Maintenance-Free Means Unmaintainable

Up until so recently, I was in the market for replacement windows, as mine are originals dating back to 1963. I knew they exhibited the normal issues of old windows: cracked panes, poor operation (with some being welded shut by decades of paint), aged appearance, and a couple having serious drafting issues on cold winter nights. I knew I wanted to replace them, but was unsure if the replacements should be wood, vinyl, or fiberglass. I even allowed a couple of door-to-door salesmen to come into my home to give replacement estimates. (Don't do that.)

Fortunately, my online research led me to OldHouseGuy, who advises to always restore old, original windows rather than replace. He has two arguments in favor of keeping old windows. The first is artistic. Old houses were individually designed by an architect, as opposed to today's cookie cutter houses. Thus, unless you have a good reason to know why, in particular, your windows were installed in error, you likely understand the design of your house less than the professional who designed it. The second argument is one of pragmatic efficiency. Wood windows, if properly maintained and restored every 50 years, will last about 200 years. Replacement windows, on the other hand, will be re-replaced in about a tenth of that lifespan.

Buyers believe they are making an economical and environmental choice. The salesmen lie, in a roundabout way. Buyers are told that their energy savings will be 50%, which sounds fantastic. Later, they will find out that the advertised improvement specifically means a 50% reduction in thermal radiation loss through the glass. The overall energy efficiency improvements are normally so small that the new windows will not pay for themselves over their expected lifespan. Additionally, a whole set of plastic-framed windows will find their ways to landfills every twenty years or so. Yet the marketers have managed to convince a gullible public that this unsustainable practice is actually the responsible, environmental choice. [I wonder if anyone has calculated the landfill space required to satisfy AOC's Green New Deal plan to retrofit all buildings to save the environment.]

Doesn't this all seem like a microcosm for America? For one, there is the public virtue (environmentalism) which is hyped to the point of religious fervor and then used to sell solutions to the public that are expensive, make the original problems worse, and introduce new problems. Second, it is symptomatic of America as a throwaway society. Maintenance-free means unmaintainable. Replacement windows don't get fixed, and often can't be. They get thrown away. The same goes increasingly for all consumer goods, including appliances and electronics. Americans now pay over a thousand dollars for the latest iPhones, which get thrown out every couple years. The consumption cycle is to consume, make conspicuous displays of virtue or wealth, and then throw away before consuming again.

It's not just a cycle of stuff, but an approach to life. It is how we treat our own people too. Consider the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019, or, as I call it, the Replace America Act. It passed the House with strong majorities out of both parties. Now, over a third of the Senate is co-sponsoring their version of the bill, including Roy Blunt of Missouri and twenty other Republicans, along with Antifa Party leftists like Kamala Harris. What these pro-family Republicans and pro-labor Democrats are saying is that the American family and the American workforce are effectively maintenance-free. When they start to wear out, just throw away and replace. The combined populations of India and China are so substantial that they could re-populate the entire North American continent with little noticeable impact to their own homelands. Roy Blunt and his cohorts in Congress would like for that to happen. They would rather protect Silicon Valley corporate profits than to maintain the American nation. A preferable solution - which I politely suggested to Sen. Blunt via his contact page - would just be to send Google and Facebook to India, which would solve a number of problems.

It's not just corporate Republicans like Roy Blunt and anti-white agitators like Kamala Harris that promote the Maintenance-Free America agenda; the worst of the lot are the large and generally decent group calling themselves socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Many people find this to be a safe compromise zone to hang out in. Social conservatism has been demonized by the media, and fiscal liberalism carries the stigma of irresponsible idealism. These fence sitters may, in fact, be even more dangerous than the leftists, because socially liberal, fiscally conservative is the same doctrine as Maintenance-Free America. The Replace America Act falls right in line with socially liberal, fiscally conservative, which is why so many Senators from both sides of the aisle are piling on to co-sponsor it. They can all sell it as a victory. Republicans can say, "I supported fiscal conservatism by raising taxable corporate revenues helping to balance the budget." Democrats can say, "I supported social liberalism by importing millions of brown foreigners who historically vote 65% in favor of Democrats." Everybody wins!

Everybody who matters, anyway. The Republicans get their sweet corporate profits. The Democrats get their new voters plus the continued destruction of the American nation. The foreigners get to upgrade to a first-world life in Silicon Valley. (A disputable benefit, as the only place where residents shit in the streets more than India might be San Francisco.) The politicians get their war chests filled with corporate lobby money. Who pays for it all? The American family, and the American worker, whom the Republicans and Democrats pretend to care about. One of the most common things I see today of couples near my age (and I'm not terribly far from 40!) is to delay child-rearing, delay home-buying, delay family-building until they can reach a better financial position. Usually, that means paying off student debt and saving up enough money for a down payment on a home. For those who have migrated to west coast cities, the idea that they'll ever own a conventional family home is merely a pipe dream. Americans have always been told that going to college is the best route to a normal, middle-class life. Instead, tuition rates have skyrocketed, housing prices have skyrocketed, the stock market has skyrocketed, and incomes have stagnated. Why? Because Republicans like Roy Blunt are more interested in the profits of left-wing, treasonous enterprises like Google than in providing livable incomes to American families. Because radical mainstream Democrats like Kamala Harris are more interested in destroying the American nation than in defending American labor. Because no one wants to spend the time and energy in the traditional methods of maintaining the integrity of the family and nation, least of all the socially liberal, fiscally conservative crowd. Instead, the family and nation are treated as maintenance-free, which means they are treated as replaceable.