2017 July 15 Blog
Article: Under Siege by Liberals from the Guardian from 14 July 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/14/nucla-colorado-mandatory-gun-law-mining-telluride
This article has a great number of points of interest about human nature, mis-conceptions, and blindness that are worth pointing out and commenting on.
Uranium mining for the war effort destroyed this town, it has been literally ground up and buried in a cement pit because of radioactive contamination. The inhabitants had to move and many moved to a nearby town founded by Socialists in 1915 called Nucla.
Outside interference:
The second part of the article is about outside interference and liberals. An environmental group sued the local coal fired power plant and put it on the road to shut down, the coal mine with it. This is the road to ghost town status. The locals resent the interference.
Who would not resent this interference? People who live in a different type of life altogether coming in a telling them what they should fear (global warming and radiation). Taking a small town in Colorado and using it as an example of how to stop global warning? There is a lifestyle in a small town that does not exist in big cities. Friendliness, security, quiet, and cooperation make up the small-town atmosphere. A big city person knows little about this. One cannot see radiation and cannot see global warming in their small town so why is there a problem.
The fact the nearby town of Uravan was ground up and put in a hole is not a reality in Nucla’s everyday life. Why worry about it?
Then there are the “A-listers” who have no idea how normal people live, having the funds to go and do whatever they wish wherever they wish, who come in and use their outside fame to tell people how the inhabitants of Nucla should live. “Liberals fighting against the mining industry are good at telling them no, residents say, but don’t present them with any alternatives – not ones that come with real salaries.”
Is there a way to do this that does not presume superiority and demonstrates caring and understands the people being disrupted? There is a long history of this activity in the world: Vietnam, Iraq, Ireland, Native Americans. Move, change, have this government, that industry, those places to live without any consideration of the people disrupted. People see their own lives as, mostly, idyllic, or at least workable, consistent, functional, normal, and resent the disruption, and usually, as the historical examples above have demonstrated, result in resentment toward the outsiders, destruction of cultures, and ways of life, premature deaths, and other consequences generally unintended by the interference.
But what should happen in a town like Uravan where the atmosphere and buildings are radioactive? In this case the help is trying to save lives. What is the proper approach? At what point does the government just put an end to it? The prevailing myth in this situation, and in situations like job loss, is to just re-educate, re-train, move to another town. This is an ignorant approach, denying human nature. It puts no stock in the idea that people’s lives, the human condition, function around their surroundings, their jobs, their homes, family, and acquaintances–inseparably.
Hark 