I wanted to talk about dying but not actually dying; just a partial dying. The subject is the great road and the not-so-great data centers invading small-town America.

The road part: Dwight Eisenhower developed a proposal for an interstate highway system resulting in the enactment of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. My personal memories of the outcome took place in upstate New York on the Northway, I-87 and it was beautifully scenic and cut through mountains and valleys and farmlands and rivers. Who lost out? Small-town America.
This stretch for my family began in Albany to the Canadian border. As a little boy, I loved seeing the miles of small-town life pre-I-87 and like all new highway builds in the 1960's, entire lives and communities were devasted by a re-route; there had to be an exit off I-87 to access a town or you were now the past and forgotten and that is exactly what these locals experienced. Hotels, restaurants, pubs, gas stations, grocery stores - all lost out for the need of fast transportation. It was only partial death, of course on Route 7. Life continued.

The Data Centers part: No need to circle the wagons on infrastructure, power, China, noise pollution, wastewater and all that. You've heard it. Like the American highway system decimated townships, the data center builds are literally the reason people are losing jobs while the elitist Silicon Valley prophets smile at their solution being universal basic income; a chance to move out of middle-class America into a boxy 1600 square foot apartment with the kids in a city. And, public schools, unsafe streets, crazy school boards, 24x7 noise pollution and higher crime. It's only partial death; careers, family life, mobility, healthcare, friendships, vacations - all change for a tech corporation like Oracle and Microsoft to give us an uncertain future of more data. That is the story: more damn data for surveillance, for China, for Sam and Dario, Satya, Jensen, Larry and the boys. They aren't kidding - it's their highway moving into American back yards and common spaces in communities. Their billions will build while hundreds of thousands of skilled workers will lose out to the hum of mini-cities where kids will look at great walls, parents wait for the next government check, the scenic view is cement and power lines.
Partial death, that's all it is. The new American road to prosperity for life, liberty and the pursuit of data. Satya Nadella said in a Wired interview two years ago, "I can see 8 billion people living in prosperity with AI, right?"

Silicon Valley businesses have predicted and prophesied the FUTURE for many years. It's so simple: AI will replace people and AI will solve world problems. Period

But, in reality, there are prophets and then there are false prophets. We have to be paying close attention NOW to what the AI intelligentsia say. The danger lies in an unexpected turn of future events like mass permanent unemployment for professionals. The government will manage one resolution, the corporate world another and societal forces such as Pope Leo's encyclical offers. We are only in the "warning" phase.

--------------------    ---------------------    -------------------

Some grads in Class2026 booed the leaders, booed their speakers. Really, we've all been here in the past when technological revolutions transformed us on global scale.

May 8, 2026: At the University of Central Florida commencement a real estate executive speaker called AI the ​"next industrial revolution." She was met with boos.

May 15, 2026: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was met with boos during a University of Arizona commencement speech after discussing AI and fears the technology could reshape or replace parts of the workforce.

May 10, 2026: At MTSU, music exec Scott Borchetta is booed by graduates in commencement speech, saying "AI is rewriting production as we sit here."

A December Harvard Youth Poll found that the majority of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 believe that AI poses a threat to their job prospects.

Jensen Huang addressed Carnegie Mellon graduates at their commencement ceremony, saying, “A new era of science and discovery is beginning.”

Dario Amodei predicted last year that AI could wipe out half of entry-level, white-collar positions by 2030.

Microsoft exec Mustafa Suleyman predicted human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks being done by AI...will be fully automated by AI within the next year or 18 months.

April 10, 2026: a 20-year-old man threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's residence.



​rpw2026

April 23.
Mr. Kimmel had imagined himself as the M.C. at the dinner. “Of course, our first lady, Melania, is here,” he said on April 23rd. Then, pretending to address her, he called her “so beautiful” and added: “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”

On  April 25th a gunman broke past a security perimeter in the Washington Hilton while the president and first lady were attending the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

Mr. Trump described the comedian’s joke on his social media as “really shocking” and “something far beyond the pale.” He ended his post: “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”

The first lady had posted about Mr. Kimmel a few hours earlier.
“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy,” she wrote. “His words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.” She called Mr. Kimmel, “a coward who shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate. He hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand.”

Let’s take a look at how academia, progressives and those who project the ideology of Critical Social Justice Theory should have responded to Mr. Kimmel’s words. It is well known from our so called, “lessons” in cancel culture, violent speech and oppressive discourses that Critical Social Justice proponents should have immediately critiqued Kimmel’s words for problematics, hate and meaning. Thus, they would have stated how Kimmel’s words were speaking to the assassination of President Trump as if it actually happened.

Has even one Social Justice voice or academician so deep in social deconstruction, as Jacques Derrida would label it, offered their so-called critiques?  Of course not. Only the political right, conservatives and Christians are to be judged for social impacts of harm on society due to their speech, such as calling a thing good or evil grounded in objective truth.  Kimmel is free to speak hate. Progressives apply almost no constructive denouncement of violent speech from their own side. Words which are reified as acts of violent discourse only fit the ideological far left.

James Lindsay, author and critic of critical race theory, argues that CRT ideology operates by redefining speech as violence to control discourses, influenced by Marcuse's "repressive tolerance." Here, speech has no meaning unless it challenges their ideology and then acts as violent. Marcuse only required conservative voices to be repressed and not tolerated. Mr. Lindsay once stated in New Discourses, ‘We are living in Herbert Marcuse’s world.” Now. Liberal network managers and haters like Kimmel are a prime example and should never be tolerated in American media. Melania called it right: cowards
​
​RPWaters