Tag: society

The irony

Why should one assume that homosexuals know anything more about science than they do about history?

Frontline, which is based in a former Army barracks in Wavertree, has been condemned by gay rights campaigners as trying to ‘repress’ people’s sexuality with ‘Dark Ages’ views.

The national Lesbian and Gay Foundation’s Andrew Gilliver said: ‘The issues about “childhood pain” are nonsense. The pain is often caused by people who don’t understand what they’re going through. We are born gay, but we learn prejudice. This is Dark Ages stuff.’

In response to which I quote the 1929 Encyclopedia Britannica: “[T]he contrast, once so fashionable, between the ages of darkness and the ages of light have no more truth in it than have the idealistic fancies which underlie attempts at mediaeval revivalism.”

Roissy has an article today about the way in which feminists are increasingly caught with their pants down by science. It’s a cogent point, even if his definition of science includes things that are definitely non-science, such as evo psych. The same is true of the homosexual community. The “born gay” hypothesis has already been heavily damaged by genetic science and the more malleable human sexuality is determined to be, the more it becomes clear that even if initial sexual orientation is not a conscious choice, dynamic abnormalities are at least partially susceptible to normalization as various ex-gay ministries have claimed.

And even pride paraders should be entirely supportive of the idea that homosexuality can be cured. Because the rapidly declining number of girls being born in China and India indicates that if the “born gay” hypothesis was correct, there will soon be very, very few homosexual individuals permitted to live once a method for prenatal orientation screening is developed.

You ain’t seen n-n-nothin’ yet

The Boomers finally begin to become dimly aware that the younger generations do not see them in the same way they have always seen themselves:

Talking about our generation is not going to be as much fun for the Boomers as it was in those long distant days of infinite promise. My generation has some real accomplishments under its belt, especially in the worlds of science and technology. And we made important progress in making American society a more open place for people and groups who were once excluded. In every field of American life, there are Boomers who have made and are making important, selfless contributions: in hospitals, in classrooms, in government, in business, in the military. You name it and we are there.

But at the level of public policy and moral leadership, as a generation we have largely failed. The Boomer Progressive Establishment in particular has been a huge disappointment to itself and to the country. The political class slumbered as the entitlement and pension crisis grew to ominous dimensions. Boomer financial leadership was selfish and shortsighted, by and large. Boomer CEOs accelerated the trend toward unlimited greed among corporate elites, and Boomer members of corporate boards sit by and let it happen. Boomer academics created a profoundly dysfunctional system that systemically shovels resources upward from students and adjuncts to overpaid administrators and professors who by and large have not, to say the least, done an outstanding job of transmitting the cultural heritage of the past to future generations. Boomer Hollywood execs created an amoral morass of sludge — and maybe I’m missing something, but nobody spends a lot of time talking about the towering cultural accomplishments of the world historical art geniuses of the Boomer years….

All of this was done by a generation that never lost its confidence that it was smarter, better educated and more idealistic than its Depression-surviving, World War-winning, segregation-ending, prosperity-building parents. We didn’t need their stinking faith, their stinking morals, or their pathetically conformist codes of moral behavior. We were better than that; after all, we grokked Jefferson Airplane, achieved nirvana on LSD and had a spiritual wealth and sensitivity that our boorish bourgeois forbears could not grasp. They might be doers, builders and achievers — but we Boomers grooved, man, we had sex in the park, we grew our hair long, and we listened to sexy musical lyrics about drugs that those pathetic old losers could not even understand.

What the Boomers as a generation missed (there were, of course and thankfully, many honorable individual exceptions) was the core set of values that every generation must discover to make a successful transition to real adulthood: maturity.

This is precisely the point that I have been making, if in a more contemptuous manner. The Boomers, by and large, continue to exhibit less maturity than their children, and in some cases, their grandchildren. It is not at all uncommon for Generation X children to have far more in their savings accounts and retirement plans than their irresponsible parents, who blithely assume that someone else will always continue to pay for their sheer wonderfulness.

