Survival skills

Sarah Hoyt writes about the people who do, those who believe in American exceptionalism. She also writes about our elites:

They were eased through life. They never met real challenge. They’re not the most creative people around.

So… they’re carefully trying to close off every avenue of creativity and prosperity that individuals can create. But they’re not us. They don’t really “get” us. They’re like the aristocrats of the ancient regime, very good at the life of Versailles, but ignorant of how the real world works. I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts most of them never MET a working class person in their lives. Not to talk to. They’ve perhaps had short conversations with working class people in the service professions when handing in dry cleaning or ordering an espresso. That’s it.

She urges us to learn something new:

First, because, if things get really, really, really bad – and if the immigration bill does make it through the house, they will and fast – the more skills you have, the more likely it is that you can find something you can do that will allow you to survive.

Second, because the more you know, the more you allow the fields of knowledge to cross-pollinate, the more likely you’ll come up with something startling that open new ways of life and totally circumvents what our would be Lords and Masters plan for us.

I have this theory that the more things you know, the more things you try, the more you are ready for every contingency, the more you become the contingency. You put yourself in a knowledge and action rich environment and suddenly the discovery happens. You flap your wings, you’re the butterfly, and the world changes in ways no one could have predicted or prevented.

We have this over the forces of Luddites and statists. We can DO. They can only try to control those who do.