The coach’s name is Mike Pollock Rice*. He’s fired, and on the firing itself I have no complaints. This is the coach who was caught on tape physically abusing the players, kicking them in the butts several times, as he did his coach-thing. I certainly see what he’s trying to do. My baseball coach was the same way, and I think most coaches are. So my disagreement with other people who agree the coach should have been fired, is not quite so much with the idea that he should’ve been fired, as with the question: What exactly is the difference between this coach, and other coaches who don’t have to be fired?

It isn’t anger. Coaches, coaching this way, are supposed to act angry. It’s part of the act. Nor is it loss of control due to anger or behavioral-disorder or substance-abuse issues. There could be some of that going on, but what I see in the video reminds me of that whole phony angry-coach facade. And it isn’t the results, for I know nothing of the results Coach Rice managed to bring, nor do I care. His technique just sucks. The spectacle is just dumb, and distracting, and I don’t think the coach is good at his job if that’s what it takes to do it. There is also some gossip going on about “homophobic remarks,” by which I infer he used slang that you’re not supposed to be using in this day and age. That probably had as much to do with the firing as anything else.

That having been said: My mind is blown that a firing, somewhere, at long last, can squeek on through the way this one did. Can’t help but wonder how many other firings need to happen, but don’t. How many times does someone show they don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing. And, are left standing. Or even promoted.

This ties in to something else I noticed: People who favor gun restrictions, and that includes lawmakers who are pushing for gun-restriction legislation, who have “been working on [these bans] for years…been deeply involved in the issue,” and yet know precious little about it.

Here’s a woman who hasn’t got the slightest clue what she’s doing. Is she going to be expelled from the House of Representatives now, or at least asked to stop legislating against guns until such time as she educates herself? To be sure, the Sheriff of Lamar County made exactly that request, but it’s probably not going to go anywhere. To acquire knowledge, you have to admit you don’t have it yet. Legislators who support gun control haven’t been known to do that too often.

I think we need to admit something here, about firings and other corrective measures. These two examples are sufficient to highlight the trend, and I see no upside to the idea of gathering more, for the trend is defined: Ignorance and incompetence do not get anyone fired, or subject to any other action truly meaningful.

Cultural clashes do that.

The problem I see has to do with set membership. The rule is that you can get canned for supporting one culture over another, or rather for failing to adequately support the other. While you can’t be canned for incompetence — back in the day, of course, canning had everything to do with lack of competence, and not often about anything else. Today it’s really all about culture and doesn’t have much to do with the competence thing.

This change is effective throughout all of our modern society. But there are many cultures in our society.

Somehow, somewhere, it has been decided that this one culture should reign supreme. It must ALWAYS win; there can be no exceptions. What do we call this culture, now. We should try to define it, if it always has to win! That’s a lot of influence. We know it by the offenses it takes. Bullying, homophobic remarks, guns. It isn’t “politically correct,” for the politically-correct culture, while also defined according to the offenses it takes, is confined to offenses taken against verbal or written statements. Guns aren’t statements. Ass-kickings are not statements either, although I suppose that may be debatable. But this is not political-correctness, and it isn’t “women over men” since it takes just as vicious umbrage against a woman brandishing a firearm in self-defense, as against any man doing likewise.

It isn’t modern liberalism, either. It doesn’t have an opinion about labor-versus-management, or minimum wage, or affirmative action, or school vouchers. It holds a lot of appeal for people who do not self-identify as liberals. And its field of interest is very narrow. I can summarize it with a phrasing almost bumper-sticker-sized:

“When we make everything safe enough, nothing bad will happen, to anyone, ever again.”

Just outside a school on a 55 mph county highway, it isn’t good enough to take the limit down to 25. My recent experiences here in upstate New York show it has to be 15. I guess twenty-five wouldn’t show how much we care. This culture cares about children arriving at adulthood with all their limbs and with their hearts still beating, but with not too much else.

