One of the big topics of the 2026 midterm elections (aside from “Orange Man Bad”) was data centers. Depending on who you asked, most of the time you got a “what the fuck is that” reaction, but from those who knew it ranged from “they’re needed” to “Donald Trump shat them out so Elon Musk could upload SkyNet and turn us all into slaves to The Man.”
And the Leftist response was even worse than that last one!
After avoiding this topic because it just wasn’t sexy, I’ve decided to take it on, and I’ll even do it posing nude on a bearskin rug to make it so.
And if nothing else, the thought of me nude will work as an ipecac, so…bonus I guess?
data centers
What the Left thinks it means – a technological evil that will destroy the environment at the enrichment of the rich
What it really means – a necessary technological evil the Left hates, yet needs
To make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s define the term the Left is pissed off about. And much like a Queen Kamala the Appointed speech, you’re never know what you’re going to get.
Wikipedia says a data center is “a facility (typically a building or room) dedicated to housing computer equipment for the storage, manipulation, and transmission of digital information. It typically includes computer servers, data storage devices, networking and telecommunication equipment, electricity distribution, cooling systems, and security measures.”
IBM is a little more concise:
A data center is a physical room, building or facility that houses IT infrastructure for building, running and delivering applications and services. It also stores and manages the data associated with those applications and services.
A more data center-friendly source, QTS Data Centers, provides the following:
A data center is the physical building and infrastructure that supports every part of our digital lives including healthcare, research, banks, schools, streaming, cloud services and AI. Every time you send an email, check your bank balance or ask AI a question, you’re accessing a data center.
So, to put it simply, a data center is where the digital sausage gets made. No, I’m not talking about Grindr…not that I know anything about that, mind you.
And just like with most topics that involve more than emoting, the Left doesn’t understand data centers, as evidenced by their rhetoric around them. In fact, they came out after the midterms to support a moratorium on data centers, with one of the loudest voices being that of Senator Bernie Sanders. The man who makes Mitch McConnell look lucid wrote on X:
7 months ago, AOC and I introduced an AI data center moratorium.
Last night, 43 of 44 communities voted for one locally.
Americans don’t want Big Tech oligarchs wrecking the environment, gutting jobs and threatening humanity’s future.
NATIONAL DATA CENTER MORATORIUM NOW
Well, now that the Socialist Socialite is involved, I’m convinced!
Aside from Sanders using the word “oligarch” like a socialist with tourette syndrome (which is what he is, by the way), there’s a bit of irony I have to laugh at because it actually makes the case for data centers.
This white-haired dumbass posted his anti-data center screed…on the Social Media Site Formerly Known as Twitter.
In order for the Dipshit Duo to communicate with their cult…I mean X followers, they will need a way to manage their data. If only there were a central location that could manage that data. A data center, if you will.
Nah. That makes too much sense.
But what doesn’t make too much sense is the Left’s objections to data centers. I’ve already touched on the anti-Big Tech argument (which is unusual given how the workers within Big Tech are on their side), but they’re bringing in climate change as an argument against them. A Leftist outfit called, and I wish I were making this shit up, Earthjustice is working with the NAACP to sue xAI for…air pollution. Beyond the obvious question of what the advancement of colored people has to do with air pollution, I can’t take this effort seriously because of the stupidity behind it. I read the article I linked above so you didn’t have to (you’re welcome), and it reads like Al Gore dropping acid, having a bad trip, and being talked down by Michael “Hockey Stick Graph” Mann.
But it’s not just air pollution the Left objects to! There’s also water consumption! Depending on who you ask, it’s either monumental or significant, but not as straightforward as the other side wants you to believe. Not to mention, there’s ground warmth to consider! And potential respiratory concerns! And the more you listen to the anti-data center side, the worse it gets.
I have a hypothesis that I’ve been gathering data on since the 1990s. It goes a little something like this: the more the Left has to ramp up the fear of a subject, the less there is to worry about it. This isn’t to say there isn’t cause for alarm, but on a scale of 1 to 10, you’re safe to stay at a 2 or 3 most of the time while the Left goes to 9,319,400,248. Remember all the doomsday scenarios based on climate change? They still haven’t gotten one right yet. So, needless to say, I’m trusting Rancid Sushi Saturday at Uncle Stinky’s You Eat It You Shit It Seafood Emporium and Hair Care Center than I am the people still beating the climate change drum.
But the wildest thing to come out of this is the idea on the Left that Big Tech is becoming Republican. Why? Because billionaires, that’s why! The Left has turned any super rich person with a hand in technology into an enemy because it’s impossible to be super rich and be anything other than a Republican. (Except Bill Gates, Jeff Besos, Uncle George Soros, Reid Hoffman, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer…I could go on, but you get the idea.)
On the surface, this makes the Left’s anti-data center arguments semi-logical. There are always going to be conflicting forces. The Rebellion and the Empire. The Justice League and the Legion of Doom. Michael Bay and making good movies. But there are times when one side has the high ground and the other side is too fucking inept to realize how far out of their depth they are.
That brings us to an anti-data center cause celebre from recent news reports, a woman named Taylor Frazier McCollum who successfully got over 25,000 signatures to block a $5 billion effort to put a data center in an abandoned mall. But before you think there wasn’t a Plan B, rest assured she has one: turn the abandoned mall into…an indoor trampoline park.
That’s right, kids. Instead of putting up a data center which would help address the increased data usage due to everybody being online, her big-brained idea is to build a Sky Zone.
And these idiots vote.
However, I do want to go a bit deeper into why the Left hates data centers so much. The obvious political angle makes sense and is most likely correct, but I see another possible angle that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with Leftist attitudes about living up to the standards they expect everyone else to follow.
There’s a saying called NIMBY, or Not In My Back Yard. This approach is used by people who are fully behind any idea to make things better, but don’t want to be inconvenienced by those ideas affecting their lives directly. They want someone else to bear the biodegradable free range cage free LGBTQIA+WHISKEYTANGOFOXTROT friendly cross so they can go about complaining about other shit.
You know. Just like Leftists do.
This is the standard operating procedures of any Leftist who can afford to complain about a societal evil and can’t afford to follow through except on social media…that will use data centers.
Ultimately, I’m in a wait-and-see mindset when it comes to data centers. Much like with AI, TikTok, and any climate predictions made by Greta Thunberg, I need to see more data before I start manning the ramparts to defend not building a data center. There are bound to be energy, material, and medical concerns because, well, there is no such thing as a perfect machine. Whether the concerns are valid or the insane ravings of people who can’t define what a woman is but knows all about the patriarchy will have to play out, and that takes time.
And time isn’t what the Left has on their side. They need to get people to freak out now so data centers get the Elon Musk treatment (loved when it fits an ideological need, and hated when the ideology drifts more leftward and makes the loved idea/individual into the next Hitler). Of course, the Left overlooks the easiest solution to address whether we need data centers.
It’s called “logging off.”