Our hyperdrive to demonize The Other in terms of education and class is the iceberg into which the Titanic is being steered.
True merit--knowing how to do things, deal with all kinds of people and situations, and the wisdom to know when and when not to do them--is a worthy goal in life. But college degrees and credentials have little to…
Our hyperdrive to demonize The Other in terms of education and class is the iceberg into which the Titanic is being steered.
True merit--knowing how to do things, deal with all kinds of people and situations, and the wisdom to know when and when not to do them--is a worthy goal in life. But college degrees and credentials have little to do with that kind of merit, as reflected on our generally piss-poor Governing and Chattering Class.
WOW - could not agree more. Literally the very thing I write about and am passionate about. I am uneducated, but often "fool" people because I carry myself in a way that seems educated. I am autodidactic. Though I am not formally educated, I love to learn. And I use my learning to try to be the best human I can possibly be. It's as simple as treating others with dignity and empathy.
You just can't put it on your resume. But look at colleges and see many are putting their first year students are being taught High School classes in an attempt to bring them up to speed and that's not working either.
Look at DACA the Best of the Best - 6% College Graduation Rate and look at the Billions spent on them in grants in attempt to make a point which alludes me.
Well, you CAN put it on your resume... in the positions you have held and more importantly -the responsibilities you have managed.
It's all in presenting the self-taught skills and disciplines in a way that showcases "what you can offer" for their investment in you.
FWIW, autodidacts tend to have varied and interesting resumes -to the unhip it may appear scattered. To someone who has a fully functioning brain it appears as "a pile of the things we like in an employee".
Steer clear of jobs where the interviewer says, "Wow, you're all over the place... I see a lot of jumping around." -That's a hallmark sign of someone who stays in their rut and doesn't bother with critical thinking or innovation, or personal growth, or ingenuity.
That means that the person interviewing you is an average dimwit -and if a company has THAT person hiring they're lacking solid leadership. They're into mediocrity.
HR Departments, in my opinion, are very weird places. Back in the dark ages I had interviewed at Little Caesars to fix pizza ovens, something I could have done in my sleep. Interviews went well. Finally there were only 2 of us left under consideration. That's when they handed me a thick psychological evaluation questionnaire. As I'm reading this I'm thinking, "This is so I can fix pizza ovens?" Halfway through I came to this lovely question, "What amount do you think is permissible to steal from your employer? a. $50, b. $500, c. $5,000. No zero though.
I spent the rest of my allotted test taking time drawing a nice big, block capitol, fully shaded FUCK YOUR DIPSHIT JOB on that page. Then I handed it in, smiled politely & told them to have a nice day. Needless to say I didn't get the job.
For some reason it all reminded me of a "test" I had to take in Religion class during my senior year at my Catholic high school. One of the stranger questions said, "When you come home from work and your wife doesn't have your dinner ready do you,
a. to c. some kind of punishment,
d. nothing because you don't care.
I checked d because I couldn't see myself caring. The next day our guidance counselor made me stay after school for a 15 minute lecture about how "I should be very careful who I marry." During his "counseling" all I could think was, "Geez teach, I can't even get a date and you're telling me to worry about who I marry. Are you nuts?"
Actually it turned out he was nuts. About 3 years after I graduated I saw in the local newspaper that our guidance counselor was arrested for arson.
That was about the time I was beginning to realize that the shit coming out of people's mouths doesn't always resemble the shit that's in their heads. And yes, I was a bit slow on the up take.
That sums up the world in a nutshell. I have retreated from it as far as I can, but sadly it’s never far enough.
I’m reminded of one of the more famous crop circles from the 1990s — some group of researchers claimed to translate it from it’s obscure encoding, which may have been an ancient language. They claim it said “There’s good out there.” IIRC.
One never knows with these things. It could be a few bored physicists with sticks and rope or something too strange for most people to ever believe. The problem is that good is often obtained only through a form of arduous spiritual mining or else you happen upon it as an accident of very good luck.
Either way, if you’re human the odds are against you. And if you aren’t humane, then God is against you.
It makes it hard, but then, if it was too easy we wouldn’t understand any of it, would we?
All these tricks the universe plays — education, class, caste, tribe, nation, party. Mostly the tricks work. They needed 9 circles of hell for Dante’s Inferno, and that was in 1320 A.D.. There must be 900 by now.
You could always take the gnostic view that the god of this world is an evil demiurge. Or that God, something I don't personally have much belief in, just has a malicious sense of humor and likes to occasionally pin a big KICK ME sign to humanities back.
If you want to go to the woo side of life there's the theory that the A-bomb tests opened up a dimensional doorway and something nasty crawled through. David Lynch played with that idea in his Twin Peaks reboot.
I just like to think that it is all one hell of a ride.
You are correct They have very little education and are re arranging our schools to meet their needs while dragging the entire system into the 3rd world. They have NO skill sets and their incomes are $ 17,000 income before graduation and $30,000 after. ARE YOU CALLING THIS A GOOD JOB?
We are still subsidizing the original 70,000,000 Latinos who came here costing MINUS -$546,850,650,400 A YEAR to subsidize not counting Earned Income Credits and WELAFRE:
Legal Latino Households with 2.6 children earn $54,000 income average pays Federal & state income taxes of $9,608.
It costs $12,600 a year to educate 1 child X 2.6 = $32,760 a year.
( For KP-13 = $425,880)
$3,000 Child Credits per child =$7,800 (Not counting $300 a month Biden welfare.)
$32,760 + $7,800 = $40,560 and only pay $9,608 – Taxes = - $30,952
-$40,560 X There are actually 17,667,700 Latino households X $40,560 (Just education & Child Credits) = $716,601,912,000 dollars a year to sustain not counting WELFARE. MINUS $169,751,261,600 Taxes = -$546,850,650,400
They have reached their ultimate performance level.
You want to add dumber to that. DACA was judged deported by an immigration court because they would become Public Charges which has happened to the Majority of Latinos. They shouldn't even have Green Cards as they are Unauthorized in the process of deportation.
I read your comment and am taking your citations at face value. As I read it I wondered how quickly you'd be hit w/ad hominum attacks as opposed to countering your argument. Didn't take long, did it?
You don't have to take them at face value. I provided addresses to the information and it was just Child Credits and education alone.
e,pierce follows me just to make personal comments because he has nothing else. Everyone just ignores him he adds so little to the discussion.
What people fail to see is that we are standing on the precarious precipice of Communism and it's winning as people were moved by the millions from working to food stamps, housing, qualifying for Welfare and realizing that education is no longer necessary if the government is going to provide.
Hamilton started this fall from freedom. He and banks and lawyers wanted the government to run everything which they saw as THEMSELVES.
lovely theory. in the real world, the fact is that credentialed education has been monetized and, in the process, has been deliberately made preëminent whenever and wherever the circumstances favor that-- which means, practically speaking, wherever those with power and influence can make this the de facto course.
of course there are and shall always be autodidacts. I'm an example. I'm also an example of how far short such a status falls in so many realms.
We want a great many professions certified for good reason-- pilots, medical doctors, engineers, people who exercise police authority, chemists and many others are only a few of the many kinds of people who should have to pass certification and obtain standard licenses to practice.
the trends are very emphatically in the direction of greater, not less, certification, or "credentialism" on steroids.
I _am_ formally educated--that, indeed, is how I developed my abiding skepticism of so many credentialed "experts" in many a field of inquiry, of study.
the area of study to which I'm now most devoted and have the longest sustained interest and intellectual investment is one of these which excludes the self-taught. It's for all practical intents and purposes a field of academic study which is in all respects very like a union's "closed-shop" system and it has suffered for this in the insanely insular character of those who are its Mandarins--fools who live in sublime complacency and have at their mercy poor, unsuspecting beginners who, knowing little, trust too much and take for granted what they're told--one of the academic world's greatest and longest-running intellectual frauds upon the trusting student. But it endures because it is so thoroughly and single-mindedly protected by the intitiated.
Unfortunately I have met many “educated” people who stopped learning at 22. I applaud your thirst for knowledge. I would take an autodidact over a college education any day!! Or as my beloved Twain purportedly said, “I never let my education get in the way of my learning”
I remember The Live at the Filmore East Album and there is a TV commercial for a product I cannot recall but Happy Together brings back memories of the Turtles Flo and Eddie and of course Suzie Creamcheese.
