There is a cost to individual freedoms -- others may not approve of your freedom.
Society is a combination of free persons who agree to a common good. Not everybody agrees and not everybody provides the same investment in the common good though everybody gets to dip into the same trough and enjoy all the benefits of society.
Case in point -- the Vietnam War Era draft in which guys like Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden avoided service, many dishonorably, whilst other, better men served. They were content to shove others to the front of the line in their place because, fundamentally, they were cowards.
There were many honorable men who served as Conscientious Objectors when they had qualms about war. These other guys just hid from the social duty the Nation placed upon them.
Now, the same guys, these cowards spawned into faux warriors, want to run the whole shooting match and send others to war on their decision.
Freedom is more important than social constructs.
Freedom means I can not agree w/ Albert Wenger -- a guy who suppresses countervailing opinions whilst pretending he is a virtuous member of the liberal Intelligentsia supportive of all views except if you do not agree with him -- and still be a member of our mutual society as we have rules as to how disputes will be resolved.
I find guys like Albert -- who blocks people who challenge him -- to be like the earlier noted band of cowards. Guys who talk a good game, but who are really small and petty. Actions drown out words.
Case in point -- the Dems want to do away w/ the cloture/filibuster rule today but were opposed to its abolition with noble speeches and objections when they benefitted from it.
Society has to be able to cast a big enough tent to cover freedom and its attendant disagreements. There is no perfect union though we seek that goal. In that imperfection, we see the genius of freedom.
You do you and I do me, but leave me the Hell alone when you don't approve of me and I will return the favor.
As to the filibuster, it serves a wonderful function of cooling off the heat of the impetuous House of Representatives exactly as the Founding Dudes designed it.
The House runs hot, reflects the humor of the angry mob, is mercurial, and is re-peopled every two years whilst the deliberative Senate is the cooling saucer to the hot coffee from the House and is deliberative peopled by 6 year terms with 1/3 of it being elected every 2 years.
Brilliant design. More important than the notion of "protecting minority rights." It makes for better decisions.
True, but at the same time we do have sort of a commonality in our society where we believe in the same things. However, there are degrees of how we exercise it, sort of like a supply/demand curve. We both might believe in free speech, but we might exercise it in different ways since we each have our own tolerance of the opportunity cost society might charge for that speech. The totalitarians want to end that and have everything be the same. The Founders, and traditional Americans, are smart enough to realize that things cannot be the same and never will be despite the things government tries to equalize them. What we need is opportunity, and isn't it ironic that the more government does to enable opportunity, the less there is.
I think much of America agrees on the values upon which the country was founded. Much more than the contemporary thought or MSM would credit.
There is a growing leftist bent on the left that does not believe in those basic values.
Let's address the most basic -- "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
A conservative, traditional, literal thinker would say that the pursuit of happiness is about the starting line.
A liberal, progressive thinker is thinking about the finish line and the redistribution of the winnings from the winner to those who didn't even compete.
We are entitled to "pursuit" not outcomes.
The left is only minimal tolerant of free speech and it must be in conformance with what they think. Case in point is our chum Albert Wenger who blocks folks with whom he disagrees while virtuously singing about how he supports free speech.
Government is never, ever the answer to anything when it entails markets. There is wisdom in markets and the crowd and free, fair elections.
There is not a single thing that government provides with efficiency as market, competitive business. Nothing.
Gov't kills markets and picks winners/losers with a degree of corruption that is appalling.
Agree with you more than you agree with yourself. Illinois government is a case and point on corruption. But you can point to many different areas of the country (Tammany Hall, Huey Long etc). Seems like the more controlling government is, the more corrupt it is.
