Election 2016

This is very close to my beliefs, though I have a few quibbles.

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-25/democratic-machine-chose-clinton-long-ago-but-why

I will eventually write more, but I'm playing a lot of pokemon go and get tired of railing about things people either already know or refuse to get. 

Hey, I caught a (low powered) Pikachu yesterday! 

A Quote, Hidden Transcripts, and the Importance of Choosing Advisors

"...what makes the Emperor weak?
...Poor advisors, to whom he listens.
- Well, he must listen to someone.
- Yes, but he must gain experience in order to determine to whom he ought to listen...he must find advisors who have, at their heart, the interest of the Empire."
-Well, and what has he now?
- Now he has advisors who look after their own positions, and seek to advise him only in such a way as to gain his favor, thus they contradict one another needlessly, and leave policy, which ought to be the force which unites all of the Imperial decisions into a single direction, scattered and uncertain."

Okay, so probably very few people would recognize where that passage came from.  Given that my current reading material is so friggin depressing, I occasionally flit to my usual fun escapes (i.e. science fiction and fantasy).  Every so often, partly to reduce spending as I am addicted to books and will buy new ones all the time, I'll look through my shelves to find something I haven't read in a while.  In this case it was The Phoenix Guards, by Steven Brust, which I hadn't read in so long that I've mostly forgotten the plot.  I do remember, however, feeling like it was very similar to the book The Three Musketeers.  (Which I read after the movie came out a few decades ago, and enjoyed enough that it brought home how disappointing Hollywood can be at adapting books.  The plot was NOTHING like the movie!)

Anyways, I threw this in there because it reminded me a lot of Kissinger's Shadow, or rather it seems to describe almost perfectly what Kissinger appeared to be doing with Nixon.

To go back to yesterday's post, I think there's a fear that the hidden transcript of the dominant group is not just snobbery and condemnation of those who aren't as well off...it's also a fear that behind the scenes they're all playing self-serving games rather than truly doing what is in the best interests of our nation.  Some of that is the usual self-deceit, and some of it's deliberate, but I don't know any of the elite well enough to which is which on an individual basis.

In Domination and the Arts of Resistance the author points out that every dominant group has a story that justifies their dominance.  In a system like ours, it's that they're supposed to be the most educated and smartest...the ones who can be trusted to make the wisest decisions.  That in a meritocracy the best and brightest rise to the top.  Evidence that they're NOT making wise decisions, but rather are making decisions in their own self-interest, always undermines the premise of their dominance.

Hidden Transcripts, Elitism, and Bubbles

As I work through Domination and the Arts of Resistance, I find myself thinking about the hidden transcripts of the dominant group.  I don't know what they are, not really.  Well, I know what they may be for some types of 'dominant' group, i.e. I hear what various white people have been saying in response to the most recent shootings.  But I don't really know what the very, very wealthy are saying to each other behind closed doors. 

I do, however, know what the rest of us are afraid they say.  Some of it's obvious in political arguments (i.e. the "poor people are to blame for their own poverty because they made bad choices" that many on the left take issue with), though I generally don't see the wealthy blaming the poor for their poverty quite so explicitly.

I wanted to highlight some others, though, that are less politically fraught and have more to do with why I believe so many elites live in a bubble.  There was a recent article where someone discussed what it was like going to an Ivy League school when he had grown up a poor kid from the rust belt.  The whole thing is worth reading, but I wanted to focus on one thing in particular -

I heard through the grapevine that this professor thought Yale should accept only students from places like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton: It’s not our job to do remedial education, and too many of these other kid need it

 It reminds me of an article about Ted Cruz, and how he only wanted study buddies from Princeton, Harvard and Yale.

And here's the thing.  It is a good thing to get into those schools, and I would expect a graduate to be bright.  Well, unless they're a legacy student.  Actually, I probably wouldn't want to make that assumption, but I understand why anyone would expect more from one of these graduates.  But they are not the only ones who are bright.  The attitude of the professor above, the attitude of Ted Cruz...that goes beyond simply acknowledging that graduates from these schools display talent and goes into snobbery, prejudice, and poor decision-making.

Yes, poor decision-making.  I have run into far too many bright and brilliant people who have never gone to an Ivy League university to believe that Ivy League schools have a monopoly on talent.  Some bright kids choose not to attend for rather intelligent reasons, like the kid who turned so many of them down because he didn't want to take on too much debt.  I have even heard someone point out that you can get a first rate college education at many universities, and that the real reason you should pick an Ivy League school over the others is to make the connections that will help you out after graduation.  The opportunity to network, in other words, is the real value added of going to these schools.  (And for those who are uninterested in that, or not ambitious, the additional cost and prestige may not be worth it.)

If you believe that only someone with an Ivy League degree is worth hiring, or studying with, or talking to, not only are you missing out on all the talent that didn't go to an Ivy League school, but you may give someone a false halo just because they went to that school.  That is supposedly part of how Andrew Caspersen was able to defraud friends and family.  (The key quote in the article was "It depended on a desperate confidence game, in which he supposedly exploited his victims’ refusal to believe that someone of his pedigree and education, someone who was part of the Club, would betray them.")

All of which is a way of saying this - getting a prestigious degree is a great thing.  It says good things about you.  But using an Ivy League degree to judge who is worth your time is a sign that you've turned off your brain and are using yet another faulty heuristic.  Limiting your interactions only to people who went to those schools and earned those degrees means you are dealing only with people who have experiences like yours, and on occasion perhaps giving them too credit.  At the same time, you are ignoring those who may be just as bright and talented but for one reason or another had a different life path. 