I’m the same and I get crapped on by my over-credentialed family who insist I should’ve gone to college despite me out-earning all of them in a blue collar trade. I notice many college grads love their self-imposed intellectual silos.
I'd hazard a guess that it's not about money and that they think some of your views might be moderated by higher education, and maybe you'd be easier to be around. I'm pretty sure my mother in law would be less of a hippy wackjob if she went to college, for example, provided she studied something real, like biology.
Correct. It was once intended to teach *all views, and then allow the students, via examination with logic and critical thinking (also thin on the College "menu" these days) to determine for themselves *which of the "views" under study had most value to themselves.
The purpose of college, insofar as it still has one, is for personal growth and expansion. Ideally, a well-rounded College education also has nothing *specifically to do with getting a job either, but those days are long gone. There is no longer any such thing as a Wide Ranging College education.
I know a young lady, first in her family to have graduated from College. She was justifiably proud of herself and insisted upon showing me her College grade transcripts. Her Degree was in Microbiology. Her entire curricula was hard sciences, in which she did very well. But, zero literature, zero philosophy, zero Western Civ, zero Eastern Sources, zero Anthropology and the so called "soft" sciences, which teaches one how Microbiology fits *into the world we inhabit, and why.
Sadly, what the young lady had, was a Trade School education in Hard Sciences, at College Degree prices. Neither she, nor any of her classmates, were getting what they were paying for ...... a College Education.
The College Education once focused upon well-rounded discovery of
what *is out there in the world that one might further pursue, potentially as a life calling. It once had less than nothing to do with improving one's propaganda skills, or salesman-like arts of persuasion except in classes like Rhetoric for orators and politicians, which is also no longer part of a Trade School degree posing as a College Education.
Now, a "degree" results from a full four years of doing nothing but "teaching to the test".
College should be about learning to think. Critically. STEM curricula is turning out students with narrowed world views who are more concerned with wealth attainment than attaining a healthy experience of themselves and the world at large.
When Buckley and Kirk founded American Conservatism the first commandment from their Ministry of Truth in the National Review building was Newspeak, Newspeak, Newspeak. Turning Spinoza and Burke into conservatives was no easy feat.
Agreed. I can't say for certain when it began to change, but when I matriculated in the late 80's it was going on. I've always been anti-establishment/authority, so didn't tow the line of counselors in order to claim a sheepskin with specific classes in a specific order, and instead took those courses that interested me, from philosophy to microbiology.
My late saint of a father, to his great credit, humored me in that regard by paying for most of them, despite having been on the receiving end of much of my rebellious nature during that time.
I enjoy reading much of what you write about your time on P-3s hunting subs from Japan, as my father's time there was contemporaneous, having been a flight engineer on the same birds.
Truly wish he were still around (not only) to ask if he recalls an Irishman meeting your self descriptions on these pages.
My father was out of Norfolk at that time, and didn't talk much about it, but I recall tales of sub hunting and time in Japan, while my poor mother was changing this dude's diapers!
There were reasons to keep a "cap" on chatter during the war itself. We were all under Secret and Top Secret Clearances due to the weapons we flew, and the Secret Logistics involved in re: The Russian Subs. We were in the odd position of fighting both the Cold War and the "hot war" (really very little of fighting, more surveillance and intel gathering in both.)
A man *really wants to keep his family in the dark regarding ops, bcuz the less they know, the less there is that can ever be "extracted" out of them.
It often (not always) can prevent people from holding extreme views. Another example: if you take even the intro macroeconomics course, you're going to be far less likely to subsequently adopt the view that there's some sort of international banking conspiracy, because you understand the basics of how banking works. Fields which seem to churn out marxists are another matter of course.
Not to worry. This world is full of highly educated derelicts. I too pursue post-institutional education endeavors. My hobby. DO NOT go to our higher education system for knowledge: They've forgotten that their job was to INFORM; not persuade. Wrong goal.
That is what I hear, yes. I was lucky enough go to College during the '70s before the entire meaning and structure when to hell converting to an indoctrination center.
Well said but the merits of autodidactism (sp) can be overrated. The rigor needed to be truly educated usually comes with guidance and incentives to bolster that knowledge with adjacent studies that might not seem to be relevant at first glance. I would say in some way we are suffering tyranny of googol autodidacts right now who think they know everything because they can look it up. Their knowledge is superficial at beat. On the other hand, we have real medical experts now who are imposing decisions that have real life and death impacts in economic terms but can’t be bothered to lower themselves to consider such middle brow issues
I am 100% in support of education and applaud those who had the grit to earn one. I too am weary of google readers who see a headline and tell you they “did their research.” I now read research papers regularly for my career, which I am self taught in too. I can tell you that reading research is insanely difficult and even an educated person will find it challenging to understand. Doesn’t mean an education is worthless though! I had amazing mentors and teachers who provided me a private informal “education.” Educated or not, you have to WANT to learn. when you are a learner, then you can understand the subjects and speak to them. A learner (educated or not) is far more trustworthy because they will not just Google read and skim everything. They will actually read research and try to understand it, because they seek knowledge, wisdom, and truth. I think the mentality is the main difference
Precisely SO ! We are all arguing "apples and oranges" ! Not one statement we make will apply to ALL schools, and to ALL students ! It depends upon the school, and it depends upon the student. A student that just sits down with that kind of passive attitude, will not do as well as the student who realizes that it on *us to make our College experience *matter in our lives ! The College has the libraries. The College has the labs. The College has the instructors, and the College once had the exposure to the "free flow of ideas". If one avails themselves of ALL of these things, organizes and steers one's *own experience, College makes up the box of *Tools ! This is the active approach to Education, as opposed to the "o.k. I found the right chair in the correct classroom - make me a genius - *passive approach.
"It's as simple as treating others with dignity and empathy."
Yes, it really is that simple. I know lefties who fall all over themselves talking about how much they CARE, and in the next sentence will make a scathing remark about someone they perceive to be lower on the social status totem pole. My lefty sister simply cannot have a conversation about any political issue without devolving to FUCK YOU! within about 30 seconds. But they CARE...
There is a massive element of mental illness in their thought process. It's one of destruction of anything that counters their view. They are a closed system and have not learned centuries old lessons. Hubris meet Nemesis.
I am highly educated but view most highly educated folks as boring and elitist and I usually don't trust them much. I believe the common person is wiser than most highly educated folks.
I am now visually compromised but fifteen years ago we taught our then commerce student the whys and wherefores of indoor plumbing and I still trust trust him with indoor plumbing. When we moved from Montreal to a more rural environment we needed a plumber with more math and education to fix our external plumbing and needed a real plumber with the education to understand the angles needed for drainage to keep the water out of our basement. Plumbers need math and science in 2021 and that is why our plumbers now require a post secondary education.
In the words of my 18 year old self. Don't trust plumbers over 30.
Education now is a lifelong commitment and America elects lawyers and politicians who think they learned all they needed to learn at 25 and America is headed down the toilet. I am 73 and and worry I will never learn what I need to learn today never mind a decade from now.
The conservative mindset will destroy us all.
I started working on computers 55 years ago and know my education makes me as useless as prehensile tail for our great ape species in keeping up with the technological universe.
I'm willing to bet a loonie against a timbit that you're self employed. I say this b/c my experience w/ corporate hiring for the higher wage jobs have educational requirements at the top of their want ads, and for internal promotions.
I am autistic and was diagnosed as lazy because I could not perform academically and was blessed with a PhD vocabulary and a genius at logic.
I married a very wise and wonderful woman who taught me to love myself. Only in Canada do we bet timbits and loonies so I will raise you a poutine that Joel speaks from truth not manufactured consent.
Fair question. Never been self employed. I work hard and make six figures, live quite comfortably in California. Single income family of five. Not bad for an uneducated goof ball :)
Don’t know what a timbit is but assume you are right about corporate jobs but there is plenty of room for thenuncredentialed at midsize private business. $30 to 100 million to do quite well. In fact quote often they are the backbones of those companies. Having run a few of those I know. They don’t fit in well with the corporate profile but have strong skills. Though believe me they do present a mangement challenge
I manage these companies, usually for Private Equity who acquired them from the Founder and work through the transition. And you are right as the people I describe are often very intelligent and black belt level at their field of expertise but are lacking in other basic skills that would make them valuable at a larger entity. It goes to my point that autodidacts often do not take into account supporting and adjacent knowledge that might not appear to apply to their specialty but is necessary for them to succeed beyond their area of expertise.