You visited Cook county and were tortured. I live in the northern edge. A few blocks further north in Lake county, none of that garbage happens. Does anyone think they'll have more cases, hospitalizations, or deaths? This sums things up well:
Stolen from a well educated friend: #nurse
"Among all the vaccines I have known in my life (diphtheria, tetanus,measles, rubella, chickenpox,hepatitis, meningitis and tuberculosis), I want to also add flu and pneumonia. I have never seen a vaccine that forced me to wear a mask and maintain my social distance, even when you are fully vaccinated. I had never heard of a vaccine that spreads the virus even after vaccination. I had
never heard of rewards, discounts, incentives to get vaccinated. I never saw discrimination for those who didn't. If you haven't been vaccinated no one has tried to make you feel like a bad person. I have never seen a vaccine that threatens the relationship between family, colleagues and friends. I have never seen a vaccine used to threaten livelihoods, work or
school. I have never seen a vaccine that would allow a 12-year-old to override parental consent. After all the vaccines I listed above, I have never seen a vaccine like this one, which discriminates, divides and judges society as it is. And as the social fabric tightens… It's a powerful vaccine! She does all these things except IMMUNIZATION. If we still need a booster dose after we are fully vaccinated, and we still need to get a negative test after we are fully vaccinated, and we still need to wear a mask after we are fully vaccinated, and still be hospitalized after we have been fully vaccinated, it will likely come to “It's time for us to admit that we've been completely deceived."
In Re: the "Great Society" and the breakup of the nuclear family. According to the 1960 census, the out of wedlock (OTW) birthrate for whites was around 10% and around 20% for blacks. Since the implementation of the "Great Society" and the policy of paying women to not have men with jobs in the home, the OTW birthrate has skyrocketed in the black family and is now close to 80% for blacks and nearing 40% for whites. Both are a four-fold increase.
This was foretold in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's brilliant essay, "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action", written in 1965 as a Department of Labor Report. That prescient report was met with condemnation and outrage by all the right people. Moynihan learned his lesson and never again publicly spoke the truth about much of anything (even though he was smart and did often know the truth, but he desired power and influence more than he loved and adhered to the truth).
Funny side note; Thomas Sowell had a very similar story to tell about his time at the Department of Labor. He had the temerity to examine and study the actual effect of what a "minimum wage" had on employment statistics. You know, did it really help folks or did it hurt them? Seems like kind of an important question to ask and answer about a government policy. Well, what do you know? He found that a "minimum wage" (quotation marks because there is no such thing) actually CAUSED higher unemployment and it was WAY WORSE for POC, especially blacks. Wrote it up and presented it to his higher ups. He thought they would love to see his work. He received a nice pat on the head and his report never saw the light of day. He learned the first rule of bureaucracies that day. The first rule of a bureaucracy is to "maintain the problem at all costs". Hint: if a bureaucracy solves the problem it has been given, it will cease to need to exist.
The point. The breakdown of the family was a known "unintended consequence" by the people doing the implementing of said policy. Of course, there are always useful idiots who don't understand human nature and voted for it and vote for it still out of something they call "compassion" that is anything but. More like slavery, actually.
Regarding your question of "how do we change all the federal programs, all the federal regulations, and re-engineer the social safety net so we fall back on our American principles of self-reliance and independence without totally seeing society destruct into mayhem?"
We don't. In every society that has reached this stage of breakdown in the family, institutions, religion, morality, and financial the next step is to inflate the currency as a way to pay off debt.
Please understand, if interest rates go up even a little say from effectively zero today to say something like 5% the the amount of the federal budget available for discretionary and military spending will go to zero pretty damn quick. Why, because the cost to service the national debt will quintuple and also WHY. Have you EVER seen an "entitlement" program rolled back or holy of holies, eliminated? Nah, me neither.
If you read "The Bitcoin Standard" which is one of the best books I have read in the past five years (the first half of the book isn't even about Bitcoin, it is about the history of money and it is fascinating), you will find that not one, no not a single one, of the countries or societies that began to inflate their currency as a way to pay off debt, survived very long after doing it. They all eventually collapsed. Of course, it won't happen all at once, but as Hemmingway's character in "The Sun Also Rises" says about his personal bankruptcy. "It happened two ways, gradually and then suddenly".
