My son, that is. I’ll be picking him up from the train station in a few hours; turned 17 Wednesday.

Happy birthday, kid! Here’s a picture of your Dad.

Update: Got ‘im, and whoa. Looks like we’re finally at the “kid taller than his Dad” stage.

I considered calling this something like “Chess: The Perfect Blend Between Process and Outcome,” since that drives more to the heart of the matter, but it’s too long and it takes too much reading-between-the-lines to get there. Anyhow, the point made is brilliant, as is the chess analogy:

Picture the situation: you know that putting your knight on e4, for example, leads to a counterattack that ruins your position. You move your bishop there instead. A normal opponent would think about what you were conceding to do that instead of the knight move and react accordingly. The Cuttlers, however, would go ahead with the sequence of moves, even though with a bishop there it will ruin their own position instead. And then they will insist that, because they made all the correct moves, that in reality the game is theirs, even as their queen and both rooks decorate the side of the board where you keep the captured pieces. The game WOULD have been won if the knight had been there, therefore your bishop doesn’t belong there, the move was invalid and the game is won, QED. Or do you deny that their moves were not perfectly in accordance with the rules?

Misses the point by a bit, don’t you think?
:
…[A]n expert can be reasonably expected to know about a specialized topic. Wouldn’t you ask an expert about it? But the point isn’t in merely asking, because a question is a tool designed to get a good answer. If the answer is wrong, then it misses the point of having asked someone skilled in the field – I can give you bad tax advice a lot more cheaply than your expert accountant.

Here we can see again the difference between condescension and humane behavior. If you question the bad advice, how does the expert react? Does he explain the reason for his advice? Does he accept if the reason doesn’t apply here? If you share something you’ve learned, does he take the time to show why that knowledge is irrelevant, or better, does he say he’ll read about it and then get back to you? That’s humane – it recognizes that what one has learned may be learned by others, that to be an expert is not to be flawless even in that realm of practice, and it shows a willigness to grow.

Or, you know, the expert could be insulted that someone else did a little research, discount the new information because of its unworthy source, openly question why you’re questioning their opinion in the first place, and then go right ahead and be stubbornly wrong about it, because experts say so. The bishop never belonged on that square. The reply moves were all well within the rules. Just tip your damned king, you peon.

That’s the funny thing about something like chess – the pieces are the same for each player, from a grandmaster to a patzer like me. One side’s bishops don’t suddenly start scooting sideways; the grandmaster’s rooks don’t level up to move twice per turn; my queen can’t shoot lasers just to make it fair.

Life is rather chesslike in this regard…

It’s easy for non-experts to interpret expert opinion way beyond the boundaries of what it really is. It’s obvious to anybody who’s ever been an expert about anything. And even if you’ve never been an expert about anything, you can ask an expert about something within their expertise and practically see it in their eyes: What’s the premise of the question, is it a valid one, who’s my audience, how are they going to misunderstand this. And, do I really know what I think I know.

Of course, now we live in a time in which a lot of experts make their expert-living off of doubting any uncertainty. And that’s perhaps worth a whole post in & of itself.

Historian takes on Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day.

In his well-documented biography of Ranger commander Earl Rudder — “Rudder: From Leader to Legend” — historian Thomas M. Hatfield excoriated Ryan for repeatedly sacrificing “facts for dramatic effect.”

Scaling sea cliffs under fire is incomparably dramatic. However, the German guns were not in the casemates. “Sacrifice for nothing” became Ryan’s ironic storyline.

It is historically inaccurate, to the point of falsehood.

In Hatfield’s view, Ryan was not a professional historian but a man grinding out a book to meet a publication deadline. Ryan admitted he relied on one Ranger veteran for his entire D-Day account, a sergeant who manned an observation point over a mile from the most critical combat on Pointe du Hoc. Professional military historians seek multiple sources, to include after-action group interviews.

Earl Rudder, who later became president of Texas A&M University, was a superb special operations commander, but a man not given to grandiose language.

Ryan’s interview of Rudder didn’t produce the sizzle Ryan sought. Ryan asked Rudder where and when he arrived in Normandy. Rudder: “Omaha Beach, H-Hour.” Ryan asked if Rudder had lost friends in the battle. Rudder: “Yes, many.” Was Rudder wounded? “Yes, twice.” Ryan appealed for a dramatic moment. Did any single incident stand out in Rudder’s mind? “No.”

One moment? The battle for and on and over Pointe du Hoc was two-and-a-half days of endless suffering, death, violence and chaotic hell, yet Rudder and his Rangers had succeeded in achieving their critical mission.

Hatfield noted that a man with solid Hollywood connections helped correct the record. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan held a ceremony at Pointe du Hoc. With Rudder’s widow and 2nd Ranger vets at his side, Reagan said: “Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion, to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. … These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the men who helped free a continent.”

Via Instapundit.

I’m not in any position to criticize Mr. Ryan, but it’s always worrisome how quickly you can find disagreement among the presumably knowledgeable, during these times in which we live when all sorts of different disciplines of scholarly work drive so hard toward something called “overwhelming consensus.” I recall some since-deceased relatives who helped me back in school researching my own family history, and as their generation died off my thoughts turned to the questions I probably should have asked them about little details, that I no longer could. Questions that would remain unanswered forever.

It must be a blissful brand of ignorance that permits the amateur and the historian alike, to believe it is only the answers that endure, and the questions that are temporary. That’s not actually how it works.

And there’s a reason for this. While most anyone with any experience at all will understand the frustration involved in dividing bad ideas from good ideas, the bad ones often looking so much like good ones, this is a difficulty that tends to exist only in advance. Good ideas, as distinguished from bad ones, have a way of looking like good ideas in the aftermath, as well as in the currency of their execution. That’s why people say things like “this is / is not working out.” This is a rather durable trend with few exceptions, although there are exceptions to just about everything.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else, as the saying goes. This is to be expected. When you biff it, and you aren’t willing to admit you’ve biffed it but you want people to keep listening to you, of course it becomes politically necessary to come up with an excuse, be it good or bad. And if this is something that tends to happen over and over again to the same person, after awhile this person will naturally acquire some talent for coming up with excuses. It is also an inevitability that this person, or group, or ideology, will become very stubborn about always getting the last word in. There’s no other alternative for them, since controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea.

