Bump is a fitting example of a mainstream media journalist. Zero curiosity, zero interest in holding power to account unless it's someone who doesn't play for Team Blue. He thinks his job is to be an attorney for Biden.
Bump is a fitting example of a mainstream media journalist. Zero curiosity, zero interest in holding power to account unless it's someone who doesn't play for Team Blue. He thinks his job is to be an attorney for Biden.
He is a proud member of the fourth estate fifth column that is destroying this nation from the inside.
The stupider the people are, the easier they are to manipulate, this is why they've gutted the journalism and education. Once you learn genuine critical thinking, you are no use to the powers that shouldn't be. They have every reason to keep you stupid/uninformed/confused/distracted and fighting among yourselves by any means possible—they never taught African American slaves to read either.
It all boils down to this: make life easy for someone and that someone does not grow, does not harden, does not ripen. That person goes into a state of arrested development and becomes a dependent slave - French kissing his master's boots for his next meal. That is what all this social justice & LGBTQ+ nonsense is about, all of this getting rid of Ds and Fs in grading is about, this is what welfare and UBI is about, this is what reality TV and social media is about: to deliberately create a generation of Idiocracy slaves who cannot think for or take care of themselves. This is a real Flyer around seattle circa 2020—come and get your heroin "booty bump" injection kit:
We have a phenomenon like that in Mississippi. It took me 40 of my years to ask why, in all my life, we aren't doing better at something, anything? Education, health, money, just one. I asked my son what he thought, and he opened my eyes. He said the people in charge here do not WANT a healthy, educated, well-off population. We produce furniture and sweet potatoes and corn and cotton. You need people to be poor and stupid to do all that work in order to survive. It was like a light came on in my brain. Powerful people need robotic people.
Student loans are an entire can of worms that many people don't understand. I was told by a former student that they must sign a "Master Promissory Note" to the school. And the school can then just add debt to the student's bill whenever they need to. My friend caught the Univ of WA adding debt to her loan balance when she had already been UNENROLLED to the school. She won, but it cost her attorney's fees to get out of the swindle. Don't believe everything you read about students being stupid.
All that can be true, but then why is our incompetent federal government in charge of dolling out finances for college study? Just another excuse for the feds to be in our jammies. Not to mention The School to be in on the grift.
The point is here that when I went to college, we signed FINITE loans. Not loans with infinite debt limit. What the fuck is going on with "Master Promissory Notes"??? And why would any parent not take one look at that and say "Fuck off, you're not fucking like that with my kid!"? My friend was old enought to catch the nefarious actions by Univ of WA, but how many kids aren't watching that closely?
Parents have no other options if they can't provide 100% of their children's tuition, housing, board, book and fees plus travel and pocket money. Gotta take those horrible terms which if I recall came from Obama under ACA legislation (government takeover of educational loans). Conservatives like Jason Lewis said it was the only thing that made sense in the entire bill and gave a little love on that.
There are many jobs that don't require a college education. There is also going into the trades. And kids can work their way through college by taking a little longer to go through it. Community College for 2 years. There are lots of ways of saying hell no.
Also one more reason Obama is the worst President in my lifetime. Another handout to the crooked financial industry. And people question me when I state Obama took post-presidency bribes from Wall Street. SMDH. Look at hisassive real estate Holdings and his massive wealth grab after he left the Whitehouse. Where did all that shit come from??? It was Obama's payoff for a job well done of protecting Wall Street from prosecution.
I exaggerated. What I described is how I got 3 children thru 2.5 college degrees. I covered whatever was left over after student loans or merit scholarships and grants. My children paid their loans back. My youngest went to community college and took no loans, I just paid as he went. You took a risk mortgaging your house but must have had a lot of confidence in your children to pay you back. I put the payback of the borrowed money on my children, though we all know that comes back on me if they're unable to pay. I had a lot of confidence in my children, too.
Much like programs ostensibly intended to "make home ownership more affordable!", programs supposedly intended to "make college more affordable!" boil down to making it easier to take out bigger loans.
An indebted populace is easier to control. Lose your job, and there's no way to pay the nut on your mortgage or your student loan note.
Yep, but no matter how screwed up it is, it's still not our neighbor's responsibility to pay for it. If there are pervasive predatory practices, lawyers can drive class action suits, and just a few wins there can change an industry.
The federal government could cancel All outstanding U.S. student loans retroactively and the only noticeable financial affect would be a lot of people with more money spending it and a lot of others receiving payments and fees that they wouldn't otherwise receive and a lot of people selling goods and services that otherwise would not be sold.
What a crock. No, the noticeable financial effect would be additional billions of debt our grandchildren will have to pay off, an excuse for future bailouts of predictably left-wing voters, and the feeling of most Americans that their debts don't matter, ergo they don't matter. If we're going to subsidize someone, I'd rather subsidize plumbers, electricians, framers, farmers, scientists and first responders, not a bunch of gamers with useless degrees in multicultural studies.
Thanks for replying. And effy didn't address my point that we are all just easy to label deplorables to those whose bills we are paying.
'Watched a few Mike Rowe shows on Labor Day about "how America works." These Bump self-important asses can't handle the fact that our country relies on people "less educated" to handle big things that everyone in the country relies on for our quality of life. Woe is me if the Federal Government shuts down. How can we live without it?! Just like in the "pandemic" lock down, we will take care of our neighbors.
You reel off so many false assumptions and spread so much bullshit in one small post it's impossible to address your "point" because it's impossible to discern your "point." If you even have one. Claiming to have a point is not the same as actually having one.
"Deplorable" refers to Clinton's smear of 2016 Trump voters, the majority of whom are from the working class.
Bump is a flak catcher for the political faction that either backed Clinton or who approve of her war-mongering, Russophobic, neoCon politics. DarkSkyBest assumes this faction is out of touch with life in fly-over states, and he's probably correct.
I apologize if I have misread you but I felt compelled to defend you against this cretin..
It gets cancelled. It's a write-off. It's only debt to the person paying off the loan. You're not subsidizing anything. It's no different than the $1 trillion check we send to the Pentagon every Oct. 1, or the the tax giveaways such as Trumps's $2 trillion check to the Richie Riches. Or the $20 trillion we flushed down the Iraq & Afghanistan drain.
Federal Student loans are and always have been a medieval racket run by the government and shady financial institutions and even shadier loan "servicers." The mob's loansharking operation is less opaque and less dishonest.
And plumbers, electricians, framers, farmers, scientists and first responders and a bunch of gamers with useless degrees in multicultural studies have nothing to do with the argument. That's in your head and unfortunately out of your ass.
It is interesting, though, when commenters here, on the heels of multiple episodes of shaking their fists heavenward and damning the "elites" over a perceived transgression or a bad policy harbored, then reverse themselves and stand tall with the hated "elites" and quickly buy into their bullshit and propaganda when it flatters their own prejudices and suits there own unflattering agendas.
And the grievance always begins..."I'd rather...
Who gives a shit, Sea Sentry, what you'd rather...
As Milton Friedman said, "All debts are paid." By this he means either the actual debtor pays it or the lender pays it by absorbing the loss of not getting repaid. I guess you were just heavily influenced by the great economist Cosmo Kramer who argued in one episode of "Seinfeld" that "they'll just write it off" but couldn't explain what "write it off" meant. Let me make it simple for you. When the government lends individuals money that were paid to it by the taxpayers, and the loan is not repaid, the taxpayers "lose" that money and have to make up for it by paying more in taxes, or getting less in "goods" and services. See how that works?
Milton Friedman was the father of the idea that "corporations owe society nothing" which gave rise to the execrable philosophy of neoliberalism. He was a cancer cell whose ideas metastasized in the brains of every politician in the world. It's time for a whole lotta lobotomies. Or decapitations. Whichever is faster.
Milton Friedman was the biggest douche bag phony in the history of economics. This has been well known for some decades. You boys need to study some marcroeconomics.
Don't sweat it---after my people seize power we'll set you up with a nice room of your own. At no charge. Three squares a day and a freshly-dug latrine included.
Curious wording, “after my people seize power.” Very Nazi like. Are your thigh high gestapo boots a fashion statement or simply your bedroom accessory?
Everyone who didn't go to college absolutely have skin in the college debt issue. I took 20 years to pay my debt (for a degree I never got) and it cost me a great deal in terms of housing and wealth generation.
Why the fuck should I be in favor of given whiney ass punks ANY economic advantage over me....like forgiving their stundent loans?
You need to go back and redo your supposed research because this is just a crock of bull. The cost has been paid back and then some already. This was a money ponsi scheme and Biden has been in it from the beginning!
When they have nothing else, which is the standard fare, they pull out the “isms”.
Everything they accuse us of is what they are.Racist, antisemitic, sexist, divide, a threat to democracy, not paying their fair share, violent, corrupt, divisive, tyrannical, corporate owned,fascist…
Not that the “ Conservatives” are much better. They’re just slightly less awful.