Timbits are donut holes. Canada needs about 350,000 new Canadians each and every year for a generation. Because we are a US Colony they dictate how we get immigrants. We will take all the Hondurans, Guatemalan, El Salvadorans and Haitian refugees if we can get them landed in Canada.
Every business and industry where I live has a we are hiring sign out. They are building everywhere and we need workers and their families for our economy that is running according to plan. The only thing that didn't go according to plan is that Covid left us 400,000 people short of our two year target for new Canadians.
Abolish the colleges, I say. Expensive ways of getting a bad education but they are good for maintaining and enhancing unwarranted class divisions. How many well-educated morons and incompetents have I known?
Have you taken a college exam in the field you're studying and passed? Or perhaps quite a few of them given the typical field of study requires many exams. If not, you're probably just deceiving yourself.
Good grief, I know and work with plenty of people that passed their college exams, and are thus credentialed that are truly imbeciles. If you made this statement 30 to 40 years ago it would be accurate, not today.
Bullseye ! Yes. And, even back then, it surprised me to find that less than 2% of College Graduates actually ended up *working in the same field for which they took their major. Simply reflecting the fact that, when you are *not going to a "Trade School" it is the experience of broad-reaching exposure to education that has the value.
As you say, whether or not your (or my) self image is accurate or the product of self-deception probably doesn't matter much. This fear can be excellent motivation keeping us learning and reading on a wide range of topics. I have an engineering degree, but my exposure in school to other topics was minimal. 30 years out of grad school, I still oscillate between feelings of inadequacy due to my utter lack of formal education in regard to art, literature, history, etc. and the belief that, having read widely and continuously on these topics, I may perhaps be drawing even with the more formally educated. In any case, the process is enjoyable. And, if the skills developed help with better navigating personally and professionally and understanding more clearly what is the right thing to do, so much the better. What is the downside?
My experience at University was largely the teach to test method of indoctrination. True learning is self-motivated inquiry. I applaud lifelong learners, they are the unsung heroes who help to sustain the intellectual and moral fabric of society.
Shades of my favorite autodidact (and iconoclast):
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
I’m not a survivalist either, but I’m going to be using and learning more so called blue collar skill so that I can take better care of my family as things get worse.
I’d love to learn more about your writing and filmmaking. are you writing on substack?
This reminds me of something I read about Qanon. People with Ph.Ds tend to be the most likely to believe this stuff while right down the line people with less education tend to be more skeptical.
Also, while people with 4 years of college tend to be the most likely to get Covid vaccines, among the least likely are -- guess -- people with Ph.Ds.
Finally, one study demonstrated that when people with different levels of education are presented a problem and produce a wrong answer, Ph.D holders tend by far to be the most resistant to changing their conclusion when presented with proof that they erred.
Well, of course; education equals indoctrination, the more education, the more indoctrination until you actually believe despite all evidence to the contrary that what you do is important...not.
I suspect that most competent plumbers today have a significant amount of post high school training and very few dropped out of high school at 16. Plumbing is not as easy as it looks.
Plumbing is useful work and saves a lot more lives than the medical industrial complex and infinitely more than Wall Street and the legal and accounting rackets, let alone, the War racket.
But what about post-modern critical theory? Sure he may be a competent plumber, but he's still a cultural barbarian. Probably even thinks there are only two genders because he fits male to female couplings.
You do make a wonderful point that I suspect escapes the notice of those unacquainted with real labor (and the truth is, very few of us labor for a living). Unlike the Marxist conceits taught in universities, labor has great variability - particularly in terms of skilled labor.
Even Lasch, being a former leftie, is overly fond of the labor theory of value. LTV is a powerful rhetorical device; sadly, it is useless as an analytical tool.
"[C]ollege degrees and credentials have little to do with that kind of merit [knowledge, wisdom, etc.]"
But it's worse than that. "Education and class" is a proxy for intelligence among the elite ... but nearly *all* in our society look down, morally, on those of low (analytical, social, etc.) intelligence.
Intelligence, like many other human characteristics, is largely immutable. Our continuing to treat it as a *moral* attribute, as some kind of "bad choice" that can be truly be overcome by effort -- now THAT'S a problem.
I'd say the educational level of the Taliban, who kicked our asses, is considerably below that of the best and brightest of the US elite, whether political, military or those in the surveillance or weapons industries, and they did it at a fraction of the cost, though with admittedly far smaller profits for the select few on our side.
As a Taliban official told an American one, "You had all the clocks, we had all the time."
No kidding. It perfectly captured both the reality of the war and our naive belief that technology is the answer to all things. Maybe 10 years ago, I saw a magazine, maybe Popular Mechanics, that said we had invented a new weapon, one that could shoot shoot around corners in close combat, that would win the war.
The fact is, we chose a war we couldn't win, one against an indigenous population, where we couldn't readily identify the enemy, instead of one we couldn't lose; killing bin Laden, crippling AQ and leaving. From Oct. 7, 2001, to the end of that year, when bin Laden was already gone, we had 12 deaths. Had we gone after him in Tora Bora, our deaths would likely have been no more than 100, but we let him go. While I can't prove it, I wouldn't be surprised Bush did it on purpose just to have a bogeyman. In any event, everyone who died after early 2002 at the latest, died a pointless death, and no one will ever be held accountable.
GREAT comment ! Yes. As a bombardier during Vietnam, I had to be "checked out" on all the "spiffy" new weapons. We had, at that time, a rocket that may have been the inspiration for the weapons to which you refer with the ability to go around corners. No need to remind *you that "Charlie" lived and based themselves out of incredibly sophisticated tunnel systems, at least in the South. The military created us a rocket that, no kidding, could fly into caves (in the rare cases that caves actually formed the entrance into the tunnels.) The rockets could follow the contours of the tunnel curvature, without ever hitting the walls on either side, or the ceilings and floors above and below. The rockets would proceed into the tunnels until they detected concentrations of human urine that indicated enemy bathrooms (the Head), at which point they would explode.
SO, the enemy, rather than spending Pentagon style money to *combat these highly sophisticated weapons, simply started pissing into buckets,
and hanging the buckets in the trees *outside the entrance to their cave compounds !
So, we had *both the technology to *build such weapons, and the abject ignorance to use such weapons in THAT kind of an application ! ;-D
The VC and the NVA did not lose all the battles/firefights; most, but not all. It was typical practice to report enemy losses as always greater than any we suffered. The 173rd Airborne got their asses thoroughly chewed up early in the war and simply covered it up by lying even more than usual about the number they killed. Besides, a metric that considers deaths as significant in such wars is irrelevant, as it presumes that their capacity to accept deaths, in their own country, is not greater than a force fighting 8,000 miles from their nation. They live there; we do not, eventually that is the deciding factor, lacking a government we support that has little support among the populace, as was the case in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Never believe anything you hear from the military, never. They know full well that a man dressed in a uniform, covered in pretty colored ribbons, most of which are glorified Boy Scout badges, and with stars on his shoulders, is given nearly free rein to tell one whopper after another.
I'd hope the latest fiasco in Afghanistan, one which exposed nearly 20 years of utter BS, should break our habit of believing these professional liars.
I just read as the Russian revolution was firing up the Tsar was worried about the quality of epaulettes. Don't you think all governments do this in wars? Give free reign to the fellows with the best outfit?
When your "measure" for how well the war is going is body count, you KNOW you did not go into Vietnam with any *actual goal. You cannot measure your success relative to a goal, when there IS no goal (that you can reveal to the public).
I share that last sentiment, but fear it wont happen. Look at the extraordinary efforts underway to prop up these fuck ups, putting them on TV as experts. Whether it's disgraced former generals or neocons, we were treated to an orgy of their "expert analysis" recently. Maybe it's a last gasp of a dying elite sort of thing, but these monsters have a way of hanging on.
