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Nature is coming for America Technology has broken the pioneer spirit

A storm's coming (Photo by Yamil Lage//AFP via Getty)

A storm's coming (Photo by Yamil Lage//AFP via Getty)


October 9, 2024   6 mins

The American wilderness has been fighting back. Less than a fortnight ago, Hurricane Helene swept across the South, leaving death, wreckage, and shattered livelihoods in its wake. It’s about to be followed by Hurricane Milton, which meteorologists warn will be even more deadly. Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, Fat Bear Week, which reimagines the pre-hibernation struggle for resources between Alaskan brown bears as a fun, furry elimination contest — a kind of Strictly Come Salmon Fishing — was briefly halted after one of the contenders killed another live on Bear Cam.

This is a salutary reminder that the taming of the American wilderness was only ever provisional. And the broader political and cultural response to such forces of nature in turn reveals an unexpected twist, in the ongoing election-year battle for the future of the American empire.

Bears once stood for everything about the American wilderness that had to be conquered. Early pioneers gained ground for their settlements via a pitched battle with the bears. As journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling puts it, they hated their ursine foes “with the sizzling, white-hot hatred that comes from living in constant fear”. Marauding bears would eat crops, livestock, or even — sometimes — human children. In response, the settlers hunted them ruthlessly, gradually beating back the bear population and wild forest to create space for farming.

In the 21st century, though, as Hongoltz-Hetling recounts, the same stubborn individualism that sustained such settlers in their endeavour ended up inviting the bears back in. In A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear (2020), he describes how a libertarian takeover of Grafton, New Hampshire failed after their aversion to collective action left them unable to maintain consistent, community-wide bear-proofing measures, such as secure bins. As a result, the local bear population grew dangerously numerous and intrusive, eventually precipitating the initiative’s collapse.

The inference of this cautionary tale is perhaps that we’re all only as radically independent as technological buffers against the elements (and bears) make us. Radical individualism, ironically, works best in a context already pre-cleansed of the kind of material threats that require human cooperation and ingenuity to overcome. And this matters: for despite the fact that America’s continent and civilisation are more stereotypically associated, today, with ultra-processed lifestyles of junk food, air conditioning, and driving everywhere, its forests are still there, and still full of bears.

This is difficult to grasp in Britain. Despite the best efforts of rewilding campaigners to reintroduce wolves and even bears to the temperate British Isles, humans have been apex predators here since the last wolf was killed in 1390. This epistemological gap is no doubt worsened by the urge to reimagine Alaskan brown bears as game-show contestants; something that also attests to just how far modern America has also slid toward forgetting its own underlying wildness.

America’s founding economy was one of republican localism, practical industry, and (in some regions) an ongoing war of attrition against the wilderness (including its bears). But modern, imperial America achieved hegemony precisely by tilting away from material practicality, toward an economy of ideas and information. And those of us out here on the imperial periphery, meanwhile, receive little except the culture that empire has since exported globally: one more likely to foreground the comic anthropomorphism of Fat Bear Week and Disney’s Baloo than the grim-faced, gun-toting mindset of American settlers guarding crops and livestock in 18th-century New Hampshire.

And as its reach has expanded and de-materialised, so America’s governance has also adjusted from the original, fiercely localist model beloved of the early settlers, toward a more centralised and managerial one. First articulated by Woodrow Wilson, this “progressive” mode of governance views the checks and balances baked into the older American republican tradition less as enabling conditions for liberty, than as obstacles to progress. In turn, one conservative commentator has recently characterised the resulting imperial order as no longer republican at all, but rather a “total state” that subordinates atomised individuals to a totalising, technocratic tyranny.

And whether or not they go this far, many modern conservative critics yearn for that bygone localism — even as others worry that the modern polity no longer possesses what Tocqueville called the “habits of the heart” required to achieve it. After all, the success of early American settlers at cooperative bear-hunting suggests they excelled at working together on highly focused local objectives. But following a century of imperial expansion, material comfort, and Wilsonian technocracy, is this still true? And yet, even if these habits of the heart have withered somewhat through lack of use, it’s possible they will be forced to make a comeback, for the same reason as Grafton’s libertarian experiment failed: keeping back the wilderness is not an achievement but an ongoing war of attrition.