Can we call it “the nanny state” and be done with it? There is certainly some overlap. The Mayor of New York City trying to ban soda sales fits into the object of my inspection here, and it is certainly part of the nanny state. Pondering it some more, though, I find this doesn’t quite work. There are differences, and the differences matter. The nanny state is an organization, and it is a sale. It is narcissists in office who have power, trying to accumulate some more. This is more like the purchase. The nanny state made no move to fire Mike Rice, and it had no interest in doing so. Rice, I think, was not fired for lack of success; he was fired for the attempt.

The truth is, there are some unpleasant boyhood memories behind every real man. That is what it takes to put together a manly man who can do manly things. This is not a defense of Coach Rice’s unprofessional actions, it’s simply a statement of fact. In the same way knowledge begins with admitting you don’t know something, learning how to do things in a manly way begins with an admission that, in the here-and-now, the boy’s best is not good enough. And that can’t be self-admission. So an authority figure is going to have to step in and say, you screwed up. That’s where manhood starts.

This culture — which always must win — is endangering our very society, because it is opposed to that. As the nanny-state seeks to everlastingly grow by way of creating more and more rules, this culture seeks to everlastingly grow by altering the definition of “bad things happening.” It has progressed so far now, without anyone consciously noticing it evidently, that bad-feeling evidently qualifies. If nothing bad really happens, but someone feels slighted, then action is required. This, of course, has to be a selective thing. It’s okay to make a guy “feel bad” when he approaches the State Fair with a Leatherman on his belt, by commanding him to walk a mile and a half back to his car, and back again, to stow the threatening-looking device. And a twelve-year-old girl who wins a pistol shooting contest might feel good with a little bit of extra applause, but this feel-good-all-the-time culture will refrain from that, and command everyone else to refrain as well.

The Leatherman is not dangerous and the pistol is not dangerous. In some situations, they both have the potential to make someone safe.

So this culture is not concerned with safety or danger. It has definite ideas about individuals and what, or how, the individuals should be.

The common theme I’m seeing throughout it all, is that the individuals should not be prepared or equipped. Men should not behave in a way that suggests they have what men are supposed to have. Women are not supposed to act like women. Children should not learn to be more than children while they’re children; so at that instant of majority-age, they should be ambushed, surprised and indeed completely baffled by whatever life can throw at them.

This culture has a lot to say about sex, whereas its close cousin the nanny-state seems to confine most of its dogmatic rules to just about everything else. These rules-about-sex are not rules, rather they are softened to simple preferences. High-fives for the encouragement, and raps-on-the-knuckles for discouragement. The preference along the gender-divide is always toward a muting of it. The high-fives come for the woman who’s chopped her locks into something short, like what you might see on a little boy’s head, the classic “bowl cut.” Pantsuits on a woman get the high-five. I’m seeing a lot of “powerful,” “intelligent” female lawmakers who can’t show or say anything to prove they’re either one — except for their habits of wearing pantsuits so often, that after awhile of watching them you see it starts to look clownish, and think they’re trying to make fun of somebody. Watching daytime teevee with my in-laws, I’m starting to see why this is fashionable. This Kelly Ripa woman, I notice, has a beautiful face but a very unappealing and unfeminine way about how she swings her skinny body around. And it’s not just her. I’m noticing a lot of women on the teevee lately, swing their thighs around the ball sockets in their pelvises in odd, strange ways, ways that mothers used to teach their daughters not to do. The pants, the skinny jeans, the leggings, they all fit in with this, and the skirts don’t.

Men are not supposed to appear masculine. That is a beat-down. In the workplace, it is unsafe for a man to say or do anything manifesting his masculinity. Even speaking in a naturally low voice is to tread into unsafe territory. He shouldn’t do anything to show his heterosexual desires; it might make homosexuals, or their sympathizers, feel bad. For the time being, it’s still safe to mention the fact that you have a girlfriend. Mentioning the wife is a bit safer even than that. But seriously, for how many more years are these things to be well-advised in the ultra-modern, ultra-sensitive office environment? I see a future not too far off, where the marital status falls off into the broad, deep, murky waters of “don’t bring it up, there’s no upside to it.”

