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Oil Field Anecdote: Trump Edition
I am back in the Eagle Ford Shale south of San Antonio moving Patterson 224 to its next 2 well pad. There are some unwritten rules in the oil field about things not discussed: anyone’s wife, religion, and politics.
The religion aspect is always fun/interesting to break the ice. If I am on a new rig and we are going to eat together I catch everyone looking around wondering if we are going to pray or eat and I will break the silence, me or someone else offers the Blessing, and dinner is over in about four minutes. After that it is assumed we will pray together, next thing you know the cussing has stopped, etc. It is fun to witness.
Outside of an occasional Obama joke, politics is strictly off limits and that works for me. The oil field is a break from the real world and chance to deal with real people not afraid of hard work.
Before we move the rig we have a premove meeting; usually six guys, all supervisors. I get everyone’s inputs, limitations, equipment, maintenance requirements, route restrictions, permit issues, etc., and assemble it into a plan that we execute about as long as lunch.
It is always good to see the gang again after a couple of weeks. I figured BS time would be filled with the start of football season until our trucking safety supervisor, a 26-year Army Retired Sargent Major, asked if anyone was going to watch the debate tonight. Everyone in the room stood up and roared, hell yeah, Trump is gonna kick their _, finally we have someone saying what I am thinking, etc.
We never, ever talk politics on a drilling rig and in a split-second we had an old fashioned church tent revival going and the subject was Trump. I was silent and making the stupid face. This is a non-partisan group whose life is the oil field and to a man the agreement was that Trump was a fighter and they are tired of the Republicans’ BS (there aren’t many/any democrats out here, we just don’t talk about it).
To Ricochet member King Prawn: I finally saw what you’ve been talking about. It is more real than I imagined. Whether it has legs or not remains to be seen.
Published in General
KP I wanted to follow up on this so I got together with the crane operators all of which are professional equipment operators like you and all brown. The 2 young riggers weren’t interested in politics and just wanted to talk about the company fantasy football tournament.
The two operators both like Trump and one said he would vote for him and then this:
“I know Trumps hates on Mexicans, but just the bad ones. I like him because he speaks his mind and tells it like it is. I would vote for him.” The other operator nodded is head and said “yeah”.
Scares the tar out of me. It really does.
Just the bad ones? And how can we tell? Do we just ask each one we run into?
Secure the border. Everything else should be back burner until that is accomplished and verified.
The republican chase for the hispanic unicorn is just that. There are plenty of folks that immigrated here from Spanish speaking countries that are proud english speaking Americans and have nothing for the invasion we are subject to. They also tend to hate taxes and are tired of being lied to by republicans.
The more we dig into this we find that we are less a white/brown/black nation and instead just a bunch of Americans who are tired of getting told “you have to elect us to find out how conservative we are” and then those we elect become mostly indistinguishable from the democrats.
Quoting it so I can like it again.
Ventura can’t self-fund. Trump can.
I wonder how those dudes will view Carly, she’s a fighter too.
Jesse proved he could win an election as a Reform Party candidate, and did. He also decided that he could not win re-election as a Reform Party candidate and did not run for re-election.
What drove Jesse’s initial run for the governorship of Minnesota was the young. He appealed to the young, got some benefit from being a Reform Party candidate, and the Republicans and the Democrats split the other vote. We did recognize that the Republican would have won barring Jesse. The Republicans got far more votes than the Democrats.
In any case, Jesse had to deal with two parties in the legislature who owed him nothing. He had no backing. He got virtually nothing done and his youthful backers had left him.
I asked some of the guys if they watched the debate. Nobody watched the entire thing after a very long and strained day yesterday.
No new opinions offered this morning.
I talked with one coworker yesterday, an older gentleman — self described political junky (meaning watches nothing but Fox News — and his opinion of the Donald was mixed. For him it comes down to anyone but the democrat. He’s not a wide river, but deeper than some, and the current is strong. He is the anchor demographic for the Republican party, and the Donald is not unmooring him. Apart from a Paul-like surge of people willing to pull hostile takeovers of caucuses and conventions for Trump I don’t know how he gets the nomination. I see most of his supporters as being angry enough to yell at things, but not nearly energetic enough to get up and do something about it. Hopefully.
