In a March leak, internal memos at the Biden Administration exposed a radical climate agenda prioritized over energy security and American jobs. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) pressed Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on the scandal in a recent Senate hearing.
Secretary Haaland had a glib response.
“I know that there is like 1.9 jobs for every American in the country right now.”
“You’re telling me we’ve got too many jobs in the country?” Senator Hawley responded.
“I’m saying we don’t have enough people.” Secretary Haaland began to detail the low-level bureaucrat positions open at her department.
Senator Hawley called this an “extraordinary response.”
“It reflects the mentality of your administration, which is, when it comes to blue-collar workers in this country, ‘You’re on your own. Good luck, good luck to you; we’ve got plenty. Just shut up and go get a job at McDonald’s. Whatever. Quit complaining about the loss of American industry.'”
As the White House blocks American mining and drilling, we send taxpayer dollars to fund identical projects in other countries. The Bureau of Land Management seeks to publish a new rule that would put environmental activists on equal footing with ranchers in grazing decisions. Washington’s attitude toward blue collar America has surpassed ignorance and arrived at malice.
A clarifying moment occurred on X the other day. Responding to footage of a decimated rural mining town in West Virginia, user @FactsChaser demanded to know why Republicans harp about homelessness in West Coast cities but not in Appalachia. He did not see the irony in equating major cities destroyed by an unchecked epidemic of crime and drug abuse with the ghost towns of mining and manufacturing, once thriving, now gutted by globalism, robbed of industry, and left to rot. In fact, they do have something in common: both are the result of uniparty policy.
During the fat years of the 90s, with America lulled and in a giving mood, the interests of the corporate Left and Right met little resistance. As Rust Belt jobs were sent to third world countries, we the people didn’t put up a fight. We were told that those countries needed our help, and in return, we’d get cheaper stuff.
Thirty years later and the stuff is indeed cheap, but those jobs we took from Americans never did lift the people of India and China out of poverty or totalitarianism. We emboldened dictators, enriched oligarchs, and hurt our own rural neighbors here in the States.
These days, it isn’t fashionable to give money to educate the poor children of Appalachia. Churches send missions trips overseas. It isn’t glamorous or Instagrammable to help the neglected in your own country.
I think back to early November 2016 when the muscle class made its voice heard. They’d elected a bully spokesman in Donald Trump and they would not be ignored. For a moment, Washington listened. The machine paused, became almost human, took whole minutes and even days to reflect on itself. Ink was spilled, think pieces flowed. What went wrong here? Are we the baddies?
But Washington never listens long; its grim roll toward progressive utopia marches on. It took four years of demonization and contention, silencing and hoaxes, witch hunts and Maoist struggle sessions, but at last the vision of liberalism as working-class champion is gone, shed like old skin. The nation emerged bruised but clear-eyed, disabused of prosaic notions about Democrats and the poor.
Daddy was a veteran, a Southern Democrat
They ought to get a rich man to vote like that
The old days are gone, the Washington uniparty has emerged. It does not care about jobs or equity or working people or free speech or human rights. In its infancy, the party used such slogans to gain power. Now empowered, slogans are superfluous. The party exists to maintain itself.
Three million jobs have been sent to China, Senator Josh Hawley reminded Deb Haaland. “Jobs for blue-collar workers in this nation are valuable resources. The ability of America to have our own industry and not be dependent on China is a valuable resource.”
But valuable to whom?