I was commissioned to paint seven enormous portraits of music icons for a Hard Rock Cafe’. They wanted a trippy psychedelic application.Marley and Hendrix were the best of the lot. Bowie ,the Beatles, Joplin, were status quo, Jim Morrison and Elvis not my best. Pity, I adore Morrison and Janis. Love Hendrix, too. At least his portrait wasn’t an embarrassment Wish they’d included Plant and Page. I’d have had a blast with Plant’s hair and Page’s facial expression. The Beatles weren’t energetic enough to put much effort into. .
My dream commission would be a Mitch McConnell, Feinstein, Biden, Fetterman quartet. Said nobody, ever.
The hell? Educating our children is a price we pay for living in a society. The fact that, like everything else a society needs to thrive, it has been turned into a profit centered scam is besides the point. Those loans were illegitmate to being with. Education should be free.
Like so many reasonable notions, this common one misses important context and specification.
There is nothing wrong with the public investing in an educated populace, but like all investments, there should be a reasonable expectation of ROI.
Like everything else, there is a marketplace which rather accurately indicates what society is in need of, and what it is not. Rather than denigrate certain oft-beaten disciplines, I'll just say that society only needs so many philosophy majors, yes? On the other hand, our society *desperately* needs people in all STEM related fields and so this would be an obvious ROI for those who successfully manage to complete AND enter that field.
The qualification at the end is an important element to this, of course, for there must be skin in the game for all involved with investments. One must truly believe they are capable of and committed to entering their chosen field, lest they be on the hook for anything invested in that venture otherwise.
Unfortunately, like so many hotly debated issues, they are thought of and parsed on white and black terms, which of course, is beyond stupid and unproductive.
One of the many things that annoys be about these conversations is the assumption that college graduates are necessarily educated, and that non-college graduates necessarily aren’t.
College education has NOTHING to do with intelligence. At least, not until you get into the Masters and up. It just means you know a little about 1 single subject. Intelligence can be had with or without a degree and true common sense comes from people with lived experience, meaning 30's and up.
When I went to college it was still OK to pursue a liberal arts education. I was like a kid in a candy store picking out my courses. Philosophy, Logic, Astronomy, Communications, History, etc. Nowadays it's so expensive you have to pigeonhole into some specialty. I got most of my real education afterwards, going to sea for over 27 years and doing A LOT of reading. Having two or three letters after your name means absolutely nothing these days for indicating real intelligence.
Correct. Lol. My son duel-majored in English and Linguistics, pandemic hit, he took a job as a teacher (never even took an education class), taught in a low income district for 2 years ( we didn't close schools here). He did this while getting a "free" Masters in Teaching (not education). He never wanted to teach, so he saved his money from his teaching gig, went to study for a Masters in Psychology in Liverpool, England. He's highly educated. Guess what he's doing? He's part owner of our family business (diesel truck repair), makes more money than he could ever make until he gets more degrees, doesn't owe a penny, but also very happy just working in something he knows and around people he likes. He's 25. I guess it was good for the future??? Maybe. But, even with all that education, he still has lots to learn. Lots! About life. He may be smarter than his dad and I on paper, but life???? Hahaha! Not even close.
Nah, my husband fixes the trucks. He can do minor repairs. He handles the paperwork, the customers, the scheduling, etc. He can change tires and oil and minor stuff, but he's the brains and his dad is the brawn.
H.G. Wells tried to warn us, sadly we're still doomed to remain on the path you've described until more working people wake up, put aside their petty differences, and reject the corporate-controlled despots who run this country.
We need to STOP playing the numbers game. Consider the following, in tandem:
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
― Margaret Mead
This, I've come to conclude, is the defining error of almost all left-wing activism (perhaps Marx/Engels are to blame): Acting in the foregone conclusion that assembling and mobilizing the biggest army is the paramount concern. That'll never work, for the reasons Wilde articulated - and for the reasons Mead articulated, it's totally unnecessary.
Correct. Our meritocracy has swiftly given way to the truth about our public education system. Public education, because it is free, is not valued. It is an inherently socialist system. While raising my sons, I did 2 things. I read to them from birth until age 10. I moved to different districts to allow them to go to the best schools, and I taught them at home. If they were little now, no way I'd send them to public.
Public K-12 education is THE civil rights issue of our time. Schools need to be de-unionized. It's slavery. These kids are chained by an abysmal education that will haunt them their entire lives, and undermine our society as well.
Civil rights issue of our time? Sounds critical. Well, then, what's your remedy for this "issue of our time?" What sort of "de-unionized" educational system are we thinking will make the grade for our next generation of students so they don't become abysmal-education-chained kids?
And I should think that an entire generation carrying around nightmares of 5th-grade recess and high school locker searches has already undermined our "society." If not our civilization and tax base.
Sure! Thanks for asking. Run schools like we run everything successful in this country, which is to say anything that isn't run by the government. Fund education based on results. Bad teachers? Fired. Good teachers? bonuses. Incentivize success, which has to be objectively measured. Leave politics out of the K-12 classroom. They can get that in college and beyond. It's already happening in the private schools that the Obama, Clinton and Bush kids went to, but the government is demonstrably incapable of excellence in anything but perhaps graft.
Yes!! This. Pay teachers much more. Let it all be private. Make a great place for great teachers. They should WANT to go to work at that school. And, if the kids aren't there to learn, they can home school them. Merit is rewarded to students and teachers based on performance. The end.
This would require ending colleges of education, scrapping the federal Department of Education, and encouraging parents to send their children to private academies.
Nothing short of this will end the destructiveness of US public schooling. Those who have managed to take an education from them are the minority who would do well in any atmosphere.
Yes. Try the government run system in the UK. It’s great unless you’re sick. Most energy grids, the reliable ones, are all privately run. Government does a horrible job. It’s a complex business. I haven’t studied public vs private prisons, but at least the taxpayers don’t have to pay for the private ones. All the world’s great advances have come from private initiative. All the world’s wars, collapses and genocide have come from governments.
You know nothing about the government run system in the UK (which, to note, is being rapidly defunded so we can argue that 'it doesn't work.) Sorry, Charlie: I have been a citizen of the US with the BEST (union) health insurance money could buy. It took WEEKS to see a primary care physician, MONTHS to see a specialist, and the 'best' hospital in San Francisco nearly killed both me and my newborn. Now, I live in the EU. When I call my doctor, I can see her the next day. Should I fall ill in the middle of the night, a doctor is sent to my home. Should I want private care, the costs of the finest specialists are less than the cost of my co-pay in the US.
Sadly, here, as where every Neo-liberal jack hole gets a foot-hold, there is a privatization drive. Health care here is being defunded, and the systems are regional. Remember those COVID deaths in Lombardia and Milan? Guess what right-wing region had decided that 'private' was better and handed their health care system over to private equity firms that immediately closed half the hospitals?
As to the UK - the issues that are currently harming the NIH have nothing to do with it being a public health care system, and EVERYTHING to do with the push to privatize.
Finally, as to all those 'great advances' - name ONE that wasn't government funded. I'll wait.
ending the federal reserve will cure so many aspects of the human ecology that have gone awry. it is a diaease and sickness that touches.almost all aspects of existence and has dehumanized all of us.
imagine fencing off 10 square miles of raw unadulterated forest and then airdropping 10 tons of spam into that area every day. the natural ecology of that forest would be so messed up and result in a mass wasting event. so it is with humanity and the printing of money.
Bullshit. Eduction is a human right, and privatizing it is the WORST thing we can do. If we decoupled school funds from zip codes and provided an actually equal education to ALL citizens, this would be a far healthier society. (I live in Europe. Private schools are primarily for children who can’t cut the rigor of public schooling.)
Our public schools are an abject failure here in the States. I’m all for an “equal “ education. That’s what we’re supposed to have now. American kids aren’t in the top 20 countries in any PISA category, even though we used to be #1. You have to have standards for both teachers and students. We don’t. The unions have destroyed our schools. Until we see real reform, don’t destroy kids lives - give them money to make their own education choices, just like we do with any other service.
A civil society depends on an educated population. The current US system is a disaster because it IS privatized (even though it uses public funds.) A child in Marin County, California graduates ready for the finest universities. He has had opportunities to engage in sports at the highest level, has had a grounding in humanities, music, arts as well as a solid grounding in maths and science. The school grounds are beautiful, the music rooms equipped, and the sports fields maintained to a level worthy of the NHL. A few miles away in Oakland, children attend school in Quonset huts - meant to be temporary until the overflowing toilets could be fixed. She will be greeted by police dogs at the door, and her books will be 10 years out of date. Discipline rather than education is the goal so she will be prepped for a life as a burger flipper or inmate.
All of this is because we refuse to fund education properly. We refuse to honor teachers and pay them proportionate to their education.
Like every other argument you make - you are full of hot air and bull snot. The problem is the privatization and monetization of everything we need to live.
