I'm sorry to report that the MAGA/Federalist/Dominionist mentality is replicated in business and law schools and probably also other professional schools these days. I don't think Berkeley is representative...at all.
I retired in 2018, but starting with Reagan, right wing foundation money corrupted most of non "liberal studies" academia. I passed on thousands of resumes - from applicants for legal positions, to attorneys' fee petitions. It seems that most of academia was focused on "reform" of the FDR "administrative state". People like me went the way of the Dodo bird and the Mastodon.
Even in my own family, the number 1 job title for kids who majored in the arts is "bar tender."
Colleges and universities are killing off their liberal arts departments right and left. Many years ago, I went for an informational interview with a top CEO in NYC. We discussed the marvelous artwork on his walls because I recognize and gasped at it when I walked in, then moved to other non-business topics. He had promised me ten minutes…an hour later, he asked me to have lunch with him. When the discussion of my job hunt finally came up, I shared how I was wavering about staying in the arts and wondering if I should try to transition to big business, even though this was the era of the MBA, and there I was with my MFA. His response was probably unique, but I’ve never forgotten it: “You have something precious. I can teach employees to do the MBA stuff. What I can’t teach them is how to think or to have a worldly perspective. You have that. It may not be an easy sell for some, but it’s crucial for real success. I will hire you if that’s what you want, but the world needs people like you in the arts and humanities. Any idiot can sell a widget.”
C Towers — My brother — a management specialist who vetted “workforces” for companies that wanted to move to new locations — told me that truism many years ago… HR departments looked for the hard skills needed in jobs, but also for an educated work force able to think more broadly. Even thinking about medical schools many years ago, I was told NOT to focus too narrowly on science courses, as med schools wanted a well-educated applicant, not simply a science nerd [though science nerd is good in the mix]. “Well educated” means able to think broadly, artistically, counter-intuitively AND logically and orderly. Someone with hard skills AND a sense of what we used to call “the human condition.” Those make the best scientists, too.
Interesting, Prof. Harry Nerhood, at Whittier College in 1965 told me that businesses were looking for people who knew how to think, that they'd learn how to do the job on the job.
Richard — Yes, that was the drill, once upon a time. Now companies don’t want to put the time in training help. Cheaper to have the schools do it, the students pay for it in tuition, the schools charge students for credits when they get “on the job training” as free interns … wow, what a grift … Corporation Heaven ….
Interesting exchange. What we've clearly failed to do in our educational process is to teach critical thinking skills and virtually nothing about comparative political systems. In my opinion, the college professor who has the answers is Melanie Trecek-King. Check this out: https://thinkingispower.com/about/
I have to look into that a bit more, Mr. Sutherland. The link leads to another link, and that link mentions a pantheon of skeptical thinkers who are my lifelong heroes … Way cool.
It's easy for CEO X to say that he can teach "MBA stuff" - the trouble is that many CEOs do not what that entails, and quite frankly have huge knowledge gaps on some basic business concepts. In a case-study oriented MBA program (Harvard, Ivey being prime example) students will carry out approximately 600 case study analyses. This is not possible in employment setting where staff fit in at most a few weeks of training each year - between doing their actual jobs.
Liberal arts departments are being cut because fewer students not choosing those majors. STEM and business are the hot things - for students.
We have lost sight of why we want an educated person in so many jobs. And, in the 80s, we changed the way we employ people. I’m old enough to be out of that employment world now, so I can’t say if any of it’s been tuned around, but when I was still in the trenches, I recall we offshored tons of manufacturing jobs, the factories where those jobs were located we shut down, and the shipping and delivery systems they needed were sidelined, and the managerial staff for those industries were out of work, too… The concept of the “gig economy” rose up; and all of a sudden, people were being hired as “temps” and they didn’t even get paid by the company where they worked, but were technically “employees” of temp agencies with fewer benefits and less chance of establishing longevity with a company, or moving up the ladder …. We’ve spent a handful of decades demonizing public education and teachers. And we have culturally disparaged the arts in education, including language and communication, history and sociology, and philosophy, in favor of hard sciences {full disclosure, I LOVE hard sciences}, encouraging people to think of education as job training only, telling them they are wasting their money in anything but a job-training course of study, meaning classes in science, technology, engineering, and math, or … ta da … business management.
That definitely discouraged people from taking classes in college where they might be encouraged to discuss whether or not they want to live in a Theocracy, or perhaps discuss the difference between Fascism and Communism, and how to tell if an Autocracy is one or the other, and if there’s any real difference between them … Or where they might read literature and discuss communication … or compare cultural art from around the world …
Unless someone planned to enter politics or go to work for the government, there was little incentive to study about such things, or have their provincial ideas about such things challenged, have their thinking broadened …!
All the better to shape a society that could be led down the primrose path to autocracy …
Get them angry at their own media, and there’s one more source of information you don’t have to worry about.
OK, maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe i just get angry about how a “liberal” education has been so badly devalued [not “liberal” politically; but “liberal” in scope and ideas}… and here we are trying to figure out how to let people know the difference between a person who supports democracy and one who intends to install a fascist state …
Could not agree more on all points, Pat. I saw the same thing in my education and career. A liberal arts education is now seen to be irrelevant, when in fact the mind-broadening, reasoning aspects of such an education are invaluable.
Life is not fair. Football coaches sometimes make more than the budgets of entire academic departments.
I know some Harvard/Wharton/Columbia MBAs who used their "superior" knowledge to destroy their own family businesses. I know several Harvard and Yale law graduates who never passed the bar. We hired law clerks who were Phi beta kappa, order of the coif who I would not trust filing papers at the courthouse.
I have relatives who were college presidents. More who were/are professors. In antediluvian time, I represented schools that fired teachers, colleges that denied tenure, and also represented a few individuals who were denied tenure. In many schools, virtually nobody receives tenure. Adjuncts are not paid well. Lecture courses are usually taught to many students and are cost productive. Seminars and lab courses are high cost. '
Basically, starting with Reagan in 1981, this country has gone to hell where average Americans are concerned. I favor wiping out the entire $1.6 trillion student debt owed by 40 million Americans. IMO, they've been screwed. My college career went from 1958 to 1973 and my total tuition was less than $17,000. Two years at a junior college, four years of U.S. Army (2 years at Army Language School), two years at USC Grad School, three years at Harvard Grad School and three years at Harvard Law. All for less than $17,000. We desperately need to make higher education affordable again.
Heeeeeyy- my kids are in the Arts, and no bar tending is happening. They work in their fields- but have no safety net…and health insurance is the single thing that has caused the most trouble. We’ve got to do better than this.
Exactly- why can’t my adult child, who pays taxes, paid off student loans, hasn’t broken any laws, get the same deal her grandparents (and now me) have? She’s more than willing to pay a premium…
Because the industrial free polluter only needs that "premium payment " not ANOTHER thinking type person. Understanding frustration is more hype after the trickling gazzillians attached to automotive and ai.
