It’s the idiocracy, stupid
Commenter “Mrs Whatsit” notes that “We are witnessing a spectacle of incompetence on multiple levels of government not quite like anything I recall before,” and asks whether there are any competent adults left.
A few, but I think they might be mostly older, relics from another age, when competence was rewarded (at least, much of the time) and incompetence penalized. I have come to the conclusion that “Idiocracy” has arrived, and this statement of mine isn’t just the usual whining of the older generation towards the younger.
Of course, some of what passes for incompetence is deliberate sabotage. But most is not, IMHO. For one thing, it’s too enormously widespread. Something is going on, and it’s much bigger than just the government. I encounter remarkable incompetence over and over in everyday life, to an extent I can never recall—on the phone, in the stores, on the street, on TV, everywhere.
Is it the decline of the educational system? Affirmative action hiring? Too many drugs taken in childhood? Drugs taken by parents? Is it computer-driven? Entertainment-driven? The decline of family and parental involvement? Cultural devaluation of thought and learning? For too many people, is English a poorly-learned second language?
If you look at the list I’ve given in above paragraph, there’s little question that much (although not all) of it has been a result of leftist policies and dominance of our educational and cultural life. The effects have been extremely pervasive, though, and have transcended political affiliation.
Idiocracy is the same as liberalism.
Dr. Tom Frieden is a prime example. He can’t say “travel ban” although that is a good solution.
Oberlin and Columbia Med. East coast. He worked for Mayor Bloomberg and he was the moving force behind banning the Big Gulp in NYC.
Neo, you have put into words what I have been encountering for some time with great exasperation. As you stated, it is everywhere. The teller at the bank or the grocery checker, on their cell phone on a personal call while conducting your business? Really? I remember the days when I worked in customer service jobs and you were lucky if you could make a personal call on your break-time. Recently I returned a treadmill I bought from Walmart, site to store. The package was clearly never opened (evidenced by packaging and labels). Well apparently they sent me the wrong treadmill even though the label and order numbers all matched. It took an hour to return this, with the help of the manager. At one point, I said to the clerk, “Well you can see this is the one you sent to me.” To which she responds, with snark and aggressive expression, “I sent to you??” In an effort to keep things friendly I responded, “I mean, Walmart.” Unbelievable. I wish this kind of foolishness was just found in places like Walmart, but unfortunately I have run into it in the professional arena as well.
Multiculturalism and affirmative action say that performance standards, any standards, are evil and unfair. The old meaning of discrimination was that you could see the different value of things. The best and the brightest were encouraged to be better than others.
“Is it the decline of the educational system? Affirmative action hiring? Too many drugs taken in childhood? Drugs taken by parents? Is it computer-driven? Entertainment-driven? The decline of family and parental involvement? Cultural devaluation of thought and learning? For too many people, is English a poorly-learned second language?”
I think it is all of these things. But I would add that there has been an escalation of the notion that one is great and worthy just by living and breathing. We are no longer a meritocracy. Jumping through hoops (who even knows at this point how our President achieved his vaunted educational pedigree, there being good reason to doubt that it was based on his grades) is all that matters. Humility has waned and we have a lot of people walking around with a superiority complex, not to mention an attitude of “what have you done for me lately”. This crosses all barriers; gender, race, socio-economic. When the scriptures direct that “you should not think of yourself more highly than you ought” and myriad other verses that bring man down a peg or two, there is reason to believe it is important.
Affirmative action hirings and (especially) promotions are a significant part of the problem. Lots of people are aware of the issues resulting from less-qualified people being hired in place of more-qualified people, and that is indeed a problem that I have observed in my own job. But the real problems arise when these same folks get promoted to positions of authority. Then you have unqualified people making important decisions that affect lots of others. It can be disastrous.
Besides that, it can cause these people who make the bad decisions to lose their own jobs, when they would have been much better off staying at the lower level.
It’s quite simple, really: Life today is relatively easy for most people, unlike the struggle to survive that human beings experienced throughout history.
Struggle results in survival of the fittest; lack of struggle results in . . . . . ?
Have you seen one of the current Siri or Google App ads where the person gets all sorts of useful information, like “What time is sunset?” and “How do I get to [some place]?”
It’s learned helplessness! It’s training people to forget basic information-seeking and learning skills, such as reading a map. Why bother learning anything if you can always look it up?
