The term “the great reset” is suddenly en vogue. For leftists, it’s shorthand for using the systemic change flowing from the world’s response to the Wuhan virus as a springboard for remaking the world in a leftist, greenie mold. Or as Rahm Emanuel said, never let a crisis go to waste.

The left has wanted to break the system for 55 years. Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, two professors of social work at Columbia University, first articulated the idea in a paper for The Nation, entitled, “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.”

Cloward and Piven found it disheartening that the poor failed to optimize the welfare benefits to which they were entitled (“it is not generally known that for every person on the rolls at least one more probably meets existing criteria of eligibility but is not obtaining assistance”). They claimed this wasn’t a flaw in the welfare system; instead, it was “an integral feature.”

The two socialists declared that any challenge to the system “would precipitate a profound financial and political crisis” – and they wanted that precipitation. By “a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls,” they intended to destroy the welfare system and force federal intervention. “The ultimate objective of this strategy [was] to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income.”

Since then, we apply the phrase “Cloward-Piven strategy” to any leftist plan that envisions breaking the system to remake the system.

In 2020, leftists have forced system breakage. While the political class and super-wealthy leftists (Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, the Waltons) have seen their fortunes soar to the level of Byzantine potentates, much of America is broken or near breaking. This is not hyperbole. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) has published “Cost of Lockdowns: A Preliminary Report.”

The report makes for grim reading. Every negative metric is up, with most having increased by dramatic amounts: mental health problems, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, anxiety, demands on food banks, extreme poverty, food insecurity, undernourishment, unemployment, decreased life expectancy, fatal cancer, missed cancer diagnoses, cardiovascular deaths, murder, property theft, failed businesses, and more.

Trump has done his best to counteract the breakage, using economic policies, supercharged treatment timelines, and miraculous vaccination development. His reward for this effort is that the statists (billionaires, politicians, academics, journalists) have committed fraud on an epic scale to oust Trump. In his place, they plan on a socialist administration committed to increasing government dependency.

Once the majority of people are dependent on the government, it’s time for “The Great Reset.” There’s even a website, to which Antonio Chavez, who drew the parody image that graces this post, introduced me.

A video at the site explains what’s going on: The Wuhan virus has been a useful pause in the way we’ve abused the world. (National Geographic was one of many sites suggesting that decreased pollution during the lockdown should “inspire us to do better.”)

“We now have an opportunity to use our influence for society and the planet’s best interest,” intones a heavily accented Cockney voice. And then comes that word BLM activists threw around: It’s time to “reimagine” society.

The “reset” concept is the brainchild of two men: Klaus Schwab (an engineer who is eerily like Auric Goldfinger) and Thierry Malleret (a futurist journalist). At the World Economic Forum, they joined with some of the world’s wealthiest (and often least savory, useful, or moral) people to discuss a better way to control the rest of the world – all for the little people’s benefit, of course, and with those assembled providing the world’s leadership . . . that is, when they’re not eating caviar and drinking fine wines. Stripped of its fancy trappings, the Great Reset is simple: Socialism, sold as the answer to apocalyptic climate change.

In this brave new world, there will be no pollution, no climate destruction, and no private property (although one gets the feeling that the movement’s advocates, people like Prince Charles, will keep their stuff). Overpopulation will also end (although, again, I’m betting that the nomenklatura will keep their procreative rights).

At bottom, the only thing that will distinguish this Brave New reset world from the Middle Ages, given that the ultimate plan is to roll back the industrial era, will be that what little energy is still produced will be used for computers to control us. Otherwise, the world will be home to absolute monarchs and serfs.

Stripped of its cult-like language, the Reset is a typical leftist Utopian project. As with all such projects, it will fail – but not before the world first welters in blood, pain, and death. We’d better hope Trump really released the Kraken, or else there are ugly times ahead.

Image: The Great Reset by Antonio Chavez.