I'm quite certain your first paragraph is correct; the addiction to no cost militarism of putting all the real cost on a small segment of the society and their families, while the rest of us go shopping with our tax cuts, seems to be a winning formula for endless war, even as that policy is equally effective at destroying this nation from within by pursuing policies that promote the empire as it neglects the nation.
Right now, the world is down to two significant nations; us and the PRC, and of the two, theirs has by far the more clear thinking and long term planning leadership, while we continue seeing the world as one we can somehow control with a military that has won but one war since WWII, that being Gulf War I where we faced a third rate military, ensconced in static positions in open desert, with no air cover, just waiting to be annihilated. Remarkably, professional military men thought that this had been proof that we had solved the mystery of war.
Now that is a scary fucking thought, one that maybe combat virgin politicians should feel, but not professional military men.
If you look at a globe of the world, two things stand out immediately; the Eurasian continent, home of most of the world's largest economies, is the dominant landmass, and is actually connected to resource rich Africa, while the American continents are basically remote and isolated. These geographical facts, with the PRC on the important land mass and using that as the underpinning of their BRI, and the US on the least important one and foolishly playing its military game of garrisoning the world and trying to counter the PRC with it, while the PRC leaders quietly go about their economic expansion both at home and abroad, make the outcome all but certain; a bipolar world, if we can accept it, but one where the Chinese are first among equals.
I don't see how it ends any other way, unless we start a war with them out of pique.
At some point, I'd like to have it dawn on our elites, that while the PRC economic growth was likely to happen anyway, that their short term policy of opening up trade with the PRC, of granting them PNTR, all to really just boost short term profits for US based multinationals, but in the name of greater friendship between us and the PRC, was largely responsible for this passing of the torch. How I'd love to see someone from our media pose this question to our elites, but they'd probably think it would be rude to do so, and besides, they'd then lose all access to all the serious people in D.C.
I was dumb enough to have served there, so for the last nearly 20 years I was simply waiting for what I knew was going to happen. Somehow, our glorious elites managed a bigger cluster fuck than they achieved in what Kenny Rogers sang about in "that old crazy Asian war."
You were not dumb. Many people were drafted or believed the govt. Anti-War protest were because of the draft, not because of principles. College exempted.
No, I was dumb, but I took my stupidity and learned my lesson, so not all was lost. As for the anti war protests being only anti draft and not principled, you're simply wrong. Making a flat statement like that is just an effort to deny the rightness of the anti war crowd, just as we were about these last 20 years, where thousands died and trillions were borrowed and spent on wars not in the national interest and foisted on us largely by people who, if they were old enough, dodged the draft for a war, Vietnam, that they supported. Of course, some of them, as Dick Cheney said, had other priorities, those priorities being themselves, as per usual for narcissists.
Though there was much intellectualizing I knew many whose inspiration came from the looming draft. Would like to think it was otherwise, but why no major protests against war since? There weren't but half a dozen of us outside the gates of CENTCOM in 2001. My husband, a drafted member of UBC (who has died from AO) was asked by a professor why he was too stupid to go to college and avoid it? I think a lot who who used deferments later said they were principled. Of course there is always Senator Blumenthal to confuse things by saying he was in country when he was not.
Obviously the draft was a part of the anti war movement which is why our endless war elite duopoly ended it, but it's an overstatement to say all were there solely because of the draft; women, not subjected to the draft, veterans of the war, clergy, and older people were protesting the war also.
Everyone who died in Vietnam did so for no good reason, for the false narrative about a global communist expansion, all led by Moscow and simply refused to understand that nationalism was always a far bigger attraction than global communism. Today, Americans can go to Vietnam as tourists, work there, be seen house hunting on HGTV, and buy products there even though we "lost". How would "winning" have made things any different? The country is still a totalitarian one party state, with a mix of private and state operated business, much like the PRC.
While I disagree with his conclusions, H. R. McMaster exposed the rot in Vietnam with his book "Dereliction of Duty" where officials acknowledged as early as 1965 the war could not be won and quoted one US politician or general, I forget which, who said after the war was over that it wasn't a total loss because we showed the Communists we were willing to lose 58,000 in a worthless backwater like Vietnam so it would give them pause about attacking in some strategically important part of the world. Needless to say, such a comment was no surprise to me, nor should it have been to anyone who was in actual combat and kept their eyes and mind open to reality.
The important point in Vietnam and the wars of the last 20 years, none of which, other than a brief foray into Afghanistan to kill bin Laden and cripple AQ, were in the national interest, is for Americans to reject the false narrative of militarism and concentrate on the real challenge, which is the economic contest between us and the PRC, and one which we are losing, in large part to our addiction to global military supremacy, a goal that is unworthy and unachievable.
"Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." Professor to the Scarecrow, from the "Wizard of Oz" (1939)
Depressing as well as fully *appalling ! To think that someone, either the students or the parents, are paying TOP DOLLAR to "educate" people who cannot locate Canada on an unmarked map of North American following
"graduation" is simply harrowing. These are our leaders of tomorrow !
But cheer up, even the Ivies are "dumping" the requirement for SATs before college entry. Now, your smart kids lose out waiting on the dummies, and the overall level of education drops for the *same reason !
And keeps loan servicers flush w $$$$$ which in turn lobbies the gov to put more money into student loan programs which enables universities to hike tuition which requires borrowing more $$$
Our hyperdrive to demonize The Other in terms of education and class is the iceberg into which the Titanic is being steered.
True merit--knowing how to do things, deal with all kinds of people and situations, and the wisdom to know when and when not to do them--is a worthy goal in life. But college degrees and credentials have little to do with that kind of merit, as reflected on our generally piss-poor Governing and Chattering Class.
WOW - could not agree more. Literally the very thing I write about and am passionate about. I am uneducated, but often "fool" people because I carry myself in a way that seems educated. I am autodidactic. Though I am not formally educated, I love to learn. And I use my learning to try to be the best human I can possibly be. It's as simple as treating others with dignity and empathy.
If you are an autodidact with people skills you are far from uneducated. Self education is education.
Thank you for saying that!
@Joel
From one of the Country's most beloved autodidacts with a grade school education:
" I have never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education."
~ Mark Twain
Wonderful :)
You just can't put it on your resume. But look at colleges and see many are putting their first year students are being taught High School classes in an attempt to bring them up to speed and that's not working either.
Look at DACA the Best of the Best - 6% College Graduation Rate and look at the Billions spent on them in grants in attempt to make a point which alludes me.
Well, you CAN put it on your resume... in the positions you have held and more importantly -the responsibilities you have managed.
It's all in presenting the self-taught skills and disciplines in a way that showcases "what you can offer" for their investment in you.
FWIW, autodidacts tend to have varied and interesting resumes -to the unhip it may appear scattered. To someone who has a fully functioning brain it appears as "a pile of the things we like in an employee".
Steer clear of jobs where the interviewer says, "Wow, you're all over the place... I see a lot of jumping around." -That's a hallmark sign of someone who stays in their rut and doesn't bother with critical thinking or innovation, or personal growth, or ingenuity.
That means that the person interviewing you is an average dimwit -and if a company has THAT person hiring they're lacking solid leadership. They're into mediocrity.
HR Departments, in my opinion, are very weird places. Back in the dark ages I had interviewed at Little Caesars to fix pizza ovens, something I could have done in my sleep. Interviews went well. Finally there were only 2 of us left under consideration. That's when they handed me a thick psychological evaluation questionnaire. As I'm reading this I'm thinking, "This is so I can fix pizza ovens?" Halfway through I came to this lovely question, "What amount do you think is permissible to steal from your employer? a. $50, b. $500, c. $5,000. No zero though.
I spent the rest of my allotted test taking time drawing a nice big, block capitol, fully shaded FUCK YOUR DIPSHIT JOB on that page. Then I handed it in, smiled politely & told them to have a nice day. Needless to say I didn't get the job.
For some reason it all reminded me of a "test" I had to take in Religion class during my senior year at my Catholic high school. One of the stranger questions said, "When you come home from work and your wife doesn't have your dinner ready do you,
a. to c. some kind of punishment,
d. nothing because you don't care.
I checked d because I couldn't see myself caring. The next day our guidance counselor made me stay after school for a 15 minute lecture about how "I should be very careful who I marry." During his "counseling" all I could think was, "Geez teach, I can't even get a date and you're telling me to worry about who I marry. Are you nuts?"
