Wisconsin Republicans in legislature vote to limit power of incoming Democratic governor

The New Neo Posted on by

This development is interesting on a lot of levels:

Wisconsin’s incoming Democratic governor is condemning moves by Republicans legislators to weaken his power.

Gov.-elect Tony Evers said Wednesday that Republicans have overridden the will of voters who chose Democrats in last month’s election. He says a handful of people desperately want to “cling to power.”

The Republican-controlled Legislature approved sweeping changes early Wednesday that weaken the governor’s ability to make rules that enact laws. The legislation also shields the state jobs agency from his control until September and cuts into the powers of the incoming Democratic attorney general.

What’s interesting about this is that it’s an example of Republicans doing what Republicans so seldom do: playing hardball. It’s also an example of Republicans doing what Democrats would do if they were in the same position—the position being that Republicans control the legislature and a Democrat is about to be sworn in as governor.

But is it right to do it? And is “right” even a consideration anymore, now that politics has become an almost completely non-cooperative and partisan affair?

Here’s what Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has to say about it:

Republicans have controlled both branches for eight years. Their concern about constitutional balance seems at the very least tardy. If that’s the reason, why not take it up before the election — or earlier, when it would have limited Scott Walker’s authority?

There are all sorts of outcome-based reasons for doing this, of course. Republicans will insist that Democrats wouldn’t have played fair with executive authority without those restrictions. As Evers notes, both he and incoming AG Josh Kaul ran on a platform of activism, so the impulse behind this effort may well be understandable. There is a need to protect a lot of good work done over the last eight years, especially from the GOP’s perspective.

That still doesn’t make this the right method, unless we’re now fully embracing a means-justifying-ends philosophy.

My questions would be the following:

What powers does the Wisconsin constitution give the legislature vis a vis the executive branch? Is this action by the legislature within their constitutional powers? Then they can do it. It does set a bad precedent, but it’s been a long time since Wisconsin Democrats have observed any niceties of the sort, particularly in their long and bitter fight against Scott Walker.

I also would like to know whether the powers they are limiting are powers that Scott Walker actively exercised as governor.

By the way, although this is technically a lame duck legislature, it’s not effectively so because after January the Republicans in Wisconsin will continue to be in the majority in the legislature and will continue to control it.

Macron’s still in trouble

The New Neo Posted on by

This article in The Sun has the following headline: “Beleaguered Emmanuel Macron predicts ‘major violence’ across France this weekend as approval rating crashes to record low of 18 per cent.”

That’s about as low as the approval for the MSM in this country.

And this is the sub-headline: “Protesters across France are set to take to the streets again on Saturday despite the government caving in over the controversial fuel price hike.” I would say that there’s no “despite” about it, since the protestors are protesting much more than the fuel price hike, and they intend to go on protesting until there is some sort of more fundamental change—although there may not be a lot of agreement among them as to what the change might be.

In addition, Macron’s caving in to the protestors isn’t going to make anyone respect him more; it’s more likely to make them respect him less. Weak horse and all that.

I’ve already written about the protestors and who they might be and what they might want, here and here. The Sun article mentions “disgruntled groups from Left and Right” as being involved, which is in agreement with what I’d learned earlier.

I don’t know whether this has any relevance at all, but the last time I can recall “disgruntled groups from Left and Right” uniting in huge protests, the result was the Iranian Revolution and the ascendance of the mullahs.

France is certainly not Iran. But I recall being puzzled by those Iranian demonstrations close to forty years ago, wondering how that alliance of Left and Right was going to play out. Now we know.

George H. W. Bush is laid to rest…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and “was celebrated with high praise and loving humor.” It’s no surprise that his former enemies on the left are saying nice things about him now, because as Michael Goodwin points out, the only good Republican is a dead one, especially if he was against Trump in life, and in death can be used as a cudgel with which to beat Trump.

We saw it with McCain and now with Bush the Elder. But even before Trump, we saw it with Reagan, who was in some sense the Trump of his time and who the MSM excoriated while alive but loved when dead. What’s more, his death occurred during the Bush II era, and therefore could be used as a cudgel which which to beat Bush the Younger.

