to ask themselves whether they should really believe him or not, since the evidence contradicts his words. But there seem to be plenty of people, for any number of reasons that I can only guess at, who trust his ramping up our fear of the future. Just like the story of the boy who cried wolf, they continue to assume that the crisis is real and that he is telling the truth. Why would he lie?
Since I hadn’t read the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” in many years, I thought it would be worth re-visiting, and I wasn’t disappointed:
A wolf that lived in the jungle had attacked some sheep in the past, but the villagers always successfully drove it away immediately. Now, a shepherd boy was given the responsibility of taking the village sheep to graze on a small hill close to the jungle. While the sheep enjoyed their grass, the boy used to get very bored. He couldn’t sleep because he had to watch over the sheep. He decided to play a little trick. One day, while the sheep were grazing, the boy started shouting very loudly, ‘Wolf!’ The villagers in the nearby fields heard his loud screams and ran towards him. As they approached him, they saw him laugh loudly, for there was no wolf. The boy enjoyed seeing the initial concern and then the anger on the faces of the farmers!
This playful boy continued his pranks for the next few days and had a hearty laugh upon seeing how fast the farmers came to help him. The farmers were visibly upset and irritated, but went away without saying anything.
A few days later, after the boy allowed the sheep to move around the hillock, he noticed a movement in the nearby bushes. At first, he thought it was the wind. Suddenly, a wolf sprang forth and jumped in the sheep’s direction. The startled boy was taken by surprise. He panicked and started shouting very loudly, ‘Wolf’, ‘Wolf’. The farmers heard his screams and smiled at one another. “Does he think by shouting more loudly, we are going to help him?”. They continued with their work in the field, turning a deaf ear to the boy’s repeated shouting.
As the sun was seen setting in the west, the farmers collected their tools and waited for the shepherd boy to return. He always came down at sunset with the sheep and walked home with the farmers. That day, he was late. The farmers were puzzled. They were very caring people and decided that they would go up the hillock to get him and his sheep despite his naughtiness. They were surprised to see him sitting with his face covered as they approached him. They found him sobbing. ‘Little boy, what happened?’ “The wolf attacked the sheep. I called out to you all, but no one came to help,’ the boy replied.
The villagers did feel sorry, but they tried to make him understand. ‘You played a trick on us a few times and enjoyed a hearty laugh at our expense. We thought you were playing another trick when we heard your calls this morning! That is why we refused to come.’
I was amazed to see the parallels between the original story and the actions of President Biden. Besides the obvious moral of the story of the importance of telling the truth, do you see the other similarities?
So has President Biden been all that alarming in his statements to citizens? We only need to look at his repeated lies about Covid, mask-wearing, and the vaccines; his shouting about the dangers of climate change; his insistence on disrupting our oil supply; his downplaying of the cost of inflation; his ignoring the lawbreaking of the Left and targeting people on the Right; his exhorting people to defend democracy (whatever that means); his lies about closing the border; his depleting our emergency petroleum supply to help out our greatest enemy China.
Do I need to go on?
There is also the fact that when we have real crises, he downplays or ignores them. What inflation? What shortages? What problems in our military? What spiraling national debt? What crime increases?
At some point, will our citizenry wake up and realize how he has deceived and misled us? Will they begin to push back on his statements?
Will they recognize the man who cries wolf?
[photo is courtesy of unsplash.com]
Published in Politics
There was I time I felt that way. COVID has taught me that my grandmother was right when she taught me that everybody can get used to anything. So many laws, rules, norms and customs were ignored and broken during that time with almost no push back by anybody. Truth is very few actually engage with news events or things outside their narrow sphere. The rest they get from whatever is presented to them and taken as fact. I am amazed at how many of my friends know things that are not true or never happened. They hear the accusation or narratives and never ever see a correction or an retraction so it becomes part of their accepted known fact pattern of their lives and their associates.
I’m always intrigued by the number of people who say they “trust the American people.” Really? Trust them to do what? If they are not informed, how can they make wise decisions, whether they see things as I do or not? I may just write a post on this topic; I’ve always been annoyed at this “trust” factor and wonder if it’s justified. Thanks for inspiring me, John!
Susan, I like a lot of the post, but what in the world are you talking about this this part?
As I understand it, Biden released oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, some of which was bought in a market sale by one or more Chinese companies. I don’t know the details. In the international oil market, such a release will tend to drive down the price, regardless of the purchaser. Banning sales to all comers — including Chinese bidders — would tend to make the auctions less competitive, which would give a possible windfall to competing bidders.
We haven’t embargoed oil sales to China, have we? Are you saying that we should?
As I recall, the last time we embargoed oil sales to a major Asian power, it led to world war.
We shouldn’t be draining our strategic supply to ANYONE. It’s supposed to be a reserve supply for emergencies. That it benefited China makes it an especially stupid decision.
As I recall, what happened was basically the war had already started, with Japan invading China, BEFORE the oil embargo to Japan. Indeed, that was the CAUSE OF/REASON FOR the oil embargo vs Japan. True, Japan hadn’t attacked US, YET, but they were already “at war.”
What it seems to amount to is draining the strategic supply to sell to China, so that China doesn’t get theirs from Saudi etc, so that WE can buy it from Saudi instead, rather than producing our own which is the stupidest part of all. But of course, it’s Biden, so Stupid must be expected.
Thanks, kedavis. But my point is that this isn’t about an oil embargo at all; it’s about using our strategic reserves appropriately.
I disagree. We’re in an energy crisis. This is precisely the time to release oil from the reserve. It will tend to drive the price down, and the federal government could actually make a profit on the sale.
We don’t need such a big reserve any more, because we’ve become effectively self-sufficient in oil. We used to be a big importer — over the past few years, it’s essentially a wash. We might be a small net importer or exporter in a particular period, but we’ve been right around even for about 3 years now, as I recall.