Kids get out of school and go where they get paid — bar tenders can make a bundle in tips {you know, the bar bill can be bigger than the dinner bill …}. I’m only a little joshing here, because kids go to school to learn about the things they want to keep in their lives, the things they want to work at, and I know kids in the arts want to work there, too, not tend bar. I think we all have seen the push to get kids into STEM, maybe because so many foreign students stopped coming here during the Trump era, and we need to replace those scientists here who used to have so many foreign names {because students came here and stayed}. But we need people in our society who can communicate and think and dream, too, even in STEM jobs — so killing off the arts {and I include literature, sociology, history, and philosophy in “arts”} kills off the skills needed to be political animals as well as inventive ones. Maybe the guys who want to pull the wool over voters eyes and sell them on fascism-in-disguise are the ones who want to kill the arts in education, so the ability to think about ideas in the philosophical realm goes out of style.
Just riffing on the idea of what has happened to “the arts.” The professors I know who teach “arts” are seriously worried about their jobs, too.
Yup. In our circle of at least master's degreed professionals 12 kids would have been in this year's graduating class. 3 fell by the wayside and dropped out. Bartenders. 3 majored in art/design and live at home. 1 is taking another "gap year" after graduation, 1 surfs from one volunteer nature experience to another, 2 are public school teachers (yay), 2 got entry level jobs in their majors: business not finance. A broad liberal education it seems is a rare, expensive and probably not so useful thing anymore. Fewer kids are going to college. So the bench for progressives is dwindling.
The expensive part is another change that was made to discourage education — Why did the government turn student loans over to private banks that made a profit center of them? Why were those banks able to mis-manage them, allow payments for years that did NOT bring down principle, so people owed MORE money after paying on their loans in stead of less — why were education loans saddled with HIGHER interest rates than the prime rate for years — Mmmmm, I have a lot of questions .. even more than this …
Why is our country discouraging quality eduction and replacing it with job training?
You were very fortunate to have exchanged ideas with that CEO. Thank you for spreading his much-needed message. For what it’s worth, discrimination in the arts begins well before college in our educational system. In recent decades, we have seen funding cut backs in arts related areas of study as early as elementary school. In overt and subtle ways, children are taught that the arts are a nice hobby, but not as important as other subjects. Thankfully, to the benefit of society, and our aesthetic needs, many children grow up to ignore this ill intended advice and pursue careers in the arts.
Daniel Solomon: Mega-Maga JOHN YOO (the Torture Memo to George W. Bush) is Professor of Law at Boalt Hall (i.e., the Law School, University of California, Berkeley).
Berkley is suppose to be the "home" of free speech, I remember the free speech riots at Berkeley, but it is really Free speech for me and not for thee.
The Students launched a massive protest against Bill Maher, who was inveted to the campus, because Bill spoke the truth and that incensed the poor sensitive souls, when he called the Abaya, Chador, Niqab and Burqa bee keeper suits, and talks of gender apartheid in the Islamic world.
I didn't know that Berkeley, Columbia, etc had become madrassas.
Free speech is why? Free speech for all, not for those that we agree with, or no free speech at all.
As regards Bill Maher, in the main I agree, he is a selfish, self centered prick and a transphobe, maybe because of his relationship to Ann Coulter. When COVID restrictions hit him in the pocket book and in the attention he so badly needs, he became an acerbic critic of vaccines, though he has had one, of masking and of Dr Faucci and medical professionals in general, thus a prick.
However I save all his shows for one reason only, New Rules, because I do agree with most of them, especially his critique of political correctness. It has one overboard, and his last show's New Rules were his best to date, Gender Apartheid in Islam. The hypocrisy of the campus idiots, who rant, rail and demonstrate for equal rights for women and gays, and in turn rant, rail and demonstrate for the greatest oppressors of women and gays.. Islam.
What the fuck is with that and them.?
So gender apartheid and murder of gays is bad in a democracy, but OK in Islam?
Maybe it will take women in the west having to wear Abayas, Chadors, Niqabs, Burqa,s and Hijab, of not being able to travel without a male relative escort, even if it as a five year old son or nephew, being tortured and hung from a construction crane for not wearing a hijab (head scarf) property, and for gays to be thrown off roofs for campus idiots to finally wake up.
One piece of idiocy I don't get is Queers for Palestine. A queer would not last a day among Palestinians, but can get married in Israel.
I'll add ... I am not against pieces of shit having the right to speak. Not at all. However, if I were at a university, I would ABSOLUTELY be LIVID that of all the speakers they could have brought in, they invited a piece of shit -- and, I assume, paid him. If anybody thinks it's part of the First Amendment that people are required to pay pieces of shit to come speak, well, that's not what it says.
Yes, this the Shame of UC Berkeley to allow this master of torture to teach. There is no such thing as limitless freedom of speech. If Yoo was seen marching around in an SS Nazi uniform, he couldn't get away with his torture memos.
Yeah C I can relate mightily to this tale. In ancient times, my first major job application out of grad school was to a university computing center. There were plenty of applicants with more computing experience, but for some inexplicable reason I was the chosen one. When later I got up the courage to question my manager as to why I had been hired, he said I was the only one who knew who Edna St Vincent Millay was and that he knew I would acquire the more advanced skills I needed at the computing center itself. That job was the best job I ever had except for my recent volunteer work teaching English to refugees in Greece.
Decades after Vietnam, it was revealed that all of us, our Presidents included, were lied to about that entire situation, dragging us into a hot war that never should have been. And, if we will keep it in mind, LBJ negotiated a peace there, but was betrayed by Republicans who promised the South Vietnamese a better deal if they didn’t sign until after the 1968 presidential election … As we all know, that peace never came…
The “war” might have ended in 1968, but the Right wanted Nixon in the White House and look what they’ve dished out ever since …
I agree these are heinous behaviors, and sometimes against not only international law, but our own law {though Trump would have the SCOTUS put all of that under “on the job” status and ignore it … I certainly hope they don’t}. The difference with most of it is, it wasn’t “personal.” Trump pulled some plain old crook behavior in service of himself, like some Mafiosi that he reveres in his “New York” persona … And he behaved AGAINST our government, not in the name of it. [I think the Patriot Act goes against our government, too, though. And Cheney’s idea of a unitary president, which is what the R’s have in mind for us again, if they get in again.]
Those differences I cite above don’t excuse what has been done by others. But they are differences.
LBJ became President when JFk was assassinated, those who lived in the era remember when JFK was accused of being a commie, because he pulled out of the Bay of Pigs. Not just JFK but the Democratic party was painted with the liberal -> Socialist ->commie brush, and still is as you all should well know.
The Bay of Tonikin resolution in 1964 was a means to deflect that criticism, If LBJ had continued with JFK's plan to pull out of Vietnam, he would and so would have the Democratic Party been declared Communist, and I think would have slid into Republican control and fascism (Mussolni style) earlier
My opinion and I am not going to argue over opinions.
Full disclosure. I voted for Nixon in 60. Didn't vote for Kennedy because my stepdad was a good friend of John B Kelly, Grace Kelley's father and the biggest contractor in Philadelphia, some claim he was the invisible mayor.
