Last week the attention of the entire world, it seemed, was focused on a small submersible
called the Titan and its five passengers. The Titan disappeared while descending through the
Atlantic Ocean on its way to visit the wreck of the Titanic. For a few days there was hope
that somehow, miraculously, the Titan might be located and its passengers rescued. But that hope
flickered when rescue efforts failed to locate the vessel before it would have exhausted its
supply of oxygen, and was finally extinguished on Thursday when debris belonging to the Titan was
discovered near the Titanic wreck site. The U.S. Coast Guard announced that the search was over,
and that most likely the Titan had imploded on Sunday, when its mothership first lost contact.
There are so many angles from which to approach this story. I could talk about how the Titan and
its five passengers were the objects of a massive, multinational rescue effort,
while thousands of refugees drown at sea every year, drawing the notice and concern of almost
no one, relatively speaking. I could join some of my fellow progressives in gleefully celebrating
the deaths of a few billionaires — but honestly, I don’t want to do that. Not because my heart
bleeds for the billionaires who died aboard the Titan, but because also aboard the Titan
was the nineteen-year-old son of one of those billionaires. Also aboard was a world-renowned
deep sea explorer who was widely considered the foremost authority on the wreck of the Titanic.
No matter how heartless and cynical I might be toward the ultra-wealthy,
I feel no need to revel in the loss of the Titan, or to make jokes about it.
Other than the ones I’ve already made, like this one which I tweeted on Thursday where
I suggest Willem DaFoe’s character from The Lighthouse would be a good choice to deliver
the eulogy at the memorial service. Also, if any of you have good jokes about the implosion
of the Titan, feel free to share them in the comments. Humor . . . can be healing.
Anyway, instead of either of those, the angle I want to take toward this story is one that
was suggested by this tweet, also posted on Thursday, by Joey Mannarino, who says:
“Wokeness killed the people on that submarine. Let that sink in. They died because the woke
CEO said he wouldn’t hire 50 year-old white men who knew how to command submarines and
would rather train others. And the CEO died too. That’s the next level of ‘go woke, go broke’.”
First of all, “Let that sink in”? Very poor taste, Joey. We don’t need to lower
ourselves to such depths. It wrecks me how titanically insensitive some people can be.
I made those jokes on Twitter last week, too — so! Joey Mannarino
is not the only shit-for-brains right-winger to charge wokeness with the destruction of
the Titan. Charlie Kirk opened the tiny mouth on his mammoth peeled cantaloupe head to say
pretty much the same thing, that the CEO of OceanGate, the company that built the Titan,
said in the past that by design his team did not include “a bunch of 50-year-old white
guys,” therefore, according to Charlie Kirk, “he killed himself and his customers with wokeness.”
Now, here’s the thing — Stockton Rush, the aforementioned CEO of OceanGate,
did say that. But when you look at the quote in context, it seems obvious that appearing woke
was not on Rush’s mind. The quote comes from an interview Rush did with Teledyne Marine,
and according to the New York Post, this is the relevant bit of what he said:
“[T]here are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have, uh,
gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and they — you’ll see a whole bunch of
50-year-old white guys. I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going
to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, uh, you know,
who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational.”
Seeing the “50-year-old white guys” quote in context probably isn’t going to change the
minds of anyone trying to blame wokeness for the Titan implosion — most people who are part of this
particular moral panic use the word “woke” the way tech companies and the entertainment industry use
“A.I.” — they don’t know what it means, they don’t even know what they think it means,
they just know it gets certain people excited so they use it every chance they get — but I
think most people who come at this with an honest, responsible approach will conclude
that Stockton Rush wasn’t trying to sound “woke” — he was trying to sound “hip.”
Does that sound too cynical? After all, in that quote he’s talking about inspiring the
younger generation to take an interest in the field he was pursuing. What’s so bad
about that? Why not give him the benefit of the doubt? I suppose I could, except for the
fact that I’m pretty sure the implosion of the Titan and the deaths of all five people aboard,
including Stockton Rush himself, are all Stockton Rush’s fault. It wasn’t “wokeness”
that imploded that sub — it was the hubris and the greed of the guy who created it.
The purpose of OceanGate, Stockton Rush’s company, is not scientific research or anything else so
noble. It’s a deep-sea tourism company. The Titan was not built to carry marine biologists or naval
historians to the bottom of the ocean to expand the boundaries of human knowledge — it was built
to carry paying customers who wanted to visit famous shipwrecks, and a seat cost $250,000.
OceanGate’s website claims the Titan was designed and constructed in collaboration with NASA,
Boeing and the University of Washington. None of these claims appears to be true — all three
organizations have issued statements clarifying that they played no part in the designing,
building, or testing of the Titan. Additionally, the Titan was not certified as safe by any
regulatory agency, operated in international waters where it was not required to meet any
safety standards, and OceanGate required passengers to sign a waiver confirming that
they were aware of the Titan’s status as an unregulated, unapproved “experimental” craft.
On top of all that, Stockton Rush made no secret of his contempt for safety regulations. In 2019
he told Smithsonian Magazine that the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993 “needlessly prioritized
passenger safety over commercial innovation” — imagine that! The Passenger Vessel Safety Act
prioritizing passenger safety over commercial innovation! What’s the world coming to?
In a 2021 interview on the YouTube channel Alan por el Mundo, Rush brags about the rules
he broke in the design of the Titan, saying “The carbon fiber and titanium,
there’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did.”
Hey, you know why there’s a rule that you don’t build submersibles designed
to travel to the bottom of the ocean out of carbon fiber and titanium? Because they can’t
handle the pressure and they implode. Rush was warned about this, repeatedly,
by people who knew what they were talking about. He had the Titan’s hull made using
carbon fiber anyway. Why? According to this 2017 article from Composites World
about the construction of one of the Titan’s predecessors, the Cyclops 2:
“OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush says the company had been evaluating the potential of using a
carbon fiber composite hull since 2010, primarily because it permits creation
of a pressure vessel that is naturally buoyant and, therefore, would enable OceanGate to forgo
the use — and the significant expense — of syntactic foam on its exterior.”
Because using a carbon fiber composite would allow the company to forgo the use
and significant expense of syntactic foam on its exterior — he did it to save money.
Just last year, Rush told CBS News, “At some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean,
if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed. Don't get in your car. Don't do anything.”
That same CBS News story, by correspondent David Pogue, also reports how, during a previous dive to
visit the Titanic wreck, communications between the Titan and the mothership failed and the
Titan — piloted by Rush himself — got lost and was unable to find the Titanic at all. Additionally,
it also features Rush showing off how many of the Titan’s components are, as he puts it himself,
“off-the shelf,” including the wireless gaming controller used to drive the goddamn thing,
and Rush declaring confidently that operating the Titan “shouldn’t take a lot of skill.”
. . .
Wokeness. Right.
It wasn’t wokeness that killed those people, it was the reckless, overconfident jackass sitting
with them in that sub with a fucking video game controller in his hand. He knew what
the rules were, and he broke them to save a buck. He was warned what could happen,
and he didn’t listen. And now, like so many arrogant and acquisitive men before him,
he’s dead and so are the people who foolishly placed their lives in his hands.
Let’s review one more time: just because someone is rich, that doesn’t make them smart;
just because someone is self-assured, that doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about;
and if someone compares their submarine to an elevator, don’t get on — especially if
they want to charge you a quarter of a million dollars for that elevator ride.
There are cheaper ways of getting yourself killed.