Now is the time to be optimistic about the future because the 2024 version of the Hatfields and the McCoys has run out of steam.

I have long felt that mining will be the workhorse industry for Alaska. The state is vast, and the deposits are remote. Furthermore, they tend to be large.

Unhappily, the political environment has, for about 75 years, been antagonistic toward mining based on a series of specious issues.

Mines are unsafe, so they say. But a worker in a government office in Washington, D. C. is more likely to have a lost time accident than a worker at a contemporary mine.

Mines pollute, so they say. But with the state and federal standards in in place across the nation, there is less air and water pollution than at any major American airport.

Mines are an eyesore, so they say. But mines are in remote locations in Alaska, and one would have to squint hard from the top of a tall mountain to actually see any of the major mines in the state.

Mines are a threat to fish and wildlife, so they say. But salmon happily swim up the rivers that flow by the mines to spawn – and, it might be added, fishermen kill a lot more fish than all the miners in Alaska have ever killed.

And when it comes to wildlife, certainly the brown bears on Admiralty Island, a.k.a. the "Fortress of the Bears," have not received the memo.

Mining in Alaska literally dedicates billions of dollars to the state in terms of property taxes, payrolls, royalties, rent and community projects, at least according to McKinley Research's recent report on the industry and a 2022 ISER report projecting the future of the industry in the state.

Of course, there is the critical minerals debate. How are we going to maintain our national defense – not to mention our standard of living – if we don't have reliable domestic supplies of copper, nickel and other base metals? How do we compete with China if we don't mine Alaska's rare earth minerals? How do we justify acquiring cobalt from slave-state mines in Congo and other African locations when we can develop those resources at home?

The war we continually confront is the perpetual dissemination of wrong and misleading disinformation. For better or for worse, our national diversity, coupled with the dawning of the age of social media, has allowed the emergence of cults to sway our national policy.

Those who view MAGA Republicans as being more interested in self-aggrandizement than sound national policy overlook the fact that they didn't invent the game. The NIMBY (not in my backyard) Environmentalists were there first. But as we drown ourselves in a worthless sea of contrived data, it is important to recall that our political process, with all of its scars and depredations, also has the potential to draw us together.

It is reasonable to be optimistic about the future, climate change and acid mine drainage to the contrary notwithstanding.

Foreseeably, we will be forced to mine our gold and silver as we have in the past because there is no substitute for mined products. And we will recover our lithium and our molybdenum from American mines, including mines in Alaska, because that is where the needed minerals are, and that is where the health, safety and environmental standards meet the humanitarian needs of the modern world.

We hold in our hands the opportunity, in this time and place, to bring the wings of our polity together in this coming election, at least in my humble opinion, because of the possibility that there will be a Democratic White House and a Republican Congress.

Under our system of government, it takes both political wings working together to solve our national problems. While the cultists of the left or the right are free to have their say, at the end of the day, it is the American middle that will triumph.