Gender studies wars

The New Neo Posted on by

In Europe there’s a trend to criticize or even in some cases do away with the field of gender studies. Naturally, this makes the gender studies professors very very nervous:

The attacks take many different forms, including blacklists and harassment of individual scholars, the proposal of legislative measures to police classroom speech, and attempts to censor academic events. In Brazil the pioneering gender studies scholar Judith Butler was burned in effigy and accosted by protestors at the airport last year after far-right Christian groups objected to her visit to the country for a conference she’d helped to organize. As Butler told Inside Higher Ed in an interview at the time, her sense was that the protesters “who engaged this frenzy of effigy burning, stalking and harassment want to defend ‘Brazil’ as a place where LGBTQ people are not welcome, where the family remains heterosexual (so no gay marriage), where abortion is illegal and reproductive freedom does not exist. They want boys to be boys, and girls to be girls, and for there to be no complexity in questions such as these.”

David Paternotte, an associate professor in sociology at the Free University of Brussels and co-editor of the book Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), said less extreme attacks on gender studies often take the form of press articles criticizing the discipline. “People saying it’s ideological, it’s not scientific. This is what we hear the most — that it’s a waste of public money, it shouldn’t be a part of what is taught at universities.”

This reached a head recently in Hungary, a phenomenon I’ve written about previously. From that post of mine:

It does indeed appear, however, as though a sort of reverse cultural revolution might be taking place in Hungary, a campaign by Orban’s party to restore the older ways and stamp out some of the leftist/progressive cultural agenda…

Orban wants the Granscian march to go in the other direction for a change.

That first article I linked in this post—the one from Inside Higher Ed—is rather long. But I found it fascinating for several reasons, chief among them the condescending holier-than-thou tone of the gender studies professors cited. The gist of what they were saying was that the troglodyte right-wingers are politically motivated in their fight against gender studies, but there is absolutely zero acknowledgement of the gender studies profs’ own political perspective, a point of view that informs their every study and every utterance. “You’re political, but I’m just an objective, enlightened researcher” is the basic message, and it’s a false one.

And in fact, what a nation decides to teach is very often a political decision, particularly in its state-funded schools, as opposed to its private schools—with the possible exception of math and science, although, as the Soviets taught us, instructive in this area as in so many others, math and science can be made to be political as well. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

But some areas of study, especially those with “studies” in their name and which tended to spring up post-1960s, are more political and more deeply political than others. Not only that, but their science is shakier and more politically driven. Gender studies is one of those fields, although it’s not the only one.

That doesn’t mean it should be banned. Perhaps states are within their rights refusing to fund disciplines such as gender studies in state-funded schools, which preserves the right of private schools to offer courses. That’s highly unlikely to happen in the US at this point, anyway, because most state university systems are wholly dominated by the left, which champions gender studies. But in Europe things seem different, particularly in Hungary.

In Allan Bloom’s great work The Closing of the American Mind he dealt with the political aspects of education:

Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It wants to produce a certain kind of human being…In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others the warlike, in others the industrious…Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality. Democratic education, whether it admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge, and character supportive of a democratic regime. Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime. We began with the model of the rational and industrious man, who was honest, respected the laws, and was dedicated to the family (his own family—what has in its decay been dubbed the nuclear family). Above all he was to know the rights doctrine; the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”…

But openness…eventually won out over natural rights, partly through a theoretical critique, partly because of a political rebellion against nature’s last constraints. Civic education turned away from concentrating on the Founding to concentrating on openness based on history and social science.

Although that was written some time during the 1980s (his book was published in 1987 but it was based at least in part on lectures Bloom had given earlier), you can see that the foundation for the current situation (including that involving gender studies) had been laid by that time. Bloom’s book also contains a lengthy description of a late-1960s fight at Cornell over (among other things) the establishment of an Afro-American Studies department and who would control it. If you haven’t read Bloom’s work, you might want to look at Thomas Sowell’s rather brief account here.

Here’s some background of how Cornell 1969 was a sort of ground zero for the special “studies” departments and their spread throughout academia:

Only days before the Straight takeover, on April 10, 1969, the Cornell administration had approved $240,000 to create an Afro-American Studies Center and a director, James Turner, had been identified months earlier. “The students wanted an autonomous program; they wanted the center to have control of its own destiny,” said Eric Acree, librarian at the Africana Studies and Research Center.