Actually it turned out he was nuts. About 3 years after I graduated I saw in the local newspaper that our guidance counselor was arrested for arson.
That was about the time I was beginning to realize that the shit coming out of people's mouths doesn't always resemble the shit that's in their heads. And yes, I was a bit slow on the up take.
That sums up the world in a nutshell. I have retreated from it as far as I can, but sadly it’s never far enough.
I’m reminded of one of the more famous crop circles from the 1990s — some group of researchers claimed to translate it from it’s obscure encoding, which may have been an ancient language. They claim it said “There’s good out there.” IIRC.
One never knows with these things. It could be a few bored physicists with sticks and rope or something too strange for most people to ever believe. The problem is that good is often obtained only through a form of arduous spiritual mining or else you happen upon it as an accident of very good luck.
Either way, if you’re human the odds are against you. And if you aren’t humane, then God is against you.
It makes it hard, but then, if it was too easy we wouldn’t understand any of it, would we?
All these tricks the universe plays — education, class, caste, tribe, nation, party. Mostly the tricks work. They needed 9 circles of hell for Dante’s Inferno, and that was in 1320 A.D.. There must be 900 by now.
You could always take the gnostic view that the god of this world is an evil demiurge. Or that God, something I don't personally have much belief in, just has a malicious sense of humor and likes to occasionally pin a big KICK ME sign to humanities back.
If you want to go to the woo side of life there's the theory that the A-bomb tests opened up a dimensional doorway and something nasty crawled through. David Lynch played with that idea in his Twin Peaks reboot.
I just like to think that it is all one hell of a ride.
I have just looked up current numbers (others out of date) and it's 12.5% have BA or higher DACA population. today.
You are correct They have very little education and are re arranging our schools to meet their needs while dragging the entire system into the 3rd world. They have NO skill sets and their incomes are $ 17,000 income before graduation and $30,000 after. ARE YOU CALLING THIS A GOOD JOB?
We are still subsidizing the original 70,000,000 Latinos who came here costing MINUS -$546,850,650,400 A YEAR to subsidize not counting Earned Income Credits and WELAFRE:
Legal Latino Households with 2.6 children earn $54,000 income average pays Federal & state income taxes of $9,608.
https://us.icalculator.info/salary-illustration/54000.html
It costs $12,600 a year to educate 1 child X 2.6 = $32,760 a year.
( For KP-13 = $425,880)
$3,000 Child Credits per child =$7,800 (Not counting $300 a month Biden welfare.)
$32,760 + $7,800 = $40,560 and only pay $9,608 – Taxes = - $30,952
-$40,560 X There are actually 17,667,700 Latino households X $40,560 (Just education & Child Credits) = $716,601,912,000 dollars a year to sustain not counting WELFARE. MINUS $169,751,261,600 Taxes = -$546,850,650,400
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families/households.html
The report’s principle finding is that fully 51% in 2015 (6 years ago) of immigrant households receive some form of welfare
https://www.amren.com/features/2015/10/welfare-whos-on-it-whos-not/
They have reached their ultimate performance level.
You want to add dumber to that. DACA was judged deported by an immigration court because they would become Public Charges which has happened to the Majority of Latinos. They shouldn't even have Green Cards as they are Unauthorized in the process of deportation.
I read your comment and am taking your citations at face value. As I read it I wondered how quickly you'd be hit w/ad hominum attacks as opposed to countering your argument. Didn't take long, did it?
And people wonder about the divides in America...
You don't have to take them at face value. I provided addresses to the information and it was just Child Credits and education alone.
e,pierce follows me just to make personal comments because he has nothing else. Everyone just ignores him he adds so little to the discussion.
What people fail to see is that we are standing on the precarious precipice of Communism and it's winning as people were moved by the millions from working to food stamps, housing, qualifying for Welfare and realizing that education is no longer necessary if the government is going to provide.
Hamilton started this fall from freedom. He and banks and lawyers wanted the government to run everything which they saw as THEMSELVES.
Bookkeepers live in a world of numbers. And this world looks financially unviable. Sorry about your mental deficit in MATH. Please don't pass it on.
lovely theory. in the real world, the fact is that credentialed education has been monetized and, in the process, has been deliberately made preëminent whenever and wherever the circumstances favor that-- which means, practically speaking, wherever those with power and influence can make this the de facto course.
of course there are and shall always be autodidacts. I'm an example. I'm also an example of how far short such a status falls in so many realms.
We want a great many professions certified for good reason-- pilots, medical doctors, engineers, people who exercise police authority, chemists and many others are only a few of the many kinds of people who should have to pass certification and obtain standard licenses to practice.
the trends are very emphatically in the direction of greater, not less, certification, or "credentialism" on steroids.
I _am_ formally educated--that, indeed, is how I developed my abiding skepticism of so many credentialed "experts" in many a field of inquiry, of study.
the area of study to which I'm now most devoted and have the longest sustained interest and intellectual investment is one of these which excludes the self-taught. It's for all practical intents and purposes a field of academic study which is in all respects very like a union's "closed-shop" system and it has suffered for this in the insanely insular character of those who are its Mandarins--fools who live in sublime complacency and have at their mercy poor, unsuspecting beginners who, knowing little, trust too much and take for granted what they're told--one of the academic world's greatest and longest-running intellectual frauds upon the trusting student. But it endures because it is so thoroughly and single-mindedly protected by the intitiated.
P.S.
Emerging Tech
( https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/social-credit-system/ )
We’re closer to China’s disturbing ‘Social Credit System’ than you realize
By Luke Dormehl
April 22, 2018
_______________________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taNCL5tXFPE
"We are building a religion, we are building it bigger
We are widening the corridors and adding more lanes
We are building a religion, a limited edition
We are now accepting callers for these pendant keychains
To resist it is useless, it is useless to resist it
His cigarette is burning, but he never seems to ash
He is grooming his poodle, he is living comfort eagle
You can meet at his location, but you'd better come with cash
[Chorus]
Now his hat is on backwards, he can show you his tattoos
He is in the music business, he is calling you, dude
______________
Cake
John McCrea – vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards, percussion
Vince DiFiore – trumpet, keyboards, backing vocals
Xan McCurdy – electric guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Gabriel Nelson – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Todd Roper – drums, percussion, Moog synthesizer, backing vocals
Tyler Pope – keyboard, electric guitar ("Opera Singer", "Short Skirt/Long Jacket", "Arco Arena")
Unfortunately I have met many “educated” people who stopped learning at 22. I applaud your thirst for knowledge. I would take an autodidact over a college education any day!! Or as my beloved Twain purportedly said, “I never let my education get in the way of my learning”
Frank Zappa said something like “Screw school-go to your library and do it yourself”.
Don't get me goin' on Zappa! Here's my fav... ’'Government is the entertainment wing of the military-industrial complex.’’
My favorite Zappa quote: "Tobacco is my favorite vegetable." I do miss him, but the music lives on.
Zappa was a provocateur and philosopher. Loved that man.
More Zappa quotes, please. Really brightens up the ‘stack.
“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” —Frank Zappa
I remember The Live at the Filmore East Album and there is a TV commercial for a product I cannot recall but Happy Together brings back memories of the Turtles Flo and Eddie and of course Suzie Creamcheese.
Not everyone is Will Hunting. Most will benefit greatly from an interactive education.
Eminently reasonable, sir! ... and I'll bet you never listened to the Mother's of Invention!
Now Elon sez the same thing.
Agreed... to quote Bullwinkle.... I attended "What's a Matter U"
I’m the same and I get crapped on by my over-credentialed family who insist I should’ve gone to college despite me out-earning all of them in a blue collar trade. I notice many college grads love their self-imposed intellectual silos.
I'd hazard a guess that it's not about money and that they think some of your views might be moderated by higher education, and maybe you'd be easier to be around. I'm pretty sure my mother in law would be less of a hippy wackjob if she went to college, for example, provided she studied something real, like biology.
I'm pretty sure the intent of college shouldn't be to moderate views.
But don't doubt that is what has happened over the past several decades.