Good ideas tend to speak for themselves. Yes, here and there you have to wait around a bit to find out if the good idea really was a good idea. That’s rare enough to be an exceptional case, and usually there is some defined test that can be run after this interval to prove the idea was good. And, yes, there are some exceptions to that as well.

Priorities in these things, though, are determined by the trends and not by the exceptions. And so we see these purveyors of bad ideas consistently lunging for, grasping for, insisting upon, control over the same things. Control over the definitions, of phrases, words, motives of their opposition. Control over the definition of the goal, and then the re-definition of the goal, and then the re-re-definition of the goal. If the idea being sold is a good one, of course none of this is necessary. The idea speaks for itself. The aftermath of its implementation says all that needs to be said, about what a good idea it was.

Jordan Ellenberg, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

…today, I don’t think we’re paying too little attention to our young geniuses. I think we’re paying too much.
:
Talent isn’t a number. We would never presume to identify the great novelists of the future by counting the number of vocabulary words they knew at age 10. To think we can do the same for math and science—as if proving the Riemann hypothesis were something like getting 100,000 on the math SAT—is to adopt a depressingly impoverished view of science and its demands on its practitioners. The cult of genius tends to undervalue hard work and the productive persistence that psychologists nowadays like to call “grit”—not to mention creativity, perspective and taste, without which all those other virtues may be wasted on pointless projects.

Those of us who managed sky-high SAT scores at 13 were 20 times as likely as the average American to get a doctorate; let’s say, being charitable, that we’re 100 times as likely to make a significant scientific advance. Since we’re only 1 in 10,000 of the U.S. population, that still leaves 99% of scientific advances to be made by all those other kids who didn’t get an early ticket to the genius club. We geniuses aren’t going to solve all the riddles. Most child prodigies are highly successful — but most highly successful people weren’t child prodigies.

Hat tip to Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm.

Not sure if I fit into what he’s discussing; probably not. I was one of the “bored” prodigies. Didn’t hand things in, didn’t hand things in, didn’t hand things in, and then came the threats of holding me back a year. It’s not an isolated case by any means, and seems to be happening more and more often now: Kid doesn’t do his work, so the adults start fighting with other adults. Then, as an experiment, I was put in the advanced group, stopped being bored, and started doing work.

It didn’t last into high school. Maybe I went back to being stupid. Or, more likely, the being-bored-with-class thing was just a symptom of something much larger. Public school has always been friendly to those who think inside the box, which is a kind way of saying it’s always been hostile to those who think outside. It’s a bureaucrat-friendly zone, and I have the impression from being a parent & former student that it is crystallizing, becoming a more strident and uncompromising version of its past self.

I didn’t mix well with the (other?) prodigies. I recall a certain need for a grasp of conceptual command of something, when I asked a teacher I was directed to ask one of the prodigies. I did, and what I got back was a sequence of steps I could execute so that I would be solving the problem as expected. I repeated the question about the concept, and got back the same sequence of steps. It emerged that the prodigy didn’t have the answer to the question I was asking, hadn’t developed it, didn’t need it. There is no one particular episode to which I’m pointing here, this is a generalization that applied to several events from that year or two.

I suppose by high school I maybe “matured” to the point of understanding and accepting that school is a crushing bore, and you have to just do the best you can and limp through to graduation day. I was too slow to grasp what we’re forced to learn in adulthood: Most of life is boring. Plodding through is not the answer, what you need to do is shrug off the boredom, think about the outcome, link it to your identity and take pride in what you do.

My gripe with K-12 is that it seems to be grading kids on their ability to fully come to terms with that. Which isn’t something that is too likely to happen, and if it does, it’s certainly not likely to happen early. If the kid’s going to be a success, it’s much more likely to happen because the crushing boredom somehow never becomes a factor.

Which makes the argument for more-attention-to-prodigies, up top, 2nd paragraph, a little distressing:

Some educators rebrand child prodigies as “exceptional human capital” and hold us to be the drivers of global economic competitiveness. “These are the people who are going to figure out all the riddles,” the Vanderbilt University psychologist David Lubinski said in a recent interview. “Schizophrenia, cancer — they’re going to fight terrorism, they’re going to create patents and the scientific innovations that drive our economy. But they are not given a lot of opportunities in schools that are designed for typically developing kids.”

It’s fascinating to me that with all this zeal we have for separating people and putting them in organized boxes, we’re so sluggish to form the separation that truly matters: Those who plan according to process and those who plan according to outcome. The surface-thinkers vs. the vertical-thinkers.

The latter of whom, time after time, we see are getting in trouble at school for thinking too pragmatically. They can’t see the point to handing in the assignments, so they don’t hand them in, and this is pegged as a “who cares” sort of an issue — kid lacks discipline, kid’s pig-iron stupid, poorly organized, who cares what it is? We’ll just treat him like he’s stupid and threaten to flunk him. Nowadays it’s “treat him like he has a DSM-V learning disability, and medicate him.” Back when it was happening to me, I couldn’t see why there was so little analytical thought being put into it, even as the grown-ups were getting in these arguments with each other over the work I wasn’t doing. As a grown-up, I can see the passion was really not so much about what it took for me to succeed, but more like about their differing approaches to life. They were having arguments about definitions, with the outcome-thinkers requiring strong and crisp definitions in order to even begin to assess what was going on, and the bureaucrat process-thinkers who fight so hard to keep things from being defined. And it was all my fault, really, for getting them into these fights with each other, by not doing my work. These two sides shouldn’t be coming into contact with each other, ever. Or, very rarely anyway, only under very tightly controlled conditions.