But change did come even more quickly after the takeover. “You now have recognition that other people need to be studied — women, gays and lesbians, Latinos, Asian Americans — and all of that is an outgrowth of the black studies movement,” said Acree.

According to Robert L. Harris, professor of Africana studies, entire scholarly fields had been ignored. “The seriousness of Africana studies as an academic endeavor had been questioned, simply because the breadth and depth of existing scholarship was not widely known,” he said. “In the decades since, the field has been the source of vast quantities of indisputably serious, relevant, compelling work.”

Actually, I think that black studies and gender studies and all the rest are very legitimate fields to ponder and learn about—in other words, they are legitimate areas of study if those studies could be objective and present all sides of the questions involved.

The real problem is the extreme leftist slant that seems inherent in those departments, baked in the cake. There is also the question of whether separate departments are necessary or whether courses in these areas could be taught within existing generalized departments such as history. However, I wonder whether there’s any turning back at this point, at least in the US.

A magic bullet for obesity?

The New Neo Posted on by

But be careful what you wish for.

At least in mice, researchers have had some success in targeting a gene for obesity:

…[S]cientists are working toward a drug that would allow patients to lose weight without exercising or making any changes to their diet.

Led by Prof. Damien Keating, researchers at Australia’s Flinders University started by identifying an obesity-related gene in rodents, known as RCAN1. The team then genetically altered a batch of mice, in order to remove that gene. Those animals were subsequently put on a variety of diets over time periods ranging from eight weeks to six months. In all cases, even when being fed high-fat foods, none of the mice gained weight.

It was found that with the RCAN1 out of the way, the animals’ bodies were much better at converting “unhealthy” energy-storing white fat into healthy energy-burning brown fat. This occurred even as the mice were resting.

Not all phenomena that occur in rodents are transferable to humans, of course, but some are. However, the article also states something extremely interesting:

[Scientists] will additionally have to take potential side effects into account, as the gene protects cells against stressors that can lead to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

That’s why the first sentence of this post is, “Be careful what you wish for.” I’ve noticed it’s often the case that something noxious, or seemingly noxious, in the natural world has unacknowledged benefits, and eradicating that thing (whatever it may be) can have unintended negative consequences.

For example, that’s true with predators or insects that are eliminated and then something else (often the thing they preyed on) grows out of control. Or drugs are invented that deal with one physical problem successfully, but the overall death rate of the population taking it doesn’t go down.

Curious, no?

On asylum

The New Neo Posted on by

Asylum has a specific purpose and rules that govern its granting, and the vast majority of the caravaners’ claims wouldn’t fit asylum’s definition.

But that may be somewhat moot, because (at least in the past) many asylum seekers haven’t shown up for their hearings (see this for the war of statistics on this matter).

Who suffers from this state of affairs? Why, the bona fide asylum seekers,, that’s who:

…[U]nless those looking for a better life have either suffered or have legitimate reason to believe they will suffer persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinions, they do not meet the legal baseline for refuge or asylum. Period.

Second, there is reason to believe that a majority of those claiming asylum from Central America do so with no intention of following through. According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security regarding the migrant caravan:

“The low statutory requirements and legal loopholes in our laws encourage aliens to claim credible fear at our Southern border knowing they will be promptly released into the interior with work permits pending the determination of their full claim.”…

It’s a simple fact…that resources are finite, and when government agents spend time sorting out frivolous asylum claims from economic migrants at the border, it takes up time and resources that could be otherwise applied to other applicants who don’t have the geographic advantage of being able to form a caravan and travel over land.

I doubt very much that those championing the “migrants” in the caravan care very much if at all about bona fide asylum seekers or about the distinction between those who simply want to come here for economic reasons and those who are actually fleeing “persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinions.”

Asylum is a sort of fast-track system to accommodate those in special situations. For those who simply want to better their lives—a laudable and understandable goal—and who think America would be just the place to do it, then get in line and come in via the legal immigration route.

[ADDENDUM: Some “migrants” are impatient with the process.]