Unfortunately, we are at the end of the gradually part.
Solution, buy guns and ammo, get right with the Lord and make friends and alliances with folks you can trust your life with, cuz your gonna have to eventually. Maybe sooner than that.
Thank you for the insight on Sowell, and the incentives of bureaucracy. One idea might be to change Social Security from a defined benefit program to a defined contribution program, giving people control of "their" money. Achieves a similar outcome but you won't need an entire SSAdministration. Ending all subsidies for everything would make Republican and Democratic legislators scream bloody murder and the corresponding agencies that oversee those subsidies and industries would scream as well. But, no government money means those departments could shrink or be eliminated.
Jeffrey, you said, and I quote "But, no government money means those departments could shrink or be eliminated."
It may sound a wee bit counter intuitive (but not to those who understand bureaucracies, human nature and incentives) but your quote is the WHY THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
In addition to the folks employed at said bureaucracy not wanting to be out of work, and good, safe, and EASY work it is, WITH AN AWESOME RETIREMENT PROGRAM (and we won't get into how once your are there for a couple of years, (now imagine this next sentence in the late comic Sam Kinison's screaming voice), YOU LITERALLY CAN NOT GET FIRED!!!) you must consider the politicians that fund these bureaucracies.
These pols, at least most of them, derive their power from doling out favors. Money mostly.
TO THESE SAME AGENCIES AND BUREAUCRACIES!!! It is an eternal gravy train.
Sorry for all the CAPS!!! I think Sam K was one of the funniest folks on the planet, ever and I was channeling him for this reply.
That is all. Love to all. Except the bad people. Who are many and legion. And the fearful. Even more of those.
Ok love to a few. A merry wee band of warriors, we are. Ok, now I went all Kenneth Branaugh on y'all (why couldn't he and Emma T work it out?) and Henry the V. Sorry, brain skips around a lot.
I had a radio show but the idiotic lockdowns put all my sponsors in bind and I couldn't fund it. Ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Ok, I know a bridge too far. The Bridge on the River Kwai, a movie that won, what, 11 Academy awards that would bomb today cuz it has about a thousand scenes with NO TALKING, just guys with funny English accents standing attention in the Burmese sun. AND it was over 3 and a half hours long!!!
Ok, I am done. Hope for those of you of a certain age and education and experience it was worth a chuckle.
Right, going to a defined contribution government pensions is a great idea. When I was at the USAFA for entertainment one night we got to watch Bridge on the River Kwai.....those upper class cadre had quite a sense of humor.
Great comment. Moynihan's report was the canary in the coal mine that America refused to heed. In those days it was a 35% problem and now it is a 85% problem.
Everybody forgets that Moynihan was a tough Irish kid who worked on the docks before becoming a Harvard don. Very earthy guy and a very earthy report.
It has enormous consequences for the black community and the rest of the world as the black population is 13.4% of America and young black men 16-30 commit 62% of all the felonies.
There is a reason why young black men follow this gravitational pull -- no countervailing force from strong black men, fathers, and patriarchs whilst growing up under-supervised in households run by good women trying to ege out a living at the subsistence level.
The number one thing we can do today is to have such a strong economy that there are jobs for everybody. When a man is working, he is not drawn to crime.
I think that Moynihan's report extends to all races, doesn't matter. Why do Asians do so well? It's not Tiger Mom's. It's that they have very close nuclear families. There is a lot of support there.
Another thing that is so different than when I even raised my kids is social media. Mistakes are now on the internet forever. I made so many back assed and awkward missteps as a teen and even in college that I'd probably be living in a trailer down by the river if the internet existed. Social media also makes it hard for people to think, or get out of the box. It imprisons you because the consequences can be dire.
I'm not sure how much time you have ben spending here other than your recent trip but it's getting suffocating. I live in DuPage and with work from home I have been largely been able to go about my business unmolested until now. I have figured out which businesses don't enforce masks and have patronized them both to say thanks as well as to feel as normal as possible.
