I was dragged by the missus tonight to an event in the heart of the ruling class beast. While there, threatened by her to be on my best behavior, I engaged in a conversation with a like-minded person regarding Hurricane Helene (I have an excellent MAGAdar and just as useful a sixth sense for Deep State provocateurs).
My new-found friend asked me whether they could have built the TVA today. Of course the answer to that is no.
There are several reasons for that.
The first is technical. I doubt we have the engineering ability to pull off a project like that anymore. As a western boy whose roots were watered by dams (hello Salt River Project), I find that conclusion difficult, but inevitable. Skills not used or otherwise maintained over time atrophy and wither away. Look at military shipbuilding over the past 30 years.
The second is political. The environmental movement severed the connection between the needs of a modern economy and the will to build the technical and social infrastructure needed to support it. Policy, especially with the “Green New Deal,” is now rooted in some cartoonish “Happy-Land, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane” where there are no perceived tradeoffs.
Hydroelectricity is the ultimate in clean renewable and reliable power, but while existing dams are tolerated (for now), no new dams will ever be built.
The third reason is something more vicious which is that for our ruling class, it’s not just that some Americans don’t matter as much as others but that they actually enjoy relegating certain groups of Americans to a permanent under-class status. The ruling class may decry the western history of imperialism and white supremacy, but in turn they adopt a colonial attitude toward red-state America that would have made Kipling blush. At least Rudyard wanted to take on the white man’s burden and civilize the savages, our ruling class betters in reality just want the people of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina to disappear.
The stuff that was in the history books up until yesterday, celebrating that TVA brought electricity to an impoverished part of America? Gun-toting, snake-handling Trump voters.
Actually when it comes to modern-day colonialism, if you remember the roots of the pro-abortion movement, the reality is that they want to more or less want to put the unborn of that region to the sword.
You can hear it on the wind, that sentiment to all of those west of Asheville, just go away and die.
21 thoughts on “Hillbilly Death Wish”
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The current Left attitude toward physical technologies (atoms vs bits, in Peter Thiel’s phrase) is very different from that of the Old Left. See Sidney Webb on ‘the machine age’
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/63059.html
<blockquotewhile existing dams are tolerated (for now)
As a former customer of Pacific Power’s Klamath River hydroelectric supply, I have to say that ship already sailed and sunk. “Former”, because the dams are gone, along with the power. It had the side(? perhaps main) effect of hurting a conservative county east of the Oregon Cascades, and the cattle and hay growers who used that water. OTOH, the Native tribes downstream think they’ll get their salmon runs back. I’m skeptical of that. And, for extra humor, the flood control is now gone. But now Pacific Power (a Berkshire Hathaway company) doesn’t have to pay for a fish ladder set.
I’m still impressed by the innumeracy where removing 100MWe of hydroelectric power can be replaced by 36MWe of solar power, though as I drive by one of the ranches repurposed to solar, maintenance of the arrays is quirky. “But it’s renewable power!” So were the dams.
/rant
I recalled this nugget after my previous. Now, dams on the Snake River are under the baleful eye of TPTB. https://northwestobserver.com/index.php?ArticleId=3265
The greenies have been lobbying for dam removal for many of California’s rivers, though they seem to forget that San Francisco gets its water from a dam in Yosemite National Park. “That’s different!”, I seem to recall.
“Let them use solar.” – Greta Antionette
“… whether they could have built the TVA today. Of course the answer to that is no.”
A good demonstration of that exists in NASA. In the 1960/70 era, the US could put a man on the moon. Today, not so much. Indeed, the Federal Parasite is even blocking SpaceX from further launches of StarShip.
Let’s not even talk about China’s thousands of miles of High Speed Rail, built while the US has failed to complete even one line — but has managed to spend huge amounts of money on environmental studies and litigation.
It seems that one of the many delusions which afflict Far Lefties is that they will always have whatever they have today. They don’t understand that everything they have today, they have only because earlier generations saved, invested, built. And everything they have will gradually go away unless they work hard to maintain and replace it. Entropy in the real world.
IF you watch the video on YT, one finds that China invited in the German and French high speed rail producers, got them set up, and then disinvited them to stay and make profit… more or less.
So, built on ‘borrowed’ technology or intellectual property, but built by Chinese manufacturers… who tend to cut corners.
Not only are the cars built with typical ‘quality’, but the tracks and raised sections are also. Concrete that is … ummhh… questionable, tracks that are ‘bendy’, and so on.