Back to the school thing, though. We talk so much of kids learning to think creatively, solve problems, think outside the box. Had that energy managed to find its way into the public school apparatus, the apparatus, I think, would have been taking a very different evolutionary path from what it has been taking, and would look very different from the way we find it today.

Kurt Schlicter writes about why you shouldn’t argue with liberals:

The truth is that conservatism is an ideology that is in accord with natural law and basic human decency, while liberalism is merely the summit of a slippery slope leading down to the hellish depths of collectivist misery.

Liberals aren’t going to like to hear this manifest and demonstrable truth. So you’re going to get called “racist,” “sexist” and “homophobic,” even if you’re a conservative black lesbian.

What you are not going to get is an argument. An argument is a collected series of statements designed to establish a definite proposition. Arguments involve the presentation of facts and evidence from which one draws a conclusion. Implied within the concept of an argument is the potential that one might change his conclusion. But liberals start with the conclusion.

They don’t change their conclusions based on the facts and evidence; they change the facts and evidence based on the conclusion they want. This is why a 105 degree day is irrefutable proof of global warming, while a 60 degree day is irrefutable proof of global warming. As is a -20 degree day.

That, in & of itself, is a better argument than anything you’ll ever get out of a liberal.

He goes on to recommend what amounts to lowering oneself to the liberal’s level. I think that part is a joke…

I had to make some arrangements with someone. I’ll leave it unmentioned who, but it’s a person with whom I am entangled in a financial way for the time being, which is awkward since she doesn’t look at money the way I do. Also, I had to add her to my bank account as a payee, from one bank to a different bank, which I figured out was a matter of business I should resolve by going into the branch and speaking with a human, the old-fashioned way. There is a history of these things getting FUBAR’d, it used to be mildly aggravating, then it got humorous, then it got tedious — THEN, it happened a few more times and I’m just tired of it.

Well, yeah, of course the cashier can’t help with something like that, so I was sent off to wait for a banker. And wait I did; not exactly brimming with exuberant optimism or high spirits at the beginning of it, I was left to pickle for awhile, long enough for my weekend errand schedule to get rearranged a bit, which is frustrating in itself on a Saturday. I picked the wrong branch, and maybe I picked the wrong forum as well. Two bankers, tied up with two customers. On and on it went, sit and sit I did. Sit, and listen to the endlessly repeating dialogue with the young couple-with-baby trying to explore their options now that they’d found they couldn’t open a checking account. Ugh. This was aggravation on steroids, because you had to feel for the baby and the parents, plus the banker was handling it completely the wrong way. The old “Let’s make this a compassionate conversation by making it forty-five minutes long, and about two or three minutes of useful stuff.” What were the takeaways. Well, there’s the possibility that the outstanding matter might be cleared up, and you’re legally entitled to get a free credit report by doing blah blah blah.

It turned out I wasn’t waiting for the end of this, because another banker eventually freed up. And then didn’t help very much. But, sitting there, mulling over how people think about money, and how they are encouraged to think about it when they’re at what we might call the “scratching and clawing” phase of life, I had time to think about something: We really do not do much to encourage the insolvent to become solvent. You hear a fair amount about people of all ages being encouraged to “go back to school,” that’s about as close as the advice ever comes to what would seem to me to be most needed: Find ways to improve your value.

What is it that you’re doing, if anything at all, to make this economy go? Is there a gap between whatever that is, and your true potential? How do you translate that gap into action? That’s the bulls-eye; “maybe you should think about going back to school” approaches it, but doesn’t hit very close to the mark at all. And that’s about as close as we ever seem to come.

“You’re legally entitled to get a copy of your credit report as long as it’s just once a year” doesn’t hit the hay bale. It doesn’t even land inside the same archery range.

And here’s my gripe: What’s the opposite? “Oh well, there’s more to life than making money!” That one…THAT one…we hear all the freakin’ flippin’ time. And I’m entirely unsure about why that is. Who says this? Who listens to it? Who believes it? Oh sure, it’s true in the strictest, most technical sense. But my point is, so what? There’s a lot more to life than picking your nose, which isn’t easy, but people manage to get that done don’t they? There’s more to life than saving a baby trapped in a burning house, but if someone is put in the position of having to try for it, you’d want them to succeed wouldn’t you? Well, wouldn’t you?

I hate this phrase with the passion and radiant heat of a thousand suns. It’s just stupid. It envisions conflict within the act of simply generating an income or making a profit. As far as crass generalizations go, it would be much more correct to envision service to one’s fellow man within such things.

“More to life than making money” is the polar opposite of what young people need to hear. It’s just a turnkey solution phrase we say, not because it works, but because that’s what old people have always said to young people. It’s like “clean your plate”; common sense should immediately tell you this is a recipe for getting fat and staying fat, and maybe the advice should be “lock it up in clean Tupperware when you aren’t hungry anymore.” We read and listen to stories every single day, about so-and-so in these dire straits because the IRS ruled on such-and-such a matter in such-and-such a way…or, his wife has such-and-such a health drama going on and it isn’t covered. Alright then, we live in an age in which fortune is fickle. And the fickle fortune, is the fortune of basic survival. This has always been the case; in fact, looking at it from a long view, we happen to be the generation that has it the easiest, and we still haven’t reached the point where there are any guarantees.

The conclusion to all this is: If you’re in that thing that I described up above as “what we might call the ‘scratching and clawing’ phase of life” — SCRATCH. And CLAW. Maybe, if all it takes to wipe out our illusory solvency is a routine physical that finds a malignant lump or a brain cloud, we should act like it. Go to school if that’s how you can maximize your income. Learn a new trade. Get this job, quit that job, job-hop like a little jitterbug if you have to, whatever it takes.

This is all just an extension of that other thing it seems like young people aren’t being told anymore: If you’re going to play, play to win. And, you have to play. Have kids, but be married and able to support the kids before you have the kids. And be able to support the marriage before you have the marriage. Have good ideas, implement all of the very best ones, and make sure you get your cut whenever you implement a good idea. If you lose, find a way to make your ideas better, and better, and better still, until you win. Then keep winning until you’re obscenely rich, teach those kids of yours how to do the same, feel no guilt and sleep well.