Russ, my step dad gossiped at the dinner table and he gossiped about a young congressman named john F Kennedy, who as a real whoremaster,cheating on his beautiful wife. I wasn't aware of politics when I voted, but that prompted me to vote against Kennedy, I was also very, very anti communist at the time. I didn't even believe that, the photos of missiles on cargo ships being send back to Russia, after the Missile Crisis, were phony.
I was in Panama when Carter signed the Canal Zone Treaty, and still have copy o it printed in the Zonian. I believed that Carter had betrayed the US and sold out out to Panama.
Obviously I've come around since then, and had an epiphany in 1989, but had gradually built towards it Point is I have been on both sides of the issue. I now consider myself a progressive, not a centrist, and eschew extremes of left and right.
Your opinion is totally garbage. Lying, and then stating that you don’t want debate your garbage is on point for your intellect. Like when you said the Steele dossier had some merit. Then refused to concede that it was a lie designed to defame a sitting president.
Bull. You are nothing but another Dumb Trump Sucker pushing bull while he sells this country to the highest bidder. You sound exactly like the Chuck Campbell I knew long ago. Another foolish know it all who supports a crook.
GULF of Tonkin. A false flag incident and excuse to murder people. Cowards and mental midgets gleefully repeated talking points in order to embroil the United States on behalf of the Military Industrial Complex. It’s not surprising that Americans stood by and watched while a lone gunman performed the most magical display of marksmanship in the history of the world. It’s surprising that they ever had the decency to elect JFK in the first place.
The Steele Dossier was a hoax as well. The FBI knew it was fake as early as January 2017. Morons like you pretend it is a valid reason to clutch pearls about trump. You should admit that it was a ruse. Only you can’t. Because if you do, your pathetic excuse of a belief structure comes unraveled.
very good. Like to see a version without the text.
If you want to change people you have to give them events not just reasons.
The teacher did both.
The other reason the students did not object is because they assumed the classroom is the teacher's space of authority. Hey, maybe the teacher had a good reason for kicking one out. "Not my problem."
We all make assumptions about the "space of authority" and what should be acquiesced to and what should not. The man in the white coat shocking the hell out of some "subject".
The more subtle detail is that even given the prof's "space of authority," >none< of the students questioned the >extent< of his >legitimate< authority - which is, I think, an important point the prof was trying to make.
That's important in current events, where there is a question as to whether a sitting president has the unlimited authority to overthrow the government. A lot of people wearing red caps >certainly< don't question it, thinking "not my problem" if he does so, believing he's their god's own appointed leader, and they serve their barbaric god.
NOT a comment or reply. Just a particularly good assortment of political cartoons I have to share with you all today (including a few about British, Canadian, & Australian politics.):
Although a couple irk me, I particularly like the one where ol' Schitzinpantz is whining about being a victim, and the one in a boxing ring about more corruption! (A real message to pass along!)
As a fellow scientist, I recall getting a phone call from a Wall Street recruiter, imploring me to change fields, because they had found that our analytic skills translated well to finance. I asked the gentlemen, why he thought people went into science in the first place. After a long moment of silence, I said, it’s because we seek to solve the unknown and to maybe create something that no one had done before. It is the thrill of discovery that motivates us, not boat loads of money. And now, I’ve done exactly what I wanted to, and created technologies that to this day, still support returning normal lives to patients in need, long after retirement. Any money I earned from that career, is just icing on the cake.
GrrlScientist, I truly wish that these trumpettes could be made aware of how they are being used for one orange man's desire to be king. I do believe the kool-aid has destroyed that part of their brain that would stop them before they become fodder for said king!
TFG's support are those who can't handle all the rapid changes in society. They essentially are against the rights of minorities of all stripes, women rights, immigrants, and the government. And they see Biden through the eyes of RW media as a demented old man. And the monster they support represents their grievances. So what he is, or says, or does is irrelevant.
Is it because they saw something on TV? Or maybe orange is their favorite color. Something must make sense. Does anyone have any info on a deprogrammed member of the cult?
Trump told them the game was rigged and he knew because he took advantage of it. He convinced them it was the "Coastal Elites" that did it. (I understand that is a buzz word for "The Jews".) Nah, it's old money like the Koch brothers.
At the same time, the Republicans want their base fighting the culture wars instead of noticing the economic wars eating them and their families alive.
Bingo! It’s the right’s deflection campaign. Economic’s 101. If you spend more money than you make, you’re going to have a deficit. So, the question I keep asking those on the right, is. Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot, by constantly cutting taxes, as is the favorite route of republicans. Let not the right forget, that Clinton left us a surplus. Which Bush crushed it with corporate tax cuts and then proceeded to bog us down in Iraq, under false pretenses. Money and lives wasted that could have gone to the greater good. This is where the entire deficit issue started. And later on, what did all of those corporate tax cuts give us? The Great Recession. And after legislation was passed to fix this loop hole in the financial industry, what do republicans do once they gain control of government under Trump, but to repeal the Dodd-Frank act! The very tool designed to prevent another financial disaster. And that doesn’t even count right wing attempts to get the Supreme Court to make consumer protection unconstitutional.
The Federal Budget creates Money, money creates consumer demand, consumer demand creates jobs. Balance the budget and the economy stagnates, no federal budget, no money, no money, no demand, no demand no jobs A depression.
Keynes in short. The Republicans know this and when in office are Keynesians, when out of office they are anti Keynesias and complain about the deficit.
The Democrats are at fault, because they let the Republicans get away with this chicanery, Also see Jude Wassinski's two santa clause theory and how the Republicans have used to whip Democrats ass
I wasn’t saying we needed to balance the budget. What I am saying, is, it’s gotten out of control, and a some point, the country is going to pay for it. And as our economy has rolled over from a manufacturing economy to a consumer economy, what happened? We now have massive consumer debt to go along with a huge deficit. I’d suggest that you read, the book Evil Geniuses. It spells out how we got here and the total BS that the Chicago School of economics gave us. Alll brought to you by the Reagan era. And yes, democrats let them get away with it. And here we are.
What you call out of control, is the consequence of a growing and prosperous economy, and economy is made up of people. America is prosperous because of it's people, in particular those willing to work for low wages, it was the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Germans and Poles who worked the coal and iron mines, like My children's other great great grand father, a German who worked the Pennsylvania coal mines The Scandinavians who settled through out the north great lakes and Washington state as lumberjacks and farmers
If the government stopped going into debt to fund it's activities, the money would dry up and you would have a depression,and consumers would not be able to pay off their debts.. no money in circulation. Reduce the national debt and you reduce the money supply and cause a recession at best.
And yes the Chicago School of Milton Friedman shoveled shit at MBA's and they ate it like ice cream and fucked Chile, brought that murdering fascist Pinochet into power and killed Salvadore Allende, I am light years ahead of you.
