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.”
As always, well-expressed, well-argued, and needed to be said. But I do not believe that the main motivation of the gen Z'ers in having progressive politics is simply to save American democracy from Trumpism, though that is a part. Basically, these young people are smart enough to see that the WORLD IS IN A TREMENDOUSLY MULTI-FACETED MESS, and they have some understanding of the many factors that make it so, with capitalism-run-amok and the growing climate crisis, not to mention the multiple wars with their crimes against humanity, as elements. They want to create a world that has a future, not just for themselves and their children but for everyone. I have never been so proud of a group of Americans as I have been of the gen Z'ers protesting for Palestinian rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza. Clearly, they see this as a part of the larger fight for humanity; this goes way beyond saving American democracy from Trumpism though of course that is one element of what they care about passionately. And fortunately they are not alone; there are older Americans who share their values and want to help.
Agreed...unfortunately there are not enough "persons" who recognize or appreciate the possibilities of what a better future means... due to a lack of experience and the opportunity of a acquiring a well rounded education.
Hi Henry, Thanks for your comment. I am not sure I agree completely however. I think that a lot of the Gen Z'ers protesting the war in Gaza DO have an idea of what kind of better world they would like to see though to a certain extent defined by what it would not be -- no or less destruction of the natural world, no mass killings of people (especially those of darker skin colour who tend to be viewed as expendable), equal human rights of and dignity for all peoples, and a great deal less financial equality. It is knowing how to get there from where we are now that is the difficulty, to put it mildly.
Yes Adam The Gen Z'ers have an idea, but are oblivious to the world around them.
They see women and children as victims, but don't see the anti human, anti democratic, stifling gender apartheid and deadly homophobia of the people and culture they champion.
It instead of Arab Muslims, that pulled off Oct 7th, Arab Muslims who oppress their own people,it was white Christians (who have the same ideology), they wouldn't be out on the streets.
And they aren't not a conscience is raised, but they are razed, when the victims are Ukrainians and the aggressor is a white genocidal psychopath -Putin, Victims are white Christian Ukrainians.
Thanks for your comment. Let me say that I watch everything in America from "abroad"; I live in Berlin, Germany, though I started life as an American, in my first 30 years. Being here, I do not actually know any American Gen Z'ers so that makes me reluctant to generalize about them but, in general, ANY generalization about the characters, knowledge, personalities of any group is bound to have so many exceptions as to be invalid.
Still, one has to draw at least tentative conclusions from what one follows and sees in the news. And I was struck during all the campus protests by the modesty and realism of the demands and the absence of pro-Hamas sentiment. The demands were overwhelmingly for a total ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the genocide there, and divestment of the universities from companies that feed the Israeli (and American) war machines. I agree with all of that and one can believe in the value of those things without having an ounce of sympathy for Hamas and their brutal culture. I would also bet that many of the Gen Z'ers have feelings about Ukraine, and the brutality of war there carried out by the Russians, similar to those that you and I do. But, as I say, I do not know any Gen Z'ers personally and certainly have not polled any. But my suspicion is that many are more alert and alive to the issues of our time than you seem to give them credit for.
The demands don't have to be pro HAMAS, but are indirectly pro HAMAS.
HAMAS has used images and video's to inflame peurile western minds. The numbers that HAMAS gives are accepted without question in the west, 37,000 dead Gazans. Without question, and yet IDF videos are caveated as "uncomfirmed" can you not see the double standard here, Western media is afraid to question HAMAS figures.
Also the source is generally given as Palestinian Health Ministry, when it is HAMAS health ministry and they lie, of course. And they report 37,000 dead Palestinians, but don't mention that half of them are HAMAS and Islamic Jihad fighters
The latest rescue of four hostages, Hamas claimed that 275 Palestinians were killed and the weak westerner moans. How about this 275 HAMAS warriors, over half a battalion were killed, but that is not why you hear.
I personally don't give a shit about Israel, other than it is a great land lockedaircraft carrier parked on Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Yemens back yard, in case these vicious thugs get any ideas about choking off the rest of the world, so that Islam and the Arabs can reign supreme, and rebuild the old Islamic Caliphate. The Saudi Flag says it all, the Sword of conquest flies high, as does that globe that Trump foolishly smiled and rubbed which stand for the conquest of the world by Islam.
As rgards Gen Z;ers caring about Ukraine, I have seen zero evidence, what I have seen is them turning a blind eye,to Putin, because in their lexicon, America is the great Satan because it is imperialist, and all Putin is trying to do is protect himself from American aggression in fact that is the gist of the comments of some commenters on this very web site in previous articles.
If GenZ'ers really cared about Ukrain and the ongoing genocide, they would be out on the streets, camping on the lawns of universities, but alas there are no rich Ukrainian students going to our exclusive universtities, paid for by wealthy Ukrainian wheat oligarchs, but there are thousands of spoiled Arab brats attending our universities because of petro dollars, to learn the skills needed to subvert and destroy the infdel.
Veni, vidi, vici
America is on its last legs, so is democracy, because its freedoms and open handedness has been turned against it.
I believe that Osama said something to the efect, that we will use your democratic freedoms to conquer you.
Westerners have no patience, like investors they want to see an immediate return on investment.
The Virginia Company of London was formed in 1607 to exploit the gold and silver they thought they would in America. James I abolished the charter 17 years later, because the only product was foul smelling tobacco which he hated.
Islam takes the long view, OK I didn't prevail today, but we will tomorrow,if not then the day after.
I predict that if a climate apocalypse doesn't wipe out mammalian life, the world will become Islam, not because it is the true religion, it is not, it it is a sham, but because the rest of the world is weak. The final battle will be between China and Islam.And the Chinese know it that is why the are trying to keep Islam sequestered in Xinjang province.
Christianity will give way to Islam, gradually, because it is fractured, schismatic and weak, Christians will rally and support the very ideology that is hostile to them and would enslave them,because they are self indulgent, complacent, self righteous and easily bamboozled.