That is the advice we should be hearing more often. The truth is, though, we’re not hearing that, we’re hearing the “more to life than making money” nonsense. And we’re hearing it because we’re embroiled in a culture war, between those who accept that we live in a universe of cause-and-effect, and those who reject this. And those who reject it, are winning. These are the “you didn’t build that” people, the people who think all good things and all disasters are spontaneous, and there’s nothing for us to do about any of it, in prospect or in retrospect. You’ve heard Patton’s quote “I wouldn’t give a hoot and hell for a man who lost and laughed”; these are the losers-and-laughers who are winning. The paradox is obvious, don’t ask me to explain it, it’s their way — they lose at everything except arguments about whether it’s good to lose. They will always win, culturally. Their way is so much easier. That’s why it is so important that every person who desires success, learns to think with autonomy, as an individual.

It truly is a conspiracy to keep the masses poor, discouraged, malnourished, dispirited, apathetic and stupid.

We’ve discussed this before, but the numbers are broken down lately more meaningfully.

Those who can, do; those who can’t, make up a bunch of new rules to force others to do.

Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

Practical thinking, broadly, is divided into two phases. You figure out what’s going on based on the evidence you manage to collect or that finds its way to you; then, you figure out what to do (or avoid doing) about it.

Maturity means you noodle these things out based on the expected outcome. Soon after we’re born, we have what it takes to recognize we need to get those questions answered, and a little while after that we develop the methods for answering them. The obstacle to maturity is that, in childhood, “outcome” is indistinguishable from “gratification of self.”

It is only in the later years that a conflict arises: Should I win more privileges for myself, or my peer group, or elevate the social stature of myself & my peer group; or, should I pursue an agenda (and evaluate the success and failures of previous efforts) based on concern about the eventual outcome? See, a baby bawling for a tit in his mouth doesn’t have to worry about that conflict. In his world it’s all the same.

The Isla Vista shooter never had to cross that barrier into maturity, that rite-of-passage wherein one has to consciously decide to accept criticism, admit to mistakes, revise strategies, in order to achieve a defined beneficial outcome. And as we see from the VA mess, which our current President inherited unfairly but about which He nevertheless learned for the first time from watching the news — neither has Barack Obama.

Not exactly a fresh or brilliant insight, and it could be criticized for being overly obvious as far as observations go. But recent events make it clear that it’s not nearly obvious enough; pointing it out has become a necessity.

Mulling it over a bit more, I see what we’re looking at is really a triangle of primal forces, and those who fail to achieve this rite of passage aren’t quite so much failing to surmount an obstacle, as taking an errant path. The baby who has the luxury of ignoring these meaningful distinctions due to living in a simple world not yet complex enough to require them, yammering for his momma’s tit in his mouth, is acting on 1) self-gratification, 2) a defined (instinctive) process and 3) fulfillment of an objective. When he enters school, the teachers will educate him in processes he’ll only follow because he’s being told to follow them, and there will be a gap between #1 and #2. When he is expected to solve problems, there will be a division between #2 and #3, and when he begins to work to serve others there will be a gap between #1 and #3.

It takes a certain level of maturity to say “Hey wait, that isn’t going to achieve the defined goal” and then come up with an effective and viable alternative sequence of steps likely to yield success. Our society still values it; we still want our leaders to have this ability. What we are losing is the ability to encourage it. Our education system lately doesn’t seem to be doing much to challenge it and develop it.

There emerges the question about whether it can. Certainly, it’s possible, but there has to be an effort to shape the curricula. In a job, especially a job that produces material wealth, it will be a natural and unavoidable development in any successful employee.

Further thoughts on the post previous, in which I conjured up yet one more tortured metaphor…

That’s really where it started. With the idea that all of our problems can be solved if we just load up everything that is masculine and rough-n-tumble into a great big rocket ship, and fire it into the sun.

Context is key. The people I’m targeting are not women. Not exclusively women, anyway. They’re not even all feminists. In fact, I would go on to say they’re not even true-believers, investing any genuine faith in the idea described.

The problem is broader than that, in fact, it’s broader even than the destructive urge against “everything that is masculine and rough-n-tumble.” The problem is the urge itself. Back in the day, we weren’t supposed to discuss religion, sports or politics in divided company; we’ve busted the taboo wide open as far as politics are concerned now. The consequence of that has been enlightening overall, if not productive or successful. Some would say it’s been a complete fustercluck, a living parable that illustrates why the taboo existed in the first place. Perhaps, perhaps not, but either way it has emerged that most people are not very good at discussing politics, or for that matter forming solid opinions about politics.

They/we may write, or monologue, some sort of manifesto — which all too often, boiled down to its essentials, amounts to nothing more than “What we really need to do is load up a big rocket ship with all the [blank] and fire it into the sun.” Some say that about Republicans, some say it about lawyers, men, women, LGBT, “corporate fat cats,” illegal aliens…oh, the politicians, yes the politicians. Pro-lifers, pro-aborts, hippies, hipsters, yuppies, yumpies, boomers, X-ers, millennials…

Some will say I am the target of my own criticism with regard to liberals. I’m sure it looks that way to many, but, one: 1 Cor 4:3-4. Two: Here we come to the heart of the matter. The problem comes with the lack of foresight, lack of vision for how things are going after the sunspot dissipates — where does that leave us. I entertain no delusions that all our problems would go away if the liberals burned up in the sun. It would fix nothing. Although, it might make an environment in which the fixes could take place.

Our various problems with society and with foreign relations, are like a busted or missing cog in a fine, delicate, tiny and expensive timepiece, disassembled and waiting for the skilled repairman to go to work. Spread out on a big bed. Liberals are like a spoiled and sugared-up five-year-old jumping on the bed. How’s that for a metaphor. Point is, their presence is not the problem. Their influence is the problem. They meddle where their whole way of thinking, their whole Weltanschauung, does not belong.