But in late November I started a new job with a big firm that was letting people work in the office. I jumped at the opportunity. It sucks. The train ride in requires masking. I got into an exchange with a conductor who just couldn't abide my mask below my nose when there were just me and one other passenger in our car. Masks in common areas at work mean that as the new guy, I am not really learning faces or reading cues as I converse with my new colleagues in the kitchen or the lobby or whatever. The new vaccine card mandate is going to present a whole new issue and I may be bringing lunches to work in order to avoid frequenting the businesses that insist on enforcing these dictates.
I hope we get back to normal but I am not optimistic. I think the damage has been done and they are only going to press harder.
Great insight, Jeff. I think many left of center or just plain left leaning folks don't understand how this will all effect them. They might be fine with affirmative action or even more overt racial quotes but what if you tell a white person, OK, now, one of your kids has to go to one of the worst schools in the area and they have no other choice and they won't be getting into any top 50 university. They must enter the work force with just a high school diploma and bottom 20% university. Oh, and they will never advance beyond middle management. Those places are reserved for minorities. That is the sacrifice you must make for previous racism.
Same issue for the environment. Many claim to be environmentalists. Fine. No, you don't just put a few bottles and cans in a green bin and call yourself good. Your water ration is cut in half. That means only two showers a week, mostly cold water. And ladies, you have to wash your hair with a bar of soap, that you share with the whole household. And you have no other choice. Your dishwasher and washing machine are taken away. Everything cleaned by hand in a bucket. It was good enough for your grandparents! I wonder how many people would consider themselves environmentalists then?
As the consequences of our seemingly "benign" decisions today take hold people will be shocked how it actually effects them.
.
There is a cost to individual freedoms -- others may not approve of your freedom.
Society is a combination of free persons who agree to a common good. Not everybody agrees and not everybody provides the same investment in the common good though everybody gets to dip into the same trough and enjoy all the benefits of society.
Case in point -- the Vietnam War Era draft in which guys like Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden avoided service, many dishonorably, whilst other, better men served. They were content to shove others to the front of the line in their place because, fundamentally, they were cowards.
There were many honorable men who served as Conscientious Objectors when they had qualms about war. These other guys just hid from the social duty the Nation placed upon them.
Now, the same guys, these cowards spawned into faux warriors, want to run the whole shooting match and send others to war on their decision.
Freedom is more important than social constructs.
Freedom means I can not agree w/ Albert Wenger -- a guy who suppresses countervailing opinions whilst pretending he is a virtuous member of the liberal Intelligentsia supportive of all views except if you do not agree with him -- and still be a member of our mutual society as we have rules as to how disputes will be resolved.
I find guys like Albert -- who blocks people who challenge him -- to be like the earlier noted band of cowards. Guys who talk a good game, but who are really small and petty. Actions drown out words.
Case in point -- the Dems want to do away w/ the cloture/filibuster rule today but were opposed to its abolition with noble speeches and objections when they benefitted from it.
Society has to be able to cast a big enough tent to cover freedom and its attendant disagreements. There is no perfect union though we seek that goal. In that imperfection, we see the genius of freedom.
You do you and I do me, but leave me the Hell alone when you don't approve of me and I will return the favor.
As to the filibuster, it serves a wonderful function of cooling off the heat of the impetuous House of Representatives exactly as the Founding Dudes designed it.
The House runs hot, reflects the humor of the angry mob, is mercurial, and is re-peopled every two years whilst the deliberative Senate is the cooling saucer to the hot coffee from the House and is deliberative peopled by 6 year terms with 1/3 of it being elected every 2 years.
Brilliant design. More important than the notion of "protecting minority rights." It makes for better decisions.
Great blog post, as usual.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
True, but at the same time we do have sort of a commonality in our society where we believe in the same things. However, there are degrees of how we exercise it, sort of like a supply/demand curve. We both might believe in free speech, but we might exercise it in different ways since we each have our own tolerance of the opportunity cost society might charge for that speech. The totalitarians want to end that and have everything be the same. The Founders, and traditional Americans, are smart enough to realize that things cannot be the same and never will be despite the things government tries to equalize them. What we need is opportunity, and isn't it ironic that the more government does to enable opportunity, the less there is.
