1,453 words

I usually adhere to the Roman custom of only speaking well of the dead, but I will make an exception for Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate and designer of the ill-fated Titan. As the Joker would say, “We live in a society.” OceanGate says a lot about that society, and I can’t help but see the funny side of the Titan’s catastrophic implosion.

Rush’s statement about not wanting to hire uninspiring 50-year-old white men is now infamous. It is also perfectly illustrative of the bourgeois boomer mentality that leaves the country worse off while being smug or clueless about it. Rush died as a 61-year-old white man. Obviously, 50-year-old white men are boring, privileged, and deserve to have their jobs given to diversity hires — unlike 60-year-old white men who were born into trust-fund families.

Bertrand de Jouvenel described the phenomenon of a society’s high and low allying in order to squeeze the middle. I have previously written about an example of de Jouvenal’s theory in microcosm where the upper part of the high segment, as epitomized by people such as Rush, is allying with the upper low, which is made up of lumpen elites and diversity tokens, to squeeze the upper middle —  such as the now-proverbial 50-year-old white men. OceanGate is therefore Exhibit A that the faux elite hate us, or are at best arrogantly indifferent. They are objective enemies, and they do not even deserve our respect, as some objective enemies do.

Another lesson that OceanGate aptly illustrates is the state of our current elite. They are not just morally bankrupt; they are also mentally retarded. The bimbo-like stupidity displayed by White House press secretaries is more the rule than the exception among them, for example. Likewise, using a game controller to pilot a vehicle deep in Neptune’s realm such as the Titan wasn’t necessarily a bad idea — so long as there had been a backup system or two. But there wasn’t any. Moreover, according to a former passenger the Titan had lost communication with its surface support vessel on all of its four previous dives. As a military veteran, I can assure you that vehicles losing communication is a big deal even in the most ordinary of circumstances.

This should destroy any illusion that OceanGate was Faustian in the tradition of the Apollo missions or Magellan’s expedition. It was just dumb. Any such comparison is insulting to those serious white explorers who took calculated risks to advance mankind. Rush was instead following the proud cultural traditions of his Jewish wife’s people in cutting costs to increase his bottom line. For example, when describing the sub’s construction in 2021, he mentioned that “[t]he carbon fiber and titanium, there’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did.”

And now he is at the bottom of the ocean as a result of his pursuit of the bottom line.

OceanGate also shows us that, with some notable exceptions, it is usually unwise to trust members of the elite or older people who are not part of the movement. There is little to learn from them, mainly because they are stupid, but apart from that, even if they aren’t malicious, they can’t be trusted to make safe decisions. Rush placing himself and others at risk solely for the sake of clout and money naturally brings to mind Donald Trump’s conduct during and after the stolen election of 2020. If anything nice can be said about Rush, it is that at least he (literally) went down with his ship — unlike Trump, who golfed at Mar-a-Lago while his supporters were being thrown into solitary confinement.

This is in addition to the fact that members of the elite tend to be arrogant. Rush had the hubris to name his submarine the Titan — because it was meant to explore the Titanic. He was tempting the fates. Furthermore, he was trespassing in holy space. OceanGate’s tagline in its early days was “Open the oceans for all of humanity.” This sounds nice, but humans should have to earn their encounters with nature. There is an inherent elitism in nature, as shown by what I call “the trailhead effect,” where the quality of people you encounter while hiking rises the further you get from the trailhead. Facilitating ordinary people such as money-grubbing CEOs and twerking black women to go to difficult-to-reach places is akin to defiling a sacred temple. To them, nature is merely a playground or a resource — and mass tourism tends to wreck nature if not properly managed. I would much prefer that the majority of nature remain mysterious and inaccessible.

While conservation efforts are important, nature thankfully has a way of defending itself as well. OceanGate was an example of the laws of nature in action. Rush messed around and found out. I love nature, but I also respect and even fear it as I do the gods. Once when I was hiking Mount Baldy, my friends and I came to a narrow saddle appropriately called “Devil’s Backbone.” The conditions were icy and those who were coming down with better gear advised against it, as did my friends. I was obsessed with getting to the top — but then I remembered that there are those each year who end up having to be rescued or even die on that backbone, and many of them are more experienced than I. We turned back not out of cowardice, but out of prudence and respect, vowing to return another day.

These untamed encounters with nature help bring men back to what is real. Too many modern people seem to suffer from atrophied amygdalas. They have forgotten that there is an exterior, objective reality which, while sometimes majestic, can also hurt them in the form of avalanches or “scholars.” Subjective pipe dreams such as the imago dei of religious nationalists and the critical race theory of progressives should never take precedence over hard facts like IQ scores. Theories can help explain or supplement reality, but should never contradict it. We humans are not mere beasts, but we’re also not separate from nature.

The forces of nature — Komodo dragons, frostbite, deep-sea pressure — are simultaneously the most anti-racist and racist forces. They do not care about your race, what gender you identify with, or your environmental, social, and governance score: It’s all merit. Whites naturally have more merit. We don’t have white privilege, but we do have white advantage in most things due to our genetics. Given a fair playing field, we tend to outcompete everyone else in most fields by most metrics.

I can already hear some complaining that this essay is insensitive given how the families of the victims must feel. Rush’s family only seems to reflect his own tackiness, however. His stepson, Brian Szasz, was brazenly hoeing it up on Twitter with an OnlyFans model and talking about going to a Blink 182 concert after his father was reported missing. We all mourn differently, I suppose, but those of the elites of earlier eras would have ensured that members of their household at least knew how to appear to have proper decorum. Even vehement critics of the Hapsburgs could never accuse them of being uncouth.

But you can’t buy class. Rush’s maternal grandmother, Louise Davies, had so much money that she could pay to put her name on San Francisco’s Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. How the mighty have fallen, indeed. But there is a major white pill in this: Our adversaries among the faux elite have fallen so far into decadence that they can’t even pretend to be cultured anymore. It is therefore only a matter of time until a new aristocracy based on blood replaces them.

I’d rather think of the families of those 50-year-old white men who have to work jobs that they’re overqualified for because of race traitors such as Rush. The pursuit of “equity” doesn’t only impact individual whites, but their families as well. As the breadwinners, they are being forced to work more for less pay.

I also prefer to lament those families that were delayed or never came into existence at all due to affirmative action. When one segment of whites is forced to settle for lesser jobs, this naturally causes higher competition in a particular job bracket, and some who would normally be in that bracket have to instead compete at a lower level. The same then happens at that level. Wealth does not trickle down, but competition certainly does — and uncertainty about their ability to provide is a significant reason as to why many whites are now hesitant to start families.

Alas, the new, vibrant Lil Mermaid couldn’t save Rush from his titanic folly. At least he died how he lived: behaving stupidly and virtue-signaling.

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