As for the rest of us: We need to learn to perceive this important distinction, and to act on it. The difference between removing something from a situation that prolongs or exacerbates a problem, and actually fixing the problem. Those two are two different things.

Joe Getty of Armstrong and Getty engaged in a delicious rant Friday morning, or Thursday, or something. You remember that late-night fight that Mr. and Mrs. Incredible had about their kid “graduating” from the fourth grade; it was inspired by that. There’s a certain silliness about this time of year, which we did not so reliably encounter in the recent past, and that silliness is in these graduation ceremonies for kids who haven’t graduated yet. They are moving from the [blank] grade to the [blank] grade, and for that we are to have “graduation ceremonies.”

When the subject moved on to baseball games for six-year-olds, well…it became unavoidable to finally, finally, target with laser precision the true cause of the problem. And Mr. Getty was forced to issue the proper disclaimers. I was driving, so I couldn’t take notes. Wish I could. It was a perfect disclaimer, in the sense that it didn’t diminish the core message. The gist of it: Joe Getty is pro-woman, AND pro-man, but the object of their scorn is evidence that we’ve been doing too much the ladies’ way. The graduation ceremony that was not a graduation ceremony, after all, couldn’t even live up to being a phony-graduation-ceremony. It was a fashion show.

If we were culturally allowed, more often, to challenge the beneficial effects of such a spectacle, the challenges would be plenty and the defenses against them would be weak, perhaps entirely ineffectual. Is it good for kids to make them feel like they’ve accomplished something? Doubtful. This thing the experts call “self-esteem” does not seem to be in short supply now; if there are problems with it, the problems could be more credibly observed to be with its abundance, than with its scarcity. And the public has become aware. “Participation trophy” has become a well-known phrase now, and not a flattering one.

This era is past its zenith now, that’s a good thing. But a decline can last a good long time. And we can’t fault the women for keeping it going. Gender-neutrality is the norm now, and the truth is that out of all the most zealous-feminist people I’ve seen who have some everyday effect on us, acting out their mission to destroy masculinity wherever they find it, very few of them are women.

I was noticing in the post previous that in our entertainment media, the “western” is not what it used to be. Over on the Hello Kitty of Blogging I’ve seen, participated in, and occasionally started some discussions about why the Star Wars prequel movies suck so much compared to the originals. My position is that out of all that’s different, the most hurtful thing is the conference-room-scene. Hours and hours of actors with rubber masks on standing around in circles, talking about things. A big table, twelve or twenty bodies in the room, only two or three with any speaking lines at all, and someone intoning “Good, then it’s settled!” at the end of it. Gag. Quick, name a plot-point in the prequel movies, that was not defined this way. Anakin got fried in the third one, that’s about it. Everything else got decided in a conference room. That’s excruciating to an audience. And — it isn’t a western. Someone was pointing out, CylarZ I think it was, that part of what made the original movies so much fun was that they were westerns, battles between pure good and pure evil, decided out of necessity by way of force.

That’s essentially what a western is. Evil makes the problem, Good comes up with the solution. Good settles the injustice by way of superior force, but only because of absolute necessity; Evil creates the necessity. That’s not womanly enough for us, nowadays. We have to have these conference room scenes, with a dozen people in a big round room, ten of them completely silent. If it is necessary to create a more profound sense of drama and suspense, the formulation has come to be to have more than a dozen. A thousand is better than a hundred, of course, and once you get into the thousands you rely on the magic of CGI. Great. Now you have actors, in rubber masks, gathered around enormous fancy tables in round rooms, delivering lines in front of CGI dopplegangers who are far more quiet and deferential than anyone you’ll ever see in real life. It’s all very bland and boring. On top of that, we’ve lost this contrast between good and evil. We’ve become overly enamored of these stories with good guys who are really bad (they spend too much time at work and place too much importance on making money), and bad guys who are really good (they have to rob this bank because a mysterious, shadowy syndicate has kidnapped their daughter…or, they have to steal the Declaration of Independence in order to save it).

Women, by and large, don’t want this. That’s the irony. Women like manly men, who eat steak and drink beer, and know how to kill spiders, fix cars, build furniture, and who appreciate the soft skin and supple curves of a womanly-woman. A man who knows and recognizes the difference between good and evil, and will take the initiative to act in the cause of good. A man who can and will defend them against danger if need be. They want what’s been cleared away, for decades now, in a risible marketing-effort to pander to their tastes.

It has not gone well, because the effort was not guided by women-at-large, only by the advocates who bothered to do some advocating. The loudest ones. The pinheads who don’t want to see anything, anywhere, that isn’t part of their tiny world. That’s really where it started. With the idea that all of our problems can be solved if we just load up everything that is masculine and rough-n-tumble into a great big rocket ship, and fire it into the sun. The results we have seen, in hindsight, are the results we should have expected to have seen. They are the consequences of getting rid of something without stopping to ask why it was put there in the first place. Kids learning en masse at age six that baseball is a boring game and a fashion show, will ultimately make those problems worse and not better.

Planning my bike route last night, I noticed there was a “New Google Maps” which looks more like Bing. And so Mrs. Freeberg had to put up with yet one more rant.

Nobody took the time to ask me. They never do. This suggests a lack of importance on my part, which would actually be my preference; but let me ask this one thing. If I am so unimportant, then why is it that every time this-thing is made to look more like that-thing, it is a constant and consistent observation of mine that the thing being changed was so much higher on my unimportant list of personal preferences, than the that-other-thing? The thing to which it is being changed?

What could explain that, other than some sadistic power-broker huddled in a back room somewhere saying to a room full of other power-brokers — Morgan likes this thing and he doesn’t like that other thing, so let’s get moving.

