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All those DC jobs and families…

All those people and jobs and families and dreams and homes being lost right now in the Washington DC area….

I write this as a former Washington, DC, Beltway person, a former US EPA employee, a former 1964 tract housing suburban homeowner in a sterile suburban neighborhood, and as a former refugee of that big mess.

So, as the new administration takes shape, embeds itself into the federal bureaucracy and into the DC area buildings, apartments, homes, and businesses, and as DOGE begins to really dig into the catastrophic amount of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money in almost every single federal agency, we also hear about the cost in people there. That is, the cost in DC Beltway people whose jobs are suddenly ended, whose sinecure isn’t, whose gold-plated taxpayer funded lifestyle and pensions are now over or up in the air.

And while I do feel badly for all these people, this developing bloodied crust of human detritus being tossed about on the waves of the Potomac River, I have to ask all of them, all of you: What about all of the Flyover Country victims of these now sad bureaucrats over the years?

Remember the rural landowners whose private properties – working farms and forests – suddenly lost about fifty percent of their value after the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule was issued? Remember how those rural properties, which are the rural person’s own 401(k) retirement fund and pension, were suddenly, dramatically, radically devalued overnight by some politically radical bureaucrats in DC? Because those properties had a mud puddle on them?

And do you remember how just a few years ago the federal bureaucrats dismissively, derisively, arrogantly told everyone newly, artificially, and unnecessarily out of a job in the coal and natural gas industries to “learn to code“?

Well, folks, as it is commonly said, karma is a real big bitch. Ain’t it.

All those untouchable federal bureaucrats at EPA, USDA, ATF, FBI, DOJ, etc who enjoyed beating up on poor white working people in flyover country, impoverishing them with outrageously destructive and useless regulations, talking down to them…now suddenly some of these same bureaucrats are being held accountable. And this is not even a taste of their own medicine. This DOGE stuff is really just fixing a few broken tractor parts in the barnyard. Chief Executive President Trump has not even figured out which rotting barn he is going to try to fix and which rotting barn he is going to demolish, push into a big pile, and set on fire.

So, yes, some of my old friends in the DC area are either hurting or scared right now, afraid that they are about to be hurting. And I feel badly for them, I do. I do not want to see anyone lose their job, or lose their home as a consequence of losing their job, or not be able to pay for their kids’ college indoctrination experience as a consequence of losing their job. It brings me no pleasure. None. I actually feel badly for all of these DC federal employee people and their ending jobs, their ending careers and ending life plans.

I just also wonder if any of them see or understand the symmetry in all of this. The relationship between messing with the bull out in its rural field, and then earning the bull’s horns up your ass. Somehow, I think of DC Beltway people as not very smart, or not too wise, actually quite tribal and primitive, and having now lived within their own cozy bubble for so long that they are now living so far out in outer space that they really don’t understand what or why this is happening to them.

I am not saying that the DC Beltway bureaucrat people should be treated like cattle and just herded on out of the venue and sent out to pasture. But I am also unconvinced that they will appreciate being treated any better than that, either. They still have a deeply inbred sense of selfish entitlement that only a couple generations of working class reality can erase. C’mon out and join us in the hinterlands, and develop a work ethic we can admire, OK?

So, yeah. About all the sad DC Beltway people right now….

Hurricane Helene says No Such Thing as White Privilege

“White privilege” may be the most racist thing you will hear anyone say or allege in your lifetime, probably from the most racist people on Planet Earth, white liberal Democrats, but that has not stopped this fake social construction from being pronounced and bandied about like it is actually real.

Well, Mother Nature herself has recently descended from the heavens above to demonstrate that in reality and in the natural world too, there is no such thing as “White privilege.”

In the form of Hurricane Helene last week, Mother Nature inflicted huge devastation and destruction upon eastern Tennessee and northern North Carolina and the regional demographic there. It is a group of people I have had a lot of life experience with and who I maintain intense admiration for, white rural working people.

That there are a lot of white liberal Democrats in Asheville folded into the mix of Hurricane Helene victims does not mitigate or reduce my sympathy or hope for everyone’s full recovery there. Everyone is equal before the law, everyone is created in the image of God, and we are all Americans who should be caring for one another, regardless of our political opinions or religious views.

