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Posts Tagged ‘entitlements’

Homage To The 60’s

March 5th, 2010 No comments

link  More Than 1,000 March in Berkeley to Protest Budget Cuts. Category: News Updates from The Berkeley Daily Planet – Thursday March 04, 2010.

You have to read the entire piece to get a feel for just how disconnected these people are from reality:

“…Students, faculty, staff and workers protested the budget cuts, fee hikes and furloughs in public education, chanting slogans, waving signs and playing loud music as they walked down Telegraph Avenue…”

Amusingly, the protest tradition is so advanced in Berkeley that they even have a ceremonial dance:

“…A few Latino students got up to do a symbolic dance not far away from the Subway shop that had its windows smashed a week ago…”
 
You know your protest has rich history and tradition if it has its own dance.  From another student who was arrested for no reason by the police while inciting a riot:
 
“Thursday night I went to this dance party and I was unjustly arrested on Telegraph and Dwight,” said Goodrich, a senior in American Studies. “I was struck by a baton which caused my nose to bleed. I was struck all over my body when I was only exercising my right to free speech. My experience was intensely painful and angry. But I am not the first they have attempted to silence and I will not be the last. Every bone in my body is a sign of their attempts to silence us. But we are not afraid … Man, today we are not going to be silenced. We are fighting for the future.”
 
Somebody’s watching too many films from the 60’s.  This guy obviously has career potential with the Al Sharpton gang or at the very least as an acting coach teaching the Hyperbole method.  Ostensibly, this is a protest against government cutbacks in funding to universities, which can be a sympathetic cause.  Sympathetic  until you look at the headlines dominating the papers about a little issue the State of California has been wrestling with recently.  A little thing called bankruptcy.  It’s not only ironic but galling that university aged students and teachers have not been reading about the severe financial crisis gripping their state.  It’s as if they are on a sinking cruise ship with water pouring in on all sides and they’re worried about a shortage of shrimp at the buffet table.
Extrapolate this mentality to when they become real people and make political decisions and you have an explanation for the plight of America today.  Big issue problems that affect everyone are ignored in favor of the pressing wants of the individual or small, vocal groups.  Though students notionally pass through an education of enlightenment, they still manage to come out the other side with adolescent entitlement thinking firmly entrenched.  
 
No solutions are proposed as to how to address budget issues, apart from dancing ceremonially.  Students who think rioting and destroying property will correlate with funding should get big ‘F’s on their grades upon resumption of school.    Either that, or in the future,  students then will  break the glass on their businesses  when the big karma boomerang comes around. 
 
Not surprisingly, another angle is introduced into the protests.  All of sudden, racism is at play.
 
“…Latin American Studies sophomore Edgar Quiroz-Medrano held an “End Racism at UC” poster next to Medina. “The UC system is made up of an overwhelming majority of white administrators which leaves only a few administrators of color,” he said. “This needs to change…”
 
Now there’s a guy Sharpton can use right now, never mind graduation.
 
Categories: Culture, Politics Tags: , , , , ,

Blame The Dummies

February 9th, 2010 No comments

link Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis. – By Jacob Weisberg – Slate Magazine.

A classic piece of liberal writing.  As the link’s headline states, an ignorant populace is apparently responsible for all of the political struggles and associated turmoil that we see today with our government.  While it’s hard to argue with some aspect of this view, it may be useful to look at why that may be. 

In a time where information is as accessible and free as it has ever been in man’s history, how can it be that so many make uninformed decisions? While this topic can be the subject of someone’s masters thesis, I can attempt to look at some of the reasons for why people appear to be so ignorant when it comes to the political process.  First of all, I will agree that mental laziness is partly to blame.  Given a choice of either watching politicians bloviate on an issue, or American Idol, we obviously know which will tilt the Nielsen ratings. Politicians are typically old fat people speaking in tongues sometimes resembling English whereas American Idol has young attractive singers.  Hmm what to do. 

Secondly, among those that are products of the national education system, the process of politics and the relevance to students’  lives is poorly taught.  Unless you are pursing law as a career, the dry presentation of the political process is about as gripping as string theory physics.  But even disregarding the study of politics in school, the whole process of education has been so watered down ( this is only anecdotal, not a thesis) that the essential skill of critical thinking has been abandoned for the more mundane achievement of passing classes. It can’t be money.  Despite bleating of teacher’s unions, money has always been available for education.  Of the large American cities, New York, Chicago, Washington etc, kids are measurably ‘dumber’ than they’ve ever been.  That opinion results from a study by Jay Greene, author of Education Myths.  He points out that:

“…If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved … We’ve doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren’t better.”

The problems are rooted in the basic principles of the education system, the educators and in a big part, teacher’s unions.  Never mind politics, kids come out of the public school system unable to string words into coherent sentences or perform simple math without taking off their shoes.  This results from the errant mentality that kids can’t fail and that every child must pass to protect their self esteem.  The consequence of many generations of this “non education” are adults that don’t understand how the world affects them outside of their work/family circle of influence.

In addition, due to America’s celebrity obsessed culture, the “uninformed masses” begin adopting the utterances of entertainers and athletes, not necessarily the most enlightened group, as their own opinions.  So we’ve  gradually built a society that is brainwashed to believe in entitlements rather than obligations.  This may explain the dichotomy put forth by the author Weisberg, regarding what people profess to want and what people are willing to pay for.  This entitlement mentality has been fed to them during their entire educational experience.  They expect government to fix all that ails them as has been the experience their whole lives.  Liberal mindsets in governments have created entire societies still suckling on the nipples of government.  Perversely, liberals and progressives constantly push for more government involvement in people’s lives pointing to the need, a need they created.  It’s  pretty easy to pander to a willing constituency when they’re predisposed to noble notions of “equality” and a kumbaya existence as a right.

Except that in the real world, that’s not how it works.  Someone has to be smarter than others.  Someone has to come up with innovations.  Someone has to pay the bills. But at some level, I do agree with the author of the piece.  The ignorance and childishness of much of the american electorate has allowed the most unqualified and unsuitable gang of people ever, to govern them for another 3 years.  The naivete of hope and change has turned into a serious ideological wrong turn for the U.S.  The restlessness that the author complains of is, hopefully, people finally growing up.

Categories: Politics Tags: , , , ,