In the American interior, this war has lost manpower as well as (perhaps) “habits of the heart”. Even as Wilsonian technocracy undermined republican praxis, the information economy drained talent to urban centres and the American coasts. In turn, as Hongoltz-Hetling recounts, much of the New Hampshire wilderness once clear-cut for farming has regrown — and as the woods have encroached, so have the bears.

But this is bringing its own backlash. For America’s persistent wildness exists in constant challenge to the softer coastal culture of bureaucracy and anthropomorphic bears. This, at least, is one interpretation of the way the Helene disaster response has been absorbed into America’s ongoing culture war. Social media has been full of images of aid efforts organised by practical people: mule trains, dirt bikes, and even Nascar. These images are emblematic of the kind of smaller-scale cooperation and practical skills strongly associated with America’s older “republican” culture. And against this FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been the subject of rumours and criticism such as having spent its budget on illegal immigrants, or even obstructing independent aid efforts so as to protect for-profit aid contractors or prioritise foreign-policy goals over the needs of citizens.

The US government has made vigorous efforts to debunk these rumours. But they have proliferated because they dovetail so neatly with longstanding perceptions of hostility toward “flyover country” — a world that, in this narrative, is descended from the pioneer culture that first beat back the bears, but whose capacity to flourish has since been parasitised by economic changes, cultural decline, and managerial politics. From this perspective, perceived shortcomings in the federal Helene response demonstrate the weakness of the “total state”, usually identified with the Left. Implicitly: managerial bureaucracy is no more equipped to manage a large-scale hurricane response than the cosseted coastal liberals it sustains would be to cope with a real-life bear, as opposed to one with a cute name on the laptop screen.

But I’m not sure it follows from this that a Trump win in November would tilt the scales back toward the more practical, republican America of collective nostalgia. From what I can make out, all the way across the pond, that capacity to mobilise for prosocial ends is already abundantly in evidence, in local Americans’ self-organised aid efforts. Meanwhile, to date, the main interventions from the Trumpist camp seem to have been firstly amplifying mistrust toward the government, and secondly a contribution of aid by Elon Musk.

This latter intervention is especially significant for the emerging Right-wing consensus, in that it didn’t come in the form of food, vehicles, manpower, or clean-up efforts, but distribution of Starlink satellite wi-fi routers. So much so that, to me, it foreshadows the new “fusionism” emerging out of the cold ashes of the 20th-century Reaganite variety.

The “New Right” has been fiercely divided for some time on what this should look like. Musk’s Starlink transmitters provide the answer. What use, after all, is a Starlink connection when your home has been flattened by a hurricane and the woods are full of bears? Well, one possible answer is that if you can get online it’s much easier to organise help. In other words, that internet connectivity enables the older, more decentralised American sociopolitical model to re-emerge from the technocratic grip of the “total state”.

“What use, after all, is a Starlink connection, when your home has been flattened by a hurricane and the woods are full of bears?”

In the same vein, since buying the social media platform X, Musk has been an energetic advocate of retrieving the republican free speech tradition. But it’s also true that this decentralisation obscures new forms of control. My speech on X is not free in the same sense as, say, a private conversation between two bear-hunters in 18th century New Hampshire — because Elon Musk owns the platform I’m using to speak. The same goes for Starlink, which remains a tool of decentralisation for as long as Musk wants it to be.

What this all foreshadows is a Right-wing consensus that opposes the post-liberal “total state” — but not exactly by trying to reanimate 18th-century republicanism. Where the post-liberal Left dreams of individual freedom governed by omniscient administration, for the post-liberal Right, the way forward looks like a tech superstructure owned and operated by an Olympian class of plutocrats and financiers, within which ordinary people are more or less left to figure it out for themselves.

At ground level, this probably looks like a dividend of freedom and flourishing to those able to forge strong local communities for practical support, while taking advantage of dematerialised opportunities for work or political organising afforded by the digital revolution. And by the same token, for those who lack the connections, capacities, or skills to flourish, it probably means “devil take the hindmost”.