To bring this back to hidden transcripts, I think those of us who are not in the elite have this fear that behind closed doors they are basically laughing at us, dismissing our thoughts and concerns, and believe that they know better.  That the average American is an idiot who clings to guns or religion, or is a lazy grifter voting for the free money that comes with welfare. 

And if you don't live in that bubble, if you know people close to poverty who are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet, if you know how much of a struggle it is for people to save up for retirement when they are living from paycheck to paycheck, it becomes obvious that the elite may think they are smarter and can make better decisions.  But it's not because they actually do know better (sometimes.  I do not like the Republican trend of outright distrusting an education, that's just as bad of a heuristic as using Ivy League degrees).

This is how we get, over and over again, the mistakes made by the 'best and the brightest'.  Whether it's JFK's 'whiz kids', or Enron, or the invasion of Iraq, we've seen bad decisions regularly get made by people who supposedly should know better. 

And then, in this crazy election year, the elite wonder why nobody trusts them or respects their alleged expertise.

The Shootings Yesterday

http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/08/uncomfortable-reason-came-dallas-yesterday/

This was very well said.  I've been interacting more on Facebook on this topic, and just don't feel like writing here.  This article covers most of what I'd want to say, anyway.

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July. 

Cosmopolitanism

A good article -

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-cosmopolitanism.html?_r=0&referer=http://www.memeorandum.com/m/

Reminds me of the difference between a tourist and a traveler.

Resilience, Freedom of Speech

There are those who want to take away suffering and pain, and those who want to teach people how to be resilient despite it.

This basic approach underlies a number of different views - do we cut down the lower branches of trees so children don't get hurt climbing them?  Or no?  Do we limit how high we build a swingset?

Some will say that we just can't make the world safe enough.  That we would have to put everyone in full padding, pad all the corners, smooth out all the streets and steps.  Safe is unrealistic.  Teaching people how to safely manage risks, how to identify and avoid dangers...that's more realistic.  (Though there's risk, of course.  Children can break bones or even die falling out of a tree.  In the abstract, accepting the risk seems realistic.  When it comes to your child, are you still willing to accept those risks?)

I was thinking about this with regards to First Amendment rights, classic liberalism, and freedom of speech.  The old school liberal would say "we need to tolerate all speech, even the worst of it.  In an open marketplace for ideas, the best will rise to the top and the worst will fail."  There's a confidence there, a belief that we, as a society, are strong enough and will make wise enough choices that we don't need to be afraid of the worst.  The haters, the conspiracy theorists, etc.

So why, then, do we have the 'new' liberalism?  The focus on being politically correct?  On creating safe places?

I read an article that covered something relevant, a pretty good article that discussed what made some children resilient even when faced with pretty horrific situations.  It's a great article and worth reading in it's entirety.  I'm only focusing on a few small pieces, because they illustrate a few important things.

First of all - resilient children have at least one person who truly believes in them.  It doesn't have to be their mother or father, but they need someone to believe in them.  (This, btw, is why I'm a Big Sister in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.  Study after study shows that this sort of long term and involved caring works.  I encourage anyone and everyone to volunteer, to join as a mentor, or just to donate the funds so they can keep doing what they do.)

To bring this back to freedom of speech - yes, we all should learn to have confidence and grow a thick skin.  There will always be haters, there will always be prejudiced, bigoted, fill-in-the-blank people.  Yet it's hard to have that confidence, hard to shrug off those words...if you don't have someone who believes in you and tells you a different story.

For me?  I never really paid much attention to what color dolls came in, or how a character on TV was portrayed.  I listen, though.  And for every story of a minority kid who didn't care (read one recently where the parents received the wrong toy, a white doll when they deliberately ordered a black one for their little girl...and the little girl hadn't noticed and didn't really care) there's another one who gets all excited and amazed that they found a doll that's just like them.

If you have a child who is told every day that they are stupid.  By their mother, their father, their teacher...if every day they are told they are stupid, we can't really expect them to turn around and shrug it off.  To say "no, I'm really smart, despite all of you".  That's called verbal abuse.

So the people who are pushing for political correctness have realized that we, as a society, send messages to people 'not like us' that (for people who don't have that source of support to make them resilient) can be overwhelmingly powerful.  That you are lazy.  You are stupid.  You are less than others.  You are dishonest.  Untrustworthy.  Going to hell.  A wimp.  Less important than others.

And they are trying to address that, by changing the messages we send. 

What would be better, of course, is to build resilience.  Considering how hard it is for my program to find Bigs, however, that's not easy to do.  So many people are not willing to make that kind of long term commitment.

Which is a shame, because I think it's the only thing that truly works.  Sure, there are charities that do good work.  They either create that context for long-term involvement, or they are dependent on a number of factors to be successful.  Many, unfortunately, aren't as successful as they hope.  You can read up on that if you want, lot's of reports and studies have explored why that is.

Personally?  I think any attempt at charity that comes across as patronizing, holier-than-thou, or a fly by will probably not work out too well in the long term.  And the sub-text of a lot of charities have these elements. 

This is not meant to say it's hopeless, or that we should give up, or stop trying.  Even if there's an element working against you, some help may be better than none.  It's just to say that we need to admit there are no easy answers, that trying to find answers requires a certain level of commitment and involvement.