@Notyours
Correct. It was once intended to teach *all views, and then allow the students, via examination with logic and critical thinking (also thin on the College "menu" these days) to determine for themselves *which of the "views" under study had most value to themselves.
The purpose of college, insofar as it still has one, is for personal growth and expansion. Ideally, a well-rounded College education also has nothing *specifically to do with getting a job either, but those days are long gone. There is no longer any such thing as a Wide Ranging College education.
I know a young lady, first in her family to have graduated from College. She was justifiably proud of herself and insisted upon showing me her College grade transcripts. Her Degree was in Microbiology. Her entire curricula was hard sciences, in which she did very well. But, zero literature, zero philosophy, zero Western Civ, zero Eastern Sources, zero Anthropology and the so called "soft" sciences, which teaches one how Microbiology fits *into the world we inhabit, and why.
Sadly, what the young lady had, was a Trade School education in Hard Sciences, at College Degree prices. Neither she, nor any of her classmates, were getting what they were paying for ...... a College Education.
The College Education once focused upon well-rounded discovery of
what *is out there in the world that one might further pursue, potentially as a life calling. It once had less than nothing to do with improving one's propaganda skills, or salesman-like arts of persuasion except in classes like Rhetoric for orators and politicians, which is also no longer part of a Trade School degree posing as a College Education.
Now, a "degree" results from a full four years of doing nothing but "teaching to the test".
College should be about learning to think. Critically. STEM curricula is turning out students with narrowed world views who are more concerned with wealth attainment than attaining a healthy experience of themselves and the world at large.
When Buckley and Kirk founded American Conservatism the first commandment from their Ministry of Truth in the National Review building was Newspeak, Newspeak, Newspeak. Turning Spinoza and Burke into conservatives was no easy feat.
@BATW
Absolutely SO ! Yes !
Agreed. I can't say for certain when it began to change, but when I matriculated in the late 80's it was going on. I've always been anti-establishment/authority, so didn't tow the line of counselors in order to claim a sheepskin with specific classes in a specific order, and instead took those courses that interested me, from philosophy to microbiology.
My late saint of a father, to his great credit, humored me in that regard by paying for most of them, despite having been on the receiving end of much of my rebellious nature during that time.
I enjoy reading much of what you write about your time on P-3s hunting subs from Japan, as my father's time there was contemporaneous, having been a flight engineer on the same birds.
Truly wish he were still around (not only) to ask if he recalls an Irishman meeting your self descriptions on these pages.
Cheers!
My father was out of Norfolk at that time, and didn't talk much about it, but I recall tales of sub hunting and time in Japan, while my poor mother was changing this dude's diapers!
There were reasons to keep a "cap" on chatter during the war itself. We were all under Secret and Top Secret Clearances due to the weapons we flew, and the Secret Logistics involved in re: The Russian Subs. We were in the odd position of fighting both the Cold War and the "hot war" (really very little of fighting, more surveillance and intel gathering in both.)
A man *really wants to keep his family in the dark regarding ops, bcuz the less they know, the less there is that can ever be "extracted" out of them.
It often (not always) can prevent people from holding extreme views. Another example: if you take even the intro macroeconomics course, you're going to be far less likely to subsequently adopt the view that there's some sort of international banking conspiracy, because you understand the basics of how banking works. Fields which seem to churn out marxists are another matter of course.
I would agree in theory - as long as all views, even "extreme" ones, are allowed to be aired and discussed. My concern is that they are not.
I call them Race War Profiteers.
I guess but I was told by an uncle I am not qualified to critique CRT as I never took postmodernism in college. .I’m just a reactionary
Higher ed has a lot of problems, but you're overstating it. Study engineering and you won't get much of the social justice madness.
Study engineering in red state maybe
That used to be the case, but sadly even hard sciences are being corrupted.
Being formally educated doesn't mean you're actually intelligent, but it does mean you 'drive the right car.'
If you want to see a parking lot that would make an NBA G league team jealous, check out the central administration lot at any big city district.
Lol, true
Not to worry. This world is full of highly educated derelicts. I too pursue post-institutional education endeavors. My hobby. DO NOT go to our higher education system for knowledge: They've forgotten that their job was to INFORM; not persuade. Wrong goal.
@Dan
That is what I hear, yes. I was lucky enough go to College during the '70s before the entire meaning and structure when to hell converting to an indoctrination center.
Well said but the merits of autodidactism (sp) can be overrated. The rigor needed to be truly educated usually comes with guidance and incentives to bolster that knowledge with adjacent studies that might not seem to be relevant at first glance. I would say in some way we are suffering tyranny of googol autodidacts right now who think they know everything because they can look it up. Their knowledge is superficial at beat. On the other hand, we have real medical experts now who are imposing decisions that have real life and death impacts in economic terms but can’t be bothered to lower themselves to consider such middle brow issues
Totally agree!!
I am 100% in support of education and applaud those who had the grit to earn one. I too am weary of google readers who see a headline and tell you they “did their research.” I now read research papers regularly for my career, which I am self taught in too. I can tell you that reading research is insanely difficult and even an educated person will find it challenging to understand. Doesn’t mean an education is worthless though! I had amazing mentors and teachers who provided me a private informal “education.” Educated or not, you have to WANT to learn. when you are a learner, then you can understand the subjects and speak to them. A learner (educated or not) is far more trustworthy because they will not just Google read and skim everything. They will actually read research and try to understand it, because they seek knowledge, wisdom, and truth. I think the mentality is the main difference
I would definitely agree that medical school/training is an exception to the benefits of autodidactism.
@Stxbuck
Precisely SO ! We are all arguing "apples and oranges" ! Not one statement we make will apply to ALL schools, and to ALL students ! It depends upon the school, and it depends upon the student. A student that just sits down with that kind of passive attitude, will not do as well as the student who realizes that it on *us to make our College experience *matter in our lives ! The College has the libraries. The College has the labs. The College has the instructors, and the College once had the exposure to the "free flow of ideas". If one avails themselves of ALL of these things, organizes and steers one's *own experience, College makes up the box of *Tools ! This is the active approach to Education, as opposed to the "o.k. I found the right chair in the correct classroom - make me a genius - *passive approach.
I think the merits of autodidacticism are underrated! There’s almost nothing you can learn in college that can’t be learned on your own.
Attaboy, brother. Keep on.
"It's as simple as treating others with dignity and empathy."
Yes, it really is that simple. I know lefties who fall all over themselves talking about how much they CARE, and in the next sentence will make a scathing remark about someone they perceive to be lower on the social status totem pole. My lefty sister simply cannot have a conversation about any political issue without devolving to FUCK YOU! within about 30 seconds. But they CARE...
There is a massive element of mental illness in their thought process. It's one of destruction of anything that counters their view. They are a closed system and have not learned centuries old lessons. Hubris meet Nemesis.
I am highly educated but view most highly educated folks as boring and elitist and I usually don't trust them much. I believe the common person is wiser than most highly educated folks.
Correction: You are not formally indoctrinated.
I am now visually compromised but fifteen years ago we taught our then commerce student the whys and wherefores of indoor plumbing and I still trust trust him with indoor plumbing. When we moved from Montreal to a more rural environment we needed a plumber with more math and education to fix our external plumbing and needed a real plumber with the education to understand the angles needed for drainage to keep the water out of our basement. Plumbers need math and science in 2021 and that is why our plumbers now require a post secondary education.
In the words of my 18 year old self. Don't trust plumbers over 30.
Education now is a lifelong commitment and America elects lawyers and politicians who think they learned all they needed to learn at 25 and America is headed down the toilet. I am 73 and and worry I will never learn what I need to learn today never mind a decade from now.
The conservative mindset will destroy us all.
I started working on computers 55 years ago and know my education makes me as useless as prehensile tail for our great ape species in keeping up with the technological universe.
I'm willing to bet a loonie against a timbit that you're self employed. I say this b/c my experience w/ corporate hiring for the higher wage jobs have educational requirements at the top of their want ads, and for internal promotions.
Hope you prove me rong, but I doubt it.
I am autistic and was diagnosed as lazy because I could not perform academically and was blessed with a PhD vocabulary and a genius at logic.
I married a very wise and wonderful woman who taught me to love myself. Only in Canada do we bet timbits and loonies so I will raise you a poutine that Joel speaks from truth not manufactured consent.
