Stories continue to develop, and new ones are emerging of bureaucracy standing in the way of many forms of aid in Helene ravaged Southern Appalachia.  That the bureaucracies can be slow to “spin up” is an unfortunate fact of life, but as these stories reveal, they are actively interfering with private efforts to bring aid and rescue or are refusing to do so themselves, because “rules!”  In some ways it is reminiscent of the pandemic when in many places rules and rulemaking overrode common sense.  The rules got in the way of the reason the rules were promulgated to begin with.  Remember, during the pandemic people died from a lack of medical care because their accessibility thereto was restricted by the pandemic regulations.  Lives were lost trying to save lives – and not heroically either, but in a cowardly, hidebound fashion.  This is a troubling development in our society.

I do not like using that word “cowardly.”  It is an ugly word, but it is oh so applicable in this instance.  We are being frightened and beaten into compliance, and the kind of courage necessary to overcome that situation may be the hardest to acquire.  Falling on a grenade for the other people in your foxhole is a deeply courageous act, but it is also a simple equation – trading your life for the life of your fellows.  But when the power of government and the pressure of culture combine to tell you your acts are wrong, even if your common sense tells you your actions are right, the equation becomes so complex that you begin to question your own judgement.

Over the weekend, a Joel Kotkin piece appeared describing just how awful California has become, mostly in an effort to help people understand just how awful life under Harris would be.  It is really hard for people to understand just how bad California has become – even if you are there, experiencing it every day.  It is not until you leave and learn how different life can be that you begin to truly understand.  This passage from the Kotkin piece describes my life:

The progressive regulatory tsunami—notably on labor, climate, and energy—hammered all businesses outside the elite tech sector. Harris talks about creating an “opportunity” society by aiding small businesses, but according to the Small Business Regulation Index, progressive California has the worst business climate for small firms in the nation.

Many large companies have simply picked up and left for other fields. A Hoover Institution report found that in 2020, California had only one-seventh the number of company-initiated capital projects than did the leading state, Texas. Since 2022, moreover, all the jobs created in the state were in government or supported by the public sector, while private employment dropped. With the state suffering deep budget shortfalls, even government employment is beginning to drop.

The companies that have left once symbolized the state’s remarkable economic prowess: Occidental Petroleum, Jacobs Engineering, Parsons, Bechtel, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Charles Schwab, and McKesson. With the recent loss of Space X, not a single top aerospace firm, the signature industry of late-20th-century California, retains its headquarters in the Golden State.

It is actually hard to say I am retiring here in East Tennessee, from California.  It is as much a question of my customer base (manufacturing) eroding out from under me as it is me giving up anything.  The question I ask myself is why do those that stay do so?  The more I think about it, the more I conclude it is that complex, and therefore confusing, formula that prevents them from seeing just how bad it has gotten there.

This mess is fine to a point.  Even now people can leave California.  But in the pandemic, and now in the Helene response, we are seeing this situation cost lives – very directly and very avoidably.   As such I find my patience and sympathy stretched to the breaking point and hence, I am prone to the word cowardly.  Direct death uncomplicates the formula.  Direct death makes the complex simple.

Glenn Reynolds posted on Instapundit a series of “tweets” from one of his favorite sources over the weekend.   It is worth considering:

The normal person learns more from failure than success. But the already perfect man lacks the capacity to learn anything from defeat other than to conclude that someone failed him.

Usually it is we the public who have failed them. Taxes will increase and regulations redoubled until everyone is doing his fair share. Notice that the concept that they actually work for us has completely disappeared in the shuffle.

What is hardest to forgive is the abuse of trust, the cheapening of the sacred symbols and the exploitation of esteem by conmen who would burn a Rembrandt to toast a marshmallow.

“Burning a Rembrandt to toast a marshmallow” is exactly what I am talking about when I talk about “the rules,” rules meant to save lives, costing lives.  And thus trust is indeed abused.  January 6 takes on a different light when it is considered from this perspective.  Which takes us back to learning from failure.  We better figure out how to do so – quickly.

I hate to contemplate the alternative.