Two dots, connected: education and the decline of the left

Two articles in today's NYT email summary

1. Iowa’s Swing to Republicans Is a Matter of (Lacking a) Degree

Iowa’s status as a swing state in presidential elections may be in doubt. One key reason: Its economy cannot support enough college graduates. That’s bad news for Democrats.

After reading this teaser in the email summary, my immediate thoughts went to oppressive regimes in the Middle East, which strive to keep women subservient and uneducated, and the rest of the population likewise via religious zeal and demogogery. In this way progressive policies are kept in check, new thinking is suppressed, and the status quo is maintained, much to the delight and benefit of the oligarchic few in power. 

Next thought: pondering Iowa (and the rest of the US), and the dumbing down of the population via the vast wasteland that is pop culture-driven reality TV, leaving what's left of educated folk bereft of any sense of taste or ability to think critically about matters that affect the society in which they live.

And finally, to Germany and its "socialist" neighbors in the EU, which somehow have evolved a more compassionate social structure that aims to take care of its people, including the poor, the elderly and the sick, in a way that continues to elude the US, despite our vast resources. 

Is this because over there the notion of an education is not so focused on getting a university degree and going out to make one's fortune, but rather, to learn a trade or a develop the skills one needs to become a contributing member of society, with an implicit understanding that there is an underlying social compact that will ensure a safety net and a fair slice of the pie, regardless of one's station in the pecking order? Is that why it works so differently over there? 

Maybe because the progressive social agenda is already in place and taken as a given regardless of whatever other populist winds may be blowing it frees people up to focus more on how they can most fully realize their individual potential as human beings, and thus pursue whichever line of education or vocation makes the most sense. 

Mainly the end result should be a well-educated society that makes good decisions about matters that affect the whole; and also immunizes itself, to some degree, against being co-opted by political chicanery or falling for the phoney promises of a dictator. 

And then a few articles down I read this one:

2. The Prophet of Germany’s New Right

From a tiny village in the country’s rural east, a leading nationalist intellectual builds a vision for the future of his movement across Europe.

Wherein my archetype for all things socially progressive is suffering from the same tide of populism that has the US, the UK, and increasingly several other nations in it's grasp, driving a nationalistic sense of entitled closing of the doors to foreigners, hoping to resurrect the glory years of ethnic monoculture, jobs for all, and safety and security all but ensured by a mostly benevolent, if not paternalistic, government. 

Conclusion

Articles like these continue to reinforce the validity of what former-Monsanto exec, Howard Schneiderman, said about what one of the primary purposes of a college education should be: 

Finally, a college is a great place to develop taste – taste of all sorts.  Why are Beethoven’s symphonies and paintings by Holbein great?  What is a significant question?  What is a significant experiment?  Why is a particular chemical synthesis considered elegant?  Why are recombinant DNA synthesis and Adam Smith’s basic argument for a rational economy considered powerful?  Why are Goldbach’s conjecture about prime numbers and Godel’s completeness theorem in mathematical logic considered profound?  By analyzing the great, the significant, the elegant, the powerful, and the profound, one learns to recognize them.  At first slowly, through painstaking analysis, and then after much analysis, rapidly, almost by instinct, one learns to ask meaningful questions, to distinguish the enduring from the ephemeral.  And that is what developing taste is all about.  Good taste in the broadest sense enables a person to distinguish fraud from fact, enables a person to recognize who is not worth following and who is worth following.  

(Howard Schneiderman, Monsanto’s senior vice president for research, made these comments at a college commencement.  This is reprinted from the June 21, 1982 issue of the College of Engineering newsletter at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Full text here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o4i14Mjiq9RS9sjArCUl6QhdbzqUb1ZzGpNZaLaDmzk)

Seems to me we are in a crisis caused at least in part by the decline of taste. As he says, who is worth following and who is a fraud? Without a developed sense of taste, discerning these types of things becomes all but impossible. Keeping people uneducated seems like a good way to ensure that for those who would like to oppress the masses and enrich themselves. 

Two little letters to the NYTimes - at least they are making me think (!)

NOTE: I wrote this in 2012 and never hit "publish", so it's been sitting on my blog for five years, unpublished.  Just re-read it and thought it was worth adding to the litanies. If you happen to read this just be sure to note the time context - it's five years old today.

In today's NYTimes, the article entitled, The Elusive Big Idea, got me to thinking - which is a bit ironic given the theme of this article about how our innundation with information is crowding out our ability to identify or deal with actual ideas. I had already started making some notes about this idea in a slightly different form, and reading this article prompted me to revisit my thoughts and synthesize them a bit, leading the following letter to the editor:

To the editor:
Like so many of today's technological marvels, easy access to information makes it easy for people to gather and consume information, which, upon its regurgitation, can create the illusion of competence. Snowboards, voice pitch correction software, and digital photography all share a similar basis for their rapid adoption and popularity. One no longer need bother with spending ten thousand hours of effort to develop true expertise, the kind that others may recognize and rightfully respect. Now one need only buy some software, or keep track of the latest fashion trends, celebrity tweets and their social circle's gossip in order to create the appearance of expertise, gaining all the approbation and respect of their peers with none of the work - or actual utility to society. So here is technology eroding yet another of our faculties. Whether or not this is inherently a bad thing will, unfortunately, not be knowable until it is too late to do anything about it.