But please don't suggest I read anything. I am not bragging but probably could have read those books that you adore. I lived through of all of that. I am 85, and find it difficult to read books anymore. I have read thousands, maybe 10,000 in my lifetime. I have left behind three libraries, and have another one stored in boxes in my garage. I would donate or sell them to a 1/2 price book store,if I had time, energy and needed the money.
Well, I am not far behind you, being 74. So I too have lived it! And like you, I am also a reader of books and probably have well over 200 hundred in my possession. I was only suggesting a book to read to understand how we got here, that’s all. How am I to know, that you might already have read it? What bothers me the most, is that people just don’t care to know about what drives the economy, much less world events. It’s the complete lack of curiosity that I find disturbing. That’s not my style. One can never have enough knowledge. An informed citizen is a responsible citizen.
What a great article Sam Ray! This is why I support raising children in agnostic communes where all their needs are met! We need to end all child abuse and religion until the child reaches 27 years old.
Thanks so much Bob. You should find a lot more you like in Counter-Narcissist Intelligence's new indexed database, including a great piece written by a friend about religious narcissists. Cheers! https://samray.substack.com/p/counter-narcissist-database
I graduated with an MS in 1991 and started working at a salary of $36k at a mid-sized state university. My son graduated with an MS in 2014 and started working at a salary of — $36k at a mid-sized state university. In 23 years, the starting salary didn’t change, but the cost of living certainly did!
I think part of the reason there is a growing resentment among the 'trumpettes' IS this disparity: working class people can not afford the high end items advertised on TV and elsewhere, items they can not afford. Trucks, cars, refrigerators, and luxury goods (?!) etc. are all Very Expensive. It used to be a Ford truck was affordable. Not so much anymore.
Yes. They were all ALREADY very "dim" on the intellectual scale, but the non-stop SHRIEKING of, "THEY R TRYING 2 REPLACE U!!2!" has shriveled what little brain power was left.
Bunkerboy wants a Kakistocracy, or rule by the least qualified, so he can shuffle roughshod over the 70% of ACTUAL "Americans" that despise him!
And some of us gave up on the science game in graduate school when all of the control from the top emerged. The medical-biological industry is filled with strivers not true scientists. Hire legions of postdoctoral servants from abroad to swell the sweatshops with the brand-Harvard, Mayo, Hopkins. Talented scientists were avoiding the biomedical machine years ago. Them ain’t sour grapes, mama. Who is Dr. John Galt?
Thomas Frank, in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" details how the ultra rich have used wedge issues (abortion, women's rights advocates, gay rights advocates, immigration, minorities etc. to entice white Christians (mostly) to vote against their own best social and economic interests. They're gullible, and that's why I denote MAGA to mean Misleading (or Milking) Average Gullible Americans.
America has developed a group of "oligarchs" which makes the Russians pale with envy. To me, this is why these people (the "Billionaire class") are so "into" Trump. They see how the Oligarchs in Russia have been able to fleece the Russian people of massive amounts of their country's natural resources and they figure another Trump "administration" will FURTHER open the floodgates to the one thing they can't get enough of: MONEY! You can call THEM the elites or, to me, more appropriately, the SWAMP!
If tfg again gains the Oval Office that is exactly what will happen and he will extend the no laws bar privileges to those who will genuflect before him. What a cesspool that will be.
I hadn’t really realized the bar had lowered for what it means to be progressive, as I’m old enough to consider myself defined under a bar higher than wanting basic tenets of democracy to be upheld but when you explain it this way it makes sense.
I also think we going to see a new group of those who don’t go to college, because as you snd others have pointed out, Reagan and others have made that further out of reach for anyone but the monied class by cutting funding for public universities to the point where most can’t get there. When I look at what I paid for my college vs what I could expect to earn when I started work afterward, in scientific research, not a highly paid profession it was still doable. This was the early 1980s. I went to high tech later but that’s another story. When I look at what the kids of close friends paid for school vs what they can earn, particularly one who works as a teacher in special education, she would be underwater for a couple decades if not longer. If I were reviewing this as a business plan, I’d reject it out of hand. No wonder we have so many angry people who are enraged by the college educated.
As a millennial, I can tell you that there are many who went to college because of the propaganda of college and graduated with student loans and no career, thus fueling the anger that’s shown by our generation and others.
College is no longer the pure institution it may have been and that’s shown in the fact that one must accept going into debt for a degree.
My argument is that college should only be attended for those who require a licensure (eg. Medical field), but aside from that, we can learn everything else.
The college problem started with the G.I. bill, I think. Remember all those fathers then telling us kids “work with your brains, not brawn?” Then the ground got ripped out from under our feet, manufacturing left, the internet changed everything, “business consultants” told business owners to cut personnel to increase profits. What a mess. College is not a guarantee of anything.
I interpreted his point to be that it’s hard to fight for larger ideals if your ability to vote, love who you want, or your bodily autonomy are under serious threat. As Samuel Johnson said: “…when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
Professor Reich: some of us even become scientists.
that said, i wonder how many of the trumpettes are aware of why there is a growing disparity in america? or has the kool-aid destroyed their brains?
Great rhetoric. MAGA is a cult, something that happens when you destroy the frontal lobes, and release the unthinking brain of a pack animal.
I'm sorry to report that the MAGA/Federalist/Dominionist mentality is replicated in business and law schools and probably also other professional schools these days. I don't think Berkeley is representative...at all.
I retired in 2018, but starting with Reagan, right wing foundation money corrupted most of non "liberal studies" academia. I passed on thousands of resumes - from applicants for legal positions, to attorneys' fee petitions. It seems that most of academia was focused on "reform" of the FDR "administrative state". People like me went the way of the Dodo bird and the Mastodon.
Even in my own family, the number 1 job title for kids who majored in the arts is "bar tender."
Colleges and universities are killing off their liberal arts departments right and left. Many years ago, I went for an informational interview with a top CEO in NYC. We discussed the marvelous artwork on his walls because I recognize and gasped at it when I walked in, then moved to other non-business topics. He had promised me ten minutes…an hour later, he asked me to have lunch with him. When the discussion of my job hunt finally came up, I shared how I was wavering about staying in the arts and wondering if I should try to transition to big business, even though this was the era of the MBA, and there I was with my MFA. His response was probably unique, but I’ve never forgotten it: “You have something precious. I can teach employees to do the MBA stuff. What I can’t teach them is how to think or to have a worldly perspective. You have that. It may not be an easy sell for some, but it’s crucial for real success. I will hire you if that’s what you want, but the world needs people like you in the arts and humanities. Any idiot can sell a widget.”
C Towers — My brother — a management specialist who vetted “workforces” for companies that wanted to move to new locations — told me that truism many years ago… HR departments looked for the hard skills needed in jobs, but also for an educated work force able to think more broadly. Even thinking about medical schools many years ago, I was told NOT to focus too narrowly on science courses, as med schools wanted a well-educated applicant, not simply a science nerd [though science nerd is good in the mix]. “Well educated” means able to think broadly, artistically, counter-intuitively AND logically and orderly. Someone with hard skills AND a sense of what we used to call “the human condition.” Those make the best scientists, too.