What does any of this matter to the British Isles, thousands of miles away and still (thankfully) innocent of bear-based “rewilding”? Well, as long as Europe lives in the shadow of the American empire, when the Land of the Free sneezes the rest of the world catches cold. So should we end up with a post-liberal Right-wing government at the imperial core, we will probably, in due course, need to rediscover our own modes of localist cooperation. Even if the only bears that trouble us are those of London’s dematerialised, oligarch-riddled, and increasingly American-owned financial markets.


Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago

…for those who lack the connections, capacities, or skills to flourish, it probably means “devil take the hindmost”.

Unbearable.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Even the bears would find that unbearable.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago

I sometimes think of Mary’s reporting on America as like Victorian explorers in pith helmets who ventured forth into foreign lands to discover tribes and customs unknown and report back to Royal Geographical Society on their strangeness. Except she never has to leave her library and computer with access to the elite legacy media on the East Coast. What a vast gulf between that and the reality. But I enjoy her stuff like I did that the intrepid earlier explorer Wilfred Thesiger.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
1 month ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

True, but I at least appreciate that Mary means well. I wish she would take a nice long trip around this country and go off the beaten path. It would probably make for a great series of articles.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

What a great idea. The new link between UnHeard and the oldest magazine in the world would seem to free up enough money for such an expedition. Let’s hope Mary proposes the adventure. So many scales would fall from her eyes.

Buena Vista
Buena Vista
1 month ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

I’m convinced Mary was three sheets to the wind when she wrote this.

Robert
Robert
1 month ago
Reply to  Buena Vista

I was thinking it was too much caffeine!

Burton Tallen
Burton Tallen
1 month ago
Reply to  Robert

I thought it was gummies.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
1 month ago
Reply to  Buena Vista

Yes, it’s not up Mary’s usual standard at all. It takes what could have been a cute idea and turns it into the kind of repetitive, jargon-riddled mess one might expect a second-year sociology student’s AI-generated term paper to look like. The promised insights aren’t new, and not worth the slog to get to them. A less than memorable offering from a normally perceptive and readable commentator, but I guess they can’t all be gems.

Bernard Hill
Bernard Hill
1 month ago
Reply to  Mark Kennedy

…I think Mary has to address the jargon in tackling the issues in the ‘narrative’ she’s critiquing. Her long running theme is that it’s really tech which has got us into this feminist focused funk, but tech also has to be the pathway out. That’s because there’s no stopping it, and therefore there’s no path back to any previous perceived state of grace.

Matt M
Matt M
1 month ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

Her writing always conjures up the exact same image for me, and not just her US reporting but also those about trends in the dark recesses of the internet. I sit here with a pot of tea and toast and marmalade like a Victorian reading the latest report out of the Congo in the Times. I like her style very much and enjoyed this one.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

Totally. It’s so arch and knowing but in the end, completely wrong and filled with bad Euro-stereotypes. The vast majority of Americans are beyond capable and entirely at home in the wilderness, yes, esp. those of us who live in the countless cities that have both the amenities of any European city AND are a short 15-minute drive from real bears, rattlesnakes, or gators. She should stick to the TERF wars as she knows nothing about our turf.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

The little Oregon black bear enjoy our orchard. When I pick apples for a pie I always count the number of scat and make sure not to step in it.
We had an electric outage and the line men were up over their boots in bear scat.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 month ago

I understand the author’s argument, but I feel her analogy with the difficulties American settlers faced with bears is unhelpful.
The bears that caused problems for American settlers, especially in the West, were brown bears, aka grizzlies. Their instinct when confronted with a potential threat was to attack. Sadly, they were eradicated from the lower 48 over a century ago, although there are reports of a few recolonizing the West. The only significant, contemporary population of brown bears is in Alaska.
Modern America has plenty of black bears which occasionally attack people, but their typical instinct is to flee when encountering a potential threat.
I suspect it’s true there’s a resurgence of American individualism, and the old pioneer spirit, mainly as a reaction to government overreach, but, sadly, confronting the danger posed by bears is now a poor metaphor for that spirit of individualism.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 month ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Plenty of grizzlies in BC too.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  J Bryant

settlers faced many difficulties. in 1757 my ancestors were nearly wiped out when the Delaware chief Shingas and his war lord “Capt Jack” massacred the Studebaker Father and Mother and infant and captured Joe, Phil and Elizabeth. Nine years later Captain Bouquet and the Black Watch resqued them. Joe and Phil had a hard time adjusting and Elizabeth refused to return.
Believe me, it wasn’t just the bears.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago

Very good work here by Mary. So far above the general pap we get on Unherd.
in due course, need to rediscover our own modes of localist cooperation.
that internet connectivity enables the older, more decentralised American sociopolitical model to re-emerge from the technocratic grip of the “total state”.
Right or wrong I can’t help but think that the British Isles just doesn’t have the energy that Americans have to make this happen, and you desperately need it. They may want to find their own modes of localist cooperation, but I don’t see them having what it takes, meaning the individual that in turn drives the collective will. If they are there just who are they? What are they doing right now along the lines of individual performance in America? Where is the innovative nature of the British Isles?

Matt M
Matt M
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

It’s a good question Brett. I often think about the problem of potholes – a constant problem in Britain due to the aging infrastructure, ever-expanding population and rainy weather. It would cost very little for neighbours to club together and fix the ones on their streets – either themselves or paying a workman. But few ever do. Instead we sit around grumbling about the government, the council and the suspension on our cars. Perhaps if the pothole situation gets worse (as it seems to be doing) the old Victorian blood will rise in our veins. Or maybe we just prefer complaining to smooth tarmac.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt M

I would have assumed that we’re not allowed to actually fix potholes ourselves for the same reasons we wouldn’t be allowed to run a lemonade stand outside the house. Regs and all that.

Matt M
Matt M
1 month ago

Indeed but would that have stopped a rugged individualist of the Old School?

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 month ago
Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt M

I live on a private road that we residents maintain ourselves. We are proud to have the best tarmac in Hampshire! However, were I to self-repair potholes on a Highways Authority road I would expect a rebate on my Council Tax.

mike flynn
mike flynn
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

Independent spirit being educated out of USA. those otherwise talented enough to lead are bought and paid for by the total state. Or lawfared to irrelevance.

Paul Airey
Paul Airey
1 month ago

Here on North Skye my Crofter neighbours have been fixing pothole in our local council owned road owing to total neglect by the Council’s Highways Department.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  Paul Airey

I was up there last week, staying near Colbost. On our way to the coral beach we had to park some distance from the usual parking spot due to an extensive road repair, tarmac-ing in fact, which looked a bit out of place with the usual greyish road surfaces elsewhere on that beautiful island. If the Council Highways were responsible, they should be taken to task for not doing the repairs in keeping with the rest of the environment.

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Could it be that the light grey tarmac is just the same dark grey tarmac but weathered over many years?

Santiago Saefjord
Santiago Saefjord
1 month ago
Reply to  Paul Airey

My Dad spray painted over some graffiti in London Yesterday… go Dad!!
The best way, is our way…

Timothy Denton
Timothy Denton
1 month ago

As a civilized bear, I resent Miss Harrington’s association of wilderness with bears. Some of us, at least, favour hot tubs and G&Ts on the deck overlooking the woods.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 month ago

A cinematic country with very cinematic weather, it would seem.
But that’s only what we see on our TV screens. When I visited New York and California everything seemed much smaller.

Rosemary Throssell
Rosemary Throssell
1 month ago
Reply to  Tyler Durden

New York small? Where did you go?

mike otter
mike otter
1 month ago

A good read IMO but pretty sure the “last wolf” date is wrong – 1680 is one theory ( Perthshire) Others reason it was later and probably in the Cairngorms. Not sure lefties are too keen on wolves, bears etc – didn’t a famous one say “They think they know what’s best, They’re making a fool of us, They ought to be more careful, They’re setting a bad example….” lol

John Kanefsky
John Kanefsky
1 month ago

The missing element here is the people who already lived there (and in better harmony with nature and presumably the bears) before the Europeans arrived.