Consider their ‘track record'(pun intended) but some state they refuse to rid on China high speed rail. Given their BEV propensity to catch fire for no apparent reason, and I understand perfectly.
The technology is available to be built should there be demand. Anyone taking a train trip soon realizes the price premium the train lines demand for sub-adequate service. The routes are circuitous and catching the next segment of a trip may be a lost cause due to delays. The CA HSR boondoggle subjected to economic analysis makes no sense as a profitable or economic venture. If all airplane, truck and car traffic were forced to ride the HSR…. it would still be a loser. Add in the pay and retirement benefits, the cost for the land and ‘better use’ of the capital, and it sure makes sense only to those who knew the path(still variable) and were able to purchase ahead of the rail buyers…
“Strong men make good times; Good times make weak men; Weak men make bad times; Bad times make strong men.”
I think we are early in the “Good times” phase. In 1943 we could build 15 Essex Class carriers. Now, I doubt we could build one.
I’m not buying that there isn’t as much engineering “ability/talent” in America as when we were a much smaller country. The first thing to understand is that engineering degree doesn’t equal engineer. At best, it denotes someone in possession of some principals, the ability to apply some formulas and some vocabulary. What they lack uniformly is the insight that, given some goal such as a dam or airplane, allows them to find a starting point that will eventually lead to success.
A recent example is that the lately deposed CEO of Boeing announced that they wouldn’t start developing any new airplanes until at least 2035. While many decried this as a sort of surrender, I never heard anyone say the full truth. This was an announcement that Boeing was NEVER going to build another new airplane. This, simply because by 2035, there would have been no one left at Boeing that had any idea of what to put on that first sheet of paper to start the process. They may have lost that already. I’ve heard and seen ample evidence that they lack the ability to start a successful new project. Some have posited somehow importing engineers in bulk. From Embraer in one account. Certainly they seem to have lost the ability to develop engineers or most any other sort of employee in a way that allows them to sustain their business. It’s as if the management has spent the last 20-odd years sucking every last dollar out with the intention of simply abandoning the dry husk at the end of the process. The end is neigh.
Just think of all the money returned to investors instead of being wasted on training new machinists and engineers. Those foolish investors that thought they were investing in a viable business rather than a soon to be depleted gold mine. Measure any number of other American or even international enterprises against this yard stick and try to sleep tonight. if only it was as simple as burning all the books celebrating the “wisdom” of Jack Welch.
1) We are ruled by those who have nothing but contempt for us.
2) Further, they have contempt for and ignorance of the concept of reality over-riding wished for fantasies.
3) And they have never been personally introduced to the concept of unavoidable consequences as a result of decisions they make.
Entropy, if nothing else, means that reality wins. We will suffer sooner and more than they; but the day will come when they cannot avoid consequences. Of course they will be sure that it is the fault of us peasants.
More and more, I find myself reminded of the concept of “Mandate of Heaven”.
Subotai Bahadur
I had thought of the TVA scenario that night because it seemed to have covered an intersection of people, history, and the environment.
Back in the 1930 when TVA was launched, people didn’t think much more highly of those in Appalachia than they do today. However FDR recognized that they were voters and it was a place he could build infrastructure. So besides any notions of obligation, they were useful.
Now? The people of that region are being told by their government that the future doesn’t need them anymore.
I think it’s that concept of the future and that a large number of Americans have no place in it, which is the source of our national discontent.
My favorite example of sheer idiocy of American corporate management is General Electric. After spending something like $45 billion on stock buybacks they were lamenting their “intractable” pension liability of $49 billion. Gosh, if only they’d put that money into resolving the pension issue I bet the stock price wouldn’t have kept dropping.
But that would have benefited the “wrong” sort of people- deplorable white males and their families, mostly, whereas money spent on stock buybacks benefits the oh-so-worthy rich.
It seems to me that during the last few decades the only real thing an executive at an American company needed to do to succeed was to be willing to move production out of the country or import foreigners here to work, either via one the endless visa programs or simply illegally. If you were an exec who was unwilling to do this, or wanted to do something different- develop a strong engineering culture like Boeing used to have, for example- the numbers for your offshoring competition were always better, so you were out of a job. And of course the most important number of all is the stock price. These idiots will quite literally destroy the businesses they manage to keep that number high.
It also seems to me that this has grown into something uglier. These worthy folks appear to actively hate the the American people, especially when the “wrong” people do well. Note how Tampon Tim Walz has been attacking J.D. Vance for not remaining poor. I recall that Nazi Germany had a weird affinity for Imperial Japan, regarding them as a sort of honorary Aryans. Meanwhile, they were busy murdering people who spoke the same language as them and sometimes had fought in WWI in the German army. I think our regime betters have now arrived at that point, regarding foreigners as more important and worthy than Americans.