Even their claimed accomplishments are suspect. What the author describes as “important progress in making American society a more open place for people and groups who were once excluded” could be more accurately described as destroying societal cohesion and creating the fault lines upon which society will eventually fragment. Especially if “groups who were once excluded” is intended to include “foreigners who live in foreign countries.”

“What begins in arrogance often ends in shame; there are some ominous signs that the Boomers are headed down that path. Sooner or later, the kids were going to note what a mess we have made of so many things, and now, it seems, the backlash has begun.”

The generational backlash hasn’t begun yet. And it won’t get into full swing, or have any material consequences, until more Boomers retire and the cost of maintaining them breaks the federal budget. But one thing that is already mathematically certain is that Generation X, the Millenials, and the Hispanic immigrants will not pay to support the Baby Boomers in old age. Because they cannot. The Boomers ate too much of the societal seed corn instead of sowing it.

Theft by bureaucrat

Keep this in mind the next time a bond issue comes up for a vote:

Cities and states across the country are using money designated for specific purposes—such as fixing roads or sewers—in order to fill financial holes elsewhere, according to public officials and records. The moves are exposing municipalities to controversy, as federal regulators and local auditors are more heavily scrutinizing their finances to protect bond buyers and taxpayers.

This isn’t exactly new. When voters pass a school bond, they usually do so under the impression that the school will hire more teachers or buy computers. But, as has increasingly been the case over the last three decades, the school districts are hiring employees with no teaching function, to such an extent that half of all public school employees now are not teachers.

The corruption in America is both endemic and structural. This was probably the most shocking thing I realized after moving to Europe, where the corruption is more readily recognized and apparent. It wasn’t that there was more corruption, but that it was only a different form of it.

The amusing thing is the notion, popular among bureaucrats, that it isn’t stealing if you put it back after you get caught. “The city is cooperating fully with the investigation,” said Ivan Harris, an attorney at Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP who is representing Miami in the SEC matter. He said the city “stands by the accounting for the transfers” because some of the funds had been unused for their designated purposes and other funds were replaced.

I’m surprised more bank robbers don’t give that excuse a whirl.

Paterno is still a decent man

One of his biographers, Joe Posnanski, defends Joe Paterno:

I’m not saying I know Joe Paterno. I’m saying I know a whole lot about him. And what I know is complicated. But, beyond complications — and I really believe this with all my heart — there’s this, and this is exclusively my opinion: Joe Paterno has lived a profoundly decent life.

Nobody has really wanted to say this lately, and I grasp that. The last week has obviously shed a new light on him and his program — a horrible new light — and if you have any questions about how I feel about all that, please scroll back up to my two points at the top.

But I have seen some things in the last few days that have felt rotten, utterly wrong — a piling on that goes even beyond excessive, a dancing on the grave that makes me ill. Joe Paterno has lived a whole life. He has improved the lives of countless people. I know — I’ve talked to hundreds of them. Almost every day I walk by the library that he and his wife, Sue, built. I walk by the religious center that tries to bring people together, and his name is on the list of major donors. I hear the stories, the countless stories, of the kindnesses that came naturally to him, of the way he stuck with people in their worst moments, of the belief he had that everybody could do a little bit better — as a football player, as a student, as a human being. I’m not going to tell you these stories now, because you can’t hear them. Nobody can hear them in the howling.

But I will say that I am sickened, absolutely sickened, that some of those people whose lives were fundamentally inspired and galvanized by Joe Paterno have not stepped forward to stand up for him this week, have stood back and allowed him to be painted as an inhuman monster who was only interested in his legacy, even at the cost of the most heinous crimes against children imaginable.

Shame on them.

And why? I’ll tell you my opinion: Because they were afraid. And I understand that. A kind word for Joe Paterno in this storm is taken by many as a pro vote for a child molester. A quick, “Wait a minute, Joe Paterno is a good man. Let’s see what happened here” is translated as an attempt to minimize the horror of what Jerry Sandusky is charged with doing. It takes courage to stand behind someone you believe in when it’s this bad outside. It takes courage to stand up for a man in peril, even if he stood up for you.