Saw this with a cousin in medical school ten years ago. He explained to my retired physician dad that he needn’t bother learning detailed human physiology and diagnostic skills because there was this nifty computer program where you type in all of the symptoms and it tells you the patient’s likely ailment(s). Scary.
Had an experience last summer where a cashier couldn’t read in a product’s 40% discount. After being unable to flag down a manger for several minutes she considered doing it in her head. Couldn’t. I very gently walked her through it – 10% of $30 is $3.00, so 4x $3.00 would be $12.00 discount. She wouldn’t believe me – it just didn’t sound right. Manager had to enter it in. Again, scary.
Is it the decline of the educational system? Affirmative action hiring? Too many drugs taken in childhood? Drugs taken by parents? Is it computer-driven? Entertainment-driven? The decline of family and parental involvement? Cultural devaluation of thought and learning? For too many people, is English a poorly-learned second language?
It’s called the Leftist alliance.
So long as people avoid evil, don’t think you’ll be able to figure it out with that methodology.
This used to be considered parody.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/congress-passes-americans-with-no-abilities-act,541/
Sharon W
Check out a MacDonalds or family restaurant in Japan, if you ever go there. Also go into a “maid cafe” as it is called.
Very different standards of behavior there.
Correction, the former should be “so long as people avoid looking at evil”.
Again, scary.
It’s what happens when you have a slave economy, this American freedom people love to tout and have. The slaves believe they are free, truly free, thus they are content in their slavery. They do what the Master tells them, when he tells them. They do what they are told, no more and no less. The responsibility is on the Master, not on the slave. The slave is just property. If property hurts a human, the owner of that property has to own up to it, not the property.
Stupid people that can think for themselves, by themselves, and fix their problems, are better performance wise than smart people that are lazy. A slow person may need 10x the time to do the same work as a smart person, but if the smart person puts in 0 time, it’s pretty easy to catch up for the slow person.
So generally it’s not the base parameters or abilities that matter, but the Will and the Soul.
Remember how the Democrat members of the Left and other Leftists made fun of Bush II and Palin for being religious and having various other American patriotic lite beliefs?
They were talking about stupidity, monkeys, pigs, and what not.
Well, to the Left, theocracy that isn’t the Left’s death cult, really makes stupid people. But since the Left projects 99% of their accusations against their enemies, it really means what the Left accuses you of was only ever true, 99%, of the Left.
That means under the Left’s theocracy, people become as dumb as they think Bush II and Palin is.
How dumb and stupid and incompetent would that be, exactly?
I’ve always said that I don’t mind working with dumb people as long as they’re nice. The ideal is a nice, intelligent person. A nice dumb person is at least trying to be helpful, and may be trainable. An obnoxious smart person can get his job done, even if he’s awful to be around. But the combination of stupid and arrogant creates an impregnable barrier to knowledge.
I guess a different way of saying it is: we’re spoiled. We expect everything to be handed to us. We want our phones to talk to us, our TVs to play our shows whenever we want them, and we’re frankly getting impatient that our cars can’t drive themselves yet. A person can make it to age 18 with the biggest challenge in his life coming from angry birds.
Yes, Ymar, it’s disturbing that all across the spectrum, (in my experience) from a doctor to a KMart cashier, the mindset was the same: I don’t have to think because this tool tells me the answer. And in giving up ownership of the answer, they’ve also abdicated their personal responsibility for the outcome. Just as was the case with the CDC employee who used their website to give Vinson the go-ahead to fly.
Ah, the Decline of Western Civilization…
But how could it be otherwise? The left’s ‘education’ consists in repetitively telling people what to think. By definition, those indoctrinated do not think for themselves but operate on ‘automatic’, witness Ben Affleck’s recent reaction to Bill Maher’s disputing the left’s memes on Islam and, despite all evidence to the contrary, Gwyneth Paltrow’s continued adoration of ‘dear leader’, her personal ‘messiah’.
The path from barbarism to civilization is historical fact, now we know that mankind can conversely, be led from civilization to the status of dumb animals.
We all have a part of the puzzle and Sharon W’s comment made me remember this factoid; “college students think they are more special than EVER: Study reveals rocketing sense of entitlement on U.S. campuses”
These freshmen did not acquire this attitude after arriving in college, they brought it with them, which means this attitude is endemic to generations of Americans. I suspect starting with the baby boomers.
That attitude is also entirely in alignment with Obama’s 2007 ‘resume’ and was arguably a real factor in his appeal to many young voters. It also explains his continued popularity, where accomplishment is divorced from self-esteem and those held in high regard.