As Red Cloud is supposed to have observed, they made many promises to the “Native Americans” but taking their land was the only one they kept.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago
Reply to  John Kanefsky

A pity John Wayne isn’t still alive to give you a good thrashing.

mike flynn
mike flynn
1 month ago
Reply to  John Kanefsky

Noticed that absence too. Big picture turned out pretty well for millions. Sensibilities were different until a few decades ago. Can’t go back.

Robert
Robert
1 month ago

What use, after all, is a Starlink connection when your home has been flattened by a hurricane and the woods are full of bears? 
What a great sentence! No hurricanes where I live, but as recently as two years ago a winter storm knocked out power for five days. Thank God for wood stoves! No brown bears, but we do have plenty of black bears and one of them can certainly ruin your day. This article read like what so many of us in the US experience where we live but turned up to 11!

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 month ago

“…that internet connectivity enables the older, more decentralised American sociopolitical model to re-emerge from the technocratic grip of the ‘total state.'”
In the political context, this is exactly why “total state” progressives are so desperate to regain control of political speech by “moderating” the Internet.

Terry M
Terry M
1 month ago

I often wonder whether Mary has ever visited the land of E Pluribus Unum. She is clueless.
Where the post-liberal Left dreams of individual freedom governed by omniscient administration, for the post-liberal Right, the way forward looks like a tech superstructure owned and operated by an Olympian class of plutocrats and financiers, within which ordinary people are more or less left to figure it out for themselves.
Did she really not notice that the so-called right has been in an uproar over the censorious plutocrats who own the MSM and social networks? And, yes, people should be left to figure it out for themselves rather than fed like housecats lapping up the propaganda of the MSM and others. Musk is not perfect by any stretch, but he is far closer to the ideal than any of the other moguls.
This is her worst work.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
1 month ago

I don’t expect many things of govt, but public safety is atop that list and when the Homeland Security Secretary says out loud “we may not have enough money for hurricane relief because we’ve squandered it on illegals,” that speaks to a level of institutional failure that is almost unfathomable.
It took random citizens and charitable groups about a day and a half to marshal supplies and personnel to help victims who none of the volunteers know personally. It took the govt far longer to even put in an appearance but officials made up for that by having the media gaslight the public about the wondrous power of the state. The dysfunction speaks to a systemic failure that is beyond correction.
THIS is the heart of the American problem. It’s not about left/right, red/blue, or anything like that. It’s more a question of incompetence vs. malevolence, and the level of things gone wrong suggests the work is intentional, mostly because even the most stupid of people benefits from stopped clock syndrome.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 month ago

Mary is at her best recently when she writes about the natural world; weather gods and Brits in boats, etc. And now the wilderness in American hearts.
More of the same, please.

Will D. Mann
Will D. Mann
1 month ago

When the “smaller-scale cooperation and practical skills strongly associated with America’s older “republican” culture” was confronted by a new “apex predator”, a highly infections COVID variant, back in 2020, the ” fiercely localist model” resulted in resistance to mask wearing, suspicion of vaccines and even denying that COVID actually existed. The consequence was that COVID deaths were far higher in Republican states than in Democratic ones.

Neil Turrell
Neil Turrell
1 month ago
Reply to  Will D. Mann

What is the comparative age profile in Republican/Democratic States? I don’t know America well, but I understand that some states, especially the likes of Florida, can be thought of as “God’s waiting Room”. Given that the Covid virus had a much greater impact on the elderly, that could be a factor to consider. Looking at the topic more in the round, one might also seek to understand the impact of Covid post pandemic. Mental health, long term covid, excess death rates and so on.

