Culture, Economy & Business, Politics

You Are What You Build, and Blue America is…

Acivilization’s most enduring creations are a reflection of the beliefs, aspirations, and desires of those societies and their leaders. The Roman emperors built triumphal arches to commemorate their victories and symbolize the might of their empire. Medieval Europeans constructed massive and ornate cathedrals, demonstrating their devotion to their faith. In similar manner, what we build today demonstrates our beliefs and desires, what we remember, and what we look forward to…

The massive wind farms that dominate many American plains, deserts, and hills destroy the many thousands of acres they are built on. Roads crisscross the area to enable trucks to service each unreliable turbine, killing wildlife habitats and vegetation, while birds are pulverized by the wind turbines when they get too close. The land is rendered unusable for any other purpose, and the view of the natural landscape is marred by miles of uniform ugly white towers with their spinning blades. All this is done in the name of saving the planet. Our energy planners think this ugliness will save the world.

California’s high speed rail project is already a monument to incompetency, corruption, and utopianism by out-of-touch politicians. Whether or not it ever reaches completion, the hulking tons of concrete spread out at great expense over pristine Central Valley farmland will long be a symbolic finger in the eye of California’s farmers. Instead of using the same concrete to build dams to provide water for parched farms, it goes to a dubious project meant to serve urban elites.

A society that mistakes ugliness for beauty will build ugly things. And thus, we get monstrosities like the Smithsonian’s African American history museum, as much a discredit to the people it is meant to memorialize as it is a blight on the classical style of the National Mall. Dark and oppressive, it looms over those who venture close. A society plunged in chaos and disorder will build disordered and chaotic buildings, and so we get buildings like the Denver Art Museum or the Seattle Central Library. Read more…

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