Contrast today’s youth with yesterdays:
“In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum. Teachers last year were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide.” William Bennett
“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot…” R.A. Heinlein
The stupidity seems too widely spread to be just conditioning, though certainly the progs have been encouraging these horrifying breakdowns of critical thinking and adult behavior.
Maybe cell phones or wireless internet do destroy gray matter. Maybe some pollutant in our hemisphere has been wreaking havoc on our brains, or our fetuses’ brains.
Or maybe it’s a virus, as in the wonderful Arthur Herzog thriller IQ83
(http://www.amazon.com/IQ-83-Arthur-Herzog-III/dp/0595276091).
(But I swing back to the progs as the main cause now that I’ve looked at CDC Director Frieden’s career
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Frieden).)
I put it down to the self-esteem emphasis in schools since the 1960s. That was a sea change. Constant praise and awards for just showing up.
And then all the mass media gurus who’ve capitalized on it.
Yes Ann! The self-esteem cult has created an unrealistic atmosphere in every aspect of a child’s life. We need to go back to the philosophy that respect is earned, that there are winners and losers, and politeness is the measure of good character.
“For too many people, is English a poorly-learned second language?”
Yes and, unfortunately, they don’t have a first language.
I think it has a lot to do with the nanny mentality. Kids aren’t permitted to learn by experience doing anything if there is even the most remote perception of danger.
By the time I was twelve I could: Whittle useful things, using a knife with a five inch blade.
Hunt, using either a bow, a .22 rifle, or a .410 shotgun.
Do all kinds of interesting (and sometimes explosive) chemistry experiments.
Risk my own life and limbs in dozens of informative ways.
Under Obama, the purpose of NASA is to promote Muslim contributions to science, the purpose of the IRS is to suppress Conservative participation in elections, the purpose of the State Dept. is to combat Climate Change, the purpose of the CDC is to promote open borders, and the purpose of the DOJ is to promote social justice. The VA doesn’t matter because who cares if a few veterans die? They usually vote Conservative anyway. Our government has been taken over by leftist ideologues who use their positions to further the causes of leftism not to do their actual jobs, and I’m including the President in that statement. Community organizer writ large. The fish is rotting from the head down.
I forgot to include that under Obama, the purpose of the Dept. of Education is to level the playing field which will cement the rot for generations to come.
LisaM-Very well-put. Perfectly describes the bureaucracy as it presently exists.
All of these are good contributions to a problem that is clearly multi-faceted, and over-determined.
I think Steve Allen described the phenomenom best in his 1990s book, based on a long-running shtick in his stage-show, “Dumbth:The Lost Art of Thinking”.
I don’t remember to what he attributed the decline in basic intelligence, especially among service workers and others; however, I am going to propose a somewhat non-PC cause: the disappearance of the traditional European (and American) class system.
Here’s why:
When groups of people are rigidly stratified as to their choice of employment and education, each class exhibits its own, separate natural distributio of intelligence. You get people like Bertie Wooster (dumb aristocrat) and Jeeves (brilliant servant).
You can also get the reverse, but the brilliant aristocrats dabble in science and industry and become famous and rich; the dumb servants barely eke out a living.
When you dissolve class barriers, and get the entire population in one distribution, then employment has to depend on education, intelligence, and luck.
Really smart people become tycoons, surgeons, rocket scientists, etc. They don’t work at McDonalds or you local plumbing service (although some pretty savvy people make good livings at core service industries, like plumbing, electrical, building trades, and especially auto repair).
The bulk of the white & blue collar “associates” are drawn from the bottom of the curve, instead of being spread through-out.
How do we get stupid politicians and government leaders?
They are elected by the dumb and dumber, for one thing, who are manipulated by the relatively smarter power-brokers.
http://articles.latimes.com/1999/mar/07/news/mn-14924
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-01-21/news/ga-566_1_steve-allen
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W. B. Yeats Excerpt
Geoffrey Britain: Contrast today’s youth with yesterdays:
“In 1940, teachers were asked what they regarded as the three major problems in American schools. They identified the three major problems as: Littering, noise, and chewing gum. Teachers last year were asked what the three major problems in American schools were, and they defined them as: Rape, assault, and suicide.” William Bennett
pre feminism families –> post feminism liberation…
we witness the hysteroidal cycle
Andrew Åobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes.