Make James Bond more like Jason Bourne. Make Star Wars movies more like C-SPAN. Make *all* of the police-procedural dramas on the teevee, look like Law And Order. Make all the talk shows look like The View. Make not-Apple products look more like Apple products.

I guess they’re all just little reminders that the universe is not my personal property. We can all use such a reminder now & then; some of us, more than others. But there is more to it than that. As Scott Adams pointed out three years ago, it’s likely to have an effect on us when we never have to be bored. It’s the bunny-trails in life, the paths not tread, the avenues without asphalt. Not too many people are looking at those anymore. There’s no reason to.

Entertainment merely sheds the best light on what is happening to us, making this effect upon our behavior most pronounced. Entertainment is most expensive. And, risky. The producers of the entertainment want a built-in audience.

And we seem to be living in an age in which the largest and most lucrative audiences, have no objections to offer if everything they’re seeing is something they’ve seen before. Recently. Repeatedly.

None of this is cause for concern, I suppose, except one thing: The reaction we have lately when we make make the increasingly rare acquaintance of something, or someone, outside of this narrow confine of our Apple-Starbucks-The-View urban cocoon. It was not so long ago that people would generally find such a thing refreshing. Perhaps, in the outlying areas, they still do. But the urban, modern living is becoming more sharply and crisply defined, the “footprint” of such living shrinking into a pencil-sized dot of expectations, enforced daily and dogmatically.

The expected consumer of such goods is, therefore, also becoming more crisply defined; this is both a cause and an effect. S/He is not me. This is more like an anti-Morgan. Someone who likes movie westerns only if the gunfighter looks like a hipster douchebag, and when s/he turns on the teevee s/he completely loses it if the forum is not always the same big table with four or five women clustered around it, clutching big gaudy coffee cups in their manicured claws, talking over each other.

I feel more pity than envy toward such a creature. What’s it like to live in a society that panders to your most tangential preferences minute by minute, year after year? Doesn’t the day ever come where they find themselves wanting something that everybody else doesn’t necessarily want? This, I infer, would be a jarring experience to someone unaccustomed to it. What happens then? That would be a personal-decision-point, I guess. It couldn’t be anything else. They’d learn to push past the pain and start thinking for themselves, or else they’d succumb and get reined back in, back into the world of chocolate mocha frothy drinks at McDonald’s. Much more often the latter than the former. A gilded cage.

Meanwhile, my “center map here” command has gone missing, and zoom seems to be broken. I’m glad they’re continuing to get and see only what they expect to get and see, nothing more, nothing less. Just yet another research project for the rest of us that we didn’t want.

I wish maximum embarrassment on everyone involved in this sordid mess, except the wife maybe. Who, I think, won’t be embarrassed too much if it becomes much bigger mess. And so I hope it does.

I was glad, therefore, to see this.

Schadenfreude.

Reason:

To my mind, if we are going to say that any kind of “culture” was responsible for Rodger’s rampage…then we might want to examine the impact of mainstream therapy culture rather than obsessing over the fringe misogyny culture he might have dabbled with.

We know a handful of things about Rodger. One is that he visited therapists. Another is that he was full of self-regard, was incredibly self-obsessed, and was utterly outraged when people, especially women, didn’t treat him with the love and respect he felt he deserved.

It is possible that these two things are connected, maybe even intimately connected. For one of the main, and most terrifying, achievements of the modern cult of therapy has been to churn out a generation of people completely focused on the self and in constant need of validation from others; a generation that thinks nothing of spending hours examining and talking about their inner lives and who regard their own self-esteem as sacrosanct, something which it is unacceptable for anyone ever to dent or disrespect.

Could Rodger’s fury at the world for failing to flatter his self-image as a good, civilized guy be a product of the therapy industry, of the therapy world’s cultivation of a new tyrannical form of narcissism where individuals demand constant genuflection at the altar of their self-esteem?

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

Forbes:

A new study by Forbes contributor Dan Schawbel, who runs Millennial Branding, a one-man research and consulting firm in Boston that’s focused on millennials, released a study today that comes to some conclusions I find startling. The most unsettling: If you are in the millennial generation and your goal is to find a job, it may be wiser to get no college degree at all than to spend four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars earning a humanities B.A. In a survey of nearly 3,000 job seekers and HR professionals, Schawbel, together with career website Beyond.com, found that a striking 64% of hiring managers said they would consider a candidate who hadn’t gone to a day of college. At the same time, fewer than 2% of hiring managers said they were actively recruiting liberal arts grads.

From Captain Capitalism.

Making a perfect world.

From Dejah Thoris at Victory Girls, who adds:

Basically, in the age of Obama and this Counter Enlightenment; his bumbling, stumbling, rambling leadership that is marked by his administration’s continued wanderings in search of a coherent and understandable policy on anything of importance, I have noticed that liberals have a pattern. You may have seen this.

To wit, the liberal philosphy in a nutshell:

If you are black/white/hispanic/asian/LGBT and we agree on anything in politics or values = good person

If you are black/white/hispanic/asian/LGBT and we disagree on anything in politics or values = evil racist bigoted hate speaking Oreo Uncle Tom hatemonger who must be destroyed.

The fact that the Dinosaur Legacy Media act as if we don’t see it makes me LMAO even harder.
:
The people whose freedom liberals say they love the most are in grave danger. Gays are being killed in Iran. Women are being oppressed in every nation where Islam is a majority. Minorities of all kinds are being slaughtered around the world. Liberals and Progressives have chosen to defend that longing for freedom that those people crave by the aggressive use of speeches and the high minded proposition that everyone must first be safe from uncomfortable ideas, followed by complaining about states asking for photo ID to vote being a racist idea and about how we need to pay even more attention to race in order to be equal in a country that elected a bi-racial man from a single parent household raised by his white mother to the highest office in the land…. Twice.

Newsflash Liberals: The world is a dangerous place, and kind words and loving gestures mean nothing to enemies who don’t care if your way of life lives or dies.

The size of the Amygdala is “positively correlated to aggressive behavior across species.”