Um, average spending per ADA in Oakland, 2021-2022 school year is $23,296. Average per ADA spending in Marin County for the same period: $18,297. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/currentexpense.asp . In addition to your unbecoming personal attacks, you are forgetting the importance of culture/values in educational outcomes.
Aside from SL's deafening silence to your common example, like so many people on that side of the debate, they fail to see the monumental role that the parents/home plays in education.
Unfortunately, it's also missing from the school choice/privatized side too. It is not that vouchers and/or charter schools are better - it's that their parents took an active measure in their kids education to begin with. Personally, this is the most clear difference in outcomes between the two ecosystems, when it comes to underprivileged school zones.
I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but public schools have been, and continue to be, quite successful in many states that aren't Mississippi. And sending your kids to segregation academies doesn't help either.
right, when your definition of success is to get a job and make millions from a situation that takes advantage of and propsers off of the usg's rampant counterfeiting operation and on top of that making sure your are anally smug and sure of your superiority for having done so.
No, Marcuse and Adorno. Marx and Engels failed to understand the working class beyond it's usefulness as a theoretical political widget, so their reformers shifted their aim to identity groups and the revolution became cultural.
Good question. They are responsible because the Marxist deeply flawed dehumanizing, mechanistic, worldview justifies anyone who can somehow claim they are "oppressed" or "marginalized" acquires power over those they accuse of being their oppressors. Sadly that paradigm, disconnected from any other morality, allows anything, including mental disease or social contagion, to acquire dangerous power. Power that defies, but never defeats, reality.
Most people refuse to listen to their youngers. I've received quite an education from my children. You just have to listen to them. Hey, c'mon up to the other end of the river, Minnesota.
thats right. and thats why public education will only ever spit out a few types of people. corporate asswhole psychopaths, dryball cogs for the machine of govt, or dependent cattle class. this is the structure of the current human ecology and it runs on the engine of counterfeiting and corruption.
This is generally true, but those who manage to survive their 12 years by following their own interests with the help of an apolitical or conservative teacher/mentor (an endangered species) have always been with us.
There may be nefarious powers allayed against Mississippi, but the citizens of the state need to take some responsibility. Maybe if they hadn't spent centuries trying to perfect hateful ignorance, some progress could have been made.
Excellent comment. Today’s plantations, full of dependents who need the next fix of government programs that never improve anything, but keep people dependent with sub-standard schools and depleted self-respect. And they are fearful that the government program will end, so they vote blue.
The education system is about learning a lot of approved facts and then reflecting them back to the teachers and examiners. The purpose of that is to indoctrinate people, and to give them accreditation so that they are educated enough to be useful employees. It’s not about making people critical thinkers.
If being able to see what is, is a necessary characteristic of a sentient being, ask yourself if these people are even alive. And I speak first of the Bumps of this world.
Bump and his kind seem to be responding to sensory input, so possibly non-sentient is not the proper description. Yet the puzzling characteristic they lack seems to go beyond the ability to think critically. Perhaps it is self-awareness?
Elitist arrogance without substance. It’s excruciating. These patronizing bastards are useless. They can’t change a tire, plumb a toilet, lay a brick, replace a fuse, fry an egg, discern a radiator from a battery, fix a leaky pipe… They’re worthless stooges who take up space and usurp oxygen.I can’t stand the press or the pundit class left or right . The presumption that they are speaking for me. I don’t recall being asked what they so fervently claim.By anybody.
The “ we” part. How often do they not only state as fact what matters most to us that doesn’t and fail to cover what does? Because I voted (R) does not mean I supported overturning R v W, believe that there is no such thing as a tiny percentage of people who are born in the wrong body.. that their hard wiring doesn’t match their chromosomal mandate. I don’t worship Reagan. I don’t believe they are doing a bang up job, I don’t support hyper-religiosity in government forums, public schools. Nor do I support ANY leftist ideology.
Fix what’s broken, end the wars, expose the WEF Great Reset, expose and purge the corruption throughout, secure the border, audit every dollar spent by government, abolish the CIA, Fed, FBI, IRS, FISA, Patriot Act, CFIUS, TSA, Dept of Education, War On Drugs, Emergency Authorization Act, funding of private universities , corporations, think tanks, media outlets, social media,bailouts, dangerous biorearch, all funding of research outside the US,NGOs, religious orgs,lobbying, special perqs for every government entity, qualified immunity for any governmental/federal entity, withdraw from the UN, WHO,NATO.WEF, Bilderberg Group Term limits whether Congressional, bureaucracy, judiciary…
Purge at least half the Deep State prosecute every bad actor in government and seize their assets until every penny is paid back to the taxpayer.
Protect our nation our citizens from invasion and actual criminality , fix our failing infrastructure Stop forcing dogma down our throats, leave our kids alone..Leave us the hell alone to live our lives in peace.
We were able to manage our lives with far less tumult and divide with far less government in years prior and we can do it again, far more effectively.
You might be giving them more credit than they deserve. But I’m not them, so don’t know. This should be a golden age for psychologists trying to figure that out.
I submit below one of the few honest "items" Professor Lindsay has written. Shoulda stuck with the numbers and body oils...
"...This research endeavors to put a common combinatorial ground under several binomiallike arrays, including the binomial coefficients, q-binomial coefficients, Stirling numbers, q-Stirling numbers, cycle numbers, and Lah numbers, by employing symmetric polynomials and related words with specialized alphabets as well as a balls-and-urns counting approach. Using the method of statistical generating functions, q- and p; q-generalizations of the binomial coefficients, Stirling numbers, cycle numbers, and Lah numbers are all discussed as well, unified under a single general triangular array that is herein referred to as the array of Comtet-Lancaster numbers."
I think its worse than that. I think he knows the truth and is intentionally lying about it because he somehow thinks its for the greater good. But people who are willing to commit evil for their supposed greater good, are themselves evil.
This is what Theodore Dalrymple has been saying. The purpose of propaganda, lying in general, is not merely to get you to believe that something is true that isn't, it's to get you to say something is true that you know is not true. At that point you become complicit in the lying, you become part of the evil that is called lying. Back in the day we used to say "if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem." Today nothing could be truer than that.
I read his quote the other day explaining that idea with the soviets. But the part he somewhat left out, in what I read, is in both Soviet and even Nazi society, there were harsh punishments for stating the truth. Here, there's some social punishment but nothing of similar magnitude. It makes it somewhat understandable to go along with the lie when your life is on the line, but what these people are doing now is inexcusable.
With respect, wrong on the most central point - status anxiety drives Bump and Drezner. All the evidence suggests they do not think. Bump and Drezner sense on the most visceral level that the Queens accent and the movement Trump represents are existential threats to every part of their "essential to society" identities. Both are driven by pats on the head from "authorities." Neither believes important lessons can be learned from the fact that much of what we all believe might be wrong.
Both function to advance blind faith in authoritarian agendas dressed-up as "compassion" and "the science" - and to deflect and discourage critical self-examination, enlightenment, and progress. Both have glimpsed themselves in the mirror and are terrified by what they see. Both understand down to their cores who they really are, and what function they perform. Scares them shitless, as such knowledge should.
Status anxiety is an unhealthy preoccupation with what others think of us - virtually all forms of branding, advertising, and marketing manipulate our fears and desires about our status within a group, before an individual, or a god concept. Old as human history and probably extends to other species - dogs, etc. - hope this helps.
Slightly off-topic - Do animals communicate? Yes. Plants? Maybe. Do either pray?
Obviously I am talking about something which is real and significant to the party that feels threatened by losing it. If you find my choices of words (_class_ and _caste_) I invite you to suggest others. You seem to agree that something real was the subject.
I would've, in fact I tried to, but I apparently slipped a cog while composing what I said before.
It's not a matter of how he's perceived, but his actual, internal ability in conflict with how he gets away with being perceived due to the limits of an inevitably imperfect meritocratic system even when it's working at its best.
Academia SHOULD only reward the truly intelligent - but how does one do that in a manner that everybody can agree on? Consequently, there's a sort of awkward compromise integral to the academic merit system that means not everybody who succeeds within it truly deserves to, nor everyone who fails - this eventually results in a rift between academic "successes" who Get It, and those who Don't Get It, but they APPEAR to be equally qualified since they got the laurels from the same process. We're seeing one of those "moments of reckoning" wherein the bona-fides and the impostors are forced to focus on their differences since something of vital importance has perched upon them.
"The Name that can be named is not the True Name."
You seem to be somewhat ahead of me in examining Mr. Bump and his kind. As a young person I was born into what was to become the PMC (caste?) and so encountered the thing he seems to believe so ardently in at an early age. But in 1960, although we knew very well which side of our bread was buttered, we were smart enough and cynical enough not to worship the butter. It was just _there_ and we happened to be the sufficiently lucky ones to receive it. Of course we were a few years ahead of the Best and the Brightest.... Perhaps Mr. Bump is on the other side of that line, the line of faith.