And here is one from a couple days ago:

To the editor:
While it's heartening to hear President Obama speak out against the egregious behavior that defines much of what goes on in Washington these days, it is less clear what the path forward is. Could it be that we are bumping up against an entitlement mindset of a different sort than the one everyone has been talking about lately? Could it be that our emphasis on diversity, which has been a huge benefit in making our nation a more just and equal place for all, has also created an entitlement mindset when it comes to holding one's ground when engaged in a debate? After all, we are each entitled to our opinion. It seems to me that this mindset has found its way into every facet of our culture resulting in all manner of unusual expressions of independent thinking and behavior. While this is not a bad thing on its own, it unfortunately means that we have political factions that are unwilling to yield, negotiate in good faith, or truly compromise because, after all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

And finally, a little rant about plausible denial. In Mississippi last week a white teenager in a pickup truck can be seen on a hotel security camera deliberately running down a black man who was walking alone, apparently injured after a previous encounter with the teenager and his buddy. The teenager was immediately apprehended and is being held on bail. His lawyer issued a statement saying that the incident was not racially motivated, despite eyewitness accounts of the teenager bragging about how "I killed me a nigger" in a bar later that evening. Whether in fact he did say these things, and many other facts of this case, will all come out eventually in court. But one fact can never, truly, be known, and that is what was in the heart of this young man when he committed this crime. The difference is potentially huge. If in fact it can be shown that his actions were racially motivated then in addition to murder he would be guilty of committing a hate crime, which carries with it significant additional penalties. Proving that may be difficult, though, as long as he and his lawyer can plausibly deny that any such motivation was present, and that instead it was just a random, senseless act of violence.

We see our political and business leaders engage in this nonsense all the time - "I didn't know" or "I can't recall" have become the two most abused phrases in the history of mankind. They are being used to cover for all manner of egregious behavior and allow their utterers to avoid the accountability that should rightfully be laid at their feet. It is time for some new laws. "I didn't know" should be rendered entirely impotent as an excuse for not being responsible for one's personal actions whether those actions occur in the context of one's personal life, on the job, or on the behalf of a political consituency.

2017: is civil war even a possibility?

Two articles in the last 24 hours have made me wonder about this. First there was the long one in Politico by Nick Hanauer about how inequality is the real enemy of our republic, not Trump and his fellow whackos in the whitehouse. Next up a story in the NYTimes about a bathroom bill in Texas that would force transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificates, rather than their chosen gender identity.

Previous articles this week mentioned California's legislature banning state-funded trips to Texas, as well as an exodus of conservatives from California who were heading to Texas. So there would appear to be a pretty clear political line between these two states, Austin and perhaps the Central Valley notwithstanding. 

Last there is the CalExit movement, which is popping up now and again - basically a group of people who would like to see California secede from the US, taking its 40+million residents and its sixth-largest-in-the-world economy with it. What we'd do about water I don't know exactly, but directionally it would otherwise appear to have a little merit, perhaps. 

Which brings me back to Hanauer and his positing the potential for civil war - actual war - here. Suddenly I found myself feeling better about living in Cali. Like racing, wars and who wins them generally end up being a function of manpower and money. Mostly money. And guess what? We have more of both than any other state in the union. 

Where things get interesting is when you think about an actual conflict, rather than a political movement, being the driver for reorganizing our country. If push came to shove, who would land where? 

Texas and much of the South would logically band together, being more similar than not. Although I imagine Texas oil billionaires wouldn't much like the idea of "carrying" a bunch of poor southerners from the country's most impoverished states. And what would Florida do? The sunny outlier in an otherwise fairly homogenous southern swath of the country - it'd be interesting to see where they sided in this. 

California would be the liberal anchor, and might well attract joiners up the West Coast to Washington, and possibly even to the east with Nevada and its Sin City (why not?), and New Mexico (nearly broke. Ok. Sure). Arizona? Hmmm - they like the idea of a wall, and increasing police powers to stop and frisk for no apparent reason at all. So they'd go in with Texas, I imagine. 

Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and Idaho - they'd all be in it together, as the last of the Wild West frontier. Colorado? Island in the middle, I'm guessing. 

Plains states would join up with Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota to form the "real" Midwest; and cut Indiana loose in the process. 

They'd join forces with Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and maybe mainland New York (which would be left behind by NYC after it declared independence). 

New York City would be the East Coast version of California, attracting hangers on states because of its economic and political might. Geographically the bloc would include all of New England; although that may not fly among many of the original 13 colonies. This isn't their first rodeo, having  already gone through this independence thing once.

So not exactly sure how that would shake out. Maybe it'd follow similar lines to how fans stack up behind the Jets or the Patriots. 

So there you have it - a civil war that results in the fragmentation of the US into five or six mega states: The West; The South; The Frontier; The Midwest; Colorado (really?); The Ozarks; Gotham; and New England. 

Each would be econcomically independent, and would be free to set it's own "national" laws and regulations to cover social policy and things like marijuana and assisted end-of-life. There would be shared military, although I imagine a significant redistribution of contracts would end up taking place. People would move to the state where they felt like their tribe was, and the work they do would be available. And each state would be free to set up policies to tax and care for their people however they felt was best. 

We are a diverse nation, for sure. I wonder how long we will be able to keep it together.