And certainly, the married women are not supposed to mention their husbands. This has become the normal pattern now, especially among the famous and high-profile celeb females who are married: The stud isn’t worth mentioning. It’s amazing how far into the details they can go, discussing their childrens’ names, school adventures, strengths, handicaps, imaginary play friends, lost teeth, and all the rest of it without ever mentioning the stud, even once. This is again, I suppose, a nod toward sensitivity: Some womens’ children don’t have a dad. Other women have to map out which dad is the dad to which kid, and the level of complexity has exceeded what we wish to discuss in polite company with new acquaintances. But, also, you have to wonder how important is the mapping; if the connections that make up the map don’t matter, then neither does the map. So, there is her, there are her kids. Just like a mother cow with her calves.

When we think about and talk about homosexuality, an irony ripples across the surface of this culture-that-must-always-win. Men, women and children are not to be prepared or equipped, and if they are prepared or equipped, they should not act like they are prepared or equipped. Weaknesses may be accentuated, but strengths should always be muted down, lest someone be made to feel bad who is lacking those strengths. We are not allowed to show that we have gifts. An inclination toward heterosexuality is to be treated likewise; if you are a man who prefers women, or a woman who prefers men, you should tone this down so that homosexuals can be made to feel like they’re not being excluded. Heterosexuality, therefore, is to be treated the same way strengths are treated; homosexuality is to be treated the same way a handicap is treated.

For this to make sense, the culture-that-must-always-win must treat heterosexuality as a gift…

The culture-that-must-always-win, therefore, has to contradict itself. I suppose this is why we don’t want to examine it in any meaningful detail, we don’t like what we might find out about it. It isn’t enforceable, until & unless everyone is bound to get in some trouble, for there is no way for anyone to behave appopriately all of the time.

We should talk about this more. Feminism doesn’t always have to win; “black power” doesn’t always have to win. Even Barack Obama doesn’t always have to win. But this weird culture that doesn’t even work, and is opposed to children and adults knowing how to confront the challenges that life has to offer, has to win. All of the time.

If that’s the way people really do want it to work, then fair enough, I bow to the whim of the majority. But let’s discuss it, out in the open, first.

*Rice, not Pollock. Commentator nightfly is right, I got my butt-kicking basketball coaches mixed up.

More and more, I continue to hear that “the market for Java programming is really taking off!” as, with increasing frequency, when I open up a new browser tab with some long-sought article or other information loaded into it, some web ad will creep in and float in on top of it so I can’t read any further. I see a connection between these two things.

I’m seeing other signs that, as the economy continues to suck, more and more products and services are being provided to “consumers” who aren’t really consumers because we/they don’t want whatever they are. The phone calls from telemarketers, carefully positioned around our dinnertime, become more frequent. A lot of them have to do with “taking surveys,” which I dunno, is that some kind of effort to get around the do-not-call laws? Well, I suppose it is to be expected. If you’re in business to provide something people actually want, it won’t be enough for people to want it, they have to be willing to part with cash in order to get it. That would be a lot of wait between the wanting right now, so I can see how it’s more appealing to provide something people don’t want. It’s clear to me that this wouldn’t be a simple marketing trick either, there’d have to be some innovation involved. Well, sadly, it looks like we’ve done it.

Even worse, the markets have adapted. Among those lucky enough to have a job, there is a growing problem of all these occupations, and the abundance of energy associated with them, being invested in providing things for which nobody asked. And so we have an addiction. If, tomorrow, all the commerce were to stop happening until such time as a real consumer stepped forward with a real demand and some real assets to back it up, a whole lot of people would be suddenly thrown out of work.

I also note that the legislative activity has stepped up quite a bit, possibly as a result of all this. A lot of things I hear about Congress doing, I see, is stuff entirely separated from any detectable constituent demand. Know anyone who was jamming the Capitol Hill switchboard wanting an Internet sales tax? Me neither.

It puzzles me that economists don’t talk more about this. Capitalism, at least the capitalism with which I’ve been acquainted, has a lot to do with want. Free want. It has to do with genuine consumer demand. This kind of capitalism is not quite so much being attacked right now, or being positioned for its destruction, quite so much as for its replacement. It’s a post-W2 job, post-desire “capitalist” world. In this world it is easy to “succeed,” but hard to find any opportunities to do so while actually building something valuable. I fear we may be on the way toward those opportunities drying up entirely. Then we’ll all pay the price…but not immediately. We’ll put it on layaway.