Glad to see you're reading the Good Book. One of them.
Fredrik deBoer's new book, "How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement" (2023) takes a look at class in terms of various cultural movements. From the Amazon review:
"Hidden beneath the rhetoric of the oppressed and the symbolism of the downtrodden lies the inconvenient fact that those doing the organizing, messaging, protesting, and campaigning are predominantly drawn from this country’s more upwardly mobile educated classes. Poses are more important than policies."
That has been obvious for some time, but the class position of the activist elites doesn't entirely invalidate their concerns or activities. Indeed, their policies and practices may well have been imperial, but you can't run a big empire if you indulge racial, religious, and other preferences before loyalty to the imperium or its current rulers.
Also, you have to take into account he has a history of lying. Lies us into the war in Iraq using his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Comm. He steals other people's speeches, writings, how his wife died, the Martin Luther King marches he was in, but wasn't. Not to mention his egocentric self comparing what went on in Maui to his 2 bit house fire.
From the Onion, yet standard operating procedure for self proclaimed ‘fact checker’ partisan hacks like Bump
“Democrats Say It'll Take A Lot More Than Eyewitness Testimony, Bank Records, Audio, Video, Complete Confessions For Them To Believe Biden Did Anything Wrong”
Actually, I think he's an interesting example of class panic. His case might be worth some analysis since it implies that the present class system is has been much tighter than I thought it was. Apparently if you're dropped out of the PMC (caste) for wrongthink you lose your job/role/position and may fall a long way. Consequently journalists so called are mostly going to toe the line -- the whole line.
"Apparently if you're dropped out of the PMC (caste) for wrongthink you lose your job/role/position and may fall a long way."
This is why I think we're living under a kind of soft totalitarianism. Soft totalitarianism regimes are uncomfortable with using force and prefer instead to maintain control through narrative management, the manipulation of language, and hegemonic control of culture. While hard totalitarianism depends on inflicting terror and fear of pain on people to force them to conform, soft totalitarianism forces conformity by making people being afraid of losing comfort, status, and employment.
I think you're right and what bothers me, and perhaps people will not agree, that during the Trump years that growing authoritarianism, or totalitarianism, was ever present and in the media, the left, and people in general were in complicity with it, blinded to it not only by their hatred of Trump, but his base as well. Too many on Facebook and other media platforms expressed their contempt for them all to well, and often defined them as an ignorant, amoral lot. The government is using that hate to impose harsh sentences on those that were present on January 6, and they let people go free after committing violent assaults on innocence in the name of justice.
If one directly challenges a legally established authority in its sphere (for example, Jan. 6 challenged the established public order) the authority is likely to respond forcefully and maybe vindictively, because its existence has been impugned, and it's likely to receive public support when it does so (because most of the public desires a reasonable degree of order). Thus during the Sixties Civil Rights and anti-war demonstrators were usually pretty careful to avoid overt acts of violence (or acts which could be construed as violence).
I understand what you're saying and agree that people in general feel very uncomfortable with that degree of disorder. I was watching at the time, and initially saw hundreds of people led into the Capital through it's front doors, by the capital police. Most people however were standing around doing nothing in particular other then looking curiously about. I saw the horned one in the Capital, smiling, and as Tucker showed on his last night on FOX, he was escorted by police and seemed to be having a non violent time. I don't remember seeing people breaking windows although I know they did, but I did see Brian Sicknick beat about the head, and they did say initially he died of the wounds inflicted, but he wasn't beaten. Did I imagine that? He went home unscathed, and died of a stroke. So confusing. Ebbs seemed to be giving directions on attacking the Capital yet never charged as far as I know, while others have been given unduly harsh sentences. For me the disorder was defined before the riot by the unlawful dedication to remove Trump from office on the lie of Russia gate, a lie pushed and supported by the democrats, the media, including the left. Celebrities called for his death, and their threats were seen as humorous and readily accepted. Oh and the impeachments. No one was held accountable for the lie of Russia-gate which took three years to see the light of day does make me wonder if Jan 6 was just the icing on the cake they prepared for Trump. They call it an insurrection, but it's better called a riot, and it didn't really scare me, but the democrats who worked in complicity with others to remove an elected president from office did. I wonder why so many people were, and remain blind to the chaos that preceded that day.
You raise a number of issues which are somewhat beyond my immediate concern (above). There, I'm principally trying to understand what some would call TDS as it affects people such as Mr. Bump, who seems to have religious faith in his beliefs. Surely it is not a surprise to find authoritarianism in Academia, although sometimes oddly colored; the Education Industry is based fundamentally on the principles of (1) sequestered knowledge (which raises its price) and (2) credentialism, which is usually a pure exercise of hierarchical or bureaucratic power. What I find odd in Mr. Bump is his lack of critical resistance to the Industry's propaganda, which in previous eras I found even in its most devoted servants. For instance, the term "politically correct" was originally activist-lesbian or feminist gibe at Maoists.
Also I am not happy with reifying the Left into a coherent organism. The Left may be a sensibility or a "side", but it is not coherent. If it has been bourgeoisified (aligned with power) as you suggest it is no longer Left (in my opinion).
Curiously I find that Taibbi and Kern this week* are now on about something similar to Mr. Bump's devotion, the way in which comedy has assumed uncomedic monotony, under the influence I suppose of what we might call "liberal totalitarianism." Doesn't this make liberals uncomfortable? I guess not. In fact, I guess I'm being pretty redundant.
* America This Week, September 8, 2023: "Comedy is Not Pretty"
Bump is a fitting example of a mainstream media journalist. Zero curiosity, zero interest in holding power to account unless it's someone who doesn't play for Team Blue. He thinks his job is to be an attorney for Biden.
He is a proud member of the fourth estate fifth column that is destroying this nation from the inside.
The stupider the people are, the easier they are to manipulate, this is why they've gutted the journalism and education. Once you learn genuine critical thinking, you are no use to the powers that shouldn't be. They have every reason to keep you stupid/uninformed/confused/distracted and fighting among yourselves by any means possible—they never taught African American slaves to read either.
It all boils down to this: make life easy for someone and that someone does not grow, does not harden, does not ripen. That person goes into a state of arrested development and becomes a dependent slave - French kissing his master's boots for his next meal. That is what all this social justice & LGBTQ+ nonsense is about, all of this getting rid of Ds and Fs in grading is about, this is what welfare and UBI is about, this is what reality TV and social media is about: to deliberately create a generation of Idiocracy slaves who cannot think for or take care of themselves. This is a real Flyer around seattle circa 2020—come and get your heroin "booty bump" injection kit:
https://tritorch.com/degradation/seattleRectalOpiodInjectionMethod.png
We have a phenomenon like that in Mississippi. It took me 40 of my years to ask why, in all my life, we aren't doing better at something, anything? Education, health, money, just one. I asked my son what he thought, and he opened my eyes. He said the people in charge here do not WANT a healthy, educated, well-off population. We produce furniture and sweet potatoes and corn and cotton. You need people to be poor and stupid to do all that work in order to survive. It was like a light came on in my brain. Powerful people need robotic people.
Your son is a very bright person, Brandy, you must be proud.
"Powerful people need robotic people."
That hits the nail right on the head!
Yeah, but the robotic people are now the ones whose student loans we are supposed to write-off before they label us racist, etc.
Student loans are an entire can of worms that many people don't understand. I was told by a former student that they must sign a "Master Promissory Note" to the school. And the school can then just add debt to the student's bill whenever they need to. My friend caught the Univ of WA adding debt to her loan balance when she had already been UNENROLLED to the school. She won, but it cost her attorney's fees to get out of the swindle. Don't believe everything you read about students being stupid.
All that can be true, but then why is our incompetent federal government in charge of dolling out finances for college study? Just another excuse for the feds to be in our jammies. Not to mention The School to be in on the grift.
The point is here that when I went to college, we signed FINITE loans. Not loans with infinite debt limit. What the fuck is going on with "Master Promissory Notes"??? And why would any parent not take one look at that and say "Fuck off, you're not fucking like that with my kid!"? My friend was old enought to catch the nefarious actions by Univ of WA, but how many kids aren't watching that closely?
Parents have no other options if they can't provide 100% of their children's tuition, housing, board, book and fees plus travel and pocket money. Gotta take those horrible terms which if I recall came from Obama under ACA legislation (government takeover of educational loans). Conservatives like Jason Lewis said it was the only thing that made sense in the entire bill and gave a little love on that.
There are many jobs that don't require a college education. There is also going into the trades. And kids can work their way through college by taking a little longer to go through it. Community College for 2 years. There are lots of ways of saying hell no.
Also one more reason Obama is the worst President in my lifetime. Another handout to the crooked financial industry. And people question me when I state Obama took post-presidency bribes from Wall Street. SMDH. Look at hisassive real estate Holdings and his massive wealth grab after he left the Whitehouse. Where did all that shit come from??? It was Obama's payoff for a job well done of protecting Wall Street from prosecution.