In a conversation with my son today, he is a college professor and 63 years old and a grandfather, I told him that I don't care what happens. I am 85, had a good life,, and hope that I won't have to deal with the shit piling up on the doorstep.
However Gen Z is going to have eat the shit, they created, They don't vote for Biden, so they get Trump and lots of luck with that.
Hi William, There is so much to comment on in this -- and explain where our disagreements are -- that it would take pages, which clearly would not be appropriate nor I am sure at all useful. Email is simply not the way to discuss anything complicated. I will just say two things. First, I agree with you about the awfulness of Putin and what he is doing in Ukraine, and likewise about Hamas. Second, I agree with you that the figure of 37,000 dead, killed by the Israelis, is almost certainly unreliable. It almost certainly is a large underestimate, probably by 5000 to 10,000, those buried in the rubble. You see, it is a sad fact but one cannot do carpet bombing of one of the most densely populated regions in the world without creating massive and untold death.
You are wrong about the untruthfulness of the Hamas Health Authority though. Both the UN and Israel, in the past, feel that their reporting is honest. And why not a word about the serial lies of Israel has put out during this 8 month war? They have been exposed -- for anyone willing to see them.
There would be much more to say about your rant but it is best to leave it here. Good luck to you.
I think you are correct in regards to addressing the problem of how we get to where "we" need to go. A proven historic solution is in motivating/inciting numbers/volume of persons required to change the survival priorities, is to utilize the inherent herd mentality that still exists within the human consciousness? Either we acquire truly charismatic and intelligent leadership that can appeal to the "masses" with directed manipulation toward goals that will inspire them to redirect there energies towards a supporting a better world, or the choice of educating those masses so that they can understand why. I think the former is the more likely option that would lead to success given the short time we have available. Got any ideas? A list of names, if yu agree?
Hi Henry, Thanks for this comment too. I will continue to think about what you say but my reaction, at this moment, is that we should not view it as a choice between intelligent (and charismatic) leaders, on the one hand, and education for the "masses" on the other. I think we need both.
My thought, which I had expressed earlier, in the comments on Robert's newsletter, is that the DNC needs to get into the business of educating Americans more broadly on the issues and what needs to be done. I see this as getting a small group of the most articulate, intelligent, progressive democrats on the road visiting towns and cities across America and giving talks and taking questions. I do not see Pres. Biden or VP Harris as particularly good at this but I think that there is a bunch of top Democrats who are. They include Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg (getting the spelling wrong I am sure), AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalla, Gretchen Whitmer, the new governor of Maryland (blanking on his name) and probably others.
FDR used his "bully pulpit" on the radio to educate the country. I am recommending a team effort and live talks around the country, with the costs to be split between the DNC and local Democratic or Democrat-leaning organizations. Of course, these speakers would also be supporting the Biden-Harris campaign but the effort would be broader and deeper, to strengthen American democracy. I am sure that this idea could and needs to be developed but I hope my suggestion will help get people talking about this and starting the ball rolling.
Thank you, Professor. It ends my evening well to read that so many of today's university students have a conscience. The 30 year olds I know are all about equality, diversity, and higher moral standards than what they're given credit for.
"I was a stranger and you took me into your home. I was hungry and you fed me. I was sick and you cared for me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was in prison and you visited me."
There's an irony to Trump's desire for revenge. Jesus did not say not to lie or steal or commit adultery. Those were laws before his time. His messages were simply of love and forgiveness. I cannot imagine a more anti-Christian value than revenge, the stated goal of Mr. Trump. I mean, even if not in the scriptural way, that really makes Trump the anti-Christ.
The evangelicals think Trump will make America a Christian nation, but considering his habits and all the felons he surrounds himself with, they should understand that he means to make it a criminal country.
Jesus did discuss lying, stealing and adultery in Mark 10:17-19 ...
"17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[a]”"
The part I find most interesting is Jesus'reply on verse 18.
But I agree with you that he was about love. Matthew 5:43-48 hits the nail on the head.
Not a Samaritan, not an immigrant, neither your Jesus not the subject. And you are no better than a Southern Baptist preacher who uses lies to make a point.
I find this the heaviest burden in the Bible. I do not see how others can seem to ignore it. Christianity was once a kinetic set of beliefs-your faith is measured by the degree that you *do and act* - only by this can you *become and grow*
But the counterrevolution of _faith_ pushed aside duty, and how admirable your feelings for your own devotion matter more than action. Took a perfectly fine religion and knackered it.
At some point along the way from the 80’s to now, I stopped respecting wealthy people. It no longer made sense to do so. Alito and Thomas have been bought by wealth and I find that disgusting. For the monied folks everything is transactional. That is a shallow, hollow way to live. Some wealthy people continue to make enormous contributions to society but far too many couldn’t care less. That’s not right.
Funny you used the word "Shallow". Everywhere I look I see a society, a nation, that is "shallow". We are simply transactional. We traded in our higher etherial values for the values of the marketplace. Higher education exists as a route to higher starting salaries.
But a lot of us are not on board with that soulless paradigm. “Man does not live by bread alone. Rather, he lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One.”
I agree. The financialization of the U.S. economy, I believe, is evidence that we are in late stage/end stage capitalism. The financial sector has become so large that it stifles the economy and causes financial crises, increases inequality, and endangers representative democracy. Due to the latter, we not only need to work within the electoral system, but also outside the two-party system to force the government to do what it is supposed to do, promote the general welfare, not just the welfare of the few morbidly rich.
I purchased a book by David Van Deusel, President of the Vermont AFL-CIO that is coming out on June 30, 2024. "Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017-2023, tells the story of "the trials and tribulations of bringing a formerly stagnant labor union into National relevance...". Van Deusel was on Richard Wolff's show and explained that we can't just pin all our hopes on the Democratic Party anymore. Of course, I'm still voting for Biden, but that is not all that needs to be done. I'm looking forward to receiving my book on June 30th.
