Today, especially in the Mountain States and some of the Great Plains, there is massive alarm being broadcast by a wide range of people. One of the fears is that of mining: controversial for more than half a century: gold, rare earths, coal, even sand and gravel.
The other is much newer: a fear of data centers. Data centers are demanded, we are told, by the explosive growth of so-called AI. By the massive expansion of the internet.
Mining, we are told, destroys the land. It consumes massive amounts of water. millions of gallons of Diesel fuel are burned in the equipment. It destroys wildlife habitat, pollutes the waters of the US, drives away tourists, and more.
Data centers are equally bad. They consume gigawatts of electrical power, their demand driving up prices for electricity and even denying people adequate power for their homes. To produce that power requires mining and burning of coal, or drilling for and burning natural gas, all producing air pollution. They also consume millions of gallons of water for cooling. They occupy square miles of land.
There are many other evils associated with these operations. Thousands of postings, tens of thousands of words, are being written weekly in opposition to these things.
All of them, we are told, are the result of greedy corporations, lusting after the almighty (or not) dollar: they are the Robber Barons of the 19th Century, reborn and just as conniving, despicable, and corrupting. Virtually all of the postings also demand that government, and voters, do something to get rid of them: to prevent new ones and even close existing ones.
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The Price of Liberty 
The mob senate – growing stronger
The Roman Republic (SPQR – Senate and People of Rome) was plagued in its last years, as it morphed into an Imperium (the Principate), by the so-called “Street Senate.” And the Roman Empire (also still called the SPQR, even when its capital was moved from Rome to Byzantium (Constantinople)) was also bedeviled by the mobs which took to the streets frequently. To protest and demand more “bread and circuses.” That is, entertainment in the form of gladitorial games and primarily Egyptian wheat to produce subsidized bread to feed the masses.
Today, the “street senate” or “mob senate” is increasingly obvious in the States. We saw some attempts at that as far back as the 1930s and again in the 1960s and 1970s. And it has grown stronger in the 3rd decade of the 21st Century.
Here is a very recent example:
We have not researched the judge or the reasoning behind his ruling. But we believe that this tiny crowd of protesters in Rapid City, South Dakota, is yet another example of how the mob is “democratically” gaining power at all levels of government.
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