Interesting, Prof. Harry Nerhood, at Whittier College in 1965 told me that businesses were looking for people who knew how to think, that they'd learn how to do the job on the job.
Richard — Yes, that was the drill, once upon a time. Now companies don’t want to put the time in training help. Cheaper to have the schools do it, the students pay for it in tuition, the schools charge students for credits when they get “on the job training” as free interns … wow, what a grift … Corporation Heaven ….
Interesting exchange. What we've clearly failed to do in our educational process is to teach critical thinking skills and virtually nothing about comparative political systems. In my opinion, the college professor who has the answers is Melanie Trecek-King. Check this out: https://thinkingispower.com/about/
I have to look into that a bit more, Mr. Sutherland. The link leads to another link, and that link mentions a pantheon of skeptical thinkers who are my lifelong heroes … Way cool.
How did you get that interview, though?
I was working for a large private foundation at the time, and the president knew everyone!
LOVE this story, C! That CEO was obviously more perceptive than the vast majority.
Did you take the job?
Nope. Stayed true to my heart. It was the right decision.
It's easy for CEO X to say that he can teach "MBA stuff" - the trouble is that many CEOs do not what that entails, and quite frankly have huge knowledge gaps on some basic business concepts. In a case-study oriented MBA program (Harvard, Ivey being prime example) students will carry out approximately 600 case study analyses. This is not possible in employment setting where staff fit in at most a few weeks of training each year - between doing their actual jobs.
Liberal arts departments are being cut because fewer students not choosing those majors. STEM and business are the hot things - for students.
We have lost sight of why we want an educated person in so many jobs. And, in the 80s, we changed the way we employ people. I’m old enough to be out of that employment world now, so I can’t say if any of it’s been tuned around, but when I was still in the trenches, I recall we offshored tons of manufacturing jobs, the factories where those jobs were located we shut down, and the shipping and delivery systems they needed were sidelined, and the managerial staff for those industries were out of work, too… The concept of the “gig economy” rose up; and all of a sudden, people were being hired as “temps” and they didn’t even get paid by the company where they worked, but were technically “employees” of temp agencies with fewer benefits and less chance of establishing longevity with a company, or moving up the ladder …. We’ve spent a handful of decades demonizing public education and teachers. And we have culturally disparaged the arts in education, including language and communication, history and sociology, and philosophy, in favor of hard sciences {full disclosure, I LOVE hard sciences}, encouraging people to think of education as job training only, telling them they are wasting their money in anything but a job-training course of study, meaning classes in science, technology, engineering, and math, or … ta da … business management.
That definitely discouraged people from taking classes in college where they might be encouraged to discuss whether or not they want to live in a Theocracy, or perhaps discuss the difference between Fascism and Communism, and how to tell if an Autocracy is one or the other, and if there’s any real difference between them … Or where they might read literature and discuss communication … or compare cultural art from around the world …
Unless someone planned to enter politics or go to work for the government, there was little incentive to study about such things, or have their provincial ideas about such things challenged, have their thinking broadened …!
All the better to shape a society that could be led down the primrose path to autocracy …
Get them angry at their own media, and there’s one more source of information you don’t have to worry about.
OK, maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe i just get angry about how a “liberal” education has been so badly devalued [not “liberal” politically; but “liberal” in scope and ideas}… and here we are trying to figure out how to let people know the difference between a person who supports democracy and one who intends to install a fascist state …
My sentiments exactly. Colleges used to teach you how to think, not what to think, or not to think at all about subjects beyond how to make money.
Could not agree more on all points, Pat. I saw the same thing in my education and career. A liberal arts education is now seen to be irrelevant, when in fact the mind-broadening, reasoning aspects of such an education are invaluable.
Life is not fair. Football coaches sometimes make more than the budgets of entire academic departments.
I know some Harvard/Wharton/Columbia MBAs who used their "superior" knowledge to destroy their own family businesses. I know several Harvard and Yale law graduates who never passed the bar. We hired law clerks who were Phi beta kappa, order of the coif who I would not trust filing papers at the courthouse.
I have relatives who were college presidents. More who were/are professors. In antediluvian time, I represented schools that fired teachers, colleges that denied tenure, and also represented a few individuals who were denied tenure. In many schools, virtually nobody receives tenure. Adjuncts are not paid well. Lecture courses are usually taught to many students and are cost productive. Seminars and lab courses are high cost. '
A number of Republican state legislatures are defunding state colleges. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/desantis-defunds-diversity-programs-florida-public-colleges-2023-05-15/
In Pa, the governor to the rescue. May be too late. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/state-policy/2024/01/29/governor-plans-restructuring-pennsylvania-higher-ed-system
Basically, starting with Reagan in 1981, this country has gone to hell where average Americans are concerned. I favor wiping out the entire $1.6 trillion student debt owed by 40 million Americans. IMO, they've been screwed. My college career went from 1958 to 1973 and my total tuition was less than $17,000. Two years at a junior college, four years of U.S. Army (2 years at Army Language School), two years at USC Grad School, three years at Harvard Grad School and three years at Harvard Law. All for less than $17,000. We desperately need to make higher education affordable again.
Heeeeeyy- my kids are in the Arts, and no bar tending is happening. They work in their fields- but have no safety net…and health insurance is the single thing that has caused the most trouble. We’ve got to do better than this.
We call the answer to that problem "medicare for all"
Exactly- why can’t my adult child, who pays taxes, paid off student loans, hasn’t broken any laws, get the same deal her grandparents (and now me) have? She’s more than willing to pay a premium…
Because the industrial free polluter only needs that "premium payment " not ANOTHER thinking type person. Understanding frustration is more hype after the trickling gazzillians attached to automotive and ai.
And online thieft.
Universal healthcare. Better answer.
Kids get out of school and go where they get paid — bar tenders can make a bundle in tips {you know, the bar bill can be bigger than the dinner bill …}. I’m only a little joshing here, because kids go to school to learn about the things they want to keep in their lives, the things they want to work at, and I know kids in the arts want to work there, too, not tend bar. I think we all have seen the push to get kids into STEM, maybe because so many foreign students stopped coming here during the Trump era, and we need to replace those scientists here who used to have so many foreign names {because students came here and stayed}. But we need people in our society who can communicate and think and dream, too, even in STEM jobs — so killing off the arts {and I include literature, sociology, history, and philosophy in “arts”} kills off the skills needed to be political animals as well as inventive ones. Maybe the guys who want to pull the wool over voters eyes and sell them on fascism-in-disguise are the ones who want to kill the arts in education, so the ability to think about ideas in the philosophical realm goes out of style.
Just riffing on the idea of what has happened to “the arts.” The professors I know who teach “arts” are seriously worried about their jobs, too.
Yup. In our circle of at least master's degreed professionals 12 kids would have been in this year's graduating class. 3 fell by the wayside and dropped out. Bartenders. 3 majored in art/design and live at home. 1 is taking another "gap year" after graduation, 1 surfs from one volunteer nature experience to another, 2 are public school teachers (yay), 2 got entry level jobs in their majors: business not finance. A broad liberal education it seems is a rare, expensive and probably not so useful thing anymore. Fewer kids are going to college. So the bench for progressives is dwindling.