Macron postpones gas tax for 6 months

The New Neo Posted on by

Macron gives in to the protestors—sort of, kind of, a little bit:

Faced with another weekend of destructive protests by the “gilets jaunes”—or yellow vests—Prime Minister Édouard Philippe told a news conference Tuesday the tax hike would be pushed back six months. The worst riots to hit Paris in decades erupted during antigovernment protests Saturday, leaving the city’s shopping and tourist center dotted with burning cars and broken storefronts. Protesters vandalized the Arc de Triomphe, rattling Mr. Macron’s administration and the nation.

“No tax is worth threatening the unity of the nation,” Mr. Philippe said.

I don’t have my finger on the pulse of France, but I would venture to say that the “unity of the nation” is threatened by more than just this tax, and a delay will not change that fact.

I also think that the French want to have their cake and eat it too. In this respect they are hardly unique; it’s a common human desire, and welfare states give people the illusion of being able to accomplish it—for a while, that is, until (as Margaret Thatcher remarked about socialism) they run out of other people’s money.

From the WSJ [emphasis mine]:

The [gas tax hike] approach, however, alienated swaths of French people who live in rural areas and rely on their cars to reach their jobs in urban areas. It also compounded the public’s perception that rural France has borne the brunt of globalism’s impact, as forces such as e-commerce and big box retail have left villages and towns hollowed out.

The result: hundreds-of-thousands of people flocked to Paris and other cities around France, blocking roads, clashing with police and demanding the resignation of Mr. Macron.

The Macron government hopes that in the next six months the opposition will enter into negotiations with them on this, which so far the opposition has refused to do. My guess is that the opposition’s leaders have a much bigger agenda than this tax, and that the rank and file may not be aware of that agenda.

What that agenda might be I’m not sure, but as I wrote yesterday there are whiffs of both left and right in this movement. Once people become dependent on certain perks of the welfare state they are loathe to give them up, and they often just want those “other people” (the ones with the money) to be further tapped in order to pay for those things.

In Europe (as in the US, but it may be more acute in Europe), elements of French society (particularly, as the article indicates, those living in more rural areas) also feel that “immigrants” have been given things at their expense. This may indeed be correct, and it’s potentially a much greater threat to “the unity of the nation” than a gas tax would ever be.

Ballot harvesting, the wave of the future?

The New Neo Posted on by

The new technique of “ballot harvesting” in California may account for why Orange Country turned blue in the 2018 election.

On election night six Republicans were ahead in their House districts in Orange County, but when the late votes came in—many cast by the newly-legal method of “ballot harvesting”—the Democrats had won all six.

Here’s an example of how it worked:

In California’s 39th Congressional District, Republican candidate Young Kim was widely anticipated to snag an electoral victory and fill outgoing Rep. Ed Royce’s shoes, becoming the first Korean-American woman to serve in Congress. On election night and the next day, she held a wide lead ahead of Democrat Gil Cisneros. While waiting for the official ballot tally, Kim flew to Washington D.C. to attend orientation events for freshmen members of Congress, including the class photo op, but as ballots continued to pour in up to a week after the election, the results flipped and she ultimately lost…

A new state law allows third parties to pick up ballots and drop them off at polling locations on behalf of that person, a practice known as “ballot harvesting.”

In video footage that surfaced last month, a woman who identifies herself to a California resident as Lulu is seen knocking on someone’s door and offering to deliver their absentee ballot, but “only to, like, people who are supporting the Democratic Party.”…

Mailing a ballot to every voter in the county, allowing these ballots to arrive up to a week after Election Day, and allowing individuals to register to vote and cast a ballot on the day of an election give ample opportunity for an individual intent on committing voter fraud to do so.

I’m pretty sure it isn’t illegal to go door to door and only “help” those who want to vote Democratic. If that’s true, it’s pretty obvious to me that the California Democrats would be much more active in this way than the Republicans in that state, who were almost undoubtedly caught flat-footed. So this could have greatly benefited the Democrats in Orange County without actual fraud being committed.

Or it certainly could have included fraud.

The entire situation is worrisome, and I’m fairly sure this is something more and more states will be instituting. Those who object will be accused of racism and vote suppression.

Democrats are intent on creating a set of large one-party states so dominant that winning them will be a foregone conclusion, and winning them will be enough to win every national election. The Republicans don’t seem to have a clue what to do about it.

Trying to get a sense of what’s really happening in France…

The New Neo Posted on by

…isn’t easy.