The Isla Vista shooting has sparked a firestorm of protest over this problem of young men driving around running over & shooting & stabbing people, to get even with all the good-looking women who wouldn’t put out. It’s became a rather sad spectacle, since the protesters (article-writers, really) are demanding some kind of change to address the problem, and murdering people is already illegal. So with any sort of legal reform redundant, the cultural protocol they’d like to put in place is that women shouldn’t have to sleep with men if they don’t want to. We’ve had that, too, for several centuries now, so what do they want? They don’t seem to know, but they’re extra upset about whatever it is.

Their real conflict is with the entitlement mentality. And that’s a problem since they themselves are operating according to it. A problem and a pity; imagine what new possibilities could be opened if they were to aim that nozzle of incandescent cultural rage toward this bulky and ancient buildup of immediate-gratification plaque. I’d be happy to join the protest. If only it could happen.

As Nightfly said:

It’s not just a failure to cope with a lack of purpose…it’s a failure to be given anything to cope with. The squishy marshmallow left has largely succeeded in crafting a world in which young people have grown to physical adulthood without ever having their will crossed in any small matter, much less a large one. Nobody is permitted to keep score, grade correctly, scold general misbehavior, or look askance at anything. Nobody is told “no.” Nobody hears that their opinions are bunk, and that their arguments are lacking, and that their attitude is piss-poor.

To quote that lovely pillar of the legal profession, Judge Judy: “The questions get harder.” As adults we can say “It hurts that you lost the big game, but it will be better soon” – but only if we ourselves learned from losing the big game once upon a time. We learn that the sun will rise again, there will be other big games, and we most importantly learn that real life doesn’t have a reset button to mash on until we get our predetermined result. The next game awaits – the last game is gone forever, and will always be a loss. That’s how to figure out how to handle results with actual consequences beyond one’s hurt feelings.

Our loonier squishes imagined that their own inability to cope and become successful were the fault of the failures of early life, thus proving that they learned little…and they decided to spare the next generation that learning opportunity, with the not unsurprising result that we have an alarming number of raging narcissists who can’t possibly imagine why anyone could ever disagree with them. They can’t hold jobs because the boss expects things like actual work done the boss’ way, not the worker’s. They can’t form relationships because others expect some give and take and actual respect, and they only want mirrors to reflect their own imagined greatness. They can’t deal with other people’s actual needs, much less reasonable requests that have nothing to do with them personally.

Well, a lot of them are rage-quitting life, and taking innocent people with them, and it’s not going to get better unless what adults remain start teaching hard lessons to young people.

The truly frightening thing about Elliot Rodger is that he left this world — we don’t know this as an absolute fact, but it seems a safe presumption — twisted, insane, in a far less stable or useful mental condition than what he had when he entered it. Also, that what knocked him off his nut came from within and not from the outside. And that this primal force from within was a nothing, and not a something. “Nobody is told ‘no.’ Nobody hears that their opinions are bunk, and that their arguments are lacking, and that their attitude is piss-poor.” He essentially missed something that everyone should be getting, and is not getting; so, how many more of us are there who happen to be like him?

Perhaps he is unique in the distance to which he carried things. I hope so. How common is the root problem? On the Internet, you see it everywhere. Especially if you start arguing with liberals: “This conversation isn’t over until it’s over the way I want it to be over.” People who just can’t get jiggy with the plain and simple fact, “I seem to have met up with someone who isn’t buying it.” They get told no, and their answer is to keep selling the same thing again and again, and they’ll do it forever, like a drill press stuck in the on position. Can’t cope with disagreement.

Sippican, by way of Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm: “…some people’s desire to find the ignoble in everyone but themselves trumps everything.” You should read Sippican’s obit for Wallace Kaufman from top to bottom, for contrast if nothing else. What if we had to rely on an entitlement-mentality generation to fight World War II? I’m not the first to ask.

On the one side of the spectrum we have stories like that one; on the other, we have Elliot Rodger, and those who share some of his behaviors. In between the two extremes are various degrees, in the ability to adapt to the unexpected and the not-preferred. The ability to cope. Different ways of coping, some having to do with adjusting expectations, some having to do with changing or de-selecting whatever has failed to satisfy; some having to do with simply lashing out. Blaming the National Rifle Association, and “Let’s lower a beatdown on the male gender one more time,” would be examples of lashing out. Planning a murder rampage because women won’t sleep with you, would belong under the same category of coping by not-coping.

Only one was made, says IMGUR.

Via Linkiest.

Wikipedia entry:

It was built to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary. Only one Egoista will be made, and it is a fully functioning model based on the Gallardo. It features a 5.2 L V10 engine producing 600 hp.

Ah…it’s like an itch under a cast, finally getting scratched…

Some of us have been noticing this for awhile, with our dual entries for old and new “science” in our semi-official glossaries and such.

Spotted around the Internet lately, Doug Ross, Never Yet Melted, no doubt other places; hat tip goes to Gerard.

Context is key…

Yet the assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.

There are other examples waiting to be found, for those who need them. But the point stands: Conclusions do not necessarily become more certain when more people conclude them. Even when they’re experts. Loud experts, quiet experts, self-appointed experts, other kinds…and, there’s an awful lot of misinformation out there about which conclusions have enjoyed greater popularity, and how popular they really are. Such claims have the distinct whiff of politics-intermingling-with-“science” about them. It is a foul and pungent odor to those of us who have had reason to learn to recognize it.

No reason, none whatsoever.

Except maybe for this picture.

You want ten hours or so of this? Here you go.

The 133rd award for BSIHORL, Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately, goes to chasmatic‘s dad who, I’m inclined to believe, was actually a capital-dee Dad.

“[N]ever lay down with a woman that has more troubles than you.”

So much for bemoaning the tragic consequences of our manic people-control people-management.

Time to look at the lighter side. By making fun of it.