Not a good road for us. We should stop, turn around, and head back.

Update: I’m reminded of a Hello-Kitty-of-Blogging update I made early Saturday morning. Most of my weekend updates get zero likes and zero commentary; that was not the case here. It even got re-shared twice, so I guess it hit a nerve.

Pre-Occupy, our word was “if”: “If you give me that money, I will give you this product or service…with which you can do things.” Now, our word is “until”: “You will not be able to do your things, until you stop everything and…” Pay attention to our demonstration, get the degree at our school, join our labor union, contribute to our “charity,” buy carbon offsets, get permits, grease some palms…

We have evolved from a society in which people put bread on their tables by helping each other to get things done, to one in which people put bread on their tables by stopping each other from getting things done — until certain conditions are met.

We wonder why we’re more contentious, and why the standard of living is slipping when so many people are “working” so hard. The answer is in where the work is going. There are lots of occupations out there, requiring a whole lot of activity and energy and “creativity,” that don’t have much to do with actually building anything.

Prelutsky is scaring the dickens out of me. Which I’m sure is a delight to some opinionated people out there who, as opinionated as they may be, aren’t going to be willing or able to say why they take delight in my consternation:

There is a trial balloon, or at least a rumor, floating around that suggests there just might be a Hillary Clinton/Michelle Obama run for the White House in 2016. Some are actually referring to it as a dream ticket. More like a nightmare. But I am willing to make book it doesn’t happen. Anyone who actually believes Mrs. Obama would play second fiddle to the honky bitch probably thinks that if that idea doesn’t pan out, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny might consider making a run for the White House. At least those two seem to like each other.

Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama make a “dream ticket.” I’m still at a loss to figure out what anybody sees, by way of positive characteristics, in either one. Let me guess, something to do with being super-duper smart and/or not “tak[ing] any [slang for used food] from anybody.”

I find this annoying for two reasons: One, what follows these often-repeated homilies, can be assured to be missing any specifics. I realize everything cannot be imbued with specifics. But I’m annoyed when these sound bites are given a sense of urgency, or enthusiasm, and are still missing the specifics. Especially when the specifics are so badly needed. We’ve had a long time, by now, to see some evidence of how smart Hillary Clinton is, and almost as long to see how smart Michelle Obama is. To date, the only example either has been able to bring, is by way of which fellow they respectively chose to marry.

I can’t think of a single job I’d want either one of them to do for me.

The other reason I find it to be annoying is that these two pushy broads, both of them, are…well, they’re annoying. They both seem to be working at it. I don’t like watching them or listening to them. If I had to make an appointment with either one, to have a conversation with them or simply to hear them speak, I would dread it and think of every excuse in the world to miss out on it.

And that seems to be the appeal. There is a template here, and the template doesn’t seem to be put together to impress women, but to impress men like me. Negatively. Shrill, unpleasant women who fit in the template, end up with this large and enthused following, because they are likely to give men headaches. No other characteristic is required in this template, no is any other characteristic needed. Annoy men. That’s good enough. Is that really what’s going on here?

And who is in the following? Who is churning up all this excitement over the idea that the latest female pol or celeb is repellent to men?

I know people don’t like it when I notice these things. Throughout the years, I’ve shown a tendency to get into a lot of trouble for noticing things that aren’t supposed to be noticed. But you know, Hillary Clinton seems to put an awful lot of energy and effort into being a shrill, unpleasant bitch. Ditto for Michelle O. To ignore that they’re trying to do it, seems itself to be impolite in its own way; when someone tries so hard to get something done, isn’t noticing their efforts the very least we can do?

It works the other way, I notice. If a woman, real or fictitious, shows some man-appeal for whatever reason there is a predominant view in our contemporary culture that this is a liability against her, and an imperative exists that she should be treated like something toxic. Sarah Palin should never be heard from again. As far as cartoons go, Wonder Woman and Lara Croft both should cover up their legs, which since I live in California, I find pretty amusing…you busybodies have any idea how many real pairs of beautiful female legs we can see down here every year? It’s completely awesome. And the cartoon characters also have to shrink down their boobs.