I think Brent’s point was that the two brown crane operators were ok with what Trump says about immigration, so they don’t support the racism theory. I think the racism theory is pretty obnoxious. Reminds me of how any criticism of Obama has been motivated by racism. It’s a big country; I’m sure some anti-immigration sentiment is motivated by racism, just as some open-borders support is.
One has to remember that there are as many disaffected non-voting people (loosely) of the right as there are black people in america.
A minor change in the behavior of disaffected voter behavior could radically change the landscape. I would worry about Bernie if I were the republicans. He could get disaffected voters. I don’t think anybody else on the dems side could. If bernie wins the dems and we nominate bush/rubio/kasich, bernie could win a landslide.
A minor change in disaffected registered voters on the right (10% of registered voters), could radically change the primary.
I will for 2. Sitting out the election is as much a vote for the other side as nominating Trump. And the fact is, he’s a despicable human being.
This post scares me. Thanks for sharing Brent.
I do worry more about him. He is telling people that some nefarious group of others (rich people, corporations … whoever) has your stuff. Elect him, and he’ll get them to give you your stuff. He couches all this in terms that sound very American. He’s basically telling the vast majority of Americans than their employers are the crown, and we need to rise up in a new revolution to reclaim our rights. And people buy this stuff. It’s straight communism in the Marxist formula using American terminology. An example:
This should scare the pants off conservatives.
This should scare the pants off
conservativesrich folks. Fixed.I suppose you want your share of the spoils…
They lived by the sword… How bad should I feel about it?
Is the assumption that those that earned the wealth did so at the expense of others or by nefarious means?
A report from a different demographic & geography: Yesterday I was walking my cool-down mile on the indoor track at the local Y (Boise, ID area, so red state.) There are a couple of elderly ladies who are regular users, they walk as a pair but not very fast, so I lap them periodically and hear snatches of conversation.
Yesterday they were talking politics for the first time I’ve ever heard, and it was clear the topic was Trump. The bit that stuck with me was “…I’m not so sure about him, but at least he’s not bought & paid for like the others.”
FWIW.
At the expense of others, most likely. Nefarious. Probably some. Gaming the system, absolutely. I don’t consider gaming the system terribly nefarious. Its kind of like speeding, good on ya’ if you can get away with it but I don’t feel bad when I see you pulled over with a reckless ticket in hand either.
Seems like the neighborhood is putting up some speed traps.
No way. I’m no leftist, and I’m really surprised you go there on me.
I’m just pointing out that the rich are not exclusively conservative – in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that more of the mega-rich are socialists. They all should be afraid of Sanders.
I did a quick poll this AM here at work. “Did anybody watch the debate last night?” Two programmers (both libs claiming Libertarian) think Trump is a buffoon. Both noted that Fiorina did very well last night. Both noted that Rubio did very well, too. They both noted that Bush at least “showed up” this time. (Their phrase.) The rest…”Meh!” I have no clue who they might actually vote for though.
Sorry to have impugned your honor. What I said was shorthand for all wealth accruing to the socialist overlords. No wealth is safe. All redistribution eventually boils down to redistributing everything to those in charge. Our fight isn’t wealthy vs. everyone else. It’s socialists who will confiscate all the wealth against us who want to prevent that from happening, even to the idiot, wealthy lefties.
That assumes wealth creation is a zero sum game. Thankfully Adam Smith disproved that centuries ago.
I make no such assumption.
If you assume that someone gains wealth at other’s expense that can’t occur unless wealth creation is a zero sum proposition.
Who is talking about wealth creation?
We are talking about accumulation of wealth. Wealth creation is a means to that end, but it isn’t the only means.
The establishment has a long history of trying to sabotage nominees they don’t like in the general. Better to let a Democrat win than some Tea Party scum.
Guru, please break down the difference between wealth accumulation and creation.
It isn’t about losing weight, it’s about looking good. You’d be happy to weigh 600 pounds if you looked good doing it.
If I understand the Guru correctly, people are concerned with making their own pile. If others don’t make money, well, nuts to them. In a free market wealth accumulation has to coexist with wealth creation because if both sides aren’t happy with the deal they don’t engage in it. (Ignoring fraud, muggings, that sort of etc.)
To the extent that a market is no longer free that principle is no longer true. Socialists can outright acquire wealth at the expense of others. Crony capitalists can line their own pockets while not necessarily creating new wealth, but they have to be subtle about it.
That, and the assumption that any company of size is necessarily cronyish.