Victor Davis Hanson's lastest essay at PJ Media is upside-the-head bracing. If ever the blogger's exhortation to "read the whole" thing was to be taken seriously, it is now.
His last few pieces for the various sites for which he writes have had a thematic thread that has been gaining prominence with each one. The lifelong Californian couches it in terms of the chasm between the world views of the Bay Area / Silicon Valley / Los Angeles area set and the hinterland farmers, timber-cutters and heavy equipment operators. The basic point is that there is a huge and culturally dominant class of post-Americans who have never, in the course of their work lives, operated machines (other than their cars) powered by fossil fuels, who have never looked at a blueprint and planned how to make - to specification - what was drawn on it, and who have never spent an entire workday in adverse weather conditions. They are utterly divorced from those who are immersed in such activity. Still, they reserve the right to make pronouncements on all manner of aspects of such activity, from "contribution to climate change" to "stereotypes of masculinity."
I see this a lot in the community where I live. It is one of those post-American places the economy of which is still largely driven by manufacturing and farming. I write regularly for a local business magazine, and often, when I visit the facility of a company I am to profile, I am drawn back into a world I left behind years ago. (My participation in that world was as a metal-stamping press operator and then stamping-company executive.) I see guys standing around the plant or warehouse, blowing on their hands, mounting their forklifts, putting on goggles to do some laser cutting or arc welding.
A lot of the manufacturing is pretty high-tech, and most of it serves world markets of one kind or another. It is mainly carried out by folks who know what they're doing. In fact, our smallish city has, per capita, the highest concentration of mechanical engineers in the country. But there has arisen a bureaucratic class that has laid down the ultimatum on what kind of cultural climate they will be operating in. It is expected that such companies will "give back to the community," will be "diverse," and will be "green." Our city being the size it is, several faces and names within this class recur throughout the maze of boards, commissions, councils and coalitions that tout pre-K education, bike paths, establishment of an arts district, and a welcoming atmosphere for the transgendered.
Most executives from these firms would say that their involvement in all this is purely volitional, but one has to ask what their civic involvement would look like if this busybody infrastructure weren't dictating the terms.
As Dr. Hanson says in his essay, the actual makers in our society may press on for a while, but at some point the numbers won't pan out. We will then be a nation of pointy-headed overlords, cattle-like sort-of-humans, and bewildered craftsmen who looked up from their work one day and asked, "What happened?"
Wow. For a post on someone else's essay, I wound up having a lot to say myself.
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