Power vs Power

So many ways to see and encounter power. Manipulate, too. Let us take a quick look at some of these.

Plugging an appliance into a electrical socket is taken for granted. All my life this has been true. Plug it in and switch it on. The light comes on, or the stereo, TV, fan or radio. Bigger plugs meant stoves of course, but refrigerators and air conditioners were still plug-ins. Walk into a room and flick the switch; lights came on, still do.

Or will they? Our nation invested billions and billions in dams, pumps, hydroelectric facilities and a whole lot more to create power for tens of millions of people. Whole rivers were rerouted or dammed to create water levels that would be used to create electric power.

The problem with that scenario is what happens when the water level is insufficient? That’s what America faces these days and the greater southwest is in one of its longest and driest droughts. Water supply to the people is a huge concern but think of the problems that will occur when hydroelectric outputs are insufficient to power a region.

Arizona is one hot spot that will wilt without air conditioning. Or pumps for its water. Agriculture will suffer without irrigation. Hospitals will curtail operations and admissions due to both power and water shortages.

Las Vegas would be much the same. And Los Angeles. Of course, LA. The aqueducts, reservoirs and hydroelectric facilities will lose their abilities to feed water and power to the region.

Have we overbuilt regions upon a shaky foundation of power and water? Being a native of Southern California, I was always unnerved by water supplies. How reliable were they? And were the dams going to be able to produce the electricity we needed, especially if water supplies were very low? What then?

Yes, that is how we were raised in our family – conserve water and spare the use of electricity. We lived back then without air conditioning. Even on the desert air conditioning was a luxury with the exception of the Navy base on the Mojave Desert! There it was a must and the Navy paid for it. But the rest of California? We shall see.

These power equations are both natural resources and politically power based. The southwest region got the resources to develop because it was in the nation’s interest. Federal government shared its resources with those states so they could provide other benefits to a growing nation. Military benefits were high on the interest list.

With that political involvement the nation waged its political power throughout other regions. It became a regular feature of politics as usual. Eventually imbalances emerged. How much federal aid should any one state receive? And why them? If one state gets more than its share, other states are starved for needed development support. And so it went and goes to this very day.

Manipulating power among states begets more power. The manipulation game grows exponentially until one day a sitting president decides that he can con the entire nation in any direction he wishes. And he did con the nation. And a congressional committee has spent over 18 months investigating and gathering evidence of that manipulation and con. The results are mostly in. More will be done with the data, but one thing has become very evident. A very orange fellow has been found out to be of another color. And it isn’t Brave Blue. More like a tarnished yellow.

Will we opt for prison or pardon? The latter is likely just to put to rest a season of disruption best forgotten and soothed. But then I hope safeguards will be installed to never experience this sort of perfidy again.

Time will tell, won't it?

July 14, 2022

 

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