We now have minions of the regime actively preventing relief supplies reaching Helene victims in NC. They also stealing donated supplies, no doubt to be repurposed elsewhere, and have reportedly sent some large fraction of spare transformers to Ukraine, ensuring that affected areas of NC will stay dark for months. The Americans of Springfield, Ohio not only had 20,000 Haitians dumped on them, but they also have the FBI there running billboards with numbers for the Haitians to call on their taxpayer-supplied cell phones to complain about “hate crimes” if Americans object when their pets get eaten.
In other words, the regime is actively malicious against Americans. It is actively attempting to get us killed. I used to write here about an incipient civil war in the US, but it seemed like something far away.
Not anymore.
The other side of the TVA saga is that all those lakes behind the dams had been towns, farms and homes whose occupants were not given any choice. Take the government offer and leave, period. TVA wasn’t universally loved by any means.
We have developed a weird culture among investors. The short term seems to be all they care about and then someone like Elizabeth Holmes, who was an obvious fraud, takes them for billions.
The Democrats have been pushing versions of the “emerging Democratic majority” for a while and Ruy Teixeira and John Judis wrote a book by that name. The thesis, akin to “The Great Replacement Theory”, was that the less white the population got the more the Democratic it would be.
Hasn’t worked out quite that way as Hispanics are breaking toward Trump. I remember years ago getting second-hand Teixeira’s reaction to this and he said that he missed the role of family in his analysis. Coalitions are like magnets, some parts attract, some repel. As part of their turn toward class and college graduates Democrats got their freak on and parts of their Hispanic coalition sheered off.
So as far the mountain folks who got hammered by Helene, they are double-plus ungood because they are white and not with chic college degrees.
As far as the Democrats who will actually help and who they leave in the dust, it’s not so much who will vote for them as much as how much they need to work for your vote (or money.) In that case a black man in the ruins of Baltimore has more in common with a white man west of Asheville; the Democrats don’t have to do anything for their vote because in the latter’s case they have been written off and in the former it’s assumed.
I saw tonight that Helene is climbing the front pages of the media again. Top of the page in the NY Times and a key editorial in the W Post; however, both emphasized the role of “misinformation” so really all the hurricane is now is the launch vehicle for the misinformation partisan warhead.
Four weeks out from the election and we’re into the sprint not so much for the election result but the election aftermath. The Democrats seem to be piling on the misinformation bandwagon big time; Kerry the other week, Hillary has been banging the drum now.
The ground has been prepped with them and the aftermath of Helene so I;m going to take odds on that the coming of Hurricane Milton provides a hook for somebody besides a Democratic has-been to push the “dangers of misinformation” to democracy theme as prep for the post-election chaos.
We’re pretty much acknowledged that the Ruling Class in this country (and in most of the rest of the Western world as well) despises the ordinary citizens. We know it, and the ordinary folk in flyover country know it well. And the residents of the area slammed by Helene now know it, bitterly – supping at that full platter of scorn, derision and hatred dished up by the Ruling Class.
And when we begin responding to that scorn, derision and hatred? What then, oh wolves?
Just a guess, but I’d venture to say that there are obstructive federal officials and members of the establishment media getting very, very close to having their *sses handed to them by angry residents in the affected areas.
MCS speaks true.
Was talking on another forum about a lot of these things and someone introduced me to the term “Rolexing an industry.”
Basically, when digital watches stopped being luxury items, there was a slow contracting of the industry for watch repairmen. It wasn’t crushing but you started to have entry level positions being filled by intermediates, and intermediate jobs being filled by experienced watch makers. Basically imagine a great squeezing at the top and experienced workers getting pushed downward.
Which makes some sense. If you’re going to hire a watch repair guy, are you going to pick the guy with 20 years experience, or the guy with 2 years?
However, this meant new watch repairmen were being taken in at a trickle, and it wasn’t that big of a problem… until the last “classes” of watch repairmen were hitting retirement age and there was no one to replacement.
The company Rolex identified the problem before it became a crisis and opened a watch repair school. Better-than-free tuition (free school, free housing, and they pay you a stripend) for around two years (maybe?) just to ensure a ready flow of entry level trained watch makers hit the market regularly.
This is what I tell a lot of people concerns me about A.I..