It reminds me a lot of the Carter administration, when manifest incompetency led to the wheels coming off important things the government tried to do, particularly wrt the economy and foreign relations. Except it’s manifold worse now, and deeper, seeping down the chain into the bowels of the government. No executive agency is immune, be it the Secret Service, CDC, the VA, IRS, etc. Maybe that’s because Carter only had 4 years, whereas Obama will have had 8. Plus I get the sense Obama is doing it intentionally. Carter was mainly just a boob, but Obama is malevolent.
The socialist experimentation of the hour must, however, result in a terrible calamity. The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was the longest running error in all history, costing tens of millions of lives. Communist China was no different. But the American Left still dreams of “power to the people,” and a balancing of economic inequalities; so it follows that a terrible bloodletting must eventually occur (either a betrayal of the country to outside socialist forces, or an internal betrayal — or a combination of both). – Nyquist
“Idiocracy” was a great movie. The only thing preposterous about it was how much too far in the future it is set. Remember that the studio barely promoted it after it’s theater release? Guess they didn’t want to hold up a mirror too closely.
Bill Quick,
Me too. I had a pocket knife at 8 and at that age started hunting with a 22LR and a 410. Bought my own 22 rifle at age 10 with my own savings. Clipped an ad from Field and Streams, got a $18.99 money order at the PO, 2 weeks later my winchester bolt action was delivered by the same PO. Climbed a lot of trees, jumped and tunneled in the hay loft, broke a few bones along the way, and learned from the school of rough and tumble reality. And my parents did not allow whining.
We raised our kids the same way. I pity the kids who are overly protected in the era of self-esteem.
Why Do So Many Chinese Expect War?
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-do-so-many-chinese-expect-war-11440
and
— Julian Snelder, National Interest
and
Russia Deploying Tactical Nuclear Arms in Crimea
Obama backing indirect talks with Moscow aimed at cutting U.S. non-strategic nukes in Europe
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-deploying-tactical-nuclear-arms-in-crimea/
and
ISIS Delivers ‘Shock and Awe’ with Arms from U.S., China, and Russia
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/isis-delivers-shock-awe-arms-103000525.html
in all, 28 Iraqi Army Abrams tanks had been damaged in fighting with the militants, including the five that suffered “ full armor penetration” when struck by the anti-tank missiles. As for the helicopters either destroyed or heavily damaged between January and May, they constituted “a significant proportion of the Iraqi Army Aviation Command’s assets.”
AND
from Animal House
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkoPq5AOCOA
It’s sad to say, but things aren’t ever going to improve until the media changes. And I mean in the broadest definition of the term “media,” which means the news, but also entertainment culture – TV, movies, music, etc. As long as the media continues to pound the memes they’ve been pounding for the last 46 years or so (when they turned on LBJ on Vietnam), things will remain the way they are, which means steadily worsening. Conflict theorists aren’t nearly as much intent on building anything constructive as they are in destroying what is.
My only qualm about blaming the self-esteem cult for this is that my generation may have perpetrated it, but wasn’t raised in it — I went to school in the ’60s and mostly had teachers who weren’t afraid to scribble on my papers in red ink, make wrongdoers stand in corners, and fail people who didn’t do the work. Also, we had coaches who got mad at us when we lost instead of giving us trophies for it. Nevertheless, I’ve watched my own peers give way to brain rot, falling one by one for nonsense such as, for instance, homeopathy or astrology despite their college degrees and IQs well north of 100 and refusing to think through their political views or listen to anyone who questions them. Why? I don’t know, though most of the commenters on this thread have plausible theories.
But, at the risk of sounding like artfldgr, I blame feminism for some of it. Yes, it’s true, I do — although I’ll keep right on fighting artfldgr for his over-the-top tendencies toward blaming women for everything. Here’s why: most teachers used to be women, and many of them used to be SMART. In the olden days when young women couldn’t choose whatever career they wanted, they picked from three: secretary, nurse, or teacher. Many of the smartest ones picked teaching as the most interesting of the three. I can recall — as I’m sure the rest of you who are my age and older can too — many an absolutely brilliant, demanding, terrifying, fantastic female teacher who probably could have been a brain surgeon or an astronaut but, finding herself in a high school English classroom instead, wasn’t going to stand for anything short of excellent work from her students or from herself. After watching my own children pass through the public schools a generation later, I can sadly report that few of those brilliant women are left in the classroom; they’re off practicing law or medicine or running businesses or writing amazing blogs like this one instead. My kids did have some good teachers and I count a few wonderful teachers among my friends and relations — but nevertheless, the teachers who were left after those who COULD leave exited for more lucrative and challenging disciplines are, on the average, not the sharpest knives in the drawer. If the person in front of the classroom can’t write a grammatically correct sentence, reason his or her way to a well-supported conclusion or explain a scientific hypothesis, well then, most of the kids in the classroom won’t learn to do it either. And they haven’t.