Charles Sutcliffe
Charles Sutcliffe
1 month ago
Reply to  Will D. Mann

Dear Mr. Mann,
If you would be so kind as to provide the indisputably factual and empirically unbiased sources confirming your most erroneous and egregious allegation? Tis a rather lordly manner of expression, to publicise so strongly what has long been debunked as deception. The globalist, leftest authoritarianism communism leaning democrat (US) fabrication that Covid death’s were higher in our Red States than in their Blue States is verifiably and patently untrue. (Fact check the statistics in Florida for starters) One might easily conclude that the source of your authoritative (and somewhat out of context) comment was gleaned with naive acceptance from the leftest state media (BBC) or perhaps you’re a blue Kamala bear in British clothing.
Cheers!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Will D. Mann

What ignorant tripe Will D Mann posts.

mike flynn
mike flynn
1 month ago
Reply to  Will D. Mann

And the skepticism has been largely vindicated.

David A. Westbrook
David A. Westbrook
1 month ago

I think the “gap” with regard to wildlife is important. I’m writing from my place in Colorado, a few acres at 10,500, borders an enormous national forest. From my deck I’ve seen black bears, a mountain lion once, coyotes, lots of moose (including babies), mule deer, and occasionally elk. Higher and lower, there are different animals. I do a lot of nature photography, which you can find easily enough. It changes ones perspective, but not nearly in the grim faced way Mary describes. Some of the animals are dangerous, but a bit of caution, care with the dogs, and some space goes a long way. And they are a blessing to live with.

mike flynn
mike flynn
1 month ago

Pretty sure the nature discussion is for illustration of a higher thought.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
1 month ago

What would things be like, had the bears not existed there? Would this republican localism replete with rugged individualism not have developed? At this point it may be instructive to compare the US with Australia. To my mind Australia is US minus the bears which are not called Koala. Could it be that any differences that may be found, would be attributable to the differences in handling them? I doubt it. And rather think that they are pretty much similar by reason of the fact that they applied a similarly ruthless approach to bringing about the dispossession of the native populations. Any differences that may be found may be due to the fact that the GB Gov retained control in one place far longer than in the other and was thus able to impose a measure of moderation.

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 month ago

Nature is indeed coming for America, greatly helped by, wait for it – Climate Change! That has led to Global Warming – the Gulf of Mexico is much warmer than it used to be, and warmer seas lead to more extreme weather events in the form of hurricanes etc making landfall on the Gulf coast. Feel free to put your head in the sand and claim that is not the case, but it really is, honest!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Hurricanes have been around as long as physics. The record shows the doom porn predictions are just that: apocalyptic claptrap. The religious zealotry that inspired your post is tolerated but not actually constructive, or accurate, in the least.

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It’s a fact that the Gulf of Mexico’s water is 2 or 3 degrees higher than hitherto, and a fact that these serious storms are intensified by warmer water. Where is the religious zealotry in that? Surely the religious zealotry is in denying measurement of temperature and observation of the effects of its variation?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Tony Price

Temperature is one influence of storm strength. The Gulf has been hotter and cooler many times, indépendant of CO2 ppm. Current hurricane intensity, frequency and strength, averaged over a time span relevant to climate, is trendless. Religious zealotry is when one sees a storm and declares it a climate trend.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 month ago

“But modern, imperial America achieved hegemony…” because President Wilson and President Roosevelt really, really, really wanted to fight world wars with other peoples’ sons.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago

The US might have been able to sit out WW1, but it really had to fight WW2.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

It was the Southeast, not the South. Technology was what made the areas more resilient, not less. A geography and history review would make this author seem more informed and less arrogant. As far as “post liberal right wing”….look who’s suppressing, censoring and jailing for thought crime and pre-crime. BTW the reports of Mayorkas declaring he’s broke, are his words. And FEMA really did interfere with aid. What is the point of denying reality, Mary?

George Rigaux
George Rigaux
1 month ago

I live in bear territory. The real upside is fewer people.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  George Rigaux

I live in koala bear territory. Don’t laugh. Those things can be pretty fierce.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 month ago

I think the wild was won by Winchester. And you need t worry about the us. They have 50 tries to get it right.