So Hurricane Helene destroyed billions of dollars in built infrastructure, including homes, towns, villages, farms, rural roads and interstates and bridges and schools and hospitals, stranding hundreds of thousands of largely white rural American citizens without power, water, or food.

And so just to demonstrate that white people can be victims and actually have no racial privilege whatsoever, the federal government response to Hurricane Helene has been… almost silent. Like cavalier and ignoring the huge mess of human misery. Like on purpose.

Recall that to our elites, Appalachian whites are the deplorable, disposable, ignored, maligned, forgotten Americans who nonetheless mine the coal that gives us most of our electricity, serve as the roughnecks on oil and gas drilling platforms that run our vehicles, fill up the special forces and combat infantry positions in our most highly motivated and patriotic high-risk fighting forces, who log the forests that provide us with high grade lumber for our fancy kitchens and furniture, who work for the railroads, and who drive trucks across the interstates that bring Amazon Prime to your home super pronto.

In every one of these professions, these (white, rural) people are taking big risks that almost always exceed their expected financial return. Why? Because they are proud to work hard, and they love America more than they love themselves. And they are devoted to America because there is no other nation anywhere that will give them the same freedom and opportunity.

White rural working people are the people who disproportionately make America work and run and give you, dear reader, the comfortable lifestyle to which you have become all too accustomed. And now that these people need a lot of help to get through this natural catastrophe, it sure appears that they are being abandoned by the same federal government that is simultaneously giving away unlimited taxpayer dollars right and left to border-jumping illegal migrants and to the porous demi-government in Ukraine.

I am hearing mostly consistent reports of aid efforts from acquaintences, friends, and family in Asheville and eastern Tennessee (some of their own photos are below; one of my family members from there is now in a hotel in South Carolina). Last week a friend of mine from Harrisburg loaded up his work van with bottled water and food and drove seven hours to the literal end of the paved road in eastern Tennessee, where he followed signs to a Baptist church. There in the church parking lot he was met with tears of fear and appreciation, and many needy hands as entire families sought shelter there with their sole remaining belongings: Their clothing on their bodies. (Some of his own photos of this are below).

Radio personality Glenn Beck reported his unbelievably negative experience with a sole FEMA crew instructive example of No White Privilege To Be Found Here.

Plenty of political fallout has resulted from apparent Biden-Harris government failure, or even willful blocking of aid efforts. While checking his email at a FEMA post, a partisan leftist Democrat in my family there said this is all politically generated misinformation, but I don’t know if I can accept that. The damning reports and real-time online videos are overwhelming and seem irrefutable, while politically partisan mainstream media outlets appear locked into a defend-Kamala Harris-at-all-costs posture, instead of having their crews on the ground recording what the citizens journalists are capturing.

Tons of on-the-ground reports are pouring out of the region, showing a complete lack of federal interest in helping, and a complicated mix of local territorialism, miscommunication, petty power flexing, and even theft of supplies. And even when the Biden-Harris Administration does speak publicly, they are actually saying sorry, we have no money for your disaster relief.

Because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ALREADY GAVE AWAY all the unsustainable taxpayer money to illegals and the endless war in Ukraine.

Folks, not only was there never any such thing as White privilege, but when there was an opportunity to demonstrate that American Whites get treated at least equally with everyone else, both American citizen of color and illegal border jumper alike, the point is made by our current federal government that American White people come last, if they get any help at all.

 

 

 

Natural resource envy

Being a conservationist, I’m on a bunch of email lists about conservation, natural resources, environmental protection.

Why and how groups send emails decrying natural resource companies, while happily using those same resources, like oil, coal, and natural gas, is beyond comprehension.

Oil and gas companies serve a demand by consumers who want their cars to run, their stoves to cook.

Coal powered electricity is ubiquitous. It runs hospitals and schools, as well as your home and place of business.

Somehow, in a twisted way, the companies supplying the power are “bad,” and the consumers are off the hook. As if these companies operate in a vacuum.

Credibility suffers when you’ve got two or more standards for the same behavior.  It’s sad because environmental quality is important. My request to conservatives is to not dismissively abandon the field of battle, and don’t let the far left define or frame the issue, either.  And don’t let the leftist groups get away with demonization of companies the world depends upon, unless those same groups are willing to generate their own power and transportation fuels.