Fair question. Never been self employed. I work hard and make six figures, live quite comfortably in California. Single income family of five. Not bad for an uneducated goof ball :)
Don’t know what a timbit is but assume you are right about corporate jobs but there is plenty of room for thenuncredentialed at midsize private business. $30 to 100 million to do quite well. In fact quote often they are the backbones of those companies. Having run a few of those I know. They don’t fit in well with the corporate profile but have strong skills. Though believe me they do present a mangement challenge
Sorry for the ref; if you read the whole (punny, ain't I? lol) thread you'll see what they are.
Here's my point:
I never even considered co's in $30M to 100M range and that's my bad. I'm really happy you made a go of it.
What part do you play in your co?
I manage these companies, usually for Private Equity who acquired them from the Founder and work through the transition. And you are right as the people I describe are often very intelligent and black belt level at their field of expertise but are lacking in other basic skills that would make them valuable at a larger entity. It goes to my point that autodidacts often do not take into account supporting and adjacent knowledge that might not appear to apply to their specialty but is necessary for them to succeed beyond their area of expertise.
Timbits are donut holes. Canada needs about 350,000 new Canadians each and every year for a generation. Because we are a US Colony they dictate how we get immigrants. We will take all the Hondurans, Guatemalan, El Salvadorans and Haitian refugees if we can get them landed in Canada.
Every business and industry where I live has a we are hiring sign out. They are building everywhere and we need workers and their families for our economy that is running according to plan. The only thing that didn't go according to plan is that Covid left us 400,000 people short of our two year target for new Canadians.
Abolish the colleges, I say. Expensive ways of getting a bad education but they are good for maintaining and enhancing unwarranted class divisions. How many well-educated morons and incompetents have I known?
Have you taken a college exam in the field you're studying and passed? Or perhaps quite a few of them given the typical field of study requires many exams. If not, you're probably just deceiving yourself.
Good grief, I know and work with plenty of people that passed their college exams, and are thus credentialed that are truly imbeciles. If you made this statement 30 to 40 years ago it would be accurate, not today.
@don lovell
Bullseye ! Yes. And, even back then, it surprised me to find that less than 2% of College Graduates actually ended up *working in the same field for which they took their major. Simply reflecting the fact that, when you are *not going to a "Trade School" it is the experience of broad-reaching exposure to education that has the value.
Self-deception certainly is a fear of mine. That is why I try to stay humble and keep reading and learning!
As you say, whether or not your (or my) self image is accurate or the product of self-deception probably doesn't matter much. This fear can be excellent motivation keeping us learning and reading on a wide range of topics. I have an engineering degree, but my exposure in school to other topics was minimal. 30 years out of grad school, I still oscillate between feelings of inadequacy due to my utter lack of formal education in regard to art, literature, history, etc. and the belief that, having read widely and continuously on these topics, I may perhaps be drawing even with the more formally educated. In any case, the process is enjoyable. And, if the skills developed help with better navigating personally and professionally and understanding more clearly what is the right thing to do, so much the better. What is the downside?
My experience at University was largely the teach to test method of indoctrination. True learning is self-motivated inquiry. I applaud lifelong learners, they are the unsung heroes who help to sustain the intellectual and moral fabric of society.
Shades of my favorite autodidact (and iconoclast):
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
I’m not a survivalist either, but I’m going to be using and learning more so called blue collar skill so that I can take better care of my family as things get worse.
I’d love to learn more about your writing and filmmaking. are you writing on substack?
If you’re not writing on Substack, why not?
I encourage everyone to start their own for their own sake.
So agree. If your water pipes burst the plumber is the smartest guy in the room and maybe only has an 9th grade education.
This reminds me of something I read about Qanon. People with Ph.Ds tend to be the most likely to believe this stuff while right down the line people with less education tend to be more skeptical.
Also, while people with 4 years of college tend to be the most likely to get Covid vaccines, among the least likely are -- guess -- people with Ph.Ds.
Finally, one study demonstrated that when people with different levels of education are presented a problem and produce a wrong answer, Ph.D holders tend by far to be the most resistant to changing their conclusion when presented with proof that they erred.
"People taking the survey were on the honor system, with no way to make sure people who claimed to have Ph.D. degrees actually have them." https://www.wnct.com/news/north-carolina/fact-check-setting-the-record-straight-on-claims-about-vaccine-hesitancy-among-ph-d-s/
Well, of course; education equals indoctrination, the more education, the more indoctrination until you actually believe despite all evidence to the contrary that what you do is important...not.
Reminds me of something great. Hawking, the person buried between Newton and Darwin, always disparaged IQ tests.
If that doesn’t tell us something about education and learning, I don’t know what would. Haha.
I suspect that most competent plumbers today have a significant amount of post high school training and very few dropped out of high school at 16. Plumbing is not as easy as it looks.
Plumbing is useful work and saves a lot more lives than the medical industrial complex and infinitely more than Wall Street and the legal and accounting rackets, let alone, the War racket.
Yes. A master plumber has several years of technical training, apprenticeship and licensing exams under his belt. Almost always his.
But what about post-modern critical theory? Sure he may be a competent plumber, but he's still a cultural barbarian. Probably even thinks there are only two genders because he fits male to female couplings.
LOL!
Of course. I was just pointing out that plumbers are not untrainef
I wasn't making fun of you or your comment.
You do make a wonderful point that I suspect escapes the notice of those unacquainted with real labor (and the truth is, very few of us labor for a living). Unlike the Marxist conceits taught in universities, labor has great variability - particularly in terms of skilled labor.
Even Lasch, being a former leftie, is overly fond of the labor theory of value. LTV is a powerful rhetorical device; sadly, it is useless as an analytical tool.
Funny! Thanks for the laugh. :-)
"[C]ollege degrees and credentials have little to do with that kind of merit [knowledge, wisdom, etc.]"
But it's worse than that. "Education and class" is a proxy for intelligence among the elite ... but nearly *all* in our society look down, morally, on those of low (analytical, social, etc.) intelligence.
Intelligence, like many other human characteristics, is largely immutable. Our continuing to treat it as a *moral* attribute, as some kind of "bad choice" that can be truly be overcome by effort -- now THAT'S a problem.
I'd say the educational level of the Taliban, who kicked our asses, is considerably below that of the best and brightest of the US elite, whether political, military or those in the surveillance or weapons industries, and they did it at a fraction of the cost, though with admittedly far smaller profits for the select few on our side.
As a Taliban official told an American one, "You had all the clocks, we had all the time."
@Mr. Nola
GOOD one !
Fuck, that’s a great quote.
No kidding. It perfectly captured both the reality of the war and our naive belief that technology is the answer to all things. Maybe 10 years ago, I saw a magazine, maybe Popular Mechanics, that said we had invented a new weapon, one that could shoot shoot around corners in close combat, that would win the war.
The fact is, we chose a war we couldn't win, one against an indigenous population, where we couldn't readily identify the enemy, instead of one we couldn't lose; killing bin Laden, crippling AQ and leaving. From Oct. 7, 2001, to the end of that year, when bin Laden was already gone, we had 12 deaths. Had we gone after him in Tora Bora, our deaths would likely have been no more than 100, but we let him go. While I can't prove it, I wouldn't be surprised Bush did it on purpose just to have a bogeyman. In any event, everyone who died after early 2002 at the latest, died a pointless death, and no one will ever be held accountable.
@m.t. nola
GREAT comment ! Yes. As a bombardier during Vietnam, I had to be "checked out" on all the "spiffy" new weapons. We had, at that time, a rocket that may have been the inspiration for the weapons to which you refer with the ability to go around corners. No need to remind *you that "Charlie" lived and based themselves out of incredibly sophisticated tunnel systems, at least in the South. The military created us a rocket that, no kidding, could fly into caves (in the rare cases that caves actually formed the entrance into the tunnels.) The rockets could follow the contours of the tunnel curvature, without ever hitting the walls on either side, or the ceilings and floors above and below. The rockets would proceed into the tunnels until they detected concentrations of human urine that indicated enemy bathrooms (the Head), at which point they would explode.
SO, the enemy, rather than spending Pentagon style money to *combat these highly sophisticated weapons, simply started pissing into buckets,
and hanging the buckets in the trees *outside the entrance to their cave compounds !
