What's a GriGri?

Herr Doktor Goebbels had it right when he stated that big lies are more readily believed than small ones and that any lie repeated often enough will eventually gain credibility with a large portion of the population. An example of this assertion is the widespread acceptance that "Bush lied the US into the invasion of Iraq". When pressed, the political enemies of Bush inevitably cite the failure of the Iraq invasion to reveal the existence of "weapons of mass destruction" in the arsenals of the Iraqi dictator. But this is a tortured definition of "lie" which is objectively defined as a statement by someone who knows it to be false e.g. "I never had sexual relations with that woman...". Mr. Bush in stating the widely held belief that Saddam possessed WMDs although mistaken, does not qualify as a lie in spite of the best efforts of his political enemies.

The use of the big lie continually repeated, is routinely utilized by the so called "environmentalist" movement, especially it's anthropogenic global warming (warmista) wing which has convinced a substantial portion of the world's population (especially the ruling elite) that climate change is caused by human economic activity. The assertion by the warmistas that increased governmental regulation is the solution to their alleged catastrophic scenario is settled science beyond further debate is absurd on its face in view of the many thousands of dissenting scientific minds. A clue to the mythical dimension of these allegations are the strenuous efforts to suppress and demonize dissenting or skeptical viewpoints.

Possibly the most egregious example of the emergence of the acceptance of a myth as fact is the now established belief that all "recycling" is always beneficial to the environment. This myth is so embedded in for example, Swedish culture as well as our own here in the US, that the mere questioning of it evokes shouts of "blasphemy" and the dismissal of anyone who utters it as beyond the pale. When, however one who has compared the energy and resources needed to recycle products as opposed to their production from naturally occurring resources and found such recycling to be a net energy and/or material loss, the tendency is to ignore or dismiss the results as being virtually sacrilegious. As a matter of fact, without substantial government subsidies and force, most recycling efforts would be exposed for the wastefulness in terms of human effort and energy that they are.

The people of Sweden are... forced to clean their trash before carefully separating different kinds of materials. This is the future, they say, and it is supposedly good for the environment. (What about the economy?) Imagine a whole population spending time and money cleaning their garbage and driving it around the neighborhood rather than working or investing in a productive market!

But it doesn't end with the extra work at home and the extra space in each and every kitchen occupied by a variety of trash bins. What do you do with the trash that isn't collected? The garbage collection service (which nowadays doesn't offer collection too often, usually biweekly or monthly, even though the rates mysteriously seem to be much higher than before) only accepts certain types of garbage, generally only biodegradable food leftovers. But do not worry; it is all taken care of.

The authorities have established trash collection centers in most neighborhoods where you get to throw away your trash. These "centers" offer numerous containers where you can throw away your trash — there is one container dedicated for each and every kind of trash and they are all neatly color-coded to help you find the right one. But this means you better have separated your aluminum from your other metals and your newspapers from your soft and hard papers before you get here. You wouldn't want to throw away dirty milk cartons, cans with paper labels or unsorted paper, would you?

But it seems people do just that: they cheat if they believe they are better off doing so. So the authorities have responded by making it more difficult to cheat. Their first measure was to redesign all containers so that it is more difficult throwing the "wrong" trash in them. For instance, containers for glass have only small, round holes where you put your bottles [one at a time!], and containers for hard paper and carton materials have only letter-slit shaped holes (you need to flatten all boxes before recycling — that's the law).

Well, that didn't do the trick. People kept on cheating. And the more difficult the authorities made it to cheat, the more difficult it was to get rid of the trash even if you intended to put it in the right place. So people went to these centers and simply put everything next to the containers instead — why bother? The authorities responded by appointing salaried "trash collection center spies" (!) to document who was cheating so that they could be brought to justice. (There have actually been a few court cases where people have been tried for not following recycling laws.)

Admittedly, the above Swedish example is extreme and the result of nearly 3 generations of socialism at work but is a view into the future for the rest of us should the march of collectivism continue unchecked. An excellent and entertaining video presentation on this subject by the comedy team of Penn and Teller in 3 parts is here , here and here.