The expensive part is another change that was made to discourage education — Why did the government turn student loans over to private banks that made a profit center of them? Why were those banks able to mis-manage them, allow payments for years that did NOT bring down principle, so people owed MORE money after paying on their loans in stead of less — why were education loans saddled with HIGHER interest rates than the prime rate for years — Mmmmm, I have a lot of questions .. even more than this …
Why is our country discouraging quality eduction and replacing it with job training?
I can only guess.
To give them to people in the GOP who would grift them, naturally, in exchange for favors and big donations.
You were very fortunate to have exchanged ideas with that CEO. Thank you for spreading his much-needed message. For what it’s worth, discrimination in the arts begins well before college in our educational system. In recent decades, we have seen funding cut backs in arts related areas of study as early as elementary school. In overt and subtle ways, children are taught that the arts are a nice hobby, but not as important as other subjects. Thankfully, to the benefit of society, and our aesthetic needs, many children grow up to ignore this ill intended advice and pursue careers in the arts.
Daniel Solomon: Mega-Maga JOHN YOO (the Torture Memo to George W. Bush) is Professor of Law at Boalt Hall (i.e., the Law School, University of California, Berkeley).
Berkley is suppose to be the "home" of free speech, I remember the free speech riots at Berkeley, but it is really Free speech for me and not for thee.
The Students launched a massive protest against Bill Maher, who was inveted to the campus, because Bill spoke the truth and that incensed the poor sensitive souls, when he called the Abaya, Chador, Niqab and Burqa bee keeper suits, and talks of gender apartheid in the Islamic world.
I didn't know that Berkeley, Columbia, etc had become madrassas.
Maher is a piece of shit, actually. Why would an institute of higher learning invite a piece of shit to speak?
Free speech is why? Free speech for all, not for those that we agree with, or no free speech at all.
As regards Bill Maher, in the main I agree, he is a selfish, self centered prick and a transphobe, maybe because of his relationship to Ann Coulter. When COVID restrictions hit him in the pocket book and in the attention he so badly needs, he became an acerbic critic of vaccines, though he has had one, of masking and of Dr Faucci and medical professionals in general, thus a prick.
However I save all his shows for one reason only, New Rules, because I do agree with most of them, especially his critique of political correctness. It has one overboard, and his last show's New Rules were his best to date, Gender Apartheid in Islam. The hypocrisy of the campus idiots, who rant, rail and demonstrate for equal rights for women and gays, and in turn rant, rail and demonstrate for the greatest oppressors of women and gays.. Islam.
What the fuck is with that and them.?
So gender apartheid and murder of gays is bad in a democracy, but OK in Islam?
Maybe it will take women in the west having to wear Abayas, Chadors, Niqabs, Burqa,s and Hijab, of not being able to travel without a male relative escort, even if it as a five year old son or nephew, being tortured and hung from a construction crane for not wearing a hijab (head scarf) property, and for gays to be thrown off roofs for campus idiots to finally wake up.
One piece of idiocy I don't get is Queers for Palestine. A queer would not last a day among Palestinians, but can get married in Israel.
I'll add ... I am not against pieces of shit having the right to speak. Not at all. However, if I were at a university, I would ABSOLUTELY be LIVID that of all the speakers they could have brought in, they invited a piece of shit -- and, I assume, paid him. If anybody thinks it's part of the First Amendment that people are required to pay pieces of shit to come speak, well, that's not what it says.
Yes, this the Shame of UC Berkeley to allow this master of torture to teach. There is no such thing as limitless freedom of speech. If Yoo was seen marching around in an SS Nazi uniform, he couldn't get away with his torture memos.
Paul Kleinman: Yes.
Good example.
Yeah C I can relate mightily to this tale. In ancient times, my first major job application out of grad school was to a university computing center. There were plenty of applicants with more computing experience, but for some inexplicable reason I was the chosen one. When later I got up the courage to question my manager as to why I had been hired, he said I was the only one who knew who Edna St Vincent Millay was and that he knew I would acquire the more advanced skills I needed at the computing center itself. That job was the best job I ever had except for my recent volunteer work teaching English to refugees in Greece.
Decades after Vietnam, it was revealed that all of us, our Presidents included, were lied to about that entire situation, dragging us into a hot war that never should have been. And, if we will keep it in mind, LBJ negotiated a peace there, but was betrayed by Republicans who promised the South Vietnamese a better deal if they didn’t sign until after the 1968 presidential election … As we all know, that peace never came…
The “war” might have ended in 1968, but the Right wanted Nixon in the White House and look what they’ve dished out ever since …
I agree these are heinous behaviors, and sometimes against not only international law, but our own law {though Trump would have the SCOTUS put all of that under “on the job” status and ignore it … I certainly hope they don’t}. The difference with most of it is, it wasn’t “personal.” Trump pulled some plain old crook behavior in service of himself, like some Mafiosi that he reveres in his “New York” persona … And he behaved AGAINST our government, not in the name of it. [I think the Patriot Act goes against our government, too, though. And Cheney’s idea of a unitary president, which is what the R’s have in mind for us again, if they get in again.]
Those differences I cite above don’t excuse what has been done by others. But they are differences.
LBJ became President when JFk was assassinated, those who lived in the era remember when JFK was accused of being a commie, because he pulled out of the Bay of Pigs. Not just JFK but the Democratic party was painted with the liberal -> Socialist ->commie brush, and still is as you all should well know.
The Bay of Tonikin resolution in 1964 was a means to deflect that criticism, If LBJ had continued with JFK's plan to pull out of Vietnam, he would and so would have the Democratic Party been declared Communist, and I think would have slid into Republican control and fascism (Mussolni style) earlier
My opinion and I am not going to argue over opinions.
Still living that history here in Baghdad By the Sea. Kennedy is still considered the enemy of Cuban emigres. All Democrats are defamed and demonized. Gratefully we are the majority. But the minority have been winning. IMHO we live in tyranny. https://www.wmnf.org/almost-1-million-florida-voters-declared-inactive-after-law-purging-voter-lists/
The greatest things that happened in education are the Education Act and the Handicap Act of 1973, now IDEA.
Full disclosure. I voted for Nixon in 60. Didn't vote for Kennedy because my stepdad was a good friend of John B Kelly, Grace Kelley's father and the biggest contractor in Philadelphia, some claim he was the invisible mayor.
Russ, my step dad gossiped at the dinner table and he gossiped about a young congressman named john F Kennedy, who as a real whoremaster,cheating on his beautiful wife. I wasn't aware of politics when I voted, but that prompted me to vote against Kennedy, I was also very, very anti communist at the time. I didn't even believe that, the photos of missiles on cargo ships being send back to Russia, after the Missile Crisis, were phony.
I was in Panama when Carter signed the Canal Zone Treaty, and still have copy o it printed in the Zonian. I believed that Carter had betrayed the US and sold out out to Panama.