I still haven't received my response from my Congressman, LaHood, whether he intends to certify the election if and when Biden wins. Why doesn't a reporter from the Rockford Register Star ask him this question for us?
I totally agree. We have lost democracy of the people. The elites have democracy among each other. Organized labor in sufficient numbers is our only hope.
Bidenomics is supposed to be going back to the Citizen Democracy we had from Eisenhower until when Reagan changed America to a Corporate Democracy. It was America's most prosperous time and tax rates on the wealthy were quite high, with incentives for them to invest in the American economy. It's about having an industrial policy so that America can compete better in the world, especially against China. It's about investment, which seems to be working well. It's about supporting unions. It should be about anti-trust and anti-monopoly legislation, ... which seems to be slowly moving forward.
That's odd - during the 1970's, US companies reduced investment. The number of patents issued to US companies fell by half. This is a Fed study showing that the 'formation' of the rust belt was as a result of a long term dearth of investment
That would be really cool! Take from those oligarchs and give it to people who really and truly need it. From what I understand, those oligarchs have so much money, losing some of it would not even make a dent!
The new super rich elites filled their bags at the expense of American workers. Yes, they did! They did by offshoring jobs. This why so many American love Trump, their false messiah.
“Senator Josh Hawley (Stanford ’02 and Yale Law ‘06)…calls the recent student demonstrations signs of ‘moral rot.’”
Hawley and his ilk’s idea of “moral rot” is anyone who says or does something that doesn’t put a lot of money in their pockets, which is all of a piece with Trump’s characterization of those he has no use for, including members of the Armed Forces, living and dead, as “suckers” and “losers.”
You can take any issue about which Republicans express public outrage and bet your last dollar that, behind closed doors, those same Republicans display utter contempt for the rank-and-file to whom those issues may actually be important, and whose postures are determined by conviction, rather than profit.
But those Republicans need their vote to put and keep them in office, so they pretend to stand with those people on the barricades, all the while triangulating as to how offering lip service can be most effectively monetized, because, at its most fundamental level, every political issue is about one thing, and one thing only: MONEY.
Josh Hawley is the spawn of an investment banker and a lobbyist. It shows. Haul Ass Hawley is one of the last people I would look to for moral guidance on anything. He has spent his entire life in a bullet proof bubble of privilege and believes he deserves it.
When I was a kid, the only kids from public school who could get into an Ivy League school could block and tackle or play a difficult band instrument. Most of the legacy students were from families that owned businesses.
I don't know. Rich people are mostly interested in preservation of capital. Less likely to be wheeler/dealers than poor people, who have nothing to lose. Poor people live on the edge, need street smarts to survive.
The welfare laws, SSID, are more arcane than the rule against perpetuities.
I think you lost the plot a little. A materialistic mentality is all about preserving & growing more of your own capital with little risk to yourself, which is what Wall St has become. Great movie but literally & figuratively nothing to do with this.
I think you're wrong. Most MAGATs do not have a pot to piss in. 90%.
Many of the people who are "market makers" are actually hedging. Bet both ways simultaneously. Check out the butterfly spread, straddle.
The "filthy" rich borrow from themselves to avoid taxation.
Most of the people I know who are in the "trade" are gamblers. Susceptible to losses. Game players. That's what is taught these days. Until relatively recently the technology was difficult to master.
You're on your own tangent dude so I don't really care about what you think or whatever point you are trying to make. Please stop or be happily blocked.
That's why Apple makes money. People want to have their products sold, accepted and used - which, rather unincredible as at sounds, is a big driver behind making money.
Why do people right non-sensical questions? Is the lack of a question-mark a clue? The famous 'is this a question or is this a question?' may need to be revisited.
I would also argue that as Republicans and the wealthy have moved to the extreme right, they have made everyone with a social conscience seem more liberal. However, they have also made people and programs like Democracy Now and people like Naomi Klein who used to sound radical, make the most sense and sound quite practical and rational. Any thoughtful person should come to realize that they are what normal human beings should be.
When you read Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s 2006 book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” and accurate histories about American slavery and how indigenous Americans were systematically displaced and killed, you realize that there have been many holocausts and terrorists that the wealthy and powerful do not want us to recognize, because they have perpetuated and supported them for their own exploitive reasons.
I get your point, however, I don’t believe the wealthy and republicans have moved to the extreme right. They pander to the extreme right to get the political power (votes) that their policies require. They don’t care about their constituency, they are about the economic policies that benefit their depraved lust for more and more money. They care nothing about the common good because when you imagine the worst results, they have enough money to move where ever and can weather most situations that will kill the rest of us. Trump told his rally in Las Vegas that he doesn’t care about them just their vote. They cheered that statement. The republicans have created a self fulfilling election scheme manipulating that allows the only real winners of the ridiculous “tax cuts” to donate a small percentage of their tax cuts to the party that will continue their depraved hoarding of money. They don’t really care about the future of the country. I have been amazed to listen to pundits being amazed that billionaires would move back to Trump but, why would they work on anything that was fair or reasonable. This is barely a mystery when folks believe stuff like the only way to stimulate an economy is to give money to those who already have more than they know what to do with it. Anyone who believes there is anything fair about a tax system where the wealthiest among us should pay the least percentage of their income in taxes, is just nuts.
Thanks again, Robert. I almost majored in finance when I was choosing majors in university at the age of 18. Now that I'm 77, I sure am glad I chose International Studies and Journalism instead. Now I'm based in Brazil and agitate against global boiling, thus helping people all over our planet, since both rich and poor will see life on Earth disappear unless when take a united stand now against fossil fuels.
For the life of me I will never understand why the moneyed class (& Big Corp & Congress) don't see that short-term thinking is shooting themselves in the foot.