Back on the plane of reality, it is just one debacle after another, resulting directly from our freakish urges to micro-manage the behavior of total strangers…

Officials in Oklahoma and other states have resorted to these methods because they can no longer access sodium thiopental, the anesthetic traditionally used in lethal injections, and another drug used to paralyze the condemned. The lone US manufacturer quit producing sodium thiopental in 2011, and international suppliers—​​particulalry in the European Union, which opposes the death penalty on humanitarian grounds—​​have stopped exporting both drugs to the United States. This has left states like Oklahoma scrambling to find new pharmaceuticals for killing death row inmates. Some have been reduced to illegally importing the drugs, using untested combinations, or buying from unregulated compounding pharmacies, a number of which have a history of producing contaminated products.

Almost like a Monty Python skit. Oh! So glad the European Union is forcing us to treat prisoners humanely at all times!

It’s haunting. Because who among us hasn’t ever been here? And yet, we didn’t shoot people.

What’s truly frightening, is what’s bound to come next. I couldn’t believe the following two statements were so closely juxtaposed…

Earlier Saturday, attorney Alan Shifman issued a statement saying Peter Rodger believed his son, Elliot Rodger, was the shooter. It was unclear how the son would have obtained a gun. The family is staunchly against guns, he added.

“The Rodger family offers their deepest compassion and sympathy to the families involved in this terrible tragedy. We are experiencing the most inconceivable pain, and our hearts go out to everybody involved,” Shifman said.

Richard Martinez, the father of Christopher Michaels-Martinez, blamed politicians and gun-rights proponents at a news conference Saturday. “When will this insanity stop? … Too many have died. We should say to ourselves `not one more,”‘ he said. [emphasis mine]

Ugh. Yeah…masculinity, and guns, drive them both deeper underground. That’s done wonders for us so far.

I can buy into the idea that Eliott Rodger’s murder spree is a tip-off that something is wrong with our society. But, allowing guns is not likely to be what’s amiss, since there are so many people who own and use guns who wouldn’t do anything like what he did. Ditto for the young guys who are frustrated because they can’t get girls. In fact, the more you read up on this guy, the more you see this chaotic mixed-bag hodge-podge of normal and sick-n-twisted; I find it unavoidable to conclude that the latter started out as the former. The kid lacked the coping skills to deal with the pressures of adolescence. Just like a drinking glass lacks the flexibility to cope with ice tea fresh out of a hot dishwasher, or something like that. Seems like belaboring the obvious to even write it down.

His manifesto shows some signs of how far off-kilter this went…

In order to completely abolish sex, women themselves would have to be abolished. All women must be quarantined like the plague they are, so that they can be used in a manner that actually benefits a civilized society. In order to carry this out, there must exist a new and powerful type of government, under the control of one divine ruler, such as myself. The ruler that establishes this new order would have complete control over every aspect of society, in order to direct it towards a good and pure place. At the disposal of this government, there needs to be a highly trained army of fanatically loyal troops, in order to enforce such revolutionary laws.

Reminds me of what rob said: “Liberalism is the lifelong attempt to make high school come out right.” Think Mister Rodger just proved that.

Sorry, is that unfair to liberalism? Words, I am told, are defined by their common usage; and one thing we see rather consistently in people who are commonly described today as “liberals,” is a refusal, and perhaps an inability, to ever get past the bad stuff. We’re not seeing too many conservatives shooting strangers, even though conservatives are supposed to be the people stockpiling the guns — and, here & there, there are some conservatives who can’t get dates, and are frustrated when they see the objects of their affection ignoring them & lavishing that same affection on blowhards and jerks. (In fact, there are actually some movements to try to make that happen.)

What’s the difference between them and Elliot Rodger?

Mental stability, for one thing. And then after that, there’s something else. Not quite so much the conservatism itself, I’m thinking, but the stuff that goes with it. The ability to get past bad stuff. Attitude. “Oh well, her loss I guess; oh look, a new day.”

The ability to play video games with people online temporarily filled the social void. I got caught up in it, and I was too young and naive to realize the severity of how far I had fallen. I was too scared to accept it. This loss of a social life, coupled with the advent of puberty, caused me to die a little inside. It was too much for me to handle, and I stopped caring about my life and my future. I even stopped caring about what people thought of me. I hid myself away in the online World of Warcraft, a place where I felt comfortable and secure. [bold emphasis mine]

The Elliot Rodger story, thus far, stem to stern has been a saga about coping. This is still a new event and perhaps I shouldn’t draw conclusions in haste, but realistically, how likely is it that anything will come to light that will change this? Elliot couldn’t cope. Or didn’t. But cope with what? First class flights and Katy Perry concerts, a flashy BMW, wine…no chores, no unfinished projects, every problem handled?

Here’s a thought: Exactly. The image that ends up being rendered, is of failure to cope with a lack of purpose. Perhaps that is a delusive image, with some meaningful detail hidden from us so far. But, I don’t think that too likely. Or let’s say I’m not investing too much faith in that. Nor do I think anybody else is, either. His monologue makes it clear he was never wanted anywhere; what about being needed? Did he ever have a role to play in anything? Doesn’t seem to be the case, and in that respect his situation looks the same as many others of these shooters. This “retribution” seems to represent, to him, an opportunity to finally engage some action that will have an effect on something. And we’ve seen this many times before.

His is the story of a “society” getting way too high on managing the people who live in it, legally, politically, culturally and incompetently. And now, about to do even more of it. Scan the YouTube channel for tell-tale “disturbing videos” — hey, guess what, that was done and they actually did find something. How’d that work out? Stigmatize and criminalize the guns. The family is at a loss to explain how he ever got into them, they were “staunchly against” them. It isn’t a big mystery: It’s the allure of the unattainable.

And, the kid was diagnosed with Aspergers. Well, of course he was. See, there it is again: They were going to manage the future shooter. The problem isn’t that they failed, the problem is that they succeeded. They succeeded so well, that Elliot Rodger picked up the ball in the game of people-management and ran with it. He was going to be the Divine