For decades our public schools have declined in merit. It should have set off alarms when high schools started cranking out illiterates. It should have set off shock waves when colleges started sending illiterates out into the world. America should have been shaken to the core when New Jersey teachers sent hate mail to their governor that was loaded with grammatical errors and misspelled words in every sentence.
Actually, the New Jersey slush pile is old news. There had been teacher uprisings all over the country that yielded similar results. Widespread literary deficiencies amongst public school teachers goes back at least to the 80's. By the time Chris Christie rolled around, this standing headline no longer had much shock value. We have accepted incremental ruin.
The occupants have been on the scene for over two weeks and we are still awaiting a coherent mission statement. I don't see one forthcoming. Society is in turmoil, perhaps even in ruin, because large numbers of people cannot articulate their opinions, their values and their objectives.
It is not coincidence the 2008 presidential election was won by a candidate
who was all style and no substance. It is no coincidence that the candidates' supporters were so vastly divided by demographics, specifically age demographics. The Obama Campaign did not articulate much of anything. They did not have to. They were all about iconography, photoshopped halos, Greek columns, empty slogans, teleprompters and celebrity endorsements. Facts are immaterial. Facts are boring. Hope and change.
I previously wrote of an Obama supporter with whom I conversed shortly before the 2008 general election. This guy was in his late twenties and was more or less a professional student. I thought the conversation was low key. In no way was I proselytizing. My point was that no one knew very much about Obama and no one seemed to care.
It did not matter what I said because this guy tuned me out right away. He ran off to his room and resurfaced wearing an Obama t-shirt. We are not in Kansas anymore. Arguably, we are not in America anymore.
There is a conspiracy of ignorance and I blame the American Left for the dummying down of America. Years ago, George Carlin did a bit about corporations advancing the cause of stupidity so that we would have ignorant consumers and a pool of workers who were content to perform mindless labor. Carlin could be funny even when you disagreed with him. There was seriousness behind Carlin's humor and while I enjoyed his performance I disagree with his premise.
We should always be wary of anyone who generalizes about the thousands of publicly traded corporations as well as the tens of thousands of private corporations. Exxon-Mobil does not equal Apple Computer does not equal Haliburton does not equal Google does not equal General Electric does not equal Joe's Garage does not equal Little Critters pet shop. To advance the idea of a common corporate agenda is absurd but it has become a staple of American verbiage.
Retail and food service and entertainment industries might prefer a stupid work force and an idiotic consumer base but our high tech companies want neither. They openly complain about the decline of American education. Intel used to sponsor a tech contest for school kids (maybe they still do.) They had trouble getting Americans to enter the competition but Chinese students treated the event like a Justin Bieber show. They were all over it.
The enemies of capitalism have to advance an agenda of engineered stupidiy. Marxism and its offshoots are the worst social institutions to ever inflict humanity. They bring technological decline, poverty and even famine. But socialism is fluffy. Fluffy minds and fluffy people will never resist Socialism's unique charms.
Capitalism brings prosperity every place it practiced. I know of no exception to that rule. Society will prosper to the degree that it promotes capitalism. Impede capitalism and you impede prosperity and you promote poverty. But for all of its wonders, capitalism has one enormous limitation. Capitalism cannot render itself fluffy.
Capitalism is hopelessly abrasive. What fluffmeister of good standing would promote a system that guaranteed the existence of losers? How can one call oneself fluffy if outcomes are not predetermined? How can one be true to fluffy principles if uncool people can prosper through thirft and cunning and long hours at the job? Better that we all share in collective misery.
The Left needs to destroy inquiry to advance a fluffy agenda. Illiteracy is a good start but unfortunately for our social engineers, it is not enough. Economics, if it is taught at all, cannot be treated as a science. Verifiability is prohibited. Economic policies are mere preferences. Some people like Japanese food. Others prefer Mexican cuisine. Some people actually like the ideas of that haggard Ayn Rand while other folks are attracted to the ideas of that dashing, handsome and ever-stylish Che Guevara.
Between the engineering of illiteracy and the occlusion of economics, there is much more the fluffy have done to advance their agenda. Remember that old thesis/antithesis/synthesis thingy? Good thing you can remember it because it is a vanished species. The idea of logically promoting an idea based on empirical evidence--premise, fact, fact, fact, conclusion--has sadly fallen by the wayside. That brings us back to the occupants.
Rational discourse is not part of the standard educational regimen. It spawns conflict and conflict is a bummer. Better to feel our opinions than to discuss facts. Facts are a buzz kill.
We know the occupants are angry and their feelings are hurt. Vocal inflection and body language tell us much that apparently cannot be put into words. But what specifically bothers them and how specifically can their grievances be addressed? For better or worse, they probably won't be able to tell us.
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