If you focus on ‘social justice’ you are not going to find economic prosperity or technical competence. The Narrative is the problem. Those who wish to go along to get along (establishment types) are enablers.
Mrs Whatsit,
Interesting post. I agree that feminism is partially responsible for our cultural decline…. in fact it is feminism, in the form of single moms, that have been the cheerleaders of the self-esteem cult. Dangerously, feminism wants to pretend gender is a social construct. But there are positive aspects to the feminist movement, so like you, I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Seen it coming for years, and I do blame the educational system together with the decline in culture that accompanied the rise of the left. It only takes a generation or two for high civilization to fall into a dark age. The only hopeful thing I see is that the decline is probably not world wide.
Idiocracy never seemed as evil to me as the current system. The current system is more like a theocracy on par with Iran.
I don’t remember to what he attributed the decline in basic intelligence, especially among service workers and others; however, I am going to propose a somewhat non-PC cause: the disappearance of the traditional European (and American) class system.
That may not be PC, but it is part of the Leftist alliance’s operations, breaking the class and caste structure, replacing it with their own. Although in American history, most of the castes such as black slaves and Jim Crow, were made by Democrats hoarding power.
The teacher’s unions were being infiltrated and hijacked as early as 1920s in America. People just didn’t notice the effects until later, after the cancer and HIV like symptoms spread.
Feminism was also hijacked during the 2nd and third waves (generations). So First wave feminism was legit. The ones after, not so much.
Most people should be aware of that, but they aren’t. PUblic education again?
I spent a quarter of a century in Hawaii.
I thought terrible educations and leftist indoctrinations were the norm.
And, remember, I was living in Barry’s ‘hood.
What you’re seeing is merely the same ill-education that was the Island specialty.
&&&
If there is ONE underlying theme, it’s that we had to await until the current generation for true wise men to correctly dope out what ails our social animal.
Modern Hawaiian kids are taught that their ancestors really screwed up by being conquered by the White Americans… on and down Left.
I once pulled up a local boy short, asking him where across the vast Pacific were Polynesians living better than in Hawaii. The obvious truth being that any comparison would be stark.
He complained that when he visited the Mainland, he was commonly mistaken for a wet-back. I said: then open your mouth. Hawaiians are wildly popular in the Mainland. Then he admitted it DID make a huge difference.
THIS out-grouping crusade is now part of the common core, as I understand it. It’s loaded to the gills with White sin. Later arriving immigrants come off as saints.
It’s having a real impact on even the desire to “act White” and learn English, learn arithmetic, etc.
The Leftist political culture is toxic to anyone trying to mainstream — to become part of the vast American ‘in-group.’
Such an event would/ must chip away at the Leftist base. For, in sum, they live for anger. They (politically) feed on it.
Obama is responsible for the incompetence of those underlings he appointed. We’ve discussed his predilection for sycophants, but they only comprise the tippy-top of the bureaucratic pyramid. The top 1%, maybe.
The incompetence goes much deeper than that. I think what we’re witnessing is the arrogance and corruption of a new estate.
They haven’t been checked in a long while, and now think they’re above the law or accountability. As long as Democrats are in office, the bureaucracy will remain out of control because Dems will not cut government.
To have a competent adult you first need an adult.
The answer is No.
The incompetence and dysfunction goes beyond government, and not all of it is attributable to Leftism (although much of it is.) Two other major factors are:
1) Excessive credentialism. There are too many people who have been placed in jobs for which they are really not qualified based in large part on their educational credentials, especially their “elite” educational credentials. Our current President, of course, is one example of this phenomenon, but he is by no means the only one.