I think it's the red "KoolAid". Their parents served it up and their schools served it and they drank it without questioning what it meant. They are unable to understand who they truly are in the scheme of life,,, Uber wealthy, undeserving cogs in a humanity crushing machine.
David Brooks is never right. About anything. You can set your watch by it. And his views are inevitably absurd. He’s worried about higher education? He’s worried about the youth? And yet there’s a concerted rightwing attack on both. This doesn’t worry him. Instead, he’s worried about some sort of attitudes that he projects onto them. This is his continual schtick. He always posits some kind of informal individual-driven idea shift as the way to address huge actual shifts in the economy and society. It’s a way of seeming as if you are talking about ideas while simply reflecting back the most out-of-touch and comfortable person’s viewpoint back to them.
I share your description of Brooks, and then some. He is the child of an upper-middle-class (liberal) Jewish heritage who abandoned those values to gain access to the powerful. And he has been welcomed into that circle of the comfortable. His writing turns my stomach hence I don’t read him any longer, not that I ever did with any regularity. He’s one of the reasons I find the NYT increasingly abhorrent. He’s smug, obviously happy with his own comfort, and he drips insincerity and condescension in his TV appearances, which are insufferable and altogether too many. As you point out, his opinions are worthless. The opposite of what he thinks is usually closer to reality, or necessary to make reality better for many more people. His public platform is far bigger than the intellect he brings to it. I have often wondered how he managed that.
There are a lot like him. The hack nothingness is part of the success. He can say nothing but received opinion while sounding serious (to dimwits). It’s like a type of propaganda but for the status quo. It reassures people that many unjust and pointless aspects of their society have some sort of justification, and the things that make them uncomfortable can be dismissed—poverty, oppression, and so on is about ‘attitudes’ and ‘character.’ And he signals the right attitudes to have about problems—a little bit of faux sorrow or pity plus a bit of concern trolling.
If you want to know what nihilistic fools the real elites are, you can just read the NYT opinion pages. And it’s not because I disagree with them politically. I am fine with reading conservatives when they talk about *something real*. He never does, though. You cannot learn a single thing from him—and that really IS the key to his success, I think. A more infuriating writer is hard to imagine though Bret Stephens gives him a run for his money—and of course Tom Friedman pioneered the whole genre.
In short: Afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted, with emphasis on the second part. In a biographical piece on Brooks I read some time ago, the author (name forgotten) described at some length Brooks’ upbringing and how much he deviated from it - perhaps in rebellion. The elder Brooks were comfortable with a social consciousness that they acted on. A very common trait in the Jewish community, that those who were comfortable had a duty and responsibility to help those less comfortable and in need. Brooks approach is to take conventional wisdom, cycle it through his scrambler, and serve it to the comfortable to make them more comfortable with their comfort. And he’s gotten very comfortable doing it.
Richard I thought I replied to you but don't see it registered. Anyhow. Grew up in a Jewish family Tampa, Florida from the late 1940s. Most of my family's Jewish friends - some fairly well off financially, others not - (some who had escaped Nazi Germany) - were staunch segregationists. My parents tended not to bring up their own views when with these individuals so as not to 'cause problems', but were activists in their own workplaces acting in accordance with their values. Racism "transcends" class and religion, regardless the tenets of that religion.
I agree with you - that Jewish social values haven’t automatically excluded racism or other prejudices - there are few matters that the Jewish community, in all its diversity, speaks with one voice about. To be clear, I am not Jewish except on an honorary basis (my mother was adopted as an orphan by a Jewish family in Austria over a century ago), and over my lifetime (84 and counting) I have had the privilege of having many Jewish friends, some quite wealthy, so I am familiar with Jewish culture and values in those strata of Jewish life. Brooks grew up in a well-to-do, upper-west side NYC Jewish family. He’s not like any of the people among my valued friends, alive or gone.
Yeah, I saw David Brooks interviewed on his book about knowing people, and it was, like, stuff you learn on the playground! Before you learn about humanity in general! It was idiotic.
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 .
The kool-aid has destroyed your critical thinking.
Good observation. And then there’s Tom [is] High, whose Kool-aid is fermented.
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!
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.
As always, well-expressed, well-argued, and needed to be said. But I do not believe that the main motivation of the gen Z'ers in having progressive politics is simply to save American democracy from Trumpism, though that is a part. Basically, these young people are smart enough to see that the WORLD IS IN A TREMENDOUSLY MULTI-FACETED MESS, and they have some understanding of the many factors that make it so, with capitalism-run-amok and the growing climate crisis, not to mention the multiple wars with their crimes against humanity, as elements. They want to create a world that has a future, not just for themselves and their children but for everyone. I have never been so proud of a group of Americans as I have been of the gen Z'ers protesting for Palestinian rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza. Clearly, they see this as a part of the larger fight for humanity; this goes way beyond saving American democracy from Trumpism though of course that is one element of what they care about passionately. And fortunately they are not alone; there are older Americans who share their values and want to help.
It's not just that Trump is a danger to American Democracy. In this critical time, he seems to actually present a danger to civilization and humanity.
I'm one of them.
Me, too!
Agreed...unfortunately there are not enough "persons" who recognize or appreciate the possibilities of what a better future means... due to a lack of experience and the opportunity of a acquiring a well rounded education.
Hi Henry, Thanks for your comment. I am not sure I agree completely however. I think that a lot of the Gen Z'ers protesting the war in Gaza DO have an idea of what kind of better world they would like to see though to a certain extent defined by what it would not be -- no or less destruction of the natural world, no mass killings of people (especially those of darker skin colour who tend to be viewed as expendable), equal human rights of and dignity for all peoples, and a great deal less financial equality. It is knowing how to get there from where we are now that is the difficulty, to put it mildly.
Yes Adam The Gen Z'ers have an idea, but are oblivious to the world around them.
They see women and children as victims, but don't see the anti human, anti democratic, stifling gender apartheid and deadly homophobia of the people and culture they champion.