.
I think much of America agrees on the values upon which the country was founded. Much more than the contemporary thought or MSM would credit.
There is a growing leftist bent on the left that does not believe in those basic values.
Let's address the most basic -- "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
A conservative, traditional, literal thinker would say that the pursuit of happiness is about the starting line.
A liberal, progressive thinker is thinking about the finish line and the redistribution of the winnings from the winner to those who didn't even compete.
We are entitled to "pursuit" not outcomes.
The left is only minimal tolerant of free speech and it must be in conformance with what they think. Case in point is our chum Albert Wenger who blocks folks with whom he disagrees while virtuously singing about how he supports free speech.
Government is never, ever the answer to anything when it entails markets. There is wisdom in markets and the crowd and free, fair elections.
There is not a single thing that government provides with efficiency as market, competitive business. Nothing.
Gov't kills markets and picks winners/losers with a degree of corruption that is appalling.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Agree with you more than you agree with yourself. Illinois government is a case and point on corruption. But you can point to many different areas of the country (Tammany Hall, Huey Long etc). Seems like the more controlling government is, the more corrupt it is.
You visited Cook county and were tortured. I live in the northern edge. A few blocks further north in Lake county, none of that garbage happens. Does anyone think they'll have more cases, hospitalizations, or deaths? This sums things up well:
Stolen from a well educated friend: #nurse
"Among all the vaccines I have known in my life (diphtheria, tetanus,measles, rubella, chickenpox,hepatitis, meningitis and tuberculosis), I want to also add flu and pneumonia. I have never seen a vaccine that forced me to wear a mask and maintain my social distance, even when you are fully vaccinated. I had never heard of a vaccine that spreads the virus even after vaccination. I had
never heard of rewards, discounts, incentives to get vaccinated. I never saw discrimination for those who didn't. If you haven't been vaccinated no one has tried to make you feel like a bad person. I have never seen a vaccine that threatens the relationship between family, colleagues and friends. I have never seen a vaccine used to threaten livelihoods, work or
school. I have never seen a vaccine that would allow a 12-year-old to override parental consent. After all the vaccines I listed above, I have never seen a vaccine like this one, which discriminates, divides and judges society as it is. And as the social fabric tightens… It's a powerful vaccine! She does all these things except IMMUNIZATION. If we still need a booster dose after we are fully vaccinated, and we still need to get a negative test after we are fully vaccinated, and we still need to wear a mask after we are fully vaccinated, and still be hospitalized after we have been fully vaccinated, it will likely come to “It's time for us to admit that we've been completely deceived."
Agree with her. It is truly amazing what happens when corporate and government power intertwine. Usually bad outcomes for citizens.
Bravo. Well said.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
In Re: the "Great Society" and the breakup of the nuclear family. According to the 1960 census, the out of wedlock (OTW) birthrate for whites was around 10% and around 20% for blacks. Since the implementation of the "Great Society" and the policy of paying women to not have men with jobs in the home, the OTW birthrate has skyrocketed in the black family and is now close to 80% for blacks and nearing 40% for whites. Both are a four-fold increase.
This was foretold in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's brilliant essay, "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action", written in 1965 as a Department of Labor Report. That prescient report was met with condemnation and outrage by all the right people. Moynihan learned his lesson and never again publicly spoke the truth about much of anything (even though he was smart and did often know the truth, but he desired power and influence more than he loved and adhered to the truth).