And that’s shameful.

I don’t know Joe Paterno at all. I don’t know Joe Posnanski either. But I very much agree with what he is saying here, which is that one act of omission, one moment of cowardice, one moral failing, is not definitive of any man. And I also agree wholeheartedly that is shameful for people to pile on Paterno in an attempt to morally preen. Posnanski isn’t saying that Paterno did the right thing or that he shouldn’t have lost his job. Failure has consequences, after all. But the loss of a man’s halo doesn’t render him a devil, merely another fallen man.

The situation reminds me somewhat of when my father was being tried in federal court. Virtually none of his peers, including a number of his friends, were willing to step forward and testify on behalf of his character. No one was being asked to lie or spin anything, merely to recount their personal experience of a man who had paid their salaries, given to their charities, hosted them in his home, or eaten at their table over the course of thirty years. They didn’t have any substantive reason not to do so, but were simply afraid of the social consequences of stepping forward and saying “this man may be guilty of what he is accused, but because that is not the entirety of who he is, let me tell you what I know about him.” I was extremely proud of my friends, several of whom volunteered to testify on my father’s behalf without even being asked to do so.

I wasn’t angry, only disappointed with those who hid behind the rationale of “not wanting to get involved”. What a lame excuse that is, as if anyone would ever seek to get involved in such unpleasantries. But even though I was disappointed, at no point did I lose any affection or respect for people I had known nearly all my life. It would have been outrageous for me to judge them on the sole basis of a single moment where their moral courage failed them.

The irony is that some of those posturing so dramatically about Paterno are exhibiting a failure of moral courage similar to the one that gave them grounds for criticizing the man in the first place. The man merits criticism , to be sure, and I think he deserved to lose his job, but it is simply ludicrous to claim, as some have done, that his behavior was on par with Sandusky’s or even the university administration’s. There is an important difference between a fundamentally decent man whose moral courage failed him at a vital moment and a fundamentally indecent man, and it is not only foolish, but downright societally destructive to equate the two.

Logan’s Run looks better all the time

I told you it wasn’t just Gen X’s imagination that the preceding generation is, when viewed in the collective, a selfish, worthless, generation of grasshoppers:

“Paws off, Junior, this cash is mine.”

Don’t expect a big inheritance from your boomer parents — even if they are rich. Less than half of millionaire boomers say that leaving money for their kids is a priority for them, according to a 2011 U.S. Trust study. But 64% of boomers say they plan to use their money to travel and more than one in three say they want to use it to “have fun.”…

“Make room kids, we’ll be living with you when we’re old.”

Boomers are expected to live longer than any other generation. At the same time, it’s no secret they haven’t saved nearly enough for retirement. Overall, the average retirement savings shortfall for married baby boomers is about $30,000, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Nearly half of early boomers, born between 1948 and 1954, and 44% of late boomers, born between 1955 and 1964, may not be able to afford even basic living expenses in retirement, according to EBRI. The result? Kids could be supporting mom and dad well into their eighties and nineties.

Yeah, I don’t see that happening on a grand scale. My generation is going to turf the Boomers into government housing faster than we saw them put our grandparents into nursing homes and we’ll do it with the same lack of remorse that they left us alone in the afternoons with a bowl of cereal and the television.

What the Boomers have forgotten is that they broke the generational contract. So they have no claim on the younger generations.

The downside of meritocracy

Ross Douthat explains the dangerous downside to America’s experiment in meritocracy:

For decades, the United States has been opening paths to privilege for its brightest and most determined young people, culling the best and the brightest from Illinois and Mississippi and Montana and placing them in positions of power in Manhattan and Washington. By elevating the children of farmers and janitors as well as lawyers and stockbrokers, we’ve created what seems like the most capable, hardworking, high-I.Q. elite in all of human history.