There are a lot of exceptions to this. And I find the exceptions even more fascinating: The trend seems to be toward stupidity. The Kardashian sisters can show as much thigh, and strut around with buxom bosoms, in prominence, to their hearts’ content. There is some simmering resentment against this, but it is muted. Their fame is not appreciated, among many, but among those many the fame is at least accepted as a fact of life. Not like, for example, Sarah Palin’s fame, which seems to be regarded by several among that same crowd as an actual problem that has to get solved with some sense of urgency. Palin is told to “go away”; the Kardashian sisters are not told that.

It seems to me that the typical straight man might appreciate looking at Snooki, KimK, Jessica Simpson, et al, but we wouldn’t very much like to be in the same room with any of them. We might like to screw them. We wouldn’t want to date them. I notice a consistent pattern wherein, where that situation exists, the muting-down of the resentment over the airhead-idiot-girl’s good looks, inevitably follows. Big boobs are okay. Boobs with brain, that’s a disaster.

If the woman is good-looking and might be a decent male-fantasy in the sack, but also is someone the man might like to take out for breakfast afterward because she knows enough to hold up her end of a conversation, she still might get a pass if she has the “don’t take any crap from anybody” thing going on. Like for example, Angelina Jolie. Not exactly my cup of tea, but there’s no denying she’s a good looking woman. But women don’t resent her or want her to go away. She might steal their husbands; the husbands might like getting stolen, might appreciate being around Angelina; but while the deed’s being done, the vision seems to be, Angelina would refuse to take bottom position. So there is redemption if there is a perception of female dominance.

The fictional characters, Tomb Raider and Wonder Woman, can’t bring this because in their case, at least classically, they have very tastefully been developed as asexual beings. Today we think of that as “it isn’t really established what their preference is, they might be lesbians or bisexual.” Sadly, that is about as close as we can come, today, to understanding “it has nothing to do with sex.” Yeah yeah, I know, Wonder Woman was originally a bondage fantasy. But after she gained momentum as a comic book character, she became something that today we evidently can’t allow: A heroine, who doesn’t have that kind of a social life because she’s a product developed for little kids — who happens to be beautiful. Beauty without sex. I guess we just can’t understand that now. So wear long pants, Wonder Woman, and shrink down those boobs.

We are not, it goes without saying, getting rid of any mention or thought of sex. We’re not even doing that for the benefit of little kids. Our societal beef seems to be against manifestations of hetero appeal.

Sometimes when you inspect things awhile, you find they don’t exist as isolated instances, but as extensions of something else. I’m starting to see this particular phenomenon that way. Consider that in our society, if you are an atheist then you have an absolute right to be one, and we have seen much agitation toward the preservation of that liberty. But of course it doesn’t stop there. No atheists are being forced to change their system of belief, for example, because a street has a certain name, but they obviously feel like they have some rights that are being trampled. Such a right must be: If I believe one way, I do not want to see any evidence anywhere that anybody else believes differently.

From all I have seen and heard and all the patterns I’ve detected, that must be what this is about. “I do not want to see evidence, anywhere, that men find women attractive.” There is much contention caused by this today, in this age in which we’re supposed to be so concerned about things being contentious, and wanting things to be less so. Well you know, I don’t think we really want that. If we wanted things to be less contentious, I think this pseudo-right a lot of people seem to think they have, not to see evidence of things, would now and then encounter a rebuke, or at least a challenge. That isn’t happening. What’s happening is we’re seeing the phony right asserted, more and more often, in more and more things. It shows up in a desire that women who obviously have a lot of appeal, should “go away.” Get out of here and take your infernal man-appeal with you! It isn’t the pleasing face or the supple thighs or the heaving bosoms, if it was that simple then Kim Kardashian would be getting chased off the stage too. It’s fear; fear of a good example. Fear that someone might start thinking “I wish X could be more like Y.” Simple jealousy. What your loyal old dog might be feeling, the night you come home with a new baby kitten.