So, we had *both the technology to *build such weapons, and the abject ignorance to use such weapons in THAT kind of an application ! ;-D
lost all the battles, won the war
The VC and the NVA did not lose all the battles/firefights; most, but not all. It was typical practice to report enemy losses as always greater than any we suffered. The 173rd Airborne got their asses thoroughly chewed up early in the war and simply covered it up by lying even more than usual about the number they killed. Besides, a metric that considers deaths as significant in such wars is irrelevant, as it presumes that their capacity to accept deaths, in their own country, is not greater than a force fighting 8,000 miles from their nation. They live there; we do not, eventually that is the deciding factor, lacking a government we support that has little support among the populace, as was the case in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Never believe anything you hear from the military, never. They know full well that a man dressed in a uniform, covered in pretty colored ribbons, most of which are glorified Boy Scout badges, and with stars on his shoulders, is given nearly free rein to tell one whopper after another.
I'd hope the latest fiasco in Afghanistan, one which exposed nearly 20 years of utter BS, should break our habit of believing these professional liars.
I just read as the Russian revolution was firing up the Tsar was worried about the quality of epaulettes. Don't you think all governments do this in wars? Give free reign to the fellows with the best outfit?
@m.t. nola
When your "measure" for how well the war is going is body count, you KNOW you did not go into Vietnam with any *actual goal. You cannot measure your success relative to a goal, when there IS no goal (that you can reveal to the public).
Made 'dumb' by the Patriotic Outrage most Americans felt post 9/11. What made us even dumber was failing to recognize the same in the 'enemy'.
I share that last sentiment, but fear it wont happen. Look at the extraordinary efforts underway to prop up these fuck ups, putting them on TV as experts. Whether it's disgraced former generals or neocons, we were treated to an orgy of their "expert analysis" recently. Maybe it's a last gasp of a dying elite sort of thing, but these monsters have a way of hanging on.
I'm quite certain your first paragraph is correct; the addiction to no cost militarism of putting all the real cost on a small segment of the society and their families, while the rest of us go shopping with our tax cuts, seems to be a winning formula for endless war, even as that policy is equally effective at destroying this nation from within by pursuing policies that promote the empire as it neglects the nation.
Right now, the world is down to two significant nations; us and the PRC, and of the two, theirs has by far the more clear thinking and long term planning leadership, while we continue seeing the world as one we can somehow control with a military that has won but one war since WWII, that being Gulf War I where we faced a third rate military, ensconced in static positions in open desert, with no air cover, just waiting to be annihilated. Remarkably, professional military men thought that this had been proof that we had solved the mystery of war.
Now that is a scary fucking thought, one that maybe combat virgin politicians should feel, but not professional military men.
If you look at a globe of the world, two things stand out immediately; the Eurasian continent, home of most of the world's largest economies, is the dominant landmass, and is actually connected to resource rich Africa, while the American continents are basically remote and isolated. These geographical facts, with the PRC on the important land mass and using that as the underpinning of their BRI, and the US on the least important one and foolishly playing its military game of garrisoning the world and trying to counter the PRC with it, while the PRC leaders quietly go about their economic expansion both at home and abroad, make the outcome all but certain; a bipolar world, if we can accept it, but one where the Chinese are first among equals.
I don't see how it ends any other way, unless we start a war with them out of pique.
At some point, I'd like to have it dawn on our elites, that while the PRC economic growth was likely to happen anyway, that their short term policy of opening up trade with the PRC, of granting them PNTR, all to really just boost short term profits for US based multinationals, but in the name of greater friendship between us and the PRC, was largely responsible for this passing of the torch. How I'd love to see someone from our media pose this question to our elites, but they'd probably think it would be rude to do so, and besides, they'd then lose all access to all the serious people in D.C.
I was dumb enough to have served there, so for the last nearly 20 years I was simply waiting for what I knew was going to happen. Somehow, our glorious elites managed a bigger cluster fuck than they achieved in what Kenny Rogers sang about in "that old crazy Asian war."
You were not dumb. Many people were drafted or believed the govt. Anti-War protest were because of the draft, not because of principles. College exempted.
No, I was dumb, but I took my stupidity and learned my lesson, so not all was lost. As for the anti war protests being only anti draft and not principled, you're simply wrong. Making a flat statement like that is just an effort to deny the rightness of the anti war crowd, just as we were about these last 20 years, where thousands died and trillions were borrowed and spent on wars not in the national interest and foisted on us largely by people who, if they were old enough, dodged the draft for a war, Vietnam, that they supported. Of course, some of them, as Dick Cheney said, had other priorities, those priorities being themselves, as per usual for narcissists.
Though there was much intellectualizing I knew many whose inspiration came from the looming draft. Would like to think it was otherwise, but why no major protests against war since? There weren't but half a dozen of us outside the gates of CENTCOM in 2001. My husband, a drafted member of UBC (who has died from AO) was asked by a professor why he was too stupid to go to college and avoid it? I think a lot who who used deferments later said they were principled. Of course there is always Senator Blumenthal to confuse things by saying he was in country when he was not.
Obviously the draft was a part of the anti war movement which is why our endless war elite duopoly ended it, but it's an overstatement to say all were there solely because of the draft; women, not subjected to the draft, veterans of the war, clergy, and older people were protesting the war also.
Everyone who died in Vietnam did so for no good reason, for the false narrative about a global communist expansion, all led by Moscow and simply refused to understand that nationalism was always a far bigger attraction than global communism. Today, Americans can go to Vietnam as tourists, work there, be seen house hunting on HGTV, and buy products there even though we "lost". How would "winning" have made things any different? The country is still a totalitarian one party state, with a mix of private and state operated business, much like the PRC.
While I disagree with his conclusions, H. R. McMaster exposed the rot in Vietnam with his book "Dereliction of Duty" where officials acknowledged as early as 1965 the war could not be won and quoted one US politician or general, I forget which, who said after the war was over that it wasn't a total loss because we showed the Communists we were willing to lose 58,000 in a worthless backwater like Vietnam so it would give them pause about attacking in some strategically important part of the world. Needless to say, such a comment was no surprise to me, nor should it have been to anyone who was in actual combat and kept their eyes and mind open to reality.
The important point in Vietnam and the wars of the last 20 years, none of which, other than a brief foray into Afghanistan to kill bin Laden and cripple AQ, were in the national interest, is for Americans to reject the false narrative of militarism and concentrate on the real challenge, which is the economic contest between us and the PRC, and one which we are losing, in large part to our addiction to global military supremacy, a goal that is unworthy and unachievable.
@michael t nola
Testify, Brother Michael, Testify !
It was both. Women and seniors (including my mother) also protested.
Or Pete Seeger’s “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”!
"Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." Professor to the Scarecrow, from the "Wizard of Oz" (1939)
Correct. The role of the University must be reevaluated
@Madjack
The University is no longer a bastion of Higher Learning.
Sadly, it is now nothing more than a Diploma Mill.
And prospective employers are aware of that fac.
😮k not sure why I’m so shocked by this and yet…
@TD
Depressing as well as fully *appalling ! To think that someone, either the students or the parents, are paying TOP DOLLAR to "educate" people who cannot locate Canada on an unmarked map of North American following
"graduation" is simply harrowing. These are our leaders of tomorrow !
But cheer up, even the Ivies are "dumping" the requirement for SATs before college entry. Now, your smart kids lose out waiting on the dummies, and the overall level of education drops for the *same reason !
You're right but I wouldn't call it maturity, more like domestication.
And keeps loan servicers flush w $$$$$ which in turn lobbies the gov to put more money into student loan programs which enables universities to hike tuition which requires borrowing more $$$
@LorriAnn
Right ! So right ! Essential to the definition of "Diploma Mill" these days, yes.
Well said.
Thanks kindly, eassae. Being able to comment on Matt's reporting makes me look smarter than I am :-)
I describe the "Chattering Class" as the "administrator-class".
They're terrible negotiators, terrible at being flexible, terrible at most things except the comfortable walls of the rut they live and operate in.
They think hanging a BLM sign on their house means they can vote for someone like Biden and all will be fixed.
You know, like slapping a "hang in there" poster up inside their cubicle.