Obviously I've come around since then, and had an epiphany in 1989, but had gradually built towards it Point is I have been on both sides of the issue. I now consider myself a progressive, not a centrist, and eschew extremes of left and right.
You’re a dork. I’m enjoying this. Judging by the amount of likes you generally get I bet others are enjoying it, too.
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Your opinion is totally garbage. Lying, and then stating that you don’t want debate your garbage is on point for your intellect. Like when you said the Steele dossier had some merit. Then refused to concede that it was a lie designed to defame a sitting president.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/11/politics/steele-dossier-fbi-durham-danchenko/index.html
Bull. You are nothing but another Dumb Trump Sucker pushing bull while he sells this country to the highest bidder. You sound exactly like the Chuck Campbell I knew long ago. Another foolish know it all who supports a crook.
GULF of Tonkin. A false flag incident and excuse to murder people. Cowards and mental midgets gleefully repeated talking points in order to embroil the United States on behalf of the Military Industrial Complex. It’s not surprising that Americans stood by and watched while a lone gunman performed the most magical display of marksmanship in the history of the world. It’s surprising that they ever had the decency to elect JFK in the first place.
The Steele Dossier was a hoax as well. The FBI knew it was fake as early as January 2017. Morons like you pretend it is a valid reason to clutch pearls about trump. You should admit that it was a ruse. Only you can’t. Because if you do, your pathetic excuse of a belief structure comes unraveled.
https://www.historynet.com/case-closed-the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident/
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I like wolves. How can you compare these intelligent beings with mentally ossified MAGAts?
A message we should all make go viral: https://youtu.be/2cXcls6u9qM?si=YZF0TeeCNk2osax9
very good. Like to see a version without the text.
If you want to change people you have to give them events not just reasons.
The teacher did both.
The other reason the students did not object is because they assumed the classroom is the teacher's space of authority. Hey, maybe the teacher had a good reason for kicking one out. "Not my problem."
We all make assumptions about the "space of authority" and what should be acquiesced to and what should not. The man in the white coat shocking the hell out of some "subject".
The more subtle detail is that even given the prof's "space of authority," >none< of the students questioned the >extent< of his >legitimate< authority - which is, I think, an important point the prof was trying to make.
That's important in current events, where there is a question as to whether a sitting president has the unlimited authority to overthrow the government. A lot of people wearing red caps >certainly< don't question it, thinking "not my problem" if he does so, believing he's their god's own appointed leader, and they serve their barbaric god.
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Best definition of the MAGA cult I’ve read so far.
NOT a comment or reply. Just a particularly good assortment of political cartoons I have to share with you all today (including a few about British, Canadian, & Australian politics.):
https://youtu.be/5p0p3neejJM?si=9sW0VR7a1xS3jfbU
Although a couple irk me, I particularly like the one where ol' Schitzinpantz is whining about being a victim, and the one in a boxing ring about more corruption! (A real message to pass along!)
Here are a few more: https://youtu.be/pmp-Y8B2YDc?si=48bOOS-eU8O88a9G
As a fellow scientist, I recall getting a phone call from a Wall Street recruiter, imploring me to change fields, because they had found that our analytic skills translated well to finance. I asked the gentlemen, why he thought people went into science in the first place. After a long moment of silence, I said, it’s because we seek to solve the unknown and to maybe create something that no one had done before. It is the thrill of discovery that motivates us, not boat loads of money. And now, I’ve done exactly what I wanted to, and created technologies that to this day, still support returning normal lives to patients in need, long after retirement. Any money I earned from that career, is just icing on the cake.
Bravo Dr. Taylor! ... and ditto on the motivation...
Wish there were more, far more!, like you.
Good for you, John.
GrrlScientist, I truly wish that these trumpettes could be made aware of how they are being used for one orange man's desire to be king. I do believe the kool-aid has destroyed that part of their brain that would stop them before they become fodder for said king!
TFG's support are those who can't handle all the rapid changes in society. They essentially are against the rights of minorities of all stripes, women rights, immigrants, and the government. And they see Biden through the eyes of RW media as a demented old man. And the monster they support represents their grievances. So what he is, or says, or does is irrelevant.
Is it because they saw something on TV? Or maybe orange is their favorite color. Something must make sense. Does anyone have any info on a deprogrammed member of the cult?
Trump told them the game was rigged and he knew because he took advantage of it. He convinced them it was the "Coastal Elites" that did it. (I understand that is a buzz word for "The Jews".) Nah, it's old money like the Koch brothers.
At the same time, the Republicans want their base fighting the culture wars instead of noticing the economic wars eating them and their families alive.
From Lib-Talk.com
Bingo! It’s the right’s deflection campaign. Economic’s 101. If you spend more money than you make, you’re going to have a deficit. So, the question I keep asking those on the right, is. Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot, by constantly cutting taxes, as is the favorite route of republicans. Let not the right forget, that Clinton left us a surplus. Which Bush crushed it with corporate tax cuts and then proceeded to bog us down in Iraq, under false pretenses. Money and lives wasted that could have gone to the greater good. This is where the entire deficit issue started. And later on, what did all of those corporate tax cuts give us? The Great Recession. And after legislation was passed to fix this loop hole in the financial industry, what do republicans do once they gain control of government under Trump, but to repeal the Dodd-Frank act! The very tool designed to prevent another financial disaster. And that doesn’t even count right wing attempts to get the Supreme Court to make consumer protection unconstitutional.
It's trickle-down theory. Something is trickling - some yellow, and some brown I think. And that's how many Americans like it.
The Federal Budget creates Money, money creates consumer demand, consumer demand creates jobs. Balance the budget and the economy stagnates, no federal budget, no money, no money, no demand, no demand no jobs A depression.
Keynes in short. The Republicans know this and when in office are Keynesians, when out of office they are anti Keynesias and complain about the deficit.
The Democrats are at fault, because they let the Republicans get away with this chicanery, Also see Jude Wassinski's two santa clause theory and how the Republicans have used to whip Democrats ass
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/thom-hartmann-how-the-gop-used-a-two-santa-clauses-tactic-to-con-america-for-nearly-40-years_partner/
I wasn’t saying we needed to balance the budget. What I am saying, is, it’s gotten out of control, and a some point, the country is going to pay for it. And as our economy has rolled over from a manufacturing economy to a consumer economy, what happened? We now have massive consumer debt to go along with a huge deficit. I’d suggest that you read, the book Evil Geniuses. It spells out how we got here and the total BS that the Chicago School of economics gave us. Alll brought to you by the Reagan era. And yes, democrats let them get away with it. And here we are.
What you call out of control, is the consequence of a growing and prosperous economy, and economy is made up of people. America is prosperous because of it's people, in particular those willing to work for low wages, it was the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Germans and Poles who worked the coal and iron mines, like My children's other great great grand father, a German who worked the Pennsylvania coal mines The Scandinavians who settled through out the north great lakes and Washington state as lumberjacks and farmers
If the government stopped going into debt to fund it's activities, the money would dry up and you would have a depression,and consumers would not be able to pay off their debts.. no money in circulation. Reduce the national debt and you reduce the money supply and cause a recession at best.
