America is mired in at least 39 or 390 serious problems, but we’ve dealt with only 4 of those we’ve Prudently identified. Time is short. We must continue.
NUCLEAR POWER
Those who have submitted, mentally and emotionally, to the “green” cult, are uniformly opposed to so-called fossil fuels on the premise that carbon-dioxide is going to ruin Earth’s climate and cause the demise of civilization and of life, itself. That CO2 is the prime “green” component of the solar-driven oxygen cycle upon which all life depends, seems not to affect their thinking. Those same are virulently opposed to nuclear energy, the cleanest, least damaging source of electrical energy currently available. Something doesn’t make sense.
Green leftists always reference “Chernobyl” as the end of the argument against nuclear; if that fails, “Three-Mile Island” is expected to shut-up any pro-nuclear stragglers. Both of those supposed examples of what’s wrong with nuclear power plants, are non-sequiturs. Chernobyl, in particular, is an example, but it’s an example of how NOT to build a nuclear pile and of how NOT to run and maintain it. Rather than condemn the natural process of nuclear fission, opponents should correct their opposition to the technological stupidity the Soviet Union rewarded. Chernobyl would have been a big nothing had it been designed and built like, well, Three-Mile Island, actually.
Chernobyl was, technically, not in a containment structure as nearly all nuclear plants outside of the USSR were. That is to say, the weaknesses of the design and overall misunderstanding of the processes at various states of operation of their graphite pile reactors, make the Chernobyl-design power plants risky for mistakes and accidents under the best of circumstances. A long list of nuclear accidents at those plants was finally made public after the investigation into “Chernobyl” was completed. Some engineering traditions should not be permitted to operate or build nuclear plants.
Still, nuclear power plants have so many inherent advantages that it is foolishness to avoid making use of the continuously-improving technology that goes into their design and construction. The largest deterrent to nuclear power is fear, often fed by reference to bad technology, like that employed in Chernobyl-design plants and methods. New series III and IV plants are smaller, modular and 5 to 10 times safer than Three-Mile Island era plants, including passive safety systems. They’re also much less expensive to build and license. And, they are clean in both product and operating lifetimes up to 60 years and in eventual decommissioning costs and impacts. There is no “all-electric” future without massive, weatherproof generating capacity like what nuclear can provide.
TRANSPORTATION
Ours is a highly specialized and competitive global economy. Both commodities and finished products must move from points of origin to points of consumption; this is not going to change no matter how many “community gardens” are created, and it won’t change despite all efforts to go “carbon neutral,” either. Some tasks must be performed. Daily there are millions of them. Reducing the efficiency of completing those millions of tasks places huge burdens on society, the economy and on freedom. Forcing wholesale changes on how transport is performed… without a more efficient way to do it, is risky at best and foolish by definition.
We are in the midst of a green revolution, and we have been for over 100 years. From time to time wisdom has been applied through government regulation that has sped up the process of becoming more efficient and therefore cleaner in our consumption of energy to get materials and people moved from place to place. Increased mileage standards is one example, and automobiles are far cleaner and more efficient than ever, today. On the other hand, there are far more cars on the road than ever – in virtually every country – causing ever more gasoline, diesel and lubricating oil to be consumed while propelling substantially more “transport” per gallon or quart, and overall. For green evangelists there has been no progress at all – things are oh, so terribly worse because people insist on private, self-directed transport, and reject, for the most part, “public” transportation: too many cars, too many people driving cars.
Bad government, bending to the political pressure of “green” acolytes, responds by forcing people to pay for and to switch to public conveyance, and then fails to render it clean, comfortable or safe. Worse, public transit doesn’t go to every place where people need to go, and it never will. Government then considers how to force people to go to where public transit does go, imagining “model” communities that may never exist. There are clean, electric alternatives, but so much money and political force has been committed to “public transit” that alternatives are now less likely to be considered than if government went back to being wise, again. [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/; or https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/07/10/automotive-economics-and-freedom/.]
Battery magic seems to many, especially to “green” proselytes, to be cleaner than those awful carbon-based fuels; we should all shuck our internal combustion engines and switch to battery-powered vehicles. Bad government is listening to them and is virtually forcing car manufacturers to make more magic cars and fewer reliable ones. The ads are impressive. Batteries, themselves, are dirty products to make, both physically and politically. A person changing from gasoline or diesel to battery power has to drive upwards of 60,000 miles before the ecological cleanliness of an “electric” car starts to improve upon that of an internal combustion model. The only advantage of lithium-ion battery-powered cars is that the filth of mining and tailings, processing and effluents, unsafe mining (including child labor) and ecological disruption and pollution… well, it all happens in other places, out of sight of “green” Americans and others. Right in our neighborhoods things are pollution free! Forcing indigenous people off of their ancestral lands in South America is meaningless to us: they’re not OUR indigenous people about whom we care very deeply… very, very deeply. Improvements to Communist China’s manufacturing base and our long-term dependence on it for parts and replacement batteries, should keep China from ever damaging relations with the United States… so that’s good, too.
No matter how much cleaner internal combustion engines become, it is – and will never be – clean enough; only perfection is barely adequate in the business of planet-saving. So, in partnership with an entirely anti-American regime, the “green” (actually Red) movement has twisted our economy to the point of throwing away phenomenal manufacturing and servicing skills and technology, as well as discarding remarkably and increasingly efficient electric generation in favor of windmills and Chinese solar panels. Soon, there will be millions of used cars rusting away as planet-saviors force the end of internal-combustion cars and trucks and the adoption of battery-powered replacements, while limiting the number of “licenses” to sell gasoline… or refine it… or transport it, making continued use of gas or diesel power a little more awkward and unreliable than even severely limited-range electrics are and will continue to be.