There are widespread riots. But exactly who is rioting and why they’re rioting isn’t completely clear, although they certainly seem to be anti-Macron. But there are plenty of reasons to be anti-Macron, some emanating from the left and some from the right or from some other impulse or belief system.

The MSM so far seems to be saying the riots are “anti-elitist,” and that they began with people angry at a fuel tax increase. This article purports to get to the bottom of things, but I don’t think it sheds all that much light:

The protests were initially described as a largely working-class, grass roots movement with many among the demonstrators saying their livelihoods will be threatened by higher fuel prices.

However, the protests have now morphed into wider discontent at the high cost of living in France and dissatisfaction with Macron, whose popularity continues to fall. A poll by Kantar Public in late October showed that 71 percent of 1,000 respondents in the poll had no confidence in Macron.

The higher fuel prices were “part of the government’s proposed carbon tax designed to improve its environmental credentials” with the Greens, prior to the next elections. But many demonstrators feel it’s a hardship that will hurt those who are already struggling (unemployment is around 10% in France).

It could spread:

The French protests seem to be inspiring others in Europe with copycat riots in Belgium this weekend. Famke Krumbmuller, partner and head of political risk at OpenCitiz, told CNBC that the disgruntlement of protesters in France could be felt elsewhere in Europe.

“I guess what’s specific to this movement is that it is relatively apolitical, so they (the protesters) are not from just one party on the left or right. They’re white, middle-class people that are squeezed by the welfare state. They pay a lot of taxes but they don’t get a lot of benefits in return,” she told CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum in Paris.

Although I certainly don’t generally trust the NY Times’ take on things, sometimes they write straight news and do it well. That article describes something that sounds a bit like a protest from what in this country would be called the Trump voters.

Finally I turned to a blog I used to read regularly. It’s by a Frenchman and is called No Pasaran. He writes:

There is nary a single media report about the Yellow Vest demonstrations in Paris and France that I’ve read or watched that has not been slanted by Fake News.

It has (usually) not been deliberate, I gather, and nobody has said anything factually wrong; what is the problem is the fact that (very) important stuff has been omitted.

Fancy that.

It is not wrong to say that the demonstrations were caused by the government’s decision to raise gas prices. What is missing is that this is just one of several draconian measures dating back half a year, i.e., ‘tis the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

For the past four to five months, the French government has done nothing but double down on bringing more and more gratuitous oppression and more and more unwarranted persecution measures down on the necks the nation’s drivers and motorcycle riders.

In fact, the imposition of ever harsher rules has been going on for the past decade and a half or so — whether the government was on the right or on the left …/…

Well, that didn’t quite give me the information I wanted.

And this is curious—student rioting that seems to be piggy-backing on the other riots but as far as I can tell has different motivations:

At the moment, all high school students who pass their final exams have the right to study any course at their local public university, for a nominal tuition fee.

This has led to some popular courses being oversubscribed and some 60 per cent of French university students do not finish their first year.

President Macron’s government wants universities to be able to apply admissions criteria and select students on merits such as exam results or entrance exams for some oversubscribed degrees.

That’s what the students are rioting over—the imposition of some form of merit system in a situation in which taking all comers has overburdened the resources available. I suppose you could call that “anti-elitist” as well, but it’s an anti-elitism that seems to be coming from the left, whereas the other rioters seem (accent on the word “seem”) to be coming more from the right.

Meanwhile, the so-called “far right” in Spain has made gains in recent elections. What does this far-right party advocate? Well, here’s one description:

A far-right party won seats in a Spanish regional parliament for the first time since the country returned to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

Vox, which opposes illegal immigration and Catalan independence, won 12 seats in the Andalusia parliamentary elections, bringing an end to three decades of socialist rule in the southern Spanish region.

Vox did better than predicted.

“The Andalusians have made history… and got rid of 36 years of socialist rule,” Vox leader Santiago Abascal said…

Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party suffered their worst result in history, picking up 33 seats, while its potential left-wing ally Adelante Andalusia (Forward Andalusia) won 17 seats…

Next year Spain will have municipal, regional and European elections which could be an even tougher test for the ruling Socialists.

Indeed.

