James J. Hill, TV series

James J. Hill

There's a series on Tubi about James J. Hill called The Empire Builder: James J Hill and the Great Northern Railway. It is dated from 2022. A search brought up PBS and the Minnesota Historical Society. There is a brief video link that describes it, but the actual production is 4 parts, each of which is an hour or so long.

There's a lot to learn from this. As for myself, I hadn't heard much of James J. Hill, being from Texas. His name did not mean a whole lot in these parts. So it was educational. It might be old hat for people in Minnesota and parts to the west of it all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

What I most likely would have heard, but not necessarily about him in particular, was that he was one of the so-called "robber-barons" that the political left likes to demonize. He and other men in his era, including Andrew Carnegie, and J D Rockefeller, are often demonized this way.

In watching this, one thing that really struck me was how SOME people, but by no means all people, took it when things got personally rough for them because they listened to James J Hill, and moved out to places out west. When the dust bowls came, Hill got the blame for it. It was if they had no responsibility for their own decisions to go out there. They blamed him instead of themselves. There are people like this, and they usually follow the leftist political persuasion. Everything is always somebody else's fault, never their own.

If James J Hill didn't build up the west, who would have? Would they have preferred that it was never built up in the first place? That question is for this "robber-baron" ilk. One of this ilk that comes to mind is Krugman of the New York Times. James J Hill is exactly who Krugman has it in for. But Krugman does not understand anything. So he's a typical leftist. All talk and nothing intelligent to say. What did Krugman ever build?

People might find it odd that I'm mentioning a PBS show. Well, I liked some of the PBS's work. I'm not always fond of commerical television, either. If it is even handed and factual, I have no problem with it at all. It definitely should have a place. What I find most annoying is these hate-filled leftists who spout their bile against people who have done nothing to them.

Of course, the hatefulness has an audience too. Sadly, it all too often is all about the Benjamins. But it wasn't all about the Benjamins with James J. Hill. Not from me, but the show itself said that.