And for the last 10 years, we’ve watched this same elite lead us off a cliff — mostly by being too smart for its own good.

In hereditary aristocracies, debacles tend to flow from stupidity and pigheadedness: think of the Charge of the Light Brigade or the Battle of the Somme. In one-party states, they tend to flow from ideological mania: think of China’s Great Leap Forward, or Stalin’s experiment with “Lysenkoist” agriculture.

In meritocracies, though, it’s the very intelligence of our leaders that creates the worst disasters. Convinced that their own skills are equal to any task or challenge, meritocrats take risks that lower-wattage elites would never even contemplate, embark on more hubristic projects, and become infatuated with statistical models that hold out the promise of a perfectly rational and frictionless world. (Or as Calvin Trillin put it in these pages, quoting a tweedy WASP waxing nostalgic for the days when Wall Street was dominated by his fellow bluebloods: “Do you think our guys could have invented, say, credit default swaps? Give me a break! They couldn’t have done the math.”)

Hubris on the part of the highly intelligent is particularly stupid because it reflects both ignorance and a lack of self-awareness. For example, I am in the top one percent of the top one percent when it comes to intelligence, and yet I could provide you with an encyclopedia of my mistakes, failures, and errors in judgment. I doubt that I have made any fewer of them than the average individual, but they do tend to be of a different order.

For example, was it the right thing to write The War in Heaven instead of Blizzard’s first Starcraft novel? Almost surely not. As it turns out, creating your own intellectual property from the start is less effective than riding someone else’s media tie-in wave, building a following from it, and then publishing your own material. My decision certainly made sense and was intellectually defensible at the time, but in retrospect it was a serious blunder.

Douthat doesn’t have it quite right, however. The problem with the mistakes of the meritocratic elite isn’t that they are too smart for their own good, it is that they are too smart for everyone else’s good. This is why technocratic visions so often go so badly awry, and why the Socratic dream of a government of philosopher-kings has almost invariably proven to be worse than the variously flawed alternatives. The worst aspect of a meritocracy is its lack of respect for tradition. Meritocracy represents the ultimate triumph of theory and potential over experience and reliability, so it should come as little surprise that by historical standards, the new meritocratic societies appear to be destroying themselves in a remarkably short period of time.

In the end, however, Douthat misses the point. A society will benefit most from being ruled by its best, not its brightest. As one of this society’s brightest, I can attest that the members of a society’s intellectual elite are no more likely to merit being described as its best than the average individual and they possess no more intrinsic right to rule by virtue of their intelligence than the obese elite do by virtue of their weight.

A society that deserves to die

I don’t see how you could possibly reach any other conclusion:

A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”

Now, I don’t believe in capital punishment by the state, for the obvious reason that it only encourages them. But I don’t think anyone could reasonably disagree with the idea that if we’re going to have capital punishment anyway, the decision to pursue a master’s degree in puppetry should definitely qualify an individual for immediate hanging.

Mimes should be decapitated, of course. One can’t be too careful when dealing with the nasty bastards.

At this point, I can’t even find it within myself to feel the least bit sorry for Americans any longer. It would be one thing if they were foolishly going into debt while studying something useful instead of Sociology, Black Studies, Womyn’s Studies, Business, and English. But a society where people are actually paid to teach puppetry, go into debt in order to obtain master’s degrees in puppetry, and believe that what a pseudo-revolutionary movement needs is giant puppets, is quite clearly insane and should be put down at the earliest opportunity.