I’ve noticed that a number of conservatives don’t seem to know this, though the data is readily available. You should be mindful of the political lies told on our side, one of which is the claim that we’ve lost energy independence. That’s not true, though absent the foolish policies of the Biden administration, we’d probably be producing more and exporting a bit more.
I also disagree with your point about part of the sale benefitting China. How would you conduct such sales? As I understand it, the oil from the reserve is sold at auction. That strikes me as the best way to do it. What would you prefer? To limit the purchasers? That would be a method susceptible to corruption, wouldn’t it?
So I think that the objection of sales of strategic reserve oil to China is just silly emotionalism. Unless we’re going to embargo all oil sales to China, it just doesn’t matter. Not that this stopped grandstanding Republican politicians from making this argument. Even Ted Cruz, I think, though he should know better.
But hey, he is a politician. If you can sway some voters with such antics, why not?
I see this same sort of thing on the Left. An example is police departments destroying guns seized from criminals. They could make money selling the guns at auction, which is what they should do. But if one of those guns ends up being used in a crime, someone will make the ridiculous argument that it was the fault of the police, as if the criminal wouldn’t have just bought a gun from another source.
It’s not hard to explain, I think. People are inclined to believe all sorts of silly nonsense, when it reflects badly on political actors that they don’t like. This goes for both sides. I think that we should resist the temptation.
The gun example was actually used on the right, too, with the ATF’s “Fast and Furious” operation some years ago.
Yes, I was just responding to Jerry’s apparent claim that WE started things by putting the fuel embargo on Japan, like out of the blue. As if Japan wasn’t already “up to no good” which is what actually was the reason for the embargo.
Susan, I may be nit-picking here. I agree with your main point about “crying wolf.” I just find that your point is weakened by the bad example of the strategic oil sales. The other examples are pretty good.
No, the main point there was that they were supposed to be tracking the weapons and stuff, which they completely failed at until some turned up being used to kill border agents, etc.
They also apparently harassed and threatened some legal gun sellers into going along with them.
I’m not going to address all your other points, because we are primarily in an energy crisis because of Biden’s policies. Almost every other response I would make would come out of the repercusssions of his decisions. But then maybe I’m demonstrating my “silly emotionalism.”
If this is true, why is Biden draining the reserve, AND begging other countries to produce more? And not just This Week or This Month, either.
First of all, you’re demonstrating silly emotionalism when you object to sale of oil to China. That was what you said in the OP. It was a cheap shot, and wrong. It’s OK to just acknowledge it and move on.
Further, though, we’re not in an energy crisis because of Biden’s policies. His policies haven’t helped, but the oil price spike was prompted by the war in Ukraine. I dislike Joe Biden intensely, but I don’t let this affect my analysis of the facts.
US oil production is up since Biden took office. I think that it would be up somewhat more if not for his foolish policies, but it is up. Here’s a link to the data.
Well, we weren’t at war, were we? This is why an embargo may be a bad idea. Why take sides at all? Because, you see, when you take sides, you may well get drawn into a world war, and stuck in a 45-year cold war, too.
Who cares?
Do you seriously think that those Mexican gang-bangers wouldn’t have had some other guns, if there had been no Fast and Furious? Of course they would have.
I always found the Fast and Furious thing to be ridiculously childish. And listen, I intensely dislike Obama and Eric Holder. I just found this particular scandal to be absurd. It surprises me that anyone would fall for such nonsense.
You think continuing to provide fuel to Japan for their invasion – sometimes called “Rape” – of China would have been smarter/wiser/more-morally-correct/somehow-non-interventionist/whatever?
So if the police are using fentanyl from evidence to stage drug buys for purposes of tracking down kingpins, etc, but they “lose track” of the fentanyl and it ends up killing a bunch of kids somewhere, that doesn’t matter because those kids would have OD’d somehow anyway?
I’m sure glad I don’t think like that.
I don’t know why I keep responding . . . selling oil to China was stupid. Aiding our biggest foreign threat doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
I’ll bet you can’t determine the degree to which the Ukraine war caused the energy crisis and the degree to which Biden’s policies did. Of course, he didn’t need to enact those policies at all, did he?
Just because oil production is up does not tell us how long it would take to replenish the strategic reserve. Unlike you, I have no idea what the future holds, and just because we have some reserves doesn’t mean we have enough if we have a serious crisis. More than that, if we needed to produce a lot more, it could take months to get refineries up and running.
Not to mention getting refineries BUILT. Several have been decommissioned or something in recent years, meanwhile it doesn’t seem like replacements are being constructed.
It makes it an impeachable offense.
One of many.
The main point is Fast and Furious happened at the same the media (at the behest of the Obama regime) was promoting a narrative that gun violence in Mexico was caused by insufficient gun control in the USA. The regime was hoping to use dead Mexicans to infringe the second amendment rights of Americans.
Oh, and also, no one was held accountable and the ATF continued business as usual after the Republican hearings.
There’s a mighty big disconnect between the narrative of energy self-sufficiency and the reality of energy prices.
It might be fungible but a Chinese company received it from what I read. I didn’t follow up and haven’t heard if they got a deal or whether we got post-refinery gas back.
That is common because of location that con handle the particular kind of crude to be refined.
I disagree. Availability, not price, should determine if we should tap it.
The Strategic Reserve was established for the purpose of having oil in the event of another embargo, or in the event of a war where oil supplies were cut off. It was not created so that politicians could “do something about gas prices” on the eve of Midterm elections.
And only for a short time, at that.
FYI – you might thank me later.
https://mypatriotsupply.com/collections/emergency-survival-food/products/emergency-staples-10-can-food-pack