Maybe he gave a few multi-million dollar speeches.
No other options? I took out a home equity line of credit, lower rates than Fed student loans. My kids paid me back.
I exaggerated. What I described is how I got 3 children thru 2.5 college degrees. I covered whatever was left over after student loans or merit scholarships and grants. My children paid their loans back. My youngest went to community college and took no loans, I just paid as he went. You took a risk mortgaging your house but must have had a lot of confidence in your children to pay you back. I put the payback of the borrowed money on my children, though we all know that comes back on me if they're unable to pay. I had a lot of confidence in my children, too.
Much like programs ostensibly intended to "make home ownership more affordable!", programs supposedly intended to "make college more affordable!" boil down to making it easier to take out bigger loans.
An indebted populace is easier to control. Lose your job, and there's no way to pay the nut on your mortgage or your student loan note.
Yep, but no matter how screwed up it is, it's still not our neighbor's responsibility to pay for it. If there are pervasive predatory practices, lawyers can drive class action suits, and just a few wins there can change an industry.
The federal government could cancel All outstanding U.S. student loans retroactively and the only noticeable financial affect would be a lot of people with more money spending it and a lot of others receiving payments and fees that they wouldn't otherwise receive and a lot of people selling goods and services that otherwise would not be sold.
What a crock. No, the noticeable financial effect would be additional billions of debt our grandchildren will have to pay off, an excuse for future bailouts of predictably left-wing voters, and the feeling of most Americans that their debts don't matter, ergo they don't matter. If we're going to subsidize someone, I'd rather subsidize plumbers, electricians, framers, farmers, scientists and first responders, not a bunch of gamers with useless degrees in multicultural studies.
Thanks for replying. And effy didn't address my point that we are all just easy to label deplorables to those whose bills we are paying.
'Watched a few Mike Rowe shows on Labor Day about "how America works." These Bump self-important asses can't handle the fact that our country relies on people "less educated" to handle big things that everyone in the country relies on for our quality of life. Woe is me if the Federal Government shuts down. How can we live without it?! Just like in the "pandemic" lock down, we will take care of our neighbors.
It's the working class that backs the otherwise worthless checks written by the ruling elite.
You reel off so many false assumptions and spread so much bullshit in one small post it's impossible to address your "point" because it's impossible to discern your "point." If you even have one. Claiming to have a point is not the same as actually having one.
"Deplorable" refers to Clinton's smear of 2016 Trump voters, the majority of whom are from the working class.
Bump is a flak catcher for the political faction that either backed Clinton or who approve of her war-mongering, Russophobic, neoCon politics. DarkSkyBest assumes this faction is out of touch with life in fly-over states, and he's probably correct.
I apologize if I have misread you but I felt compelled to defend you against this cretin..
It gets cancelled. It's a write-off. It's only debt to the person paying off the loan. You're not subsidizing anything. It's no different than the $1 trillion check we send to the Pentagon every Oct. 1, or the the tax giveaways such as Trumps's $2 trillion check to the Richie Riches. Or the $20 trillion we flushed down the Iraq & Afghanistan drain.
Federal Student loans are and always have been a medieval racket run by the government and shady financial institutions and even shadier loan "servicers." The mob's loansharking operation is less opaque and less dishonest.
And plumbers, electricians, framers, farmers, scientists and first responders and a bunch of gamers with useless degrees in multicultural studies have nothing to do with the argument. That's in your head and unfortunately out of your ass.
It is interesting, though, when commenters here, on the heels of multiple episodes of shaking their fists heavenward and damning the "elites" over a perceived transgression or a bad policy harbored, then reverse themselves and stand tall with the hated "elites" and quickly buy into their bullshit and propaganda when it flatters their own prejudices and suits there own unflattering agendas.
And the grievance always begins..."I'd rather...
Who gives a shit, Sea Sentry, what you'd rather...
As Milton Friedman said, "All debts are paid." By this he means either the actual debtor pays it or the lender pays it by absorbing the loss of not getting repaid. I guess you were just heavily influenced by the great economist Cosmo Kramer who argued in one episode of "Seinfeld" that "they'll just write it off" but couldn't explain what "write it off" meant. Let me make it simple for you. When the government lends individuals money that were paid to it by the taxpayers, and the loan is not repaid, the taxpayers "lose" that money and have to make up for it by paying more in taxes, or getting less in "goods" and services. See how that works?
Milton Friedman was the father of the idea that "corporations owe society nothing" which gave rise to the execrable philosophy of neoliberalism. He was a cancer cell whose ideas metastasized in the brains of every politician in the world. It's time for a whole lotta lobotomies. Or decapitations. Whichever is faster.
Milton Friedman was the biggest douche bag phony in the history of economics. This has been well known for some decades. You boys need to study some marcroeconomics.
he should get a lobotomy like you did.
He was such a "douche bag" he was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics. And you?
Such as?
The government did not loan anyone anything! Bankers loaned money at astronomical interest rates. See how that works!
I’d like the Government to lend me $1million to buy a house, and then write it off.
Don't sweat it---after my people seize power we'll set you up with a nice room of your own. At no charge. Three squares a day and a freshly-dug latrine included.
Curious wording, “after my people seize power.” Very Nazi like. Are your thigh high gestapo boots a fashion statement or simply your bedroom accessory?
What do you mean "after," you fucking douchebag? Are you not a Marcusian?
Or are you hoping for a rehash of 1968-77?
You sound delusional to me.
You've cemented your status as a certified idiot who can't focus on the point at hand.
Not an honest interlocutor.
I'm one of the few honest "interlocutors" here. In my opinion.
I cemented my status long ago, chum.
Again I ask, what is your opinion of the resentment felt by those who have paid their student loans toward those who are hoping for forgiveness?
Just pay your own student loan, ya grifter.
Everyone who didn't go to college absolutely have skin in the college debt issue. I took 20 years to pay my debt (for a degree I never got) and it cost me a great deal in terms of housing and wealth generation.
Why the fuck should I be in favor of given whiney ass punks ANY economic advantage over me....like forgiving their stundent loans?
You bought the ticket, take the ride.
Oh thank you! I could not have said this better! I tried!
Game, set, and match, to feldspar.
Only in an alternate universe.
Yeahhh...nope.
You need to go back and redo your supposed research because this is just a crock of bull. The cost has been paid back and then some already. This was a money ponsi scheme and Biden has been in it from the beginning!
What is your opinion on the resentment felt by those who have paid off their loans toward those who would have them erased by the feds?
When they have nothing else, which is the standard fare, they pull out the “isms”.
Everything they accuse us of is what they are.Racist, antisemitic, sexist, divide, a threat to democracy, not paying their fair share, violent, corrupt, divisive, tyrannical, corporate owned,fascist…
Not that the “ Conservatives” are much better. They’re just slightly less awful.
"too much -isms and -schisms"
~Bob Marley, Rasta talking point
I was commissioned to paint seven enormous portraits of music icons for a Hard Rock Cafe’. They wanted a trippy psychedelic application.Marley and Hendrix were the best of the lot. Bowie ,the Beatles, Joplin, were status quo, Jim Morrison and Elvis not my best. Pity, I adore Morrison and Janis. Love Hendrix, too. At least his portrait wasn’t an embarrassment Wish they’d included Plant and Page. I’d have had a blast with Plant’s hair and Page’s facial expression. The Beatles weren’t energetic enough to put much effort into. .
My dream commission would be a Mitch McConnell, Feinstein, Biden, Fetterman quartet. Said nobody, ever.
New Mount Rushmore
God help us!
We need all the help we can get. What a shit show
Love him. Remember it well. Touche’!
The hell? Educating our children is a price we pay for living in a society. The fact that, like everything else a society needs to thrive, it has been turned into a profit centered scam is besides the point. Those loans were illegitmate to being with. Education should be free.
Like so many reasonable notions, this common one misses important context and specification.
There is nothing wrong with the public investing in an educated populace, but like all investments, there should be a reasonable expectation of ROI.
Like everything else, there is a marketplace which rather accurately indicates what society is in need of, and what it is not. Rather than denigrate certain oft-beaten disciplines, I'll just say that society only needs so many philosophy majors, yes? On the other hand, our society *desperately* needs people in all STEM related fields and so this would be an obvious ROI for those who successfully manage to complete AND enter that field.
The qualification at the end is an important element to this, of course, for there must be skin in the game for all involved with investments. One must truly believe they are capable of and committed to entering their chosen field, lest they be on the hook for anything invested in that venture otherwise.
Unfortunately, like so many hotly debated issues, they are thought of and parsed on white and black terms, which of course, is beyond stupid and unproductive.
Teachers must be paid, facilities must be built and paid for. Nothing is free. Somebody must pay.
can be extended to colonialism
One of the many things that annoys be about these conversations is the assumption that college graduates are necessarily educated, and that non-college graduates necessarily aren’t.