Funny side note; Thomas Sowell had a very similar story to tell about his time at the Department of Labor. He had the temerity to examine and study the actual effect of what a "minimum wage" had on employment statistics. You know, did it really help folks or did it hurt them? Seems like kind of an important question to ask and answer about a government policy. Well, what do you know? He found that a "minimum wage" (quotation marks because there is no such thing) actually CAUSED higher unemployment and it was WAY WORSE for POC, especially blacks. Wrote it up and presented it to his higher ups. He thought they would love to see his work. He received a nice pat on the head and his report never saw the light of day. He learned the first rule of bureaucracies that day. The first rule of a bureaucracy is to "maintain the problem at all costs". Hint: if a bureaucracy solves the problem it has been given, it will cease to need to exist.
The point. The breakdown of the family was a known "unintended consequence" by the people doing the implementing of said policy. Of course, there are always useful idiots who don't understand human nature and voted for it and vote for it still out of something they call "compassion" that is anything but. More like slavery, actually.
Regarding your question of "how do we change all the federal programs, all the federal regulations, and re-engineer the social safety net so we fall back on our American principles of self-reliance and independence without totally seeing society destruct into mayhem?"
We don't. In every society that has reached this stage of breakdown in the family, institutions, religion, morality, and financial the next step is to inflate the currency as a way to pay off debt.
Please understand, if interest rates go up even a little say from effectively zero today to say something like 5% the the amount of the federal budget available for discretionary and military spending will go to zero pretty damn quick. Why, because the cost to service the national debt will quintuple and also WHY. Have you EVER seen an "entitlement" program rolled back or holy of holies, eliminated? Nah, me neither.
If you read "The Bitcoin Standard" which is one of the best books I have read in the past five years (the first half of the book isn't even about Bitcoin, it is about the history of money and it is fascinating), you will find that not one, no not a single one, of the countries or societies that began to inflate their currency as a way to pay off debt, survived very long after doing it. They all eventually collapsed. Of course, it won't happen all at once, but as Hemmingway's character in "The Sun Also Rises" says about his personal bankruptcy. "It happened two ways, gradually and then suddenly".
Unfortunately, we are at the end of the gradually part.
Solution, buy guns and ammo, get right with the Lord and make friends and alliances with folks you can trust your life with, cuz your gonna have to eventually. Maybe sooner than that.
Thank you for the insight on Sowell, and the incentives of bureaucracy. One idea might be to change Social Security from a defined benefit program to a defined contribution program, giving people control of "their" money. Achieves a similar outcome but you won't need an entire SSAdministration. Ending all subsidies for everything would make Republican and Democratic legislators scream bloody murder and the corresponding agencies that oversee those subsidies and industries would scream as well. But, no government money means those departments could shrink or be eliminated.
Jeffrey, you said, and I quote "But, no government money means those departments could shrink or be eliminated."
It may sound a wee bit counter intuitive (but not to those who understand bureaucracies, human nature and incentives) but your quote is the WHY THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
In addition to the folks employed at said bureaucracy not wanting to be out of work, and good, safe, and EASY work it is, WITH AN AWESOME RETIREMENT PROGRAM (and we won't get into how once your are there for a couple of years, (now imagine this next sentence in the late comic Sam Kinison's screaming voice), YOU LITERALLY CAN NOT GET FIRED!!!) you must consider the politicians that fund these bureaucracies.
These pols, at least most of them, derive their power from doling out favors. Money mostly.
TO THESE SAME AGENCIES AND BUREAUCRACIES!!! It is an eternal gravy train.
Sorry for all the CAPS!!! I think Sam K was one of the funniest folks on the planet, ever and I was channeling him for this reply.
That is all. Love to all. Except the bad people. Who are many and legion. And the fearful. Even more of those.
Ok love to a few. A merry wee band of warriors, we are. Ok, now I went all Kenneth Branaugh on y'all (why couldn't he and Emma T work it out?) and Henry the V. Sorry, brain skips around a lot.
I had a radio show but the idiotic lockdowns put all my sponsors in bind and I couldn't fund it. Ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Ok, I know a bridge too far. The Bridge on the River Kwai, a movie that won, what, 11 Academy awards that would bomb today cuz it has about a thousand scenes with NO TALKING, just guys with funny English accents standing attention in the Burmese sun. AND it was over 3 and a half hours long!!!