So Michelle and Hillary might be a “dream ticket,” to some. This isn’t a bad thing because of the who, as in, who finds this to be a dream ticket. The peril is in the why. For quite awhile now we’ve had politicians being elevated to offices of real power, based on the kind of fear I’ve been inspecting and probing here. Doesn’t seem to be working out too well, I’d say. And, acknowledging that I’m not the focus group being chased by this dream-harpy ticket, nevertheless I’d have to expect that over the long term, things wouldn’t work out any better there either. Fear is not a good motivator for choosing leaders, especially leaders who are supposed to have real influence.

Phil forwarded on a Cafe Hayek Quotation-of-the-day post to me…the quote is from Mencken…

They like phrases which thunder like salvos of artillery. Let that thunder sound, and they take all the rest on trust. If a sentence begins furiously and then peters out into fatuity, they are still satisfied. If a phrase has a punch in it, they do not ask that it also have a meaning. If a word slides off the tongue like a ship going down the ways, they are content and applaud it and await the next.

It is timely because I was just commenting on a stuffy, committee-speak rebuttal-rebuttal from Western Washington University’s geology faculty, that appeared in the Bellingham Herald and then was forwarded to me by a certain older family member.

You know how these committee-speak rebuttal-rebuttals go by now. Boilerplate phrases everywhere. And just like vegetable oil, or an Obama speech, one half-gallon exactly the same as any other half-gallon:

We concur with the vast consensus of the science community that recent global warming is very real, human greenhouse-gas emissions are the primary cause, and their environmental and economic impacts on our society will likely be severe if we don’t make significant efforts to address the problem. Claims to the contrary fly in the face of an overwhelming body of rigorous scientific literature.

Vast and overwhelming! Flies in the face! Any statements of specifics are provided grudgingly, if they are provided at all. The economic impacts on our society will likely be severe? I wonder what the economic impacts are of being able to grow more plants and vegetables in an atmosphere that is warmer and has more CO₂. Looks like they ran out of ink before they could tell me…

Well, let me guess. Something to do with vastly and overwhelmingly settled science, or something. I should go get hold of the Fourth Assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and somewhere in there they’ll fill me in. Nobody can tell me exactly what page it’s on, because they haven’t had to go look it up, because everyone else already knew the answer and that’s why they’re going to tell me to go look it up.

Hello, sentence beginning furiously and then petering out into fatuity.

Without the benefit of Mencken’s quote, I replied with regard to the WWU litanies:

Reads more like prose than scientific commentary. Words like “overwhelming,” “vast” and “painstaking” are obviously unscientific, yet time after time I notice the written defenses of the global-warming con are consistently peppered with them. The authors seem to increase their use of these with each sentence, until they reach a summit of:

Science thrives on controversies; it rewards innovative, unexpected findings, but only when they are backed by rigorous, painstaking evidence and reasoning. Without such standards, science would be ineffective as a tool to improve our society.

That isn’t even true. When an Edison comes up with a new light source or an Eratosthenes figures out the size of the Earth, the best that the “standards” have managed to contribute to the advancement is to stay out of the way. Something they have very often failed to do.

There is an argument taking place here that is not being acknowledged: How does individual thinking benefit our society, and how does group-think benefit our society? Those who repeat the words of others that have been most-often repeated, seem to think it works like this: The individual comes up with any ol’ random idea, just like a random mutation occurring before evolution, but the individual lacks the vision or the ability to say, or to prove, that the idea is a good one. It’s just a fart in a hurricane until the committee sits down and subjects it to its many layers of vast, painstaking, overwhelming peer review; it is the committee’s place to say “you know what, you might have something there.” And then, thanks to the committee, we have a smart phone…

Those who inspect the details, see that the individual does a lot of work. That’s why everyone isn’t doing it! So before it leaves his desk, he already knows he has something and that it works. What he might not know, is that someone somewhere else may have a better way of doing it. He also can’t fund it. So it goes before the committee, which champions some innovations and kills off others. Like any committee, it doesn’t make its decisions for the benefit of mankind necessarily, but more out of political expediency. So it has the same chance of making the “right” decision as you or I have of calling heads-or-tails.

We all seem cleanly divided on which of those visions is the correct one. Those who are very opinionated and loud think it’s the first vision, those who’ve been through the process think it is the second vision. I guess we should do what the low-information-voters do, see who’s loudest and talks more, agree with them, and go back to watching “Jersey Shore” or whatever.