College education has NOTHING to do with intelligence. At least, not until you get into the Masters and up. It just means you know a little about 1 single subject. Intelligence can be had with or without a degree and true common sense comes from people with lived experience, meaning 30's and up.
When I went to college it was still OK to pursue a liberal arts education. I was like a kid in a candy store picking out my courses. Philosophy, Logic, Astronomy, Communications, History, etc. Nowadays it's so expensive you have to pigeonhole into some specialty. I got most of my real education afterwards, going to sea for over 27 years and doing A LOT of reading. Having two or three letters after your name means absolutely nothing these days for indicating real intelligence.
I've always wanted to go to the same sort of college Plato did. Or Aristotle. Or William Shakespeare. Or George Washington. Or Abraham Lincoln.
Yes!!! I would do that.
Correct. Lol. My son duel-majored in English and Linguistics, pandemic hit, he took a job as a teacher (never even took an education class), taught in a low income district for 2 years ( we didn't close schools here). He did this while getting a "free" Masters in Teaching (not education). He never wanted to teach, so he saved his money from his teaching gig, went to study for a Masters in Psychology in Liverpool, England. He's highly educated. Guess what he's doing? He's part owner of our family business (diesel truck repair), makes more money than he could ever make until he gets more degrees, doesn't owe a penny, but also very happy just working in something he knows and around people he likes. He's 25. I guess it was good for the future??? Maybe. But, even with all that education, he still has lots to learn. Lots! About life. He may be smarter than his dad and I on paper, but life???? Hahaha! Not even close.
Nah, my husband fixes the trucks. He can do minor repairs. He handles the paperwork, the customers, the scheduling, etc. He can change tires and oil and minor stuff, but he's the brains and his dad is the brawn.
Yes. This.
Hey we may agree on something.
H.G. Wells tried to warn us, sadly we're still doomed to remain on the path you've described until more working people wake up, put aside their petty differences, and reject the corporate-controlled despots who run this country.
We need to STOP playing the numbers game. Consider the following, in tandem:
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
― Margaret Mead
This, I've come to conclude, is the defining error of almost all left-wing activism (perhaps Marx/Engels are to blame): Acting in the foregone conclusion that assembling and mobilizing the biggest army is the paramount concern. That'll never work, for the reasons Wilde articulated - and for the reasons Mead articulated, it's totally unnecessary.
Great comment. These wealthy deep state elitists are not incompetent and are not stupid. THEY ARE DOING THIS ON PURPOSE. It's the plan.
Bingo! It’s all deliberate.
EDUCATION from the beginning. I am sorry to say this but Americans have been uneducated for a LONG time but you did not care to see this.
Correct. Our meritocracy has swiftly given way to the truth about our public education system. Public education, because it is free, is not valued. It is an inherently socialist system. While raising my sons, I did 2 things. I read to them from birth until age 10. I moved to different districts to allow them to go to the best schools, and I taught them at home. If they were little now, no way I'd send them to public.
Public K-12 education is THE civil rights issue of our time. Schools need to be de-unionized. It's slavery. These kids are chained by an abysmal education that will haunt them their entire lives, and undermine our society as well.
Civil rights issue of our time? Sounds critical. Well, then, what's your remedy for this "issue of our time?" What sort of "de-unionized" educational system are we thinking will make the grade for our next generation of students so they don't become abysmal-education-chained kids?
And I should think that an entire generation carrying around nightmares of 5th-grade recess and high school locker searches has already undermined our "society." If not our civilization and tax base.
Any ideas or solutions, Professor Dewey?
Sure! Thanks for asking. Run schools like we run everything successful in this country, which is to say anything that isn't run by the government. Fund education based on results. Bad teachers? Fired. Good teachers? bonuses. Incentivize success, which has to be objectively measured. Leave politics out of the K-12 classroom. They can get that in college and beyond. It's already happening in the private schools that the Obama, Clinton and Bush kids went to, but the government is demonstrably incapable of excellence in anything but perhaps graft.
Yes!! This. Pay teachers much more. Let it all be private. Make a great place for great teachers. They should WANT to go to work at that school. And, if the kids aren't there to learn, they can home school them. Merit is rewarded to students and teachers based on performance. The end.
Ah, yes---the one answer to what ails us all. Privatize the whole shootin' match!
Yes, that absolutely would be the end.
This would require ending colleges of education, scrapping the federal Department of Education, and encouraging parents to send their children to private academies.
Nothing short of this will end the destructiveness of US public schooling. Those who have managed to take an education from them are the minority who would do well in any atmosphere.
An editorial bereft of ideas. Unsurprising.
You mean like our private health care system? Our private prison systems? Our private energy grid? Hows that working out for ya?
Yes. Try the government run system in the UK. It’s great unless you’re sick. Most energy grids, the reliable ones, are all privately run. Government does a horrible job. It’s a complex business. I haven’t studied public vs private prisons, but at least the taxpayers don’t have to pay for the private ones. All the world’s great advances have come from private initiative. All the world’s wars, collapses and genocide have come from governments.
You know nothing about the government run system in the UK (which, to note, is being rapidly defunded so we can argue that 'it doesn't work.) Sorry, Charlie: I have been a citizen of the US with the BEST (union) health insurance money could buy. It took WEEKS to see a primary care physician, MONTHS to see a specialist, and the 'best' hospital in San Francisco nearly killed both me and my newborn. Now, I live in the EU. When I call my doctor, I can see her the next day. Should I fall ill in the middle of the night, a doctor is sent to my home. Should I want private care, the costs of the finest specialists are less than the cost of my co-pay in the US.
Sadly, here, as where every Neo-liberal jack hole gets a foot-hold, there is a privatization drive. Health care here is being defunded, and the systems are regional. Remember those COVID deaths in Lombardia and Milan? Guess what right-wing region had decided that 'private' was better and handed their health care system over to private equity firms that immediately closed half the hospitals?
As to the UK - the issues that are currently harming the NIH have nothing to do with it being a public health care system, and EVERYTHING to do with the push to privatize.
Finally, as to all those 'great advances' - name ONE that wasn't government funded. I'll wait.
Take all thee tests away. Teachers hate them.
ending the federal reserve will cure so many aspects of the human ecology that have gone awry. it is a diaease and sickness that touches.almost all aspects of existence and has dehumanized all of us.
imagine fencing off 10 square miles of raw unadulterated forest and then airdropping 10 tons of spam into that area every day. the natural ecology of that forest would be so messed up and result in a mass wasting event. so it is with humanity and the printing of money.
Bullshit. Eduction is a human right, and privatizing it is the WORST thing we can do. If we decoupled school funds from zip codes and provided an actually equal education to ALL citizens, this would be a far healthier society. (I live in Europe. Private schools are primarily for children who can’t cut the rigor of public schooling.)
Our public schools are an abject failure here in the States. I’m all for an “equal “ education. That’s what we’re supposed to have now. American kids aren’t in the top 20 countries in any PISA category, even though we used to be #1. You have to have standards for both teachers and students. We don’t. The unions have destroyed our schools. Until we see real reform, don’t destroy kids lives - give them money to make their own education choices, just like we do with any other service.
A civil society depends on an educated population. The current US system is a disaster because it IS privatized (even though it uses public funds.) A child in Marin County, California graduates ready for the finest universities. He has had opportunities to engage in sports at the highest level, has had a grounding in humanities, music, arts as well as a solid grounding in maths and science. The school grounds are beautiful, the music rooms equipped, and the sports fields maintained to a level worthy of the NHL. A few miles away in Oakland, children attend school in Quonset huts - meant to be temporary until the overflowing toilets could be fixed. She will be greeted by police dogs at the door, and her books will be 10 years out of date. Discipline rather than education is the goal so she will be prepped for a life as a burger flipper or inmate.
All of this is because we refuse to fund education properly. We refuse to honor teachers and pay them proportionate to their education.
Like every other argument you make - you are full of hot air and bull snot. The problem is the privatization and monetization of everything we need to live.
Um, average spending per ADA in Oakland, 2021-2022 school year is $23,296. Average per ADA spending in Marin County for the same period: $18,297. https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/currentexpense.asp . In addition to your unbecoming personal attacks, you are forgetting the importance of culture/values in educational outcomes.
Aside from SL's deafening silence to your common example, like so many people on that side of the debate, they fail to see the monumental role that the parents/home plays in education.
Unfortunately, it's also missing from the school choice/privatized side too. It is not that vouchers and/or charter schools are better - it's that their parents took an active measure in their kids education to begin with. Personally, this is the most clear difference in outcomes between the two ecosystems, when it comes to underprivileged school zones.
Oh, ok---education is not valued because it's free and it's also "inherently a socialist system."
A trifecta of wrongness. Please reload.
Please, tell me how public school is helping our children here in the United States. Do you believe this is a world class education?