It instead of Arab Muslims, that pulled off Oct 7th, Arab Muslims who oppress their own people,it was white Christians (who have the same ideology), they wouldn't be out on the streets.
And they aren't not a conscience is raised, but they are razed, when the victims are Ukrainians and the aggressor is a white genocidal psychopath -Putin, Victims are white Christian Ukrainians.
Dear William,
Thanks for your comment. Let me say that I watch everything in America from "abroad"; I live in Berlin, Germany, though I started life as an American, in my first 30 years. Being here, I do not actually know any American Gen Z'ers so that makes me reluctant to generalize about them but, in general, ANY generalization about the characters, knowledge, personalities of any group is bound to have so many exceptions as to be invalid.
Still, one has to draw at least tentative conclusions from what one follows and sees in the news. And I was struck during all the campus protests by the modesty and realism of the demands and the absence of pro-Hamas sentiment. The demands were overwhelmingly for a total ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the genocide there, and divestment of the universities from companies that feed the Israeli (and American) war machines. I agree with all of that and one can believe in the value of those things without having an ounce of sympathy for Hamas and their brutal culture. I would also bet that many of the Gen Z'ers have feelings about Ukraine, and the brutality of war there carried out by the Russians, similar to those that you and I do. But, as I say, I do not know any Gen Z'ers personally and certainly have not polled any. But my suspicion is that many are more alert and alive to the issues of our time than you seem to give them credit for.
The demands don't have to be pro HAMAS, but are indirectly pro HAMAS.
HAMAS has used images and video's to inflame peurile western minds. The numbers that HAMAS gives are accepted without question in the west, 37,000 dead Gazans. Without question, and yet IDF videos are caveated as "uncomfirmed" can you not see the double standard here, Western media is afraid to question HAMAS figures.
Also the source is generally given as Palestinian Health Ministry, when it is HAMAS health ministry and they lie, of course. And they report 37,000 dead Palestinians, but don't mention that half of them are HAMAS and Islamic Jihad fighters
The latest rescue of four hostages, Hamas claimed that 275 Palestinians were killed and the weak westerner moans. How about this 275 HAMAS warriors, over half a battalion were killed, but that is not why you hear.
I personally don't give a shit about Israel, other than it is a great land lockedaircraft carrier parked on Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Yemens back yard, in case these vicious thugs get any ideas about choking off the rest of the world, so that Islam and the Arabs can reign supreme, and rebuild the old Islamic Caliphate. The Saudi Flag says it all, the Sword of conquest flies high, as does that globe that Trump foolishly smiled and rubbed which stand for the conquest of the world by Islam.
As rgards Gen Z;ers caring about Ukraine, I have seen zero evidence, what I have seen is them turning a blind eye,to Putin, because in their lexicon, America is the great Satan because it is imperialist, and all Putin is trying to do is protect himself from American aggression in fact that is the gist of the comments of some commenters on this very web site in previous articles.
If GenZ'ers really cared about Ukrain and the ongoing genocide, they would be out on the streets, camping on the lawns of universities, but alas there are no rich Ukrainian students going to our exclusive universtities, paid for by wealthy Ukrainian wheat oligarchs, but there are thousands of spoiled Arab brats attending our universities because of petro dollars, to learn the skills needed to subvert and destroy the infdel.
Veni, vidi, vici
America is on its last legs, so is democracy, because its freedoms and open handedness has been turned against it.
I believe that Osama said something to the efect, that we will use your democratic freedoms to conquer you.
Westerners have no patience, like investors they want to see an immediate return on investment.
The Virginia Company of London was formed in 1607 to exploit the gold and silver they thought they would in America. James I abolished the charter 17 years later, because the only product was foul smelling tobacco which he hated.
Islam takes the long view, OK I didn't prevail today, but we will tomorrow,if not then the day after.
I predict that if a climate apocalypse doesn't wipe out mammalian life, the world will become Islam, not because it is the true religion, it is not, it it is a sham, but because the rest of the world is weak. The final battle will be between China and Islam.And the Chinese know it that is why the are trying to keep Islam sequestered in Xinjang province.
Christianity will give way to Islam, gradually, because it is fractured, schismatic and weak, Christians will rally and support the very ideology that is hostile to them and would enslave them,because they are self indulgent, complacent, self righteous and easily bamboozled.
In a conversation with my son today, he is a college professor and 63 years old and a grandfather, I told him that I don't care what happens. I am 85, had a good life,, and hope that I won't have to deal with the shit piling up on the doorstep.
However Gen Z is going to have eat the shit, they created, They don't vote for Biden, so they get Trump and lots of luck with that.
The opinion of a crass old man
Well said, Wlliam.
Hi William, There is so much to comment on in this -- and explain where our disagreements are -- that it would take pages, which clearly would not be appropriate nor I am sure at all useful. Email is simply not the way to discuss anything complicated. I will just say two things. First, I agree with you about the awfulness of Putin and what he is doing in Ukraine, and likewise about Hamas. Second, I agree with you that the figure of 37,000 dead, killed by the Israelis, is almost certainly unreliable. It almost certainly is a large underestimate, probably by 5000 to 10,000, those buried in the rubble. You see, it is a sad fact but one cannot do carpet bombing of one of the most densely populated regions in the world without creating massive and untold death.
You are wrong about the untruthfulness of the Hamas Health Authority though. Both the UN and Israel, in the past, feel that their reporting is honest. And why not a word about the serial lies of Israel has put out during this 8 month war? They have been exposed -- for anyone willing to see them.
There would be much more to say about your rant but it is best to leave it here. Good luck to you.
Hi Adam,
I think you are correct in regards to addressing the problem of how we get to where "we" need to go. A proven historic solution is in motivating/inciting numbers/volume of persons required to change the survival priorities, is to utilize the inherent herd mentality that still exists within the human consciousness? Either we acquire truly charismatic and intelligent leadership that can appeal to the "masses" with directed manipulation toward goals that will inspire them to redirect there energies towards a supporting a better world, or the choice of educating those masses so that they can understand why. I think the former is the more likely option that would lead to success given the short time we have available. Got any ideas? A list of names, if yu agree?
