Given the steady stream of corruption, mendacity, malign neglect, and unabashed awfulness at the highest levels of the Biden administration, it’s easy to lose sight of the everyday incompetence wreaking havoc just beneath the surface.

Take, for example, our nation’s diversity-hire interior secretary, Deb Haaland. (No, really — take her.) At a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Tuesday, Missouri Republican Josh Hawley pressed Haaland about a leaked memo that showed the Biden administration prioritizing its climate change obsession over energy independence and natural resource development here at home.

“Your decision to trade off our energy security in favor of a radical climate change agenda is making us more and more dependent on China,” Hawley began. “And at the same time, you are denying mining, blocking mining, blocking permits for mines in this country that would allow us to develop nickel and copper and cobalt. Why? Why block the development of these resources in our own nation in favor of making us dependent on China?”

The answer Hawley got was both unsatisfying and highly illuminating. And it should disabuse any Democrat dead-enders who still think their party gives a rip about everyday Americans and good-paying blue-collar jobs.

As background, the Biden administration had, earlier this year, effectively canceled a major mining project when it banned the activity on 225,000 acres of Minnesota’s Superior National Forest. Haaland remarked that northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness area, which is near the site of the mine, was an “iconic place, of course, a very valuable ecological system to many plants, animals, species.”

“Jobs for blue-collar workers in this nation are valuable resources,” Hawley shot back. “The ability of America to have our own industry and not be dependent on China is a valuable resource.”

“I know that there is like 1.9 jobs for every American in the country right now,” said Haaland. “So, I know there’s a lot of jobs.” This must be true, of course, because Haaland went on to argue that they’re having trouble hiring enough bureaucrats to staff her very own Department of the Interior.

“Have you seen the number of jobs we have lost in this country to China in the last 20 years?” Hawley asked. “Do you know where those jobs come from? Over three million jobs have gone to China. Do you know where those jobs have come from? They’ve come out of midwestern towns like the ones I represent. They are blue-collar workers.”

Yep, we’re up to our ears in this country in good-paying blue-collar jobs — like the thousand or so Joe Biden blithely eliminated when he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline project on his first day in office.

Haaland went on to defend the administration’s “green” energy obsession and its battle against “legacy pollution in this country.” She insisted, “Those are good-paying, well-paying jobs with benefits that Americans are having because of President Biden and his policies.”

Well, while the Biden administration is maniacally hawking electric vehicles, the inconvenient truth is that the manufacturing for the requisite lithium-ion batteries is actually causing damage to the environment. You know, the interior. Haaland, whose primary qualification for the job is that she’s Native American, confessed her ignorance regarding China’s role as the world leader in mining for lithium and cobalt. A simple fact like that ought to guide policy decisions, but alas.

In all, Haaland’s performance was a one-two punch toward our nation’s steady decline: a dismissal of the importance of blue-collar jobs to the American people and our nation’s manufacturing base, coupled with a casual acceptance of the country’s growing dependence on lying, spying, cheating, thieving communist China.

You might think we deserve better. But we don’t. Elections, after all, have consequences.