2) Related to the above, an excessively abstract and theoretical approach to management, in all kinds of organizations. See Peter Drucker’s thoughts on this, which I have excerpted here:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_archive.html#108835321560249258
3) Excessive growth and influence of both the legal and financial professions. See my post A Plague of Sticky Governors:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/18204.html
name the positives of feminism that they actually can take credit for… wwii was the force behind work…wlmen didnt have three options…my grandmother was a reasearch chemist (with credited discovery). einstein credited emmy noether…what year was radcliff started?? any one besides me realize the move in masse rayher than slowly depressed salaries so it took two to earn what one does? that the marxism behind the movement wanted to be able to tax womens labor, facilitate state controlling from pre k to adult what kids woul be trained (unless wealthy or elite) to work as wage slaves for others (who get a different ed), thenormalization of sex deseases, destruction of family making the welfare state. murder of over fifty million unborn…lowering of standards fir police, fire, and military. affimative action where sex and race mean more than hard work and achievment. victim culture. turning the state into sugar daddy rannging from free education, to free birth control. with the destruction of family went traditions, holidays, etc. oh, cant forget slutting up halloween…dont forget the end to holding gdoors, removing hats, polite discourse…etiquette…gone are manly men (some ladies did like them). ddnt forget feminism was the idea, lesbianism the practice (can give you tons of quotes). loss of ability to dress, invited the state into thebedroom, feral kids, collapse of the population, extermination of billion year old family lines…loss of cooking healthy food facilitating the junk foodindustry.
and lots more. including the majority niw hating they work and cant shop and be with their kids which a lot will never have…
left out death of dancing, dating now is hookup culture, children mostly accidents, and turning the society of handle, ballette, sbakespeare, into miley sirus… be more interesting to precompose thisandnot on my phone while out.
Okay, now… what you wrote? Good and all. Some of it okay, some of it is bunk. I am not, actually, bright enough to completely separate the two, not with absolute certainty. But… I catch the drift, see the patterns, and have been… horrified by what I see.
The trailer, however? Yeah… I see that too closely on a regular basis. I stay home, for health reasons, often. But when I go, I remember why I like to be home, even if I would love to be out. I don’t think we are going to have to wait 500 years, at all. The next time I go to the store I will run into this, some of it. It isn’t just the kids! It’s a large subset, at least, of society.
My actual hope is that the inevitable destruction of modern society through, what I once thought was economic but now believe is based on the topic that you discuss, might turn things around a bit. Some, many, people, are literally too stupid to survive actually having to do something constructive in order to live. I sometimes think of zombies, only ones which haven’t figured out that they need to eat brains because someone, somewhere, has figured out how to feed them… manufactured “stuff”. Argh!
I didn’t have time to read posts denying history, but I wanted to put out that the history that is valid does not put forth a solution or an action to take. I profess none. That is, just because I know the history and details of things and do not change that to suit speech control (pc started in the USA by feminists), does NOT mean I want some state force to come in and force an outcome (the way feminists do).
My wife, mother, sister, grandmother, and others in my family, all do what they want, they do not need to give credit to a socialist/communist political movement for their success and hard work and earning things. Most women think that because I am an anti communist against feminism (which is communist and has been since the 1930s onward at least), I am against self determination, and other such things. In fact, it’s the feminists that tell you what to think about men who are not for feminism, its they that normalized the idea of telling you X and on the way speaking for the other side, and cutting out all actual dialogue in favor of one person talking both sides and making up stuff.
The list I put forth is only partial, I left out title IX, destroying mens sports. I left out normalizing schools choosing who gets to go, and who doesn’t get to go, by gender and race to skew the numbers of those entering to meet some number on a form, and having to disenfranchise those that worked hard but find that there were too many of them. where are the feminists fighting for equity in child custody, of which 90% of the children go to women. They single handedly expanded the welfare state, because most welfare recipients are women, which is why you see so many homeless men out there, its very hard for a man to get welfare, and very easy for a woman with children to get it. the end of bastardy as a negative is what created the EBT momma with 5 kids from 5 different men and none of them supporting their family.
I suspect before I even read that the programmed response to what I put forth is to attack me, or think I am negative, or marginalize my points or play pish tosh as to women being responsible for these outcomes. but if you know the actual history, not the zeitgeist false history bantered around, you would know that each of these things IS from the outcome of that MASS movement, of which outcomes would be different if movements were not en mass all at once. Water is good, you should drink a gallon a day, but drink a gallon all at once, and it will kill you.
Ebola a disease probably would think that its expansion into other countries is good. But just cause the beneficiary of this, the ebola virus thinks things are better for it, doesn’t mean that things are better for everything around it. same with feminism, just cause women think that they are better off, and have all this, doesn’t mean that what this is was good for the whole any more than what’s beneficial for cancer is good for the body.