Millenials vs Baby Boomers

Well, I certainly know whose side I am on. Keep this generational perspective in mind as you see the same people who are defending the systematic lawbreaking of banks, financial institutions, and government agencies over decades while waxing apocalyptic over a few weeks of a little littering and trespassing. Whatever the downside of Occupy Wall Street might be, as a phenomenon it is still VASTLY preferable to the poisonous activities of Wall Street:

The Occupy movement is being driven by the Millenial Generation. They have used their superior technological and social networking skills to organize, educate, and inspire people to their cause while befuddling and confusing the authorities. They continue to rally more young people to their fight against Wall Street and K Street tyranny. The generational lines of battle are being drawn. The Baby Boom Generation, who is at the point of maximum power in society, fears this movement. They control Wall Street, corporate America, Congress, the courts, academia and the media. They have reached their peak of influence and power, which will rapidly wane over the next fifteen years. They see the Occupy movement as a threat to their supremacy and control of the system. The cynical, alienated, pragmatic Generation X is caught between the Boomers and the Millenials in this escalating conflict. It is likely the majority of this generation will side with the Millenials, realizing the future of the country depends on them and not the elderly Boomers….

Over the last six weeks I’ve watched as the young protestors around the country have been called: filthy hippies, losers, lazy, coddled, socialists, communists, spoiled college kids, parasites, useful idiots, and tools of the left. Most of the wrath being heaped upon these young people for exercising their Constitutional right to free speech and freedom of assembly has been from the Baby Boom Generation, who are at the peak of their power in our society. Sixty percent of the Senate is made up of Baby Boomers, with the next closest generation being the Silent Generation with twenty five percent. Over 58% of the House of Representatives is made up of Baby Boomers, with the next closest generation being Gen Xers at 27%. They occupy the executive suites of the Wall Street banks (Blankfein, Dimon, Pandit, Moniyan) and the Federal Reserve (Bernanke). They make up the majority of judges, local politicians and school boards. They run the Federal government agencies.

And they dominate the airwaves as the high priced mouthpieces for their corporate bosses. This Prophet generation will lead the country through the trials and tribulations of this Fourth Turning.

The disdain and contempt for these Millenial protestors flies in the face of the facts about this generation. They use drugs at a lower rate than their parents did at the same age. Teen crime rates and teen pregnancies have declined. They will have the highest level of college education in U.S. history. They were protected during their youth as organized sports taught them teamwork. They are the most technologically savvy generation in history. They volunteer at higher level than previous generations. They have been more upbeat and engaged than their predecessors (Gen X). And they are much closer to their parents than Boomers were at the same age. They reject the negativism and cynicism of their parents and believe positive change is possible in our society.

They have shown respect for authority up until the last six weeks. They were primed to be led by Boomers that could articulate a positive vision of the future based on reality and a better tomorrow. They were ready to make sacrifices in order to create a brighter future. But a funny thing happened. The Boomer generation failed to deliver on their part of the bargain….

The youth of America listened to their parents and stayed in school. They’ve racked up over $1 trillion in student loan debt getting college educations. Meanwhile, our Baby Boomer leadership had an opportunity to address the country’s unsustainable fiscal path by accepting the consequences of a thirty year debt binge and liquidating the banks that took extreme risks with extreme leverage. An orderly liquidation (aka Washington Mutual) would have punished the stockholders, bondholders and management of the Wall Street banks, while leaving the depositors whole and purging the system of debt that can never be paid off. Our politicians could have ended our wars of choice in the Middle East and cut our war spending by hundreds of billions without sacrificing one iota of safety for the American people. The political leadership could have put the country on a deficit reduction path that would have insured the long-term viability of our republic.

Instead of doing the right thing, our Baby Boomer leaders did the exact opposite of the right thing.

We can’t Logan’s Run those bastard Boomers soon enough for me. Years ago, when all the magazines were full of “50 is the new 20” stories, I used to joke that it didn’t matter how old the idiots got, they would still be insisting that it was cool to be geriatric. But I was joking… surely even the Baby Boomers couldn’t possibly be that hopelessly, myopically, narcissistically stupid, right?

Wrong. I suppose this headline was always inevitable:

Life begins at 70!

Clearly we need to exterminate the monsters before they finish raping the planet in their never-ending voyage of self-importance.