And yes the Chicago School of Milton Friedman shoveled shit at MBA's and they ate it like ice cream and fucked Chile, brought that murdering fascist Pinochet into power and killed Salvadore Allende, I am light years ahead of you.
But please don't suggest I read anything. I am not bragging but probably could have read those books that you adore. I lived through of all of that. I am 85, and find it difficult to read books anymore. I have read thousands, maybe 10,000 in my lifetime. I have left behind three libraries, and have another one stored in boxes in my garage. I would donate or sell them to a 1/2 price book store,if I had time, energy and needed the money.
Well, I am not far behind you, being 74. So I too have lived it! And like you, I am also a reader of books and probably have well over 200 hundred in my possession. I was only suggesting a book to read to understand how we got here, that’s all. How am I to know, that you might already have read it? What bothers me the most, is that people just don’t care to know about what drives the economy, much less world events. It’s the complete lack of curiosity that I find disturbing. That’s not my style. One can never have enough knowledge. An informed citizen is a responsible citizen.
Trump is a coastal elite.
Most "trumpettes" were traumatized into being narcissistic so are barely self-aware, if at all. https://samray.substack.com/p/trumpism-is-narcissism
What a great article Sam Ray! This is why I support raising children in agnostic communes where all their needs are met! We need to end all child abuse and religion until the child reaches 27 years old.
Thanks so much Bob. You should find a lot more you like in Counter-Narcissist Intelligence's new indexed database, including a great piece written by a friend about religious narcissists. Cheers! https://samray.substack.com/p/counter-narcissist-database
I was thinking Josh Hawley is the poster child for moral rot, along with Tom Cotton and Elise Stefanik.
GrrlScientist: It's the kool-aid destroying their brains.
Congratulations: Women scientists RULE! Thank you for your research, objectivity and the truth and enlightenment you bring.
I graduated with an MS in 1991 and started working at a salary of $36k at a mid-sized state university. My son graduated with an MS in 2014 and started working at a salary of — $36k at a mid-sized state university. In 23 years, the starting salary didn’t change, but the cost of living certainly did!
I think part of the reason there is a growing resentment among the 'trumpettes' IS this disparity: working class people can not afford the high end items advertised on TV and elsewhere, items they can not afford. Trucks, cars, refrigerators, and luxury goods (?!) etc. are all Very Expensive. It used to be a Ford truck was affordable. Not so much anymore.
See my comment on 42%.
Yes. They were all ALREADY very "dim" on the intellectual scale, but the non-stop SHRIEKING of, "THEY R TRYING 2 REPLACE U!!2!" has shriveled what little brain power was left.
Bunkerboy wants a Kakistocracy, or rule by the least qualified, so he can shuffle roughshod over the 70% of ACTUAL "Americans" that despise him!
And some of us gave up on the science game in graduate school when all of the control from the top emerged. The medical-biological industry is filled with strivers not true scientists. Hire legions of postdoctoral servants from abroad to swell the sweatshops with the brand-Harvard, Mayo, Hopkins. Talented scientists were avoiding the biomedical machine years ago. Them ain’t sour grapes, mama. Who is Dr. John Galt?
Precisely.
In a bardello the pimps and johns determine the work.
Rico Corporation Systemically abort the
Research in favor of the idea of money. And it does cause stunted adults in career paths for a carrot .
And that makes me happy. My nephew who is blind has chosen to be a Professor of Music.
Thomas Frank, in his 2004 book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" details how the ultra rich have used wedge issues (abortion, women's rights advocates, gay rights advocates, immigration, minorities etc. to entice white Christians (mostly) to vote against their own best social and economic interests. They're gullible, and that's why I denote MAGA to mean Misleading (or Milking) Average Gullible Americans.
I would say yes, it has rotted their brains and I’m not that smart.
Yes, grrl scientists working out how to survive changing climate, transition away from fossil fuels, feed clothe house everyone safely etc!
Good point. Scientists! Also, the invalidation of science is their strangest tool.
America has developed a group of "oligarchs" which makes the Russians pale with envy. To me, this is why these people (the "Billionaire class") are so "into" Trump. They see how the Oligarchs in Russia have been able to fleece the Russian people of massive amounts of their country's natural resources and they figure another Trump "administration" will FURTHER open the floodgates to the one thing they can't get enough of: MONEY! You can call THEM the elites or, to me, more appropriately, the SWAMP!
There is a powerful faction that wants to break the federal government so that they are not subject to law.
If tfg again gains the Oval Office that is exactly what will happen and he will extend the no laws bar privileges to those who will genuflect before him. What a cesspool that will be.
drown it in the bathtub, so to speak. "Just get it out my way so I can make more money."
The Heritage Foundation. This is the heritage: https://youtu.be/V2RUfDt-veI?si=09CWpCIcg5yuXeUG
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Well said, David!
I hadn’t really realized the bar had lowered for what it means to be progressive, as I’m old enough to consider myself defined under a bar higher than wanting basic tenets of democracy to be upheld but when you explain it this way it makes sense.
I also think we going to see a new group of those who don’t go to college, because as you snd others have pointed out, Reagan and others have made that further out of reach for anyone but the monied class by cutting funding for public universities to the point where most can’t get there. When I look at what I paid for my college vs what I could expect to earn when I started work afterward, in scientific research, not a highly paid profession it was still doable. This was the early 1980s. I went to high tech later but that’s another story. When I look at what the kids of close friends paid for school vs what they can earn, particularly one who works as a teacher in special education, she would be underwater for a couple decades if not longer. If I were reviewing this as a business plan, I’d reject it out of hand. No wonder we have so many angry people who are enraged by the college educated.
As a millennial, I can tell you that there are many who went to college because of the propaganda of college and graduated with student loans and no career, thus fueling the anger that’s shown by our generation and others.
College is no longer the pure institution it may have been and that’s shown in the fact that one must accept going into debt for a degree.
My argument is that college should only be attended for those who require a licensure (eg. Medical field), but aside from that, we can learn everything else.
College may have played a role in damaging us as a generation: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/how-millennials-were-setup-to-fail
The college problem started with the G.I. bill, I think. Remember all those fathers then telling us kids “work with your brains, not brawn?” Then the ground got ripped out from under our feet, manufacturing left, the internet changed everything, “business consultants” told business owners to cut personnel to increase profits. What a mess. College is not a guarantee of anything.
Prior generations had similarly high enrolment in higher ed - maybe it's your own fault?
College is fun because we are with like minded people (mostly and we are learning. Too bad debt is so high now,
I don't know why Reich should get to define what it means to be a progressive. Not my idea of progressive.
I interpreted his point to be that it’s hard to fight for larger ideals if your ability to vote, love who you want, or your bodily autonomy are under serious threat. As Samuel Johnson said: “…when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
Since he's wrong 101 times out of 100, that's a good question.