Ok, I am done. Hope for those of you of a certain age and education and experience it was worth a chuckle.
Right, going to a defined contribution government pensions is a great idea. When I was at the USAFA for entertainment one night we got to watch Bridge on the River Kwai.....those upper class cadre had quite a sense of humor.
The gov't cannot reform SS because since the time of LBJ the SS $$$ have been co-mingled with the general fund of the United States.
Until recently that was a net gain for the general fund meaning SS receipts were more than payouts. That has how changed.
It was a ruinous and dumb decision to co-mingle funds.
#Lockbox
JLM
www.theusingsofthebigredcar.com
Great comment. Moynihan's report was the canary in the coal mine that America refused to heed. In those days it was a 35% problem and now it is a 85% problem.
Everybody forgets that Moynihan was a tough Irish kid who worked on the docks before becoming a Harvard don. Very earthy guy and a very earthy report.
It has enormous consequences for the black community and the rest of the world as the black population is 13.4% of America and young black men 16-30 commit 62% of all the felonies.
There is a reason why young black men follow this gravitational pull -- no countervailing force from strong black men, fathers, and patriarchs whilst growing up under-supervised in households run by good women trying to ege out a living at the subsistence level.
The number one thing we can do today is to have such a strong economy that there are jobs for everybody. When a man is working, he is not drawn to crime.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I think that Moynihan's report extends to all races, doesn't matter. Why do Asians do so well? It's not Tiger Mom's. It's that they have very close nuclear families. There is a lot of support there.
Another thing that is so different than when I even raised my kids is social media. Mistakes are now on the internet forever. I made so many back assed and awkward missteps as a teen and even in college that I'd probably be living in a trailer down by the river if the internet existed. Social media also makes it hard for people to think, or get out of the box. It imprisons you because the consequences can be dire.
I'm not sure how much time you have ben spending here other than your recent trip but it's getting suffocating. I live in DuPage and with work from home I have been largely been able to go about my business unmolested until now. I have figured out which businesses don't enforce masks and have patronized them both to say thanks as well as to feel as normal as possible.
But in late November I started a new job with a big firm that was letting people work in the office. I jumped at the opportunity. It sucks. The train ride in requires masking. I got into an exchange with a conductor who just couldn't abide my mask below my nose when there were just me and one other passenger in our car. Masks in common areas at work mean that as the new guy, I am not really learning faces or reading cues as I converse with my new colleagues in the kitchen or the lobby or whatever. The new vaccine card mandate is going to present a whole new issue and I may be bringing lunches to work in order to avoid frequenting the businesses that insist on enforcing these dictates.
I hope we get back to normal but I am not optimistic. I think the damage has been done and they are only going to press harder.
Agree. The Karen's can't let it go.
Great insight, Jeff. I think many left of center or just plain left leaning folks don't understand how this will all effect them. They might be fine with affirmative action or even more overt racial quotes but what if you tell a white person, OK, now, one of your kids has to go to one of the worst schools in the area and they have no other choice and they won't be getting into any top 50 university. They must enter the work force with just a high school diploma and bottom 20% university. Oh, and they will never advance beyond middle management. Those places are reserved for minorities. That is the sacrifice you must make for previous racism.
Same issue for the environment. Many claim to be environmentalists. Fine. No, you don't just put a few bottles and cans in a green bin and call yourself good. Your water ration is cut in half. That means only two showers a week, mostly cold water. And ladies, you have to wash your hair with a bar of soap, that you share with the whole household. And you have no other choice. Your dishwasher and washing machine are taken away. Everything cleaned by hand in a bucket. It was good enough for your grandparents! I wonder how many people would consider themselves environmentalists then?
As the consequences of our seemingly "benign" decisions today take hold people will be shocked how it actually effects them.
This is very true. Germans are finding out this winter how well solar and wind work compared to oil for heating. It's also more expensive!