It's a bot, not an honest interloctuor.
Don't help train the AI!! I hate tankie-bots.
Then leave.
You first.
I promise - I'll leave right after you're gone.
Pinkie-swear.
feldspar is often (like today) enlightening and downright entertaining. On balance, you should leave first.
I was here first.
Oh! Thank you. I need you everywhere, haha!
Don’t be too mean to feldspar. He’s our mascot!
Didn't the pet rock craze end around 1975?
No it's not in the USA but it's good here in France.
Dude, preaching about the shitty-ness of public education from Mississippi is a game lost before even taking the field.
We have Public education in France. It's good.
I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but public schools have been, and continue to be, quite successful in many states that aren't Mississippi. And sending your kids to segregation academies doesn't help either.
right, when your definition of success is to get a job and make millions from a situation that takes advantage of and propsers off of the usg's rampant counterfeiting operation and on top of that making sure your are anally smug and sure of your superiority for having done so.
Perhaps, given the worldwide reach of woke/gender/Marxist pseudoscience, the easier question is where doesn't the dumbing down happen...
...and Marx and Engels are somehow responsible for the current debates around gender identity? um, how?
No, Marcuse and Adorno. Marx and Engels failed to understand the working class beyond it's usefulness as a theoretical political widget, so their reformers shifted their aim to identity groups and the revolution became cultural.
I'll recommend a primer that will have the resident mineral's panties in a wad: https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Cultural-Revolution-Conquered-Everything/dp/0063227533
Good question. They are responsible because the Marxist deeply flawed dehumanizing, mechanistic, worldview justifies anyone who can somehow claim they are "oppressed" or "marginalized" acquires power over those they accuse of being their oppressors. Sadly that paradigm, disconnected from any other morality, allows anything, including mental disease or social contagion, to acquire dangerous power. Power that defies, but never defeats, reality.
That's not an answer. It's a word salad.
Most people refuse to listen to their youngers. I've received quite an education from my children. You just have to listen to them. Hey, c'mon up to the other end of the river, Minnesota.
An uneducated citizen is the Democrats' best friend.
thats right. and thats why public education will only ever spit out a few types of people. corporate asswhole psychopaths, dryball cogs for the machine of govt, or dependent cattle class. this is the structure of the current human ecology and it runs on the engine of counterfeiting and corruption.
This is generally true, but those who manage to survive their 12 years by following their own interests with the help of an apolitical or conservative teacher/mentor (an endangered species) have always been with us.
There may be nefarious powers allayed against Mississippi, but the citizens of the state need to take some responsibility. Maybe if they hadn't spent centuries trying to perfect hateful ignorance, some progress could have been made.
Slander
Kudos for mentioning the idea of critical thinking.
Excellent comment. Today’s plantations, full of dependents who need the next fix of government programs that never improve anything, but keep people dependent with sub-standard schools and depleted self-respect. And they are fearful that the government program will end, so they vote blue.
The Life of Julia, in real life.
KHP -- I had to look it up. You’re right! Here’s a link: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/ppr/vol11/iss1/1/
The education system is about learning a lot of approved facts and then reflecting them back to the teachers and examiners. The purpose of that is to indoctrinate people, and to give them accreditation so that they are educated enough to be useful employees. It’s not about making people critical thinkers.
I don't think the news that dependents of federal programs vote blue has made it to Mississippi yet.
If being able to see what is, is a necessary characteristic of a sentient being, ask yourself if these people are even alive. And I speak first of the Bumps of this world.
NPCs are real - they just don't know it
Bump and his kind seem to be responding to sensory input, so possibly non-sentient is not the proper description. Yet the puzzling characteristic they lack seems to go beyond the ability to think critically. Perhaps it is self-awareness?
Elitist arrogance without substance. It’s excruciating. These patronizing bastards are useless. They can’t change a tire, plumb a toilet, lay a brick, replace a fuse, fry an egg, discern a radiator from a battery, fix a leaky pipe… They’re worthless stooges who take up space and usurp oxygen.I can’t stand the press or the pundit class left or right . The presumption that they are speaking for me. I don’t recall being asked what they so fervently claim.By anybody.
The “ we” part. How often do they not only state as fact what matters most to us that doesn’t and fail to cover what does? Because I voted (R) does not mean I supported overturning R v W, believe that there is no such thing as a tiny percentage of people who are born in the wrong body.. that their hard wiring doesn’t match their chromosomal mandate. I don’t worship Reagan. I don’t believe they are doing a bang up job, I don’t support hyper-religiosity in government forums, public schools. Nor do I support ANY leftist ideology.
Fix what’s broken, end the wars, expose the WEF Great Reset, expose and purge the corruption throughout, secure the border, audit every dollar spent by government, abolish the CIA, Fed, FBI, IRS, FISA, Patriot Act, CFIUS, TSA, Dept of Education, War On Drugs, Emergency Authorization Act, funding of private universities , corporations, think tanks, media outlets, social media,bailouts, dangerous biorearch, all funding of research outside the US,NGOs, religious orgs,lobbying, special perqs for every government entity, qualified immunity for any governmental/federal entity, withdraw from the UN, WHO,NATO.WEF, Bilderberg Group Term limits whether Congressional, bureaucracy, judiciary…
Purge at least half the Deep State prosecute every bad actor in government and seize their assets until every penny is paid back to the taxpayer.
Protect our nation our citizens from invasion and actual criminality , fix our failing infrastructure Stop forcing dogma down our throats, leave our kids alone..Leave us the hell alone to live our lives in peace.
We were able to manage our lives with far less tumult and divide with far less government in years prior and we can do it again, far more effectively.
They are thinking critically, but the response to that thinking is from a different set of objectives than yours.
You might be giving them more credit than they deserve. But I’m not them, so don’t know. This should be a golden age for psychologists trying to figure that out.
Booty Bump Injection Kit... that's going on someone's tombstone.
You spoony wizard, that was a good joke.
Here lies "booty bump"
Took heroin in his rump
The doctor said
"No wonder he's dead"
He had too much junk
In his trunk
Spoony I am, without a doubt
Recognizing my 16-bit allies from my redoubt
Here is my handle, here is my spout...
Okay, that's all I've got. -_-
mehn saying this makes me sick but The Unibomer's Manifesto is kind of happening
What about the fall of The Roman Empire?
The fall of the American Empire is deliberate:
How ESG & Emotional Abusive Schooling Will Achieve the WEF's Great Reset https://bitchute.com/video/vS0ykC9Y20Vt [6:02mins]
CRT Removes the Reason to Try, This is Not Theoretical: Black Lawyer Excoriates Critical Race Theory https://bitchute.com/video/DaS25FLR8ktR [2:04mins]
You do know that James Lindsay is clinically insane, don't you?
Oh this is good. Tell us, who made that diagnosis?
What part of his presentation did you disagree with?
It's a bot - don't help train the AI.
The part where Lindsay thought he was something more than a massage therapist.
He is a Ph.D. in math and also unlike you, is a great source of information and wisdom.
I submit below one of the few honest "items" Professor Lindsay has written. Shoulda stuck with the numbers and body oils...
"...This research endeavors to put a common combinatorial ground under several binomiallike arrays, including the binomial coefficients, q-binomial coefficients, Stirling numbers, q-Stirling numbers, cycle numbers, and Lah numbers, by employing symmetric polynomials and related words with specialized alphabets as well as a balls-and-urns counting approach. Using the method of statistical generating functions, q- and p; q-generalizations of the binomial coefficients, Stirling numbers, cycle numbers, and Lah numbers are all discussed as well, unified under a single general triangular array that is herein referred to as the array of Comtet-Lancaster numbers."
So he wrote his doctoral dissertation involving theoretical mathematics that neither you nor I understand. What's your point?
DNFTT
Lindsay's explication of neo-Marxist politics threatens the resident mineral mind, so it ridicules him like a good leftist lapdog.
I think its worse than that. I think he knows the truth and is intentionally lying about it because he somehow thinks its for the greater good. But people who are willing to commit evil for their supposed greater good, are themselves evil.
This is what Theodore Dalrymple has been saying. The purpose of propaganda, lying in general, is not merely to get you to believe that something is true that isn't, it's to get you to say something is true that you know is not true. At that point you become complicit in the lying, you become part of the evil that is called lying. Back in the day we used to say "if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem." Today nothing could be truer than that.
I read his quote the other day explaining that idea with the soviets. But the part he somewhat left out, in what I read, is in both Soviet and even Nazi society, there were harsh punishments for stating the truth. Here, there's some social punishment but nothing of similar magnitude. It makes it somewhat understandable to go along with the lie when your life is on the line, but what these people are doing now is inexcusable.
https://www.glibertarians.com/2021/03/of-havels-greengrocer-and-the-necessity-for-ubiquitous-statist-lies/
Banality of evil.