Hi Henry, Thanks for this comment too. I will continue to think about what you say but my reaction, at this moment, is that we should not view it as a choice between intelligent (and charismatic) leaders, on the one hand, and education for the "masses" on the other. I think we need both.
My thought, which I had expressed earlier, in the comments on Robert's newsletter, is that the DNC needs to get into the business of educating Americans more broadly on the issues and what needs to be done. I see this as getting a small group of the most articulate, intelligent, progressive democrats on the road visiting towns and cities across America and giving talks and taking questions. I do not see Pres. Biden or VP Harris as particularly good at this but I think that there is a bunch of top Democrats who are. They include Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg (getting the spelling wrong I am sure), AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalla, Gretchen Whitmer, the new governor of Maryland (blanking on his name) and probably others.
FDR used his "bully pulpit" on the radio to educate the country. I am recommending a team effort and live talks around the country, with the costs to be split between the DNC and local Democratic or Democrat-leaning organizations. Of course, these speakers would also be supporting the Biden-Harris campaign but the effort would be broader and deeper, to strengthen American democracy. I am sure that this idea could and needs to be developed but I hope my suggestion will help get people talking about this and starting the ball rolling.
Agreed.
I'm not proud of the Biden hatred being exhibited by some of these protesters. They may end up electing Trump.
Me neither. But it is quite understandable.
They met on the campus of a university Students on one side, Proud boys on the other both shouting Fuck Biden. The horse shoe , left and right meet.
The true elite are the individual's wealthy enough to control those we elect.
🎯🎯
"The true elite are the individual's (sic) wealthy enough"
Plural, NOT possessive! - NO apostrophe!
The true elite are the individuals wealthy enough
👍
... and have been doing it for a long time...
Thank you, Professor. It ends my evening well to read that so many of today's university students have a conscience. The 30 year olds I know are all about equality, diversity, and higher moral standards than what they're given credit for.
So true!
That’s refreshing to hear 🙏
Get your bull dozer ready for plan B. I do not think they will give up the rigged system without
a fight.
After all. We are the means of production.
You’re right about that.🙏
👍
"I was a stranger and you took me into your home. I was hungry and you fed me. I was sick and you cared for me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was in prison and you visited me."
--Jesus of Nazareth, a Samaritan immigrant
There's an irony to Trump's desire for revenge. Jesus did not say not to lie or steal or commit adultery. Those were laws before his time. His messages were simply of love and forgiveness. I cannot imagine a more anti-Christian value than revenge, the stated goal of Mr. Trump. I mean, even if not in the scriptural way, that really makes Trump the anti-Christ.
The evangelicals think Trump will make America a Christian nation, but considering his habits and all the felons he surrounds himself with, they should understand that he means to make it a criminal country.
Lib-Talk.com
People following Trump know nothing of Christianity
Jesus did discuss lying, stealing and adultery in Mark 10:17-19 ...
"17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[a]”"
The part I find most interesting is Jesus'reply on verse 18.
But I agree with you that he was about love. Matthew 5:43-48 hits the nail on the head.
Luke 22;36, Sell your cloak and buy a sword
Luke 18:27 'Moreover, bring my enemies here who do not wish to have me reign over them and kill them before me!'
Ephesians 6:5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters
This they really liked in the ante bellum south, paid preachers to keep the slaves in line..
Now their descendants praise Jesus.
There is a Jesus for everyone
Maybe, but would Jesus absolve a fornicator/adulterer? The scriptures are clear on this.
Isn’t that why he was stapled to a cross. To forgive sin?
PJ, I don't thinks this beautiful passage was included in the orange man's bible for his cult. They only cherry pick what is useful to their agenda!
We always used to call them "buffet table Christians."
Good point.
But they do know what the Gospels say about fornicators/adulterers.
Not a Samaritan, not an immigrant, neither your Jesus not the subject. And you are no better than a Southern Baptist preacher who uses lies to make a point.
I find this the heaviest burden in the Bible. I do not see how others can seem to ignore it. Christianity was once a kinetic set of beliefs-your faith is measured by the degree that you *do and act* - only by this can you *become and grow*
But the counterrevolution of _faith_ pushed aside duty, and how admirable your feelings for your own devotion matter more than action. Took a perfectly fine religion and knackered it.
NOT a Samaritan.
Jesus of Nazareth was from the Northern Kingdom of Judea, and he spoke only Aramaic, not Hebrew. He was definitely a Samaritan.
According to AI overview, Jesus was a Samaritan and a Jew.
Jesus was a Jew who accepted the hated Samaritans.
and Jesus despised fornicators/adulterers.
Bullshit. Virtually all Jews spoke Aramaic....and many of the prayers TODAY like Kaddish are Aramaic.
Make Israel Syria again
What America needs is for President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. to become Robin Hood. The rich have way too much money and power!
At some point along the way from the 80’s to now, I stopped respecting wealthy people. It no longer made sense to do so. Alito and Thomas have been bought by wealth and I find that disgusting. For the monied folks everything is transactional. That is a shallow, hollow way to live. Some wealthy people continue to make enormous contributions to society but far too many couldn’t care less. That’s not right.
Funny you used the word "Shallow". Everywhere I look I see a society, a nation, that is "shallow". We are simply transactional. We traded in our higher etherial values for the values of the marketplace. Higher education exists as a route to higher starting salaries.
But a lot of us are not on board with that soulless paradigm. “Man does not live by bread alone. Rather, he lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One.”
"At some point along the way from the 80’s (sic) to now,"
Plural, NOT possessive! - NO apostrophe!
