If we disrespect skilled trades, we’re ignorant and arrogant fools

By David McElroy · June 20, 2018

As I walked into Lowe’s tonight, I realized I was too ignorant to even ask for the part by its name. Was it a socket? A plug-in doohickey? Or “the stuff under where the plug goes”?

I don’t remember what I called it now, but a couple of employees looked puzzled until one of them realized what I wanted and directed me to Aisle 12. After wandering that aisle and confirming how hopelessly ignorant I was with these parts, a nice fellow shopper asked what I was looking for. She directed me to the right place — on Aisle 13, it turned out — and advised me about which one to buy.

I was completely out of my element and it made me feel shame and regret — not for the first time — about the utter disdain which I used to have toward people who did the sort of blue-collar work which I looked down upon.

I don’t know exactly where this ugly early attitude came from. I’m from a family where everyone was expected to go to excel academically and then go to college. I strongly considered becoming an electrical engineer, a lawyer, a psychologist, a minister and a few other things before settling into a life as as journalist and then political consultant.

I somehow came to see people who did skilled blue-collar jobs as somehow inferior to people like me. I’ve come to understand over the years how short-sighted and ignorant I was.

I have this on my mind tonight because of an electrical problem in my bedroom tonight. The electrical socket you see above suddenly started sparking and hissing before a circuit breaker shut down power to a good portion of my house.

In the dark and sweltering heat, I had to pull the socket assembly out of the wall and figure out what to do — with just the light from my iPhone. (I had turned off every breaker in the house. I wasn’t taking a chance on being wrong about what controlled the power to those wires.) I could tell that the piece was fried — although I didn’t know how badly until I saw it in the light after the repair was made. That’s when I left for Lowe’s to buy the replacement.

I was so ignorant about what I was doing that I had to make a second trip out to get a wire-cutters and a wire-stripper. I couldn’t even find a screwdriver when I started tonight, so I bought a couple of those, too.

I carefully made a diagram of the wiring layout and numbered which wires went into which holes. Then I taped a piece of paper to each wire as I cut it, labeling each with the number that corresponded with a point on my diagram.

An hour or so after it started, I screwed the cover back onto the socket and turned on all the circuit breakers. Everything worked and the lamp plugged into that socket came on without a complaint.

Part of me felt proud of figuring it out, but then I realized that all I’d done was what a typical 10-year-old could have done in a household where such skills are common.

I had an odd feeling as I was wandering around in Lowe’s looking for my part. I found myself thinking, “I want to build a house.” It was a strange thought for someone with no such skills and no inclination to do hard work on that nature.

I think I felt that way because humans have always been builders. We’ve survived this long by making things and fixing things. Our ancestors had to invent the thousands of technologies which built on one another to give us our comfortable modern world.

There’s something in me which still appreciates that — and I loved the tiny little feeling that maybe I could be part of that long historical parade of people who had to learn how to build and repair.

A skilled electrician would have had the tools which I had to go buy. He would have known exactly where to get the part — if he didn’t already have a dozen in his truck. He could have stripped the wires and put them into the new socket in five minutes. Probably less than that.

All of the other skilled trades are the same. Every one of them knows how to do things which I know nothing about. Every one of them is a craftsman to one degree or another. Every one of them can trivially do things that seem like major accomplishments to me.

I appreciate the things I can do. I have skills which relatively few people have. I’m good at thinking and creating. I know that and I haven’t lost sight of those things.

But I feel as though I owe an apology to a lot of people who I once looked down upon because they weren’t as educated and sophisticated as I was. They weren’t as good with words. They didn’t always know how to dress for success. They didn’t always speak with good grammar.

I was wrong to look down on these skilled people. They never knew I felt that way. They don’t really care that I felt that way.

But still, I apologize to all the electricians and carpenters and plumbers and heavy-equipment operators who had intelligence and skills that were applied in very different ways than I’ve applied myself. I apologize to all the people who do such things — across a broad range of fields. Most of you deserve my respect, not my disdain, because you know how to skillfully do things which I’ll never be able to do.

If the modern economy eventually falls apart for awhile — as I expect it to — they’re the ones whose skills will be in demand, not mine. Maybe I need to learn more about construction or welding or plumbing. Maybe they’ll be the ones teaching me.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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