I can EASILY show each point is related to his movement, and how this movement was co-opted and changed in its direction by socialist/communists. Original feminists did not want abortion, and were not for communist Kolontais free sex, nor were they for the destruction of family. that came after the communists took over the social movement, the same way that they took over the term liberal, which used to stand for something very different than today.
cont.
Personally I am too old to give a crap, and will be dead before anything will happen that would make this amenable to freedom, self-determination, and so on. after all, affirmative action and self-determination are mutually exclusive. My south pacific Asian wife has to be barren because I cant get a riase, because I was told its reserved for women and minorities, and no matter what I do or what I achieve I cant get one. So she cant have a baby and we cant have a family, as I cant afford to pay for all the social programs they are robbing me for, and a family. I couldn’t expand my business and had to return to being a wage slave as all the benefits and programs of the SBA are for women and minorities, to a point where its nigh impossible to get a loan under the program if your not one of the special protected classes. In fact, the whole concept of protected classes in violation of the 14th amendment is their work too. I came out of Bronx science and could not go to college as the entry people were choosing to marginalize the poor guys who did not have the economics in favor of women (The supreme court told them to stop, but by then it was too late for people like me and my poor classmates). Currently, Obama nationalized the school, so my honors student son who was in STEM and trying to get his Phd in genetics, had to quit school and go into the Navy, because the docs and academics were choosing women and social justice, and he could not get one to accept him so he could do his lab work and dissertation — and the usa sciences lost a smart guy… heck, the society lost the intellectual property I have and the business and taxes and jobs I would have created too.
So I have no dog in this fight, but I am not going to censor my knowledge of history just to make a bunch of people who don’t like me happier and think that they are victim losers who didn’t do what they did and what they supported.
Heck, even now, surveys of women point out that they are more unhappy now than they have every been since the surveys started. That many of them don’t want to work and would rather be home with their children, and with family, but their mothers and grandmothers changed the economic situation to remove their choices. If you read the feminist leaders like bouvier, that is EXACTLY what the outcome was supposed to be, because she said that womens choices had to be removed, so that they would not choose what feminist leaders didn’t want them to choose, and so their work, would be taxable by a socialist state that wanted to use that money to bribe for votes, cause problems, and obtain power under the guise of fixing it.
Sorry if people don’t like the history and outcomes, but that is not something I can change. The history and the connections are the history and connections, and communist historical revision (Stalinism) is not something I favor, nor do I favor censorship. After all, the only reason its continuing onward is because the people doing it think they are blameless, so why stop?
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I bought something at the store the other day, and I gave them a 20. They had put in the ‘cash’ in the machine as 10, so to determine the difference in change they should be giving me, the guy pulled out his phone calculator.
I told him just to add a 10 to whatever the computer said, but he didn’t trust that without looking at his phone.
So we are talking about grown people who cannot do the math for 20-10. !!! Idiocracy indeed.
Had an experience last summer where a cashier couldn’t read in a product’s 40% discount. After being unable to flag down a manger for several minutes she considered doing it in her head. Couldn’t.
I have had so many experiences like this. Or they ring something up, think it’s right and you have to tell them, hey? that 100 dollar item that is 40% off should not have rung up at 85. Try again?
I have tried a few times to explain to cashiers how to count change up — the way I was taught to do it in my first job behind an old-fashioned cash register — rather than relying on a calculator or computerized cash registers to tell them how much cash to hand over. (For those under 50 or so who may not have encountered this antediluvian process, if a buyer hands over a five-dollar bill for a purchase totaling $4.59, the cashier starts with the smallest denomination by counting out a penny to reach $4.60, a nickel to reach $4.65, a dime to reach $4.75, and a quarter to reach $5.00. Result: 41 cents in change, with no subtraction required.) They cannot fathom what I’m talking about. I once encountered a farmstand proprietor trying to teach his teenaged assistant to do it — she was succeeding, but very slowly and laboriously, and when I congratulated her on it, the proprietor told me that she was the first young employee he’d encountered in years who was able to do it at all.
Likewise, Mr Whatsit and I have befriended a young waitress who often waits on us at a favorite restaurant. Once, we tried to explain to her how to tell whether her tip represented 20 percent of the bill, by figuring 10 percent of the total and then doubling it. She was dumbfounded, perplexed and mystified — never mind when we launched into starting from 10 percent to get to 15 or 25 percent. And she works in a bank when she’s not waitressing!