At some point along the way from the 80s to now,
I agree. The financialization of the U.S. economy, I believe, is evidence that we are in late stage/end stage capitalism. The financial sector has become so large that it stifles the economy and causes financial crises, increases inequality, and endangers representative democracy. Due to the latter, we not only need to work within the electoral system, but also outside the two-party system to force the government to do what it is supposed to do, promote the general welfare, not just the welfare of the few morbidly rich.
I purchased a book by David Van Deusel, President of the Vermont AFL-CIO that is coming out on June 30, 2024. "Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017-2023, tells the story of "the trials and tribulations of bringing a formerly stagnant labor union into National relevance...". Van Deusel was on Richard Wolff's show and explained that we can't just pin all our hopes on the Democratic Party anymore. Of course, I'm still voting for Biden, but that is not all that needs to be done. I'm looking forward to receiving my book on June 30th.
I still haven't received my response from my Congressman, LaHood, whether he intends to certify the election if and when Biden wins. Why doesn't a reporter from the Rockford Register Star ask him this question for us?
I totally agree. We have lost democracy of the people. The elites have democracy among each other. Organized labor in sufficient numbers is our only hope.
The essential workers must save the ignorant elite as well as everybody else.
What Tom High has in mind when he refers to "the deep state" is the state that enacted the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.
Bidenomics is supposed to be going back to the Citizen Democracy we had from Eisenhower until when Reagan changed America to a Corporate Democracy. It was America's most prosperous time and tax rates on the wealthy were quite high, with incentives for them to invest in the American economy. It's about having an industrial policy so that America can compete better in the world, especially against China. It's about investment, which seems to be working well. It's about supporting unions. It should be about anti-trust and anti-monopoly legislation, ... which seems to be slowly moving forward.
Lib-Talk.com
That's odd - during the 1970's, US companies reduced investment. The number of patents issued to US companies fell by half. This is a Fed study showing that the 'formation' of the rust belt was as a result of a long term dearth of investment
https://www.atlantafed.org/-/media/documents/cqer/publications/workingpapers/cqer_wp1405.pdf
That would be really cool! Take from those oligarchs and give it to people who really and truly need it. From what I understand, those oligarchs have so much money, losing some of it would not even make a dent!
The new super rich elites filled their bags at the expense of American workers. Yes, they did! They did by offshoring jobs. This why so many American love Trump, their false messiah.
“Senator Josh Hawley (Stanford ’02 and Yale Law ‘06)…calls the recent student demonstrations signs of ‘moral rot.’”
Hawley and his ilk’s idea of “moral rot” is anyone who says or does something that doesn’t put a lot of money in their pockets, which is all of a piece with Trump’s characterization of those he has no use for, including members of the Armed Forces, living and dead, as “suckers” and “losers.”
You can take any issue about which Republicans express public outrage and bet your last dollar that, behind closed doors, those same Republicans display utter contempt for the rank-and-file to whom those issues may actually be important, and whose postures are determined by conviction, rather than profit.
But those Republicans need their vote to put and keep them in office, so they pretend to stand with those people on the barricades, all the while triangulating as to how offering lip service can be most effectively monetized, because, at its most fundamental level, every political issue is about one thing, and one thing only: MONEY.
Josh Hawley is the spawn of an investment banker and a lobbyist. It shows. Haul Ass Hawley is one of the last people I would look to for moral guidance on anything. He has spent his entire life in a bullet proof bubble of privilege and believes he deserves it.
Spot on, Avie!!
Going into a money business to strictly make lots of money is not elite. It's material & narcissistic.
When I was a kid, the only kids from public school who could get into an Ivy League school could block and tackle or play a difficult band instrument. Most of the legacy students were from families that owned businesses.
The only CEO s I know went to state colleges.
It seems this is more about the purely materialistic mentality of the elite imo.
I don't know. Rich people are mostly interested in preservation of capital. Less likely to be wheeler/dealers than poor people, who have nothing to lose. Poor people live on the edge, need street smarts to survive.
The welfare laws, SSID, are more arcane than the rule against perpetuities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Places
I think you lost the plot a little. A materialistic mentality is all about preserving & growing more of your own capital with little risk to yourself, which is what Wall St has become. Great movie but literally & figuratively nothing to do with this.
I think you're wrong. Most MAGATs do not have a pot to piss in. 90%.
Many of the people who are "market makers" are actually hedging. Bet both ways simultaneously. Check out the butterfly spread, straddle.
The "filthy" rich borrow from themselves to avoid taxation.
Most of the people I know who are in the "trade" are gamblers. Susceptible to losses. Game players. That's what is taught these days. Until relatively recently the technology was difficult to master.
You're on your own tangent dude so I don't really care about what you think or whatever point you are trying to make. Please stop or be happily blocked.
No really. You can't make much money by making products people do not want. The main driver behind Steve Jobs was to 'create insanely great products'.
https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/how-steve-jobs-built-insanely-great-products-b45c9186c190
That's why Apple makes money. People want to have their products sold, accepted and used - which, rather unincredible as at sounds, is a big driver behind making money.
Why do people who post nothing & write no posts spam comments with irrelevancies.
Why do people right non-sensical questions? Is the lack of a question-mark a clue? The famous 'is this a question or is this a question?' may need to be revisited.
A rhetorical question about a narcissist require no ?
Obviously you’re the expert on this - from first hand knowledge.
buh bye block.
I would also argue that as Republicans and the wealthy have moved to the extreme right, they have made everyone with a social conscience seem more liberal. However, they have also made people and programs like Democracy Now and people like Naomi Klein who used to sound radical, make the most sense and sound quite practical and rational. Any thoughtful person should come to realize that they are what normal human beings should be.
When you read Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s 2006 book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” and accurate histories about American slavery and how indigenous Americans were systematically displaced and killed, you realize that there have been many holocausts and terrorists that the wealthy and powerful do not want us to recognize, because they have perpetuated and supported them for their own exploitive reasons.
David Souers, and an entire gender. We must add females to your list of those subjugated, killed, abused, and exploited.
