The sunshine and balmier weather is giving some American people a reprieve from having to use so much energy to heat their homes as prices escalate due to the draconian measures the Biden regime had adopted on his first day in office – executive orders that shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, off-shore drilling permits, and drilling on federal land.
We had been
an oil exporter during the Trump presidency, but we have become an oil importer
from Russia during the Biden regime. This is not a good time to become
dependent on such a bellicose country
which is now helping escalate the price of gas and fuel around the world.
Poor
neighbors such as Romania have found themselves having to pay 450 euros for a
month’s electric bill when the country’s average salary is 350 euros. How are
poor people supposed to keep warm or find affordable fuel for their cars? Is an
energy crisis looming?
Eastern
Europeans are no strangers to energy crises or shortages. Cold winters and the inept Communist Party central planning brought
power shortages, heat, electricity, and rationing of gasoline at the pumps.
Americans have not had to deal with such problems in recent memory.
Drastically
cutting back on energy and banning private cars in Romania, for example, in the
frigid winter of 1984-85 did little to deal with the shortage of energy
supplies. Mismanagement by communist apparatchiks, who did not know how to
properly run the “socialist economy” and did not really care, reduced imports of
everything and increased exports of gas and oil and Romania did not have enough
energy and electricity for its own citizens.
The
draconian measures to save energy, a severe lack of electricity, hot water, and
heat in the communist concrete and steel blocks and very cold apartments (still
in use today), factories, public buildings, frigid government stores, caused so
much illness and death among the population, some of whom froze to death.
According to
David Funderburk, former Ambassador to Romania during the extremely cold winter
of 1984-85, one in three babies died or were born severely malformed; many
babies died in neonatal units when the incubators were unplugged to save
electricity. Old and young alike died
from a scarcity of food and heat.
How did so
many people live in cold and drab concrete 5-9 story apartments that were
poorly built, heated, and electrified? The tyrant and his communists in power
wanted to create the new socialist man and a new society, built back better, so
he called for the destruction of private homes. If people were forced to
abandon their homes overnight and herded into such high-rise and small space
apartments, the state commissar could keep a better watch and a heavy boot on
their necks, thus more easily controlling the citizens’ every move. The “new socialist
plan” called for seizure of their lands for “the common good” and hundreds of thousands
of private homes, with more space than the communist apartment blocks, were bulldozed.
The poor
villagers and former farmers became dependent on the socialist state practically
overnight. They could no longer get firewood in their village for heat or
cooking, they had to beg the totalitarian state for their rations of timber, supplies
of rationed gas, and supplies of rationed electricity.
And the
communist lackeys did not stop just at destroying people’s homes. They destroyed
their village churches and city churches, some of whom had withstood hundreds
of years of history and turmoil. The totalitarian socialist state recognized 14
denominations but they called them cults. (Armenian, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical
Christian, Lutheran, Reformed, Islamic, Jewish, Old Rite Christian, Pentecostal
Evangelical, Presbyterian Evangelical, Seventh Day Adventist, Romanian Orthodox
[the largest denomination], and Unitarian).
The
communist tyrant did all this because he wanted to force the “passage from the
bourgeois-landlord society to the multilaterally developed socialist society.”
In this process he destroyed priceless historical monuments that could no
longer be replaced. Destroying history, art and architecture, he destroyed the
people’s identity, memories, and connections to their shared past, good or bad.
In a not so
distant future our American children will find themselves in a similar position
when their connection to the past history will be forever altered or completely
severed by the hordes of woke mobs. Right now they are just changing historical
names of buildings and streets, removing classical books from libraries and
bookstores, and destroying statues. Eventually they will erase their shared past
completely and create a deceptive one.
After the
destruction of so many churches, religious persecution followed. Children and
grandchildren of religious figures, active churches members, and some of those
who occasionally showed up for religious services, were discriminated against
and some were jailed under trumped-up charges. People were charged with “serious
misconduct of the socialist ethics and of the political and moral behavior” of
the new socialist man.
If young
people had relatives who had hunted down communists in the early days of the Bolshevik
takeover of the monarchy, they were labeled in the socialist society as pariahs
and nobody would marry them or their children. Dossiers followed them for the
rest of their lives.
In 1972 and
1981, as part of a “good faith” offers, the socialist tyrant allowed equal
shipments of Bibles translated into Romanian. Of the promised 20,000 Bibles, around
200 were actually delivered to churches. The rest of the Bibles were poorly
recycled into toilet paper made at a factory in Braila. I had some of that
toilet paper in my hand one day – words from the Bible were still visible on
the badly recycled paper. That is what Christianity and its Bible meant to the
communists and still does today.
Small
mountain villages, where the communist party had not fully inserted itself and forcibly
collectivized the farmers, experienced their tyrannical handprint anyway– there
was no electricity, heating oil, gasoline, running water, or medical care.
Church services and people’s modest homes were lit with candles or oil lamps.
Heat came from firewood when available.
Do we really
want to go this painful route of scarcity, high prices, and rationing, in the
name of green energy, solar and wind, that is not enough to service a large
economy and 340 million people?
Western
nations like Germany have learned a hard lesson from expensive and unreliable
green energy, and are quietly and slowly reverting to fossil fuels as their brown-outs
and high prices have taken a heavy toll on their respective economies.
Comrade Putin during his rise to power became the wealthiest man on the Globe! He now controls 51% of the world's oil and gas market via "Gunvor" a Geneva-based trading company that controls the oil commodities and futures in Europe, Middle East and Asia....and his wealth has climbed to more than US$ 300 billion, according to all the reliable sources, not to mention the 10 yachts and 10 private jets furnished with full-time bimbos and party-time ex-KGB staffers....Not to forget, a 2 billion-dollar palace on the Black Sea shore, with a private brothel and lap-dance saloons....
ReplyDeleteGod save us from the biggest Evil on Earth, after Stalin and Xi-xi, the newly created Comrade Putin!
From Carmel in MS:
ReplyDelete"THANKS FOR THIS INFORMATION. PEOPLE DON'T SEEM TO REALIZE HOW FAST THEY CAN END UP WITHOUT THEIR HOMES AND NO PLACE TO GO! NO WAY TO FIGHT FOR THEMSELVES."
From OrchardSmith in Indiana:
ReplyDelete"Thank you Dr. Paugh for reminding us what we're seeing unfold before our very eyes. It's still hard to believe people would be so depraved, and so consumed with socialism that they would sacrifice their fellow citizens and even their country to this insanity. Please tell and retell the story. There are many who still can't believe it. You were there. You know. You are our witness."