Tom Condray
Tom Condray
1 month ago

Ms. Harrington is always an enjoyable read. I reside in the rural America she describes. That’s out in the country where our local bear turns various wrought iron bird feeders into pretzels in Autumn and Spring in order to fatten him/herself up. And yet, I live in a wealthy community of $million+ homes that is barely 50 miles from the United States’ version of Capital City in films like Hunger Games.
Nobody’s pulled a gun on him yet. Honestly, I don’t think it’s occurred to anyone to do so.
The locals whom I’ve known for a half century are still Salt of the Earth who always have time to chat about family, and don’t have to be asked for help when a stricken tree comes down in a storm. My immediate neighbors– transplants from the environs of Capital City and its contractors’ castles–are more prone to making irate calls to local county hotlines demanding services. Still, as they live here longer I find them out with their snow throwers helping each other clear their long drives after the blizzards their Elite Imperators declare a thing of the past dump a metre of snow.
Reality does have a way of adjusting one’s verities.
Personally, whether they inhabit the megalopoli I fled, or were never caught in that grasp, I honestly believe the central notions of the American Experiment are just a heartbeat–or a lived truth–below the surface of us all. It’s our heritage from four centuries of living in what is–in comparison with the gentle fields of the Cotswolds–a howling wilderness replete with earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, forest fires, droughts, volcanic eruptions, and utterly incompetent Presidential candidates of both stripes.
We call it home.

Rosemary Throssell
Rosemary Throssell
1 month ago

Loved this article and the comments that followed, although the pot holes were a distraction.
Now I will step out of my house (Upstate New York) and venture into the woods with my Ridgebacks mindful that I never know what we will come across. And that is the thrill for me, which is so different from my experience of living in the Scottish Borders which was bereft of wildlife. Sheep everywhere.
Skunks, porcupines, coyotes, an occasional black bear, an array of birds and raptors all make for a thrilling experience of Upstate living.
The force of nature is like a drug. Respecting it is key.
I have such respect for my local, Republican voting neighbours who are well equipped to deal with any adversity and on hand to help their neighbours when the need arises. A stark contrast to the city dwellers and this is what we have seen in North Carolina and Appalachia where locals claim their efforts to help their neighbours have been hampered by FEMA.
This is not to say one is more important than the other but that they should work together because one group understands the terrain and posesses the skills to navigate that terrain.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Ahh Mary…we so enjoy remote psycho-analysis by our distant kin.
I think you’re on to something, but struggling to drag the right bear carcass out of the wilderness. Retired military, retired FEMA, and avid hunter here; allow me a try: Starlink and our device entourages are the new digital flintlocks — the new American longrifles. These equalizers — enablers — make “every man his own commander”. That’s why you saw the “Overmountain men” (and women) organize so quickly and come streaming to help Helene survivors without seeking permission or direction from a centralized decision-making authority. It seems, at least anecdotally, that many of those collective actors recognized the need to make contact with authorities, but communications were disconnected and inadequate for the task, the authorities were absent, unreceptive, or overwhelmed, and the emergent citizen response groups were unfamiliar with authority structures and formal response plans. Sure, uncoordinated efforts can create problems, but since emergent citizen response always occurs, it’s foreseeable, and authorities must account for it, not treat it like an ambush.
Emergent groups also tend to be treated suspiciously because of pernicious disaster mythology, which causes officials to expect chaos and antisocial behavior. Minor instances of scavenging or opportunistic theft draw disproportionate attention, when in fact citizens act rationally and altruistically, and accomplish much of their life-saving and care-giving while government institutions are still kick-starting their own efforts. 
The actions of emergent groups often injure the pride of the bureaucrat, who having failed to consider that self-help would occur, ends up discouraging it. Authorities develop plans with their (government) partners and employ them in the traditional way (exercise of directive control by government institutions). They have a difficult time anticipating and accounting for the ingenious contributions of emergent groups. Effective emergency management and improvisation should work in synchronization, not with threats of arrest.
Funny thing about that digital flintlock — it’s a dual-purpose tool. We’re witnessing it help muster collective action in support of disaster survivors, and, in the course of this heated election campaign, to tame a new wilderness and its breed of dangerous bears — technocratic, tyrannical and managerial. 
You only have to look to mainstream media post-Helene to see the disdain the bear clan’s podium priesthood has for improvisers. It can’t help itself — chastising self-helpers (“You need to be a more grateful victim”), painting the government response in the most favorable light (“Pretty awesome we can give you $750 and still provide concierge services to illegals and Lebanese citizens”), and placing its responders on pedestals (“Don’t hurt their feelings, it makes them feel unsafe”). Deaf bears; surly bears. Louis XV’s “Après moi, le déluge“ is Hillary’s “We Lose Total Control.”
James Fenimore Cooper said “Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to publick opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem the true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong the right.” 
So who, then, is really the most dangerous bear? Certainly not the furry kind. The Black Bear that tore down my bird-feeders last year taught me the error of providing easy food sources; the bear, in turn, learned that the adjacent wilderness is a much safer environ than my backyard. We have an accommodation. But there is no accommodation or coexistence with a breed of bear that demands total control, that exercises tyrannical abuse, and that turns its “sizzling, white-hot hatred” on its own “grim-faced, gun-toting American settlers.”
P.S. Our bear problems seem to pale in comparison to the vexing challenges the U.K. faces. And you gave up your flintlocks…tsk, tsk.