I wonder about the permanence and meaning of all these moves to the right, or to populism, or rejections of socialism, or however one might want to characterize them. To me they seem—much like the Trump movement here—to not be deeply rooted but to instead be frustrated reactions to something else. That “something else” is loosely called “elitism,” but I actually think it’s many things: a combination of not wanting Big Government to dictate so much and take so much money from people to do things most people really don’t want it to do, a rejection of illegal immigration and open borders (a rejection that used to be a mainstream position but is now considered to be a “far right” position), and a feeling that much of life has gotten out of control in a way that feels ominous and threatening.

The impulse could go right or left, as the recent midterms in the US seem to indicate. I sense that it may be an impulse away from rather than towards, a deep frustration with the status quo.

After disaster: to rebuild or not to rebuild…

The New Neo Posted on by

…whether in Paradise, California, or any other disaster-prone area, that is the question.

Paradise and many other towns in California seem especially vulnerable to fire. But although quite a few fires have raged near Paradise for many decades, it was mostly spared from any major destruction till now.

Beautiful settings call to people. But beautiful settings can be risky, whether the risk be earthquake, fire, or flood (tornadoes are a risk in other areas not necessarily known for special beauty—please forgive me all you midwesterners).

In a place such as Paradise, fire insurance becomes pricier, and a fair number of people there were uninsured for that reason. They will get some FEMA money, but that is very limited and ordinarily not nearly enough to rebuild. We all pay taxes that go to FEMA, and we all might pay increased insurance rates to cover so many payouts to those who are insured. But even though we all have a stake in this, I’m not for limiting people’s ability to live where they want.

You might say that the victims of the fire should sue PG&E, which may or may not be responsible (or at least partially responsible) for the conflagration. But there’s a catch, because no power company can be 100% successful at preventing these events and still provide power to the public. If PG&E had to pay out to all the fire victims, it goes bankrupt or passes the whole thing onto its customers in a huge rate increase. And what would replace it?

This is how California has recently decided to handle it (from this past September, prior to the Paradise fire):

In California, utilities are responsible for fires traced to their equipment whether or not they are complying with regulations. PG&E faces about 200 lawsuits on behalf of 2,700 plaintiffs stemming from last year’s fires.

…This [recently passed bill] would soften that standard by having regulators determine liability based on whether equipment was reasonably maintained and operated. It would also let utilities issue bonds to help pay damages, with a surcharge on ratepayers’ bills helping to cover interest payments.

So, how much is too much risk in a community, and who gets to decide? Does each locality decide for itself whether to limit growth or allow it?

[NOTE: Good news, though—the number of the Paradise missing has fallen to 25.]

The 5 worst things about getting older

The New Neo Posted on by

John Hawkins has a piece at PJ Media entitled “The 5 Worst Things About Getting Older.” It caught my eye for obvious reasons, but as with many such articles I started chuckling right at the start on learning that Hawkins is in his 40s.

Ha! You call that “getting older”? Just you wait, young man, just you wait.

Of course I remember turning 40 and thinking it was a big transition. And it is. And of course it’s getting older—every day we all get older, unless the first name is Peter and the second name is Pan.

But I never really thought of forty as anywhere near getting particularly old. And I suppose that people in their 80s and 90s would think of the age I’ve reached (which will remain specified here, although anyone who follows my blog can kinda figure it out) is not especially old, either. But it’s edging up there even in the objective sense.

My 5 worst things about getting old are somewhat different from Hawkins’, as one might expect. Some are the same, however, and one in particular—loss, which is Hawkins’ #2—looms large. I’ve lost not just parents, but I’ve lost many contemporaries, including some near and dear.

That, I did not expect at this age, and it’s a loss I feel almost constantly. I understand the statistics that dictate this will start to happen and then accelerate until we’ve all shuffled off, not just to Buffalo but off this mortal coil. I get it. But like Edna St. Vincent Millay, I am not resigned, although I know this is the normal way of the universe, as the beautiful poetry of Ecclesiastes reminds me.

Hawkins’ #1 is “physical deterioration.” What do most 40-somethings know of that, compared to several decades later? Well, for me, my forties were actually a very rough time physically, because that was the main decade of my extreme chronic pain from several injuries, and I had great difficulty functioning at all. So now, whatever generalized deterioration I’ve undergone, I’m nevertheless in a lot less pain than I was back then, for which I’m tremendously grateful. But I realize that my particular trajectory was unusual, and I also have no idea what lies ahead for me.