With respect, wrong on the most central point - status anxiety drives Bump and Drezner. All the evidence suggests they do not think. Bump and Drezner sense on the most visceral level that the Queens accent and the movement Trump represents are existential threats to every part of their "essential to society" identities. Both are driven by pats on the head from "authorities." Neither believes important lessons can be learned from the fact that much of what we all believe might be wrong.
Both function to advance blind faith in authoritarian agendas dressed-up as "compassion" and "the science" - and to deflect and discourage critical self-examination, enlightenment, and progress. Both have glimpsed themselves in the mirror and are terrified by what they see. Both understand down to their cores who they really are, and what function they perform. Scares them shitless, as such knowledge should.
Status anxiety is an unhealthy preoccupation with what others think of us - virtually all forms of branding, advertising, and marketing manipulate our fears and desires about our status within a group, before an individual, or a god concept. Old as human history and probably extends to other species - dogs, etc. - hope this helps.
Slightly off-topic - Do animals communicate? Yes. Plants? Maybe. Do either pray?
So it's a class thing? Where class is implicit in their personal identities?
Not really; class, like all communicable group identity, is a granfalloon - what Paul's talking about there, OTOH, is something comparatively REAL.
Obviously I am talking about something which is real and significant to the party that feels threatened by losing it. If you find my choices of words (_class_ and _caste_) I invite you to suggest others. You seem to agree that something real was the subject.
I would've, in fact I tried to, but I apparently slipped a cog while composing what I said before.
It's not a matter of how he's perceived, but his actual, internal ability in conflict with how he gets away with being perceived due to the limits of an inevitably imperfect meritocratic system even when it's working at its best.
Academia SHOULD only reward the truly intelligent - but how does one do that in a manner that everybody can agree on? Consequently, there's a sort of awkward compromise integral to the academic merit system that means not everybody who succeeds within it truly deserves to, nor everyone who fails - this eventually results in a rift between academic "successes" who Get It, and those who Don't Get It, but they APPEAR to be equally qualified since they got the laurels from the same process. We're seeing one of those "moments of reckoning" wherein the bona-fides and the impostors are forced to focus on their differences since something of vital importance has perched upon them.
"The Name that can be named is not the True Name."
- Lao Tzu
You seem to be somewhat ahead of me in examining Mr. Bump and his kind. As a young person I was born into what was to become the PMC (caste?) and so encountered the thing he seems to believe so ardently in at an early age. But in 1960, although we knew very well which side of our bread was buttered, we were smart enough and cynical enough not to worship the butter. It was just _there_ and we happened to be the sufficiently lucky ones to receive it. Of course we were a few years ahead of the Best and the Brightest.... Perhaps Mr. Bump is on the other side of that line, the line of faith.
Glad to see you're reading the Good Book. One of them.
"Straight, square, great,
without purpose, yet everything is furthered."
Fredrik deBoer's new book, "How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement" (2023) takes a look at class in terms of various cultural movements. From the Amazon review:
"Hidden beneath the rhetoric of the oppressed and the symbolism of the downtrodden lies the inconvenient fact that those doing the organizing, messaging, protesting, and campaigning are predominantly drawn from this country’s more upwardly mobile educated classes. Poses are more important than policies."
That has been obvious for some time, but the class position of the activist elites doesn't entirely invalidate their concerns or activities. Indeed, their policies and practices may well have been imperial, but you can't run a big empire if you indulge racial, religious, and other preferences before loyalty to the imperium or its current rulers.
I think you are incorrect. I think they are just people who are actually nuts.
Are either Bump or Drezner aware that their Freudian analyst is posting on the Racket News comment threads about their cases?
You agree with bump, so obviously..
That is the way he comes across. He's not there to inform himself of anything other then to tell you the right and wrong of things.
Also, you have to take into account he has a history of lying. Lies us into the war in Iraq using his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Comm. He steals other people's speeches, writings, how his wife died, the Martin Luther King marches he was in, but wasn't. Not to mention his egocentric self comparing what went on in Maui to his 2 bit house fire.
From the Onion, yet standard operating procedure for self proclaimed ‘fact checker’ partisan hacks like Bump
“Democrats Say It'll Take A Lot More Than Eyewitness Testimony, Bank Records, Audio, Video, Complete Confessions For Them To Believe Biden Did Anything Wrong”
It was the Babylon Bee.
Oops. My bad. Thank you for not ratting me out to the misinformation authorities. 😬
Bump is a fitting name. As are Tribe, Boot, Bash,Frum,Mitt,Warnock, Crump, Weiner,Fink, Flake, Whitehouse….
Actually, I think he's an interesting example of class panic. His case might be worth some analysis since it implies that the present class system is has been much tighter than I thought it was. Apparently if you're dropped out of the PMC (caste) for wrongthink you lose your job/role/position and may fall a long way. Consequently journalists so called are mostly going to toe the line -- the whole line.
"Apparently if you're dropped out of the PMC (caste) for wrongthink you lose your job/role/position and may fall a long way."
This is why I think we're living under a kind of soft totalitarianism. Soft totalitarianism regimes are uncomfortable with using force and prefer instead to maintain control through narrative management, the manipulation of language, and hegemonic control of culture. While hard totalitarianism depends on inflicting terror and fear of pain on people to force them to conform, soft totalitarianism forces conformity by making people being afraid of losing comfort, status, and employment.
Wrote about this as it relates to the Left's war on language: https://www.euphoricrecall.net/p/the-lefts-war-on-language
I think you're right and what bothers me, and perhaps people will not agree, that during the Trump years that growing authoritarianism, or totalitarianism, was ever present and in the media, the left, and people in general were in complicity with it, blinded to it not only by their hatred of Trump, but his base as well. Too many on Facebook and other media platforms expressed their contempt for them all to well, and often defined them as an ignorant, amoral lot. The government is using that hate to impose harsh sentences on those that were present on January 6, and they let people go free after committing violent assaults on innocence in the name of justice.
If one directly challenges a legally established authority in its sphere (for example, Jan. 6 challenged the established public order) the authority is likely to respond forcefully and maybe vindictively, because its existence has been impugned, and it's likely to receive public support when it does so (because most of the public desires a reasonable degree of order). Thus during the Sixties Civil Rights and anti-war demonstrators were usually pretty careful to avoid overt acts of violence (or acts which could be construed as violence).
I understand what you're saying and agree that people in general feel very uncomfortable with that degree of disorder. I was watching at the time, and initially saw hundreds of people led into the Capital through it's front doors, by the capital police. Most people however were standing around doing nothing in particular other then looking curiously about. I saw the horned one in the Capital, smiling, and as Tucker showed on his last night on FOX, he was escorted by police and seemed to be having a non violent time. I don't remember seeing people breaking windows although I know they did, but I did see Brian Sicknick beat about the head, and they did say initially he died of the wounds inflicted, but he wasn't beaten. Did I imagine that? He went home unscathed, and died of a stroke. So confusing. Ebbs seemed to be giving directions on attacking the Capital yet never charged as far as I know, while others have been given unduly harsh sentences. For me the disorder was defined before the riot by the unlawful dedication to remove Trump from office on the lie of Russia gate, a lie pushed and supported by the democrats, the media, including the left. Celebrities called for his death, and their threats were seen as humorous and readily accepted. Oh and the impeachments. No one was held accountable for the lie of Russia-gate which took three years to see the light of day does make me wonder if Jan 6 was just the icing on the cake they prepared for Trump. They call it an insurrection, but it's better called a riot, and it didn't really scare me, but the democrats who worked in complicity with others to remove an elected president from office did. I wonder why so many people were, and remain blind to the chaos that preceded that day.
Well said, Fran!
Thanks Brad.
You raise a number of issues which are somewhat beyond my immediate concern (above). There, I'm principally trying to understand what some would call TDS as it affects people such as Mr. Bump, who seems to have religious faith in his beliefs. Surely it is not a surprise to find authoritarianism in Academia, although sometimes oddly colored; the Education Industry is based fundamentally on the principles of (1) sequestered knowledge (which raises its price) and (2) credentialism, which is usually a pure exercise of hierarchical or bureaucratic power. What I find odd in Mr. Bump is his lack of critical resistance to the Industry's propaganda, which in previous eras I found even in its most devoted servants. For instance, the term "politically correct" was originally activist-lesbian or feminist gibe at Maoists.
Also I am not happy with reifying the Left into a coherent organism. The Left may be a sensibility or a "side", but it is not coherent. If it has been bourgeoisified (aligned with power) as you suggest it is no longer Left (in my opinion).
Curiously I find that Taibbi and Kern this week* are now on about something similar to Mr. Bump's devotion, the way in which comedy has assumed uncomedic monotony, under the influence I suppose of what we might call "liberal totalitarianism." Doesn't this make liberals uncomfortable? I guess not. In fact, I guess I'm being pretty redundant.
* America This Week, September 8, 2023: "Comedy is Not Pretty"
Lying for your Blue team members pays.