There is a lot of “grunt work” in a job. You usually push it to newbies. This may seem unfair, but what people forget is that there is a lot of learning done in the “grunt” level. After you’ve put in your time and effort, you start moving up and begin applying the things you learned while “grunting” to more complex problems.
Well A.I. makes doing a lot of grunt work a breeze and is easy (also makes less mistakes than a newbie). The problem is that you’re basically blocking off the “bottom rung” of the ladder and cutting off newbies from learning the basics that will make them masters at the craft. Instead they have to “leap-frog” over the A.I. level and start trying to do high-level tasks basically without any training. I don’t know why people have convinced themselves that learning and certifications can be an adequate substitute for hands-on training, but it can’t. You can’t just grab a rookie, hand him the old-timer’s notebook, and have him carry on as the old-timer walks out the door. You need the rookie training and apprenticing under the old-timer’s eye. But something about google and the information age has convinced people that all of this effort and wisdom can be shortcutted – then they look around and wonder why nothing works or they can’t get stuff built and repaired in time.
(And yes this hit me personally when we hired a new programmer and I was mentoring them and realizing that my explanations to him were going a lot faster than him always trying to google mishaps – because something the “problem” is actually a symptom, and the real problem is deeper.)
I saw tonight that Helene is climbing the front pages of the media again. Top of the page in the NY Times and a key editorial in the W Post; however, both emphasized the role of “misinformation” so really all the hurricane is now is the launch vehicle for the misinformation partisan warhead.
Their problem is that the NYT and Wapo can print whatever they like and then people can go on X and find dozens of videos refuting their lies. Not everyone will do that, but plenty will.
And if they’ve got to talk about Helene at all, it isn’t good for them. In politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing- and there is absolutely no way to explain what has been happening in NC as anything other than malice.
They have crossed a bright clear line. It should end them, politically.
Mike K. talks about short-termisim in investors. But how many are real investors? Is someone who’s only connection with a company is an index fund an investor? If so, what are they investing in?
I tried to find out just how much money is in index funds and and found one number of 11 trillion dollars. However much that is, it represents money that is probably fairly stable for exactly as long as it keeps going up and the owner intends to pull it out just as soon as it goes down. I know a lot more about feedback loops than investing and have the bank account to prove it, but I clearly see where some sort of serious market downturn would see that 11 trillion all trying to liquidate at once.
Not one dollar of that 11 trillion represents a considered judgement about the prospects of any business. They’re simply betting that they’re smart enough that they will get out in time and not be left holding the bag. History suggests they’re wrong.
We’re in the weak men make hard times phase.
Seems to me –
– basing your business strategy on chasing the best stock price ignores the reason to be in business in the first place, supplying a customer what they need or want. Lose the guide of that northstar, and you are lost as far as where you want to go. Fulfilling the dreams of Wall St analysts rather than paying attention to the core business seems to be self-destructive, as the analysts who do not work in the industry should not be considered experts by anyone. Voodoo analysts, so to speak, are as reliable as tossing bones to predict the future.
– as far a Jack Welch firing the bottom 20% of his workforce annually, he seems to be selling the idea that the HR group cannot discern employees that are worth hiring, training, and keeping in the workforce. It also demeans the current workforce who know who is good, capable, and willing to pull their own weight. No matter how well they work, how well the meet the needs of the business, they could be part of that bottom 20%.
– It took nearly ten years to replace the eastern approach to the Oakland Bay Bridge. The original and complete end-to-end bridge was completed 80-ish years earlier using less advanced tools and equipment, in around three years. Some of that can be blamed on the notorious California ‘Boards’. They all need to prove their relevance and nearly all want to have input to every project that is proposed. A bit more can be attributed to the various Federal agencies who also want their input to be considered, else the agency might find they are no longer needed… Publish or perish in a way seems an applicable comparison.
Add in political and personal non-public interaction and punishment/rewards systems, and there is even more mechanism of delay and indecision. Pay to play at work.
Multiply this by three or four and you have the intricacies of NYC which DJT dealt with during his career in real estate and construction. Mean tweets, that’s just normal jabber in NYC….
Here is the most important sentence in the article.
“The ruling class may decry the western history of imperialism and white supremacy, but in turn they adopt a colonial attitude toward red-state America that would have made Kipling blush.”
People in flyover country need to quit trying to fix the United States and adopt the attitude of India, Poland, and yes our own Founders. None of them were trying to fix Britain or the Soviet Union. They just wanted out. We are being colonized by the costal ruling class in the same way and it demands the same solution.