Corey Gruber
Corey Gruber
1 month ago

Ahh Mary…we so enjoy remote psycho-analysis by our distant kin.
I think you’re on to something, but struggling to drag the right bear carcass out of the wilderness. Retired military, retired FEMA, and avid hunter here; allow me a try: Starlink and our device entourages are the new digital flintlocks — the new American longrifles. These equalizers — enablers — make “every man his own commander”. That’s why you saw the “Overmountain men” (and women) organize so quickly and come streaming to help Helene survivors without seeking permission or direction from a centralized decision-making authority. It seems, at least anecdotally, that many of those collective actors recognized the need to make contact with authorities, but communications were disconnected and inadequate for the task, the authorities were absent, unreceptive, or overwhelmed, and the emergent citizen response groups were unfamiliar with authority structures and formal response plans. Sure, uncoordinated efforts can create problems, but since emergent citizen response always occurs, it’s foreseeable, and authorities must account for it, not treat it like an ambush.
Emergent groups also tend to be treated suspiciously because of pernicious disaster mythology, which causes officials to expect chaos and antisocial behavior. Minor instances of scavenging or opportunistic theft draw disproportionate attention, when in fact citizens act rationally and altruistically, and accomplish much of their life-saving and care-giving while government institutions are still kick-starting their own efforts. 
The actions of emergent groups often injure the pride of the bureaucrat, who having failed to consider that self-help would occur, ends up discouraging it. Authorities develop plans with their (government) partners and employ them in the traditional way (exercise of directive control by government institutions). They have a difficult time anticipating and accounting for the ingenious contributions of emergent groups. Effective emergency management and improvisation should work in synchronization, not with threats of arrest.
Funny thing about that digital flintlock — it’s a dual-purpose tool. We’re witnessing it help muster collective action in support of disaster survivors, and, in the course of this heated election campaign, to tame a new wilderness and its breed of dangerous bears — technocratic, tyrannical and managerial. 
You only have to look to mainstream media post-Helene to see the disdain the bear clan’s podium priesthood has for improvisers. It can’t help itself — chastising self-helpers (“You need to be a more grateful victim”), painting the government response in the most favorable light (“Pretty awesome we can give you $750 and still provide concierge services to illegals and Lebanese citizens”), and placing its responders on pedestals (“Don’t hurt their feelings, it makes them feel unsafe”). Deaf bears; surly bears. Louis XV’s “Après moi, le déluge“ is Hillary’s “We Lose Total Control.”
James Fenimore Cooper said “Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to publick opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem the true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong the right.” 
So who, then, is really the most dangerous bear? Certainly not the furry kind. The Black Bear that tore down my bird-feeders last year taught me the error of providing easy food sources; the bear, in turn, learned that the adjacent wilderness is a much safer environ than my backyard. We have an accommodation. But there is no accommodation or coexistence with a breed of bear that demands total control, that exercises tyrannical abuse, and that turns its “sizzling, white-hot hatred” on its own “grim-faced, gun-toting American settlers.”
P.S. Our bear problems seem to pale in comparison to the vexing challenges the U.K. faces. And you gave up your flintlocks…tsk, tsk.