Delusions undo people. They can also undo entire nations. Historical case in point: Germany. Hypothetical case in point: The United States.
Near the end of World War II, Hitler, increasingly more paranoid and delusional, ordered a counterstrike against the Allies that has become known as the Battle of the Bulge. To supply Germany’s Western Front with men and material for a push to recapture Belgium and the Netherlands after Allied advances following D-Day, Hitler borrowed men and material from the Eastern Front, which was already a crumbling line of defense against advancing Russian troops. As in many instances of borrowing, this was the folly of someone without a grip on reality, on practicality. Shifting forces and resources, Hitler weakened Germany’s armies in the East without any permanent gain in the West. The Battle of the Bulge proved to be only a temporary advance against the Allies. For ten days, the Germans wreaked havoc on all that stood in their path, and then the eleventh day arrived. Borrowing, though often good in the short-term, often has negative consequences in the long-term. In ordering the surge into Belgium, Hitler envisioned a Blitzkrieg like that at the beginning of the war. But Germany in 1944 could not sustain the attack after years of fighting on its eastern, western, and southern fronts.
As an American, I’m wondering whether there isn’t a parallel in the borrowing taking place in Washington, D. C. during 2021. Am I seeing a new form of the Battle of the Bulge? No, not an active military war, but rather a parallel economic one. The bulge to which I refer is an advance dependent on borrowed money and shorted fuel resources. It is the product of a delusion that begs a question: What will trillions of dollars in proposed and already enacted spending and a decrease in abundant energy supplies do to the American economy in the long-term?
If a strategy is flawed, the outcome is usually flawed.
The myth that a modern society, a twenty-first century society, can exist at the current level of affluence without fuel will in the long-term have negative consequences. Washington, D. C. seems be run by delusional people whose incessant and reckless borrowing is coupled with some belief that the world’s third largest population can run without oil, coal, and natural gas, the three fuel commodities that made the modern world possible. The use of fossil fuels is the reason that Americans, nay, all today’s civilized humans, have the lives of affluence on a scale no pre-Industrial Age population enjoyed. As Barbara Freese writes in Coal: A Human History, when in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries depleted forests forced people to seek new energy supplies, they turned to coal. “In this world of tight energy constraints, coal offered select societies the power of millions of years of solar income that had been stored away in a solar savings account of unimaginable size” (7).* One could say the same for oil and natural gas.
When a strategy is flawed, the outcome is usually flawed.
Just as in the first ten days of the Battle of the Bulge the borrowing temporarily strengthened one front and appeased a delusional leader and his generals with dreams of success, so in the first years the borrowing of trillions of dollars against future income and the diminution of fuel supplies will make D.C.’s delusional leaders happy, maybe even giddy. But those with commonsense know that “borrowing from Peter to pay Paul” isn’t an effective economic move. Sure, Paul temporarily benefits. Peter suffers long-term right from the get-go, and then Paul suffers similarly, and since in lending all that was available for lending, Peter has nothing left to give when Paul later asks for more. Deeper in debt and lacking the once-abundant fuels to drive the machinery of a twenty-first century economy, the nation eventually suffers. You might remember that from the time of the Battle of the Bulge on, Hitler spent his time satisfying his delusions from inside a bunker while his armies crumbled. Those who knew better but said nothing out of fear or blind loyalty shielded him from the realities crushing his Reich.
When a strategy is flawed, the outcome is usually flawed.
In under two weeks, Hitler’s generals could not find the fuel to run many of their tanks. They continued, however, to follow the orders of der Führer, borrowing from resources that were depleted or under stress, accruing a debt of men and material they could never repay to the Eastern Front. One wonders whether or not Hitler, had he been concerned about global warming, would have asked his military engineers to develop tanks that were solar powered, or wind powered, or hydrologic-dam powered, or whether Hitler would have asked the generals to run their tanks without fuel or on energy from mythical energy sources. Thank the Allies that he is not around today to take up the cause of total green energy run on borrowed money. Remember Solyndra? Where is the half billion dollars the government gave to a green company that folded in under two years? Oh! Wait, I know where it is. It’s in the taxes your children will pay.
A strategy based on myth led to the downfall of the Third Reich. A strategy of borrowing weakened the operation of the Reich. That strategy depleted fuel supplies and resulted in tank crews abandoning their vehicles in the Ardennes and forcing them to retreat on foot.
A flawed strategy often results in a flawed outcome.
Right now, I am concerned about a flawed strategy in twenty-first century America. Right now, I see unbridled borrowing for projects that have little chance of providing long-term practical benefits for the country. Right now, I see the government wildly borrowing to rush men and material to an “Ardennes” where they will fight a losing battle to enemies in a very short time. Debt will increase, fuel supplies will dwindle, and the heat of battle will intensify, heat generated, by the way, by those who have developed and continue to develop adequate fuel supplies.
