Pundits Should Get Their Hands Dirty

Following up on the Shawn Fain discussion in the last post, my task today is to learn enough about a CAD software program to design an 80/20 aluminum strut build for our new rig. If that sentence was gibberish, don’t worry about understanding it: the important point is that I will suck at it, and many small failures will be involved.

My dad grew up on a farm and was a pretty shit farmer — he has a lot of self-deprecating stories about fucking up stuff on the farm. (His dad and brother were really good farmers, which is how they survived.) When we did things around the house, even though we lived in town, maintenance-wise, we carried on his shit farmer traditions. The tools we had to fix stuff were like a pliers, a hammer and a few wrenches and screwdrivers. An electric drill was the only power tool. Any real work was done by mechanics, electricians, plumbers and carpenters who dad hired, since, as stated above, he was a shit farmer.

We also chopped our own wood for our fireplace and used only hand tools, because an axe, saw, maul and wedge were all they had on the farm, and that was good enough for the old man. I’d like to say it built character, but it made me avoid owning a wood-burning fireplace instead. I think he also wanted us to understand what hard manual work was like, and he was successful at that.

With this solid upbringing, it’s not a huge surprise that I’m terrible at “using my hands” as they say. Being bad at some form of work — especially work that ivy-educated pundits who write for big media outlets think is somehow of lesser value than cranking out wank pieces —is a humbling and educational thing. For example, I am a decidedly mediocre 12-volt electrician, but I’ll be once again doing some wiring in our new rig. I don’t do any kind of complicated wiring around the house, because 120 volt can kill you. But I sure appreciate when an electrician fixes something, and I probably bug them because I ask a lot of questions to try to understand their trade while they’re fixing stuff around the place.

This should be obvious, but nature and/or nurture gives us certain talents. Intellectual talent is not the only worthwhile one. People who write are generally good at thinking, and bad at other things. Unfortunately, these people have an outsized influence on the US educational system, which generally funnels most kids into the “go to college” track even if their talents don’t run in that direction. This view of the value of intellectual work pervades proposals for creating work in economically depressed areas: if I hear another proposal about teaching unemployed coal miners or steel workers how to code, I’m going to puke.

The move away from at least a reasonable amount of industrialization was always going to be bad for the party that supposedly supports workers, considering that a lot of workers won’t be suited to be knowledge workers in an office. The embrace of “free trade” — which in reality means outsourcing manufacturing for cheap — was one example.

Tim Walz was such a breath of fresh air in part because he combined two strains of the Democratic Party that are often problematic when they’re being messaged by lesser politicians. First, he was a teacher and an obviously smart guy, but he communicated clearly, without artifice. Second, he was obviously “good with his hands” in an unaffected way (here’s an old video of him talking about the headlight harness in his campaign car). He is one of the people that I hope gets an outsized presence as we try to regain non-college-educated voters who have left the party.

So, per the headline of the piece, I’d like to see a few of the more influential pundits who are constantly lecturing us on the importance of a knowledge economy try to wire something, or build something, and fail miserably at it. David Brooks, who’s finally realized that he has been a “well, actually” idiot about feral conservatism, can try wiring a new outlet for his too-young-for-him new wife’s dryer, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, I’m off to view a dozen YouTube videos and, dios mediante, rise to the level of mediocre at 80/20 design. Before I finish, thanks to everyone who recommended a TDAP booster — my wife and I got them yesterday, and she was 12 years out from her last one. The CDC recommends every 10 years for Tetanus and Diphtheria, no recommendation for Pertussis. The shots were free on our ACA policy — thanks Obama! I also did some quick research on Measles, and the current thinking is that vaccinated adults don’t need a booster. I assume that’s going to be rigorously tested, empirically, under the RFK Jr. regime.