M Tree, thank you for the reminder. It is so easy for a male to overlook this.
I get your point, however, I don’t believe the wealthy and republicans have moved to the extreme right. They pander to the extreme right to get the political power (votes) that their policies require. They don’t care about their constituency, they are about the economic policies that benefit their depraved lust for more and more money. They care nothing about the common good because when you imagine the worst results, they have enough money to move where ever and can weather most situations that will kill the rest of us. Trump told his rally in Las Vegas that he doesn’t care about them just their vote. They cheered that statement. The republicans have created a self fulfilling election scheme manipulating that allows the only real winners of the ridiculous “tax cuts” to donate a small percentage of their tax cuts to the party that will continue their depraved hoarding of money. They don’t really care about the future of the country. I have been amazed to listen to pundits being amazed that billionaires would move back to Trump but, why would they work on anything that was fair or reasonable. This is barely a mystery when folks believe stuff like the only way to stimulate an economy is to give money to those who already have more than they know what to do with it. Anyone who believes there is anything fair about a tax system where the wealthiest among us should pay the least percentage of their income in taxes, is just nuts.
Yikes David Souers - there you go - telling it like it is. Ouch.
Very well said.🙏
Thanks again, Robert. I almost majored in finance when I was choosing majors in university at the age of 18. Now that I'm 77, I sure am glad I chose International Studies and Journalism instead. Now I'm based in Brazil and agitate against global boiling, thus helping people all over our planet, since both rich and poor will see life on Earth disappear unless when take a united stand now against fossil fuels.
For the life of me I will never understand why the moneyed class (& Big Corp & Congress) don't see that short-term thinking is shooting themselves in the foot.
I think it's the red "KoolAid". Their parents served it up and their schools served it and they drank it without questioning what it meant. They are unable to understand who they truly are in the scheme of life,,, Uber wealthy, undeserving cogs in a humanity crushing machine.
David Brooks is never right. About anything. You can set your watch by it. And his views are inevitably absurd. He’s worried about higher education? He’s worried about the youth? And yet there’s a concerted rightwing attack on both. This doesn’t worry him. Instead, he’s worried about some sort of attitudes that he projects onto them. This is his continual schtick. He always posits some kind of informal individual-driven idea shift as the way to address huge actual shifts in the economy and society. It’s a way of seeming as if you are talking about ideas while simply reflecting back the most out-of-touch and comfortable person’s viewpoint back to them.
I share your description of Brooks, and then some. He is the child of an upper-middle-class (liberal) Jewish heritage who abandoned those values to gain access to the powerful. And he has been welcomed into that circle of the comfortable. His writing turns my stomach hence I don’t read him any longer, not that I ever did with any regularity. He’s one of the reasons I find the NYT increasingly abhorrent. He’s smug, obviously happy with his own comfort, and he drips insincerity and condescension in his TV appearances, which are insufferable and altogether too many. As you point out, his opinions are worthless. The opposite of what he thinks is usually closer to reality, or necessary to make reality better for many more people. His public platform is far bigger than the intellect he brings to it. I have often wondered how he managed that.
There are a lot like him. The hack nothingness is part of the success. He can say nothing but received opinion while sounding serious (to dimwits). It’s like a type of propaganda but for the status quo. It reassures people that many unjust and pointless aspects of their society have some sort of justification, and the things that make them uncomfortable can be dismissed—poverty, oppression, and so on is about ‘attitudes’ and ‘character.’ And he signals the right attitudes to have about problems—a little bit of faux sorrow or pity plus a bit of concern trolling.
If you want to know what nihilistic fools the real elites are, you can just read the NYT opinion pages. And it’s not because I disagree with them politically. I am fine with reading conservatives when they talk about *something real*. He never does, though. You cannot learn a single thing from him—and that really IS the key to his success, I think. A more infuriating writer is hard to imagine though Bret Stephens gives him a run for his money—and of course Tom Friedman pioneered the whole genre.
Ok Richard but what are those "upper-middle-class-Jewish-liberal-values" that he has forsaken? Not quite following you there. I get the rest.
In short: Afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted, with emphasis on the second part. In a biographical piece on Brooks I read some time ago, the author (name forgotten) described at some length Brooks’ upbringing and how much he deviated from it - perhaps in rebellion. The elder Brooks were comfortable with a social consciousness that they acted on. A very common trait in the Jewish community, that those who were comfortable had a duty and responsibility to help those less comfortable and in need. Brooks approach is to take conventional wisdom, cycle it through his scrambler, and serve it to the comfortable to make them more comfortable with their comfort. And he’s gotten very comfortable doing it.
Richard I thought I replied to you but don't see it registered. Anyhow. Grew up in a Jewish family Tampa, Florida from the late 1940s. Most of my family's Jewish friends - some fairly well off financially, others not - (some who had escaped Nazi Germany) - were staunch segregationists. My parents tended not to bring up their own views when with these individuals so as not to 'cause problems', but were activists in their own workplaces acting in accordance with their values. Racism "transcends" class and religion, regardless the tenets of that religion.
I agree with you - that Jewish social values haven’t automatically excluded racism or other prejudices - there are few matters that the Jewish community, in all its diversity, speaks with one voice about. To be clear, I am not Jewish except on an honorary basis (my mother was adopted as an orphan by a Jewish family in Austria over a century ago), and over my lifetime (84 and counting) I have had the privilege of having many Jewish friends, some quite wealthy, so I am familiar with Jewish culture and values in those strata of Jewish life. Brooks grew up in a well-to-do, upper-west side NYC Jewish family. He’s not like any of the people among my valued friends, alive or gone.
Yeah, I saw David Brooks interviewed on his book about knowing people, and it was, like, stuff you learn on the playground! Before you learn about humanity in general! It was idiotic.
That's it! You put your finger on the heart of the con. Now how do we get you a bigger platform? Many, many more people need to understand this.