We are formed – to a large extent – by our experiences in life. Parents, school, friends, popular culture, work.
Work – be it for pay, or chores – used to be pretty common for young people. For children now it is for the vast majority non-existent.
And imagine that . . . one of the few things that teaches you life’s lessons via consequences is now lost.
I don’t so much blame the leftists’ sliding scale thinking as I do the receptiveness of most people to these ideas. So many of the ideas have a veneer of truth to them but actually don’t work in practice. Too many people now just can’t get that deep because they’re lives have been so easy, so limited.
They need a lesson . . . and they’ll eventually get that lesson. And a lot of folks who don’t need a lesson will be taken along.
For those under 50 or so who may not have encountered this antediluvian process
Heh. I’m not quite that old but I think people used to still do it up to 10/15 years ago.
I actually hate the ‘new’ way, because they count your cash first and then your change, and then they hand it all to you and the change falls over…irritating.
I am constantly perplexed at people’s inability to do INSANELY simple math, though. It is very distressing.
From the front lines of the undergraduate classroom, smart phones are part of the problem. Interacting with them precedes everything else, including some bodily functions. That doesn’t mean smart phones are absolutely evil, but they are enabling.
Somewhere in there, a deep frustration within any sort of complexity–and perhaps accountability, too–figures. Academia demonstrates this quite frequently.
Too many people now just can’t get that deep because they’re lives have been so easy, so limited.
Never realized the whole point of raising minimum wage was to eliminate work and jobs for kids?
But the kids of today already KNOW how to do everything. Don’t even need to learn HOW to do it, it’s innate. See Dunning-Kruger effect. Ever since I first heard of it, it seems to address many of the problems we have in schools and work.
Just did a quickie search and turned up two links that seem to avoid the tl:dr pit:
http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-dunning-kruger-effect-why-the-incompetent-dont-know-theyre-incompetent.php
This one, although it looks like it’s from a religious site, doesn’t seem to use religion explanations:
http://bibleapologetics.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/what-is-the-dunning-kruger-effect/
Becoming unamused with too many folks with D-K in my (government) IT job helped me decide hang up my spurs. I feel much better now.
I think that a lot of the commentators have been focusing on the symptoms. The reason that people seem to be stupider is only partly because of poor education and poor public policies. It may actually be because they ARE stupider. There is evidence that the average IQ now is one standard deviation below that of a hundred years ago. I don’t recall exactly where I saw this, but it was an English psychologist and he was referencing data from reaction times from the late Victorian era. Reaction time is a proxy for IQ.
Why are we stupider? That I’m not sure of.
Bryan:
If true, it may be a natural selection thing. It is easier to survive these days (at least, it has been until recently) than it used to be. Maybe it used to take more wits to survive to reproductive age, or to have one’s children survive.
“There are men running governments who shouldn’t be allowed to play with matches.” ~ Will Rogers
Not a new problem or observation.
}}} Is it the …
It’s not that common sense is not out there — it’s that the fools (NOT idiots) who speak out are not told they’re fools, and it’s become a matter of ultimate politeness to not do so. So the fool gets as much say as the wise.
IQ is about book learning. It’s about your capacity to read things and learn them. It’s not as much a generalization skill. And the terms “idiot”, “moron”, “imbecile” are all classical (now derided) metrics of it.
“Wisdom” is about learning from experience. It is VERY MUCH about your capacity to generalize from the specific to the rule. The term for low-achievers in this area is properly “fool”, not idiot. And the real trick is to not only learn from direct experience, but from indirect experience:
“Fools say they profit from experience. I prefer to profit from others’ experience.”
– Otto Von Bismarck –
}}} Why Do So Many Chinese Expect War?
Art, I have not read the piece, but I’d suggest that this is something that both the Chinese government and the US government should agree to push another way.
One of the major benefits of modern society is that you can “do battle” in a different way — that is, via business and not military force. It’s a way in which the excess Chinese males, thanks to their “one child” policy, could compete for females in a way which does not result in a need for jingoism and war. It is in the interest of both nations — and the world — to approach this attitude properly. It’s one reason why it’s a benefit to have an industrialized China. The excess males can compete both internally and externally for the limited supply of mates. The China in question is only nominally more dangerous militarily (once you have nukes, any direct warfare is going to be a Real Bad Thing, which is why the USA/USSR Cold War was always fought through proxies like Vietnam and Afghanistan)