Bloomberg: Let's Go Forward With The Marathon So People Without Homes, Power, Warmth, or Food Will Have Something To Cheer About

They can't watch it on TV, of course. As they have no power. Or TVs. Or a house.

But maybe they'll hear rumors.

Meanwhile they have two massive generators, with a third in reserve, for the media's coverage of the marathon.

Deroy Murdock pens a gripping portrayal of lower Manhattan after the storm. It is not much of an exaggeration to call it apocalyptic.

There are a lot of people who just do not appreciate the wonders of a modern technological civilization. They romance primitivism. They talk about cutting our energy usage while running their TV's 8 hours a day and tapping into their internet-linked computers 16 hours a day.

Electricity and heat, they seem to think, are simply magic. They are Summoned, like friendly demons, when a switch is thrown.

They do not-- will not -- understand that this energy comes from someplace. Big-shouldered men dig it up from the earth. Clever-fingered men control its movements in enormous electric grids.

They also don't understand the thin Electric Blue Line that separates civilization from barbarism. People are crapping in hallways because their toilets are already filled and they can't flush their waste away.

That's not these people's fault at all -- when you have to go, you have to go, as wise men have long observed.

But a lot of people don't seem to understand that these commonplace elements of civilization didn't just happen. They happened because people built them, and maintain them, and people only had the money to pay for such things because we are -- or at least have been -- a prosperous nation.

Without that, we're like most other nations throughout the impoverished, wanting, miserable history of nations.

It's easy to romanticize Third World primitivism so long as you only see it on TV, or visit it briefly as part of a pampered junket. Once you live in it a little bit, one gains an appreciation for the little things -- which aren't so little at all -- long taken for granted.

I suppose it's wrong to politicize this but I have long thought Barack Obama represents the triumph of decadence. He just doesn't see the connection between coal mines in Ohio and power in Staten Island. He's been so insulated in his bubble of privilege he's never even had occasion to wonder what it is, exactly, that makes his TV glow when he turns it on.

I've long had a theory that when you look at the various professions and occupations, those which are "dirtier" -- those which have a direct, tangible connection to the gritty reality of the world -- skew conservative, while those which are "cleaner" -- occupations which are largely performed on a computer monitor, or deal only with abstractions -- skew liberal.

Obama has lived in that latter world, and only that latter world, his whole life.

So has Michael Bloomberg.

They both eat steak but would be sickened to see a cow slaughtered. They both benefit from a technologically-advanced world running on power extracted, ultimately, from the blood and bone of the earth, but despise the mechanisms of energy creation.

They prefer just not to think about it too much. And because they've always been so insulated from "A" -- where it all starts -- and have only lived in the world of "B" -- where the electricity-demons run to, to heat homes and light the streets -- they've never had to think about it too much.

While they blather about "reducing our carbon footprint," they ignore the fact that, right now, Lower Manhattan is living a low-carbon footprint lifestyle.

And its carbon footprint will be reduced further as people -- inconvenient, energy-addicted people -- die.

This is the preferred future of Al Gore and his fellow primitives.

posted by Ace at 03:30 PM

| Access Comments