Hawkins #3 is “looking old.” At forty I looked very young, not much different than I had at twenty. I noticed that most people my age looked pretty young, too. I continued to look very young at fifty, and that wasn’t so unusual either. But somewhere along the line—although fortunately how old I look hasn’t caught up with my real age—I started looking considerably older. It may not be so apparent in the carefully-chosen photo for this blog (and that apple comes in handy to hide this and that), but in real life I don’t look twenty anymore. I probably don’t even look fifty anymore. However, I’m not too upset about that aspect of things, for whatever reason, although I completely understand people who are.

Number four for Hawkins is “Achieving your dreams and NOT achieving your dreams.” Hmmm. That’s a hard one for me. The biggest dreams I achieved are having a child (I had some fertility problems, so it wasn’t all that easy) and becoming a writer. But there are a lot of unfufilled ones that may never be achieved, and I still struggle with that. One of them involves the end of my marriage, which I never wanted to happen but which unfortunately was absolutely necessary. So that 50th wedding anniversary ain’t gonna happen.

Number 5, “dwindling excitement,” I don’t quite see as that big a deal (I can’t get all the excited about it), although I acknowledge it as a general trend. But I can still get pretty darn excited about some random things, such as seeing my son (who lives far away) or going to a favorite play or ballet (something that happens less often these days), or viewing some wonderful sight of nature or art. And I’m pretty sure I’d be mega-excited if I ever became a grandparent.

So maybe my list isn’t all that different from that of the 40-something Hawkins, except for that #5. Instead of “dwindling excitement” I might say something like “the shadow of the valley of the shadow of death,” although I don’t want to be too morbid. But how can one avoid the realization that, although none of us knows how long we have left, the older we are the more we know that the number of remaining days is diminishing?

I mentioned Ecclesiastes here. So I think I’ll close with a passage from it:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

The gender wage gap

The New Neo Posted on by

A new study underlines what many of us already knew:

The report was compiled by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and titled “Still A Man’s Labor Market,” because of course. The Atlantic article about the report tries to keep the sexism argument alive, but acknowledges six paragraphs in that the earnings gap is entirely due to women making different choices in their lives than men, and not a “wage” gap from discrimination:

“Comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges, women earn close to what men earn: Women in similar workplaces with similar titles and similar credentials make pretty much what their male peers do, whether they are fast-food employees making close to the minimum wage or corporate executives making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”

Once upon a time, long long ago, the slogan was “Equal pay for equal work.” Sounds reasonable, is reasonable, and at the time most women thought that was the goal. But activist leftist feminists have never had that goal, just as the left generally has bigger fish to fry than it lets on to the public.

So now it’s something like, “Equal pay for whatever work we happen to be doing.” So if the so-called wage gap is a de facto one based on the fact that some women take more time off for various family and personal reasons, and therefore that lowers the amount they earn, we’re supposed to be all angry about that as though some dreadful injustice has occurred despite the fact that there is no de jure gender-based wage gap at all.

It is very similar to the old “equality of opportunity” (the conservative point of view, although it was once also the liberal point of view) versus “equality of outcome” (the current leftist/liberal point of view, because leftist and liberal have increasingly fused).

The American public has been slowly, and then recently more quickly, moving to the latter goal from the former one: outcome vs. mere opportunity. How did this happen? It helps to have had the message delivered by a combination of the educational system plus the constant pounding of the media and the left, so that more and more people consider the first—equality of opportunity—to be racist and/or sexist and/or whatever “ist” happens to be the target du jour, and therefore unacceptable.

It also helps that most people do not understand research and statistics. That’s not so surprising, because both things are somewhat technical and require a certain amount of logic and mathematical sophistication, although one doesn’t have to understand the finer points of statistics at the graduate level to understand the basics. But since the basics also seem to be beyond the grasp of many people, most people are going to rely on interpreters of research—for example, articles in the MSM—to elucidate matters. And since the MSM has its own agenda, and that agenda is political rather than an objective reporting on the facts, way too many readers are going to assume that the MSM’s summary of the meaning of a research finding is reliable.

In other words, propaganda works, and the less a person knows about the actual subject matter, the more likely the propaganda will work for that person.