A boomer confesses

They are the Worst Generation:

A few years ago, an American author wrote a book about the men and women who endured the Depression and then fought in World War II. He testified to their courage, vision and resilience by calling his book The Greatest Generation. If anyone attempted to name their children — those born between about 1945 and 1965 — the so-called Baby-Boomers, they might consider calling them The Worst Generation.

It is now received wisdom that today’s young people may be the first generation in modern history to expect to be poorer than their parents.

Earlier this month, a report suggested the young will be 25 per cent worse off than their parents when they reach the age of 65 — the so-called ‘baby bust’ generation, having accumulated £400,000 less by the time they retire. This may not be entirely their parents’ fault. But we should certainly take a good share of the blame….

We had become not merely the luckiest but also the most selfish generation in history.

The remarkable thing is that this is coming from a British baby boomer, and the British boomers weren’t as ludicrously obnoxious as their American counterparts. Now, there is no need for the boomers to start complaining that Not All Boomers Are Like That. In the context of speaking about AN ENTIRE FREAKING GENERATION it is well understood by everyone that NOT EVERY INDIVIDUAL PERFECTLY FITS THE OBSERVED GENERATIONAL MODEL. But that doesn’t change the facts. That doesn’t change the experience of most Generation X and Y individuals with their parents and grandparents and the behavioral patterns that they have observed.

Speaking of grandparents, another thing I’ve noticed about Baby Boomers is that many of them, (again, not all), are almost nonexistent as far as their grandchildren are concerned. Far fewer of them behave in the hands-on, heavily involved, take-them-out-for-ice-cream-on-Saturday with their grandchildren manner that nearly all the grandparents of me and my friends did. They’re too busy going to Starbucks or shopping or playing tourist somewhere. I would pity the grandchildren of the baby boomers, if it weren’t for the likelihood that their grandparents would prove to be an awful influence on them.

But the evil solipsism of baby boomers can probably be seen most clearly in this quote from Slashdot concerning the student loan debacle. “In response to students burying their obligations in court during the 1970s, anti-default provisions were imposed to make it almost impossible to shed student loans in bankruptcy.” In other words, baby boomers took out student loans – in many cases to avoid Vietnam – defaulted on them, then passed a law to ensure that future generations would not be able to do the same. And their student loan debts were far smaller and far less onerous than the ones facing those who have graduated in the 2000s.

The most contemptible thing about the boomers is that they collectively never grew out of their absurd and childish narcissism. They never recovered from their sense of self-importance, and to the extent that they changed the world, they changed it for the worse. Now, I don’t believe the state of the world is entirely their fault, but I am certain that they will not be part of the solution… unless it involves Paxman’s suggestion of compulsory euthanasia.

No limits on self-defense

This McDonald’s cashier is a hero, not a criminal:

A McDonald’s cashier jailed for beating two irate customers with a metal rod says he was only trying to defend himself. Rayon McIntosh was arrested Oct. 13 after a wild fight inside a McDonald’s in the Greenwich Village neighborhood in Manhattan. Video recorded by a customer showed two furious women vaulting a counter to attack McIntosh after some sort of dispute.

McIntosh grabbed a metal bar and fought back with savage force, continuing to deliver crushing blows even after the women were incapacitated on the floor.

Good for him. I wouldn’t have any problem with his actions if he had killed both women after they were “incapacitated”. Police commit “justifiable homicide” in far less dangerous circumstances all the time and are infamous for firing dozens of shots after their target is already down. It’s simply not always possible to turn off the adrenaline-fueled aggression, particularly if you aren’t sufficiently accustomed to experiencing it.

And more importantly, once you attack someone unprovoked, all bets are off and you merit no protection from the law. The fact that the attackers were women is irrelevant, a two-on-one attack absolutely merited such a vigorous response. How on Earth could the cashier have known neither of the two hair-trigger lunatics didn’t have a weapon and wouldn’t use it once they were knocked down?

Rayon McIntosh shouldn’t be found innocent, he shouldn’t even be charged. And McDonald’s should be paying his legal fees.