Rural, Urban, College or Trades

It is the latest round of a tiresome game

“I wake up some days in total despair of these mountains.”

The latest round of ruralite/urbanite mud-slinging, which has hardened into a debate about going to college or not is the impetus to this essay. A young, white male with a 1460 SAT being rejected by Ivy League schools sparked the new debate. It was not productive, it was dumb and it was a waste of time. We should review the situation, the players at hand and be realistic about the broader situation.

First, this young man had a nice resume but ran into the stone wall that is modern college admissions. Anyone who scores as high as he did on the SAT should be going to college. Anyone interested in not just his future but possibly helping him help others, should be brutally honest with him why he was rejected from elite private schools. The system is against you. If you wish to change it and prevent others from meeting the same fate, work with us. That’s it. That’s the message. Going into the trades is incredibly dumb and a disservice to this individual and society a large. In our captured institutions, his advance would be stymied but we could use an aligned man anywhere.

Both sides of this meaningless debate are talking past each other. There is no nuance. We should all recognize that college is a scam, a high percentage of attendees should not even step foot on a campus, but that those with talent should explore the fullest use of their talents. My children are all under ten, but even now, my wife and I discuss the college question. Parents are sizing up their kids’ talents, drive and personalities and all rejecting the Boomerplate slogan of “you have to go to college”. Does it make sense for your child to go? What do you think will help them most achieve success and happiness? How does your child define a good life? These are all questions that go into parenting and guiding your child as the college app year approaches.

This is a Twitter argument and the Twitter players break into the ruralite/urbanite divisions. It’s mostly people over thirty rationalizing the decisions that they made which by now have narrowed their life paths. Anyone with exposure to the blue collar world knows successful skilled tradesmen. They also know skilled tradesmen who by age fifty have an injury or repetitive motion disability. Those years of zero college debt and good pay better be saved up because before a union pension or SSDI kicks in, they need some financial bridge. Trades are a solid path that can be entered after completing trade school or even earning a low-cost public university BA, but also involve years as an apprentice and journeyman. Jump into a union, and you are last in, first out. One can make decent money but the millionaires are low in number.

The same can be said for the urbanite position. A degree is required for many corporate gigs and any graduate or professional degree will require a BA. One can make good money. If one wants a position in a government entity, one will need a BA and likely an MA. One also will be in a metropolitan area with a higher cost of living. The amenities are better and there is more excitement, but many a man making ‘six figures’ will be treading water. Add in the corporate adoption of woke hiring practices, and making the leap to management is practically closed off to our side. Specialization makes sector jumping just as difficult for a white collar production worker as it is for a tradesman. One can make decent money but the millionaires are low in number.

There is no Shangri-la. The quote at the top is a thought from an urbanite who moved to the hinterlands. Covid allowed me to go remote. My wife wanted to be closer to her family. I could move anywhere as long as I was within one hour drive of an airport. We sold our home and left the city for a low cost rural area. My wife opted out of the workforce. It has been a huge boost to our quality of life. The absence of threats helps and I never realized the constant, low level tension of city life until I left. Seeing the same twenty families at youth activities is a huge networking thing, and really improves what we can do. You might be shocked that small towns like a newcomer willing to devote, time, money and energy to existing institutions. Is rural America a utopia? God no. Some of those same institutions might not like your new blood suggestions. There are many negatives to city life that we avoid, but there is no connection to power or protecting our area. Our small town has 8,000 people. A new development was approved for 1,000 homes. We heard about the results of this town meeting. The town was very upset and due to successful blocking of prior developments, thought they could stop this one. We could not. The county made the decision and has state backing. Our town can do nothing but enforce municipal standards for the development.

There are social maladies, too. I love the small town events and charm, but the free Narcan hand outs at the start of every school year signals an opioid problem. I’m a volunteer fire fighter, and the EMT full timers note that the daily calls are 2-12 per day “depending on the latest shipments”. Those shipments being narcotics. Obesity levels are high and many youths discuss wanting to move to the nearby metro. Some days I do despair because of the isolation or realizing our state or federal government is screwing us over and there is nothing I or anyone I know directly can do. It is not perfect, but I will take it over the city life we lived for a decade.

The right has to be realistic about the situation. Little Twitter accounts use the debate to just take out petty grudges on one another. We are outnumbered. Even if not officially outnumbered, the millions pouring over the border annually make that a certainty in the future. All of our institutions are in left wing hands. The trades are a good path for many on our side, but we still need to send talented individuals to maximize their capabilities and build out a credentialed elite. We still need right aligned, explicit or implicit, to become doctors, lawyers, engineers and accrue and wield power. We need right wing bureaucrats to end the NGO pig trough. We need right wing judges. We can start by staffing our red states with actual right wingers. Maybe even current members of corporations can help applicants rejected when the hiring team explicitly states in an email that it is a racial decision by quietly alerting the applicant to create a nice lawsuit. We can start by creating a pool of talent to pluck into new administrations and bureaucracies.

A fantastic idea would be for governors, staffers and backbench legislators in red states to appoint the government affairs liaisons at flagship state universities and then fund papers for government policy with the implicit goal of spotting right wing talent to develop and use later. These offices do exist, but we need to take ownership of them and use them to our advantage. Defund DEI and fund RW R&D. Reward friends and punish enemies.

We are outnumbered and outgunned. There is currently no white knight to save us. There is no value in petty insults flung at one another using college as cover, and sending our best and brightest to a life in the trades is the perfect way to make certain there is no white knight in the future.