Ultimately, (see “only perfection” in the preceding paragraph) owning and driving personal vehicles will become so troublesome that only grossly expensive “public” transportation will be able to provide a modicum of mobility. Personal freedom and sovereignty that Americans have invented the technological means to enjoy, will be lost forever. After that there will be millions of battery vehicles that no one wants or can sell, and will find difficult to recycle. Everything will be approaching perfection.
IMMIGRATION
For many nearly forgotten reasons the United States of America has for over 230 years been the most attractive nation and place for people from every nation to emigrate to. Americans, themselves, no longer understand (or are taught) why this could possibly be. Today education appears to include – is compelled to include – every tawdry mistake anyone in our history ever made. Worse, to complete a communistic circle, the effect of those mistakes is to absorb and render null and void, every great idea and action of those same people. The net effect of this twisted lens of American history is to grow up blaming your country for every problem in the world, rendering the existence and founding of it indefensible. As a result, fewer and fewer people do defend it… at least from inside the country… even as more and more people flee their home countries and sneak into, well, HERE.
Actual sovereign nations, however, have laws to govern and, basically, restrict entry to their jurisdictions. Nations are defined by their borders. The United States is defined by both borders and ideas of freedom and individuality – not by groups or identities, but by individuals, individual responsibility and equality under the law for – every – individual. For the past 65 years or so, we have turned our backs on our unique and majestic ideas, and dispersed the gold of citizenship as millions of people who don’t want to become Americans flooded to the insides of our borders.
Barack Obama was the first president who actively modified immigration practices if not policies, to try to change the demographics of the United States. Democrats had been dreaming of pushing white America into the minority category since Teddy Kennedy, an avowed socialist (and idiot). They couldn’t get it rolling any faster during the Clinton administration, but things started moving under Obama. He was probably the first president who seriously does not like the United States or its Constitution. Trump, obviously, was an unexpected speed bump in the race to change races. Biden, on the other hand, knows only two speeds in that race: “flat-out” and “stupid.” Some FIVE MILLION illegal aliens from over 100 countries have walked in to the U.S. since the 2020 votes were “certified.” About a million of those never even checked in with the Border Patrol, preferring to sneak in with various subterfuges planned, including serious drug-dealing and, for some hundreds or thousands, terrorist crimes.
Biden is hard to pigeon-hole. A patriotic observer is hard-pressed to declare him merely sloppy or foolish, when the very next day he might be presented with greater evidence of Biden’s treason toward his own nation. Breaking, or failing purposefully to enforce U. S. laws, which enables the entry of enemies to our nation, is exactly what President Biden has been doing since taking office… and it’s treasonous. That treason has come in many flavors, primarily these two: entry of those seeking to execute criminal activities including terrorist acts, and entry of those transporting deadly narcotics with intent to distribute. That fentanyl kills 10’s of thousands of Americans – mostly young men, but certainly not exclusively – one would think might wake up Americans to the crime of making its importation easier!
The importation of people is also a crime. Mexican cartels, who control drugs across Mexico and across the U. S., have found a new billion-dollar industry in the trafficking of people into the U. S., especially, by a factor of 10, since the Biden administration took office. For all of the cooperative police work – DEA work – between Mexico and the past 5 administrations, the flow of drugs, now including abundant fentanyl, has not slowed. Where there once were 5 or 6 cartels there may be 15 operating in every Mexican state and every U. S. state, as well. They’ve become more violent in Mexico, causing record levels of homicides, destroyed families and widespread official corruption. At the same time, with the cooperation of Chinese chemical suppliers, they are partners in at least 100,000 deaths in the U. S. from fentanyl overdoses.
President Biden commits treason against his own country in other ways, often by providing “aid and comfort” to our enemies. It’s subtle, but definite… well, subtle except for scuttling Afghanistan. According to sworn congressional testimony, Biden demanded immediate withdrawal despite the advice of military advisors, including the abandonment of Baghram Airbase and more than $7 BILLION in weapons, ammunition, aircraft, including some high-tech personal and tactical hardware. The Taliban, of course, has never been an ally of ours or friendly toward America or Americans in any way. They’re enemies, Joe, you dope. And we armed them to the teeth, abandoned real allies to danger and death at the hands of the Taliban. We could have retained Baghram and much of our equipment, and we logically should have regardless of costs. So, militarily, why did we do things the way we did? What on Earth was the headlong, damned stupid rush?
It seems Prudent to realize that we abandoned all of our work because China wanted us to. China didn’t want us to maintain a base so close to their border. China is happy to see us shoot ourselves in the foot – it saves them the trouble. They have invested many millions into the Biden family; our retreat was a return on investment by a factor of a thousand percent. When we look at all the players and pressures involved in 20 years of U.S. actions in Afghanistan, only the U.S. acted like an idiot, against its own interests. Treason, thy name is Biden.
When China is invited to “help” the United States eliminate drug abuse, and elections are “temporarily” suspended to get a handle on “crime,” it will be too late to rid ourselves of the gaggle of assholes from the Obama and Biden regimes.
So many words and only 3 more issues discussed. Prudence says stop here, wait for the next.