What do you envision will occur as the United States devotes itself to green energy that cannot fill transportation needs? What, long-term, do you envision will result from closing down fossil fuels? And what, long-term, do you believe will occur to your descendants’ ability to live as you have lived in a land where even the poor have had access to abundant and relatively cheap fuel.
Are the leaders in Washington, D. C. the reincarnations of a leader whose delusional strategies led to his country’s demise during World War II?
In her account of coal’s history, Freese notes that after hearing complaints from his nobles about the obnoxious soot and odor of burning coal, King Edward I banned its use. Fortunately for ensuing generations and the eventual rise of the Industrial Revolution, he did so without force of law. People continued to use the convenient fuel. It provided, as Freese terms it, a “portable climate.” She writes, “Had the coal ban held up in the centuries that followed, human history would have been radically different” (2). You can understand that if you have ever switched on a light.
The same can be said for oil. When you get in your car today to take that short trip to the store for bread, milk, and eggs, or for bananas imported from a foreign land, think of those German soldiers who took their tanks into the Ardennes and then had to abandon them because of fuel shortages. When you pay your taxes ten years hence to repay those trillions of dollars, think of those halcyon days of today, when you have a choice between expensive wind power and cheap abundant coal power, between abundant oil supplies and inadequate oil production, and between today’s freedoms and those future restrictions you’ll endure as you look back.
.
German success in the Battle of the Bulge depended on fuel supplies and borrowing. After just ten days of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s tanks ran out of fuel. No fuel, no fighting, or, at the very least, a lessening in the ability to sustain the fight. The Battle of the Bulge ultimately proved to be a disastrous military campaign for the Germans, probably shortening the life of the Reich to the benefit of Hitler’s enemies on both the eastern and western fronts.
Fuel, it seems, is an important commodity in the running of a military machine. It is also, it seems, an important commodity in the running of an affluent industrial and technological nation. Those who believe otherwise are delusional. And when the delusional devise the strategy, failures are inevitable. America seems ready to enter the economic Ardennes, where its destiny is abandoned machinery it has no fuel to run and a debilitating debt it might take generations to repay. The Battle of the Bulge did not end well for Germany; today’s analog will most likely end the same way.
*New York. Basic Books, 2003. Revised in 2016.
Near the end of World War II, Hitler, increasingly more paranoid and delusional, ordered a counterstrike against the Allies that has become known as the Battle of the Bulge. To supply Germany’s Western Front with men and material for a push to recapture Belgium and the Netherlands after Allied advances following D-Day, Hitler borrowed men and material from the Eastern Front, which was already a crumbling line of defense against advancing Russian troops. As in many instances of borrowing, this was the folly of someone without a grip on reality, on practicality. Shifting forces and resources, Hitler weakened Germany’s armies in the East without any permanent gain in the West. The Battle of the Bulge proved to be only a temporary advance against the Allies. For ten days, the Germans wreaked havoc on all that stood in their path, and then the eleventh day arrived. Borrowing, though often good in the short-term, often has negative consequences in the long-term. In ordering the surge into Belgium, Hitler envisioned a Blitzkrieg like that at the beginning of the war. But Germany in 1944 could not sustain the attack after years of fighting on its eastern, western, and southern fronts.
As an American, I’m wondering whether there isn’t a parallel in the borrowing taking place in Washington, D. C. during 2021. Am I seeing a new form of the Battle of the Bulge? No, not an active military war, but rather a parallel economic one. The bulge to which I refer is an advance dependent on borrowed money and shorted fuel resources. It is the product of a delusion that begs a question: What will trillions of dollars in proposed and already enacted spending and a decrease in abundant energy supplies do to the American economy in the long-term?
If a strategy is flawed, the outcome is usually flawed.
The myth that a modern society, a twenty-first century society, can exist at the current level of affluence without fuel will in the long-term have negative consequences. Washington, D. C. seems be run by delusional people whose incessant and reckless borrowing is coupled with some belief that the world’s third largest population can run without oil, coal, and natural gas, the three fuel commodities that made the modern world possible. The use of fossil fuels is the reason that Americans, nay, all today’s civilized humans, have the lives of affluence on a scale no pre-Industrial Age population enjoyed. As Barbara Freese writes in Coal: A Human History, when in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries depleted forests forced people to seek new energy supplies, they turned to coal. “In this world of tight energy constraints, coal offered select societies the power of millions of years of solar income that had been stored away in a solar savings account of unimaginable size” (7).* One could say the same for oil and natural gas.
When a strategy is flawed, the outcome is usually flawed.
Just as in the first ten days of the Battle of the Bulge the borrowing temporarily strengthened one front and appeased a delusional leader and his generals with dreams of success, so in the first years the borrowing of trillions of dollars against future income and the diminution of fuel supplies will make D.C.’s delusional leaders happy, maybe even giddy. But those with commonsense know that “borrowing from Peter to pay Paul” isn’t an effective economic move. Sure, Paul temporarily benefits. Peter suffers long-term right from the get-go, and then Paul suffers similarly, and since in lending all that was available for lending, Peter has nothing left to give when Paul later asks for more. Deeper in debt and lacking the once-abundant fuels to drive the machinery of a twenty-first century economy, the nation eventually suffers. You might remember that from the time of the Battle of the Bulge on, Hitler spent his time satisfying his delusions from inside a bunker while his armies crumbled. Those who knew better but said nothing out of fear or blind loyalty shielded him from the realities crushing his Reich.
When a strategy is flawed, the outcome is usually flawed.
In under two weeks, Hitler’s generals could not find the fuel to run many of their tanks. They continued, however, to follow the orders of der Führer, borrowing from resources that were depleted or under stress, accruing a debt of men and material they could never repay to the Eastern Front. One wonders whether or not Hitler, had he been concerned about global warming, would have asked his military engineers to develop tanks that were solar powered, or wind powered, or hydrologic-dam powered, or whether Hitler would have asked the generals to run their tanks without fuel or on energy from mythical energy sources. Thank the Allies that he is not around today to take up the cause of total green energy run on borrowed money. Remember Solyndra? Where is the half billion dollars the government gave to a green company that folded in under two years? Oh! Wait, I know where it is. It’s in the taxes your children will pay.
A strategy based on myth led to the downfall of the Third Reich. A strategy of borrowing weakened the operation of the Reich. That strategy depleted fuel supplies and resulted in tank crews abandoning their vehicles in the Ardennes and forcing them to retreat on foot.
A flawed strategy often results in a flawed outcome.
Right now, I am concerned about a flawed strategy in twenty-first century America. Right now, I see unbridled borrowing for projects that have little chance of providing long-term practical benefits for the country. Right now, I see the government wildly borrowing to rush men and material to an “Ardennes” where they will fight a losing battle to enemies in a very short time. Debt will increase, fuel supplies will dwindle, and the heat of battle will intensify, heat generated, by the way, by those who have developed and continue to develop adequate fuel supplies.
What do you envision will occur as the United States devotes itself to green energy that cannot fill transportation needs? What, long-term, do you envision will result from closing down fossil fuels? And what, long-term, do you believe will occur to your descendants’ ability to live as you have lived in a land where even the poor have had access to abundant and relatively cheap fuel.
Are the leaders in Washington, D. C. the reincarnations of a leader whose delusional strategies led to his country’s demise during World War II?
In her account of coal’s history, Freese notes that after hearing complaints from his nobles about the obnoxious soot and odor of burning coal, King Edward I banned its use. Fortunately for ensuing generations and the eventual rise of the Industrial Revolution, he did so without force of law. People continued to use the convenient fuel. It provided, as Freese terms it, a “portable climate.” She writes, “Had the coal ban held up in the centuries that followed, human history would have been radically different” (2). You can understand that if you have ever switched on a light.
The same can be said for oil. When you get in your car today to take that short trip to the store for bread, milk, and eggs, or for bananas imported from a foreign land, think of those German soldiers who took their tanks into the Ardennes and then had to abandon them because of fuel shortages. When you pay your taxes ten years hence to repay those trillions of dollars, think of those halcyon days of today, when you have a choice between expensive wind power and cheap abundant coal power, between abundant oil supplies and inadequate oil production, and between today’s freedoms and those future restrictions you’ll endure as you look back.
.
German success in the Battle of the Bulge depended on fuel supplies and borrowing. After just ten days of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s tanks ran out of fuel. No fuel, no fighting, or, at the very least, a lessening in the ability to sustain the fight. The Battle of the Bulge ultimately proved to be a disastrous military campaign for the Germans, probably shortening the life of the Reich to the benefit of Hitler’s enemies on both the eastern and western fronts.
Fuel, it seems, is an important commodity in the running of a military machine. It is also, it seems, an important commodity in the running of an affluent industrial and technological nation. Those who believe otherwise are delusional. And when the delusional devise the strategy, failures are inevitable. America seems ready to enter the economic Ardennes, where its destiny is abandoned machinery it has no fuel to run and a debilitating debt it might take generations to repay. The Battle of the Bulge did not end well for Germany; today’s analog will most likely end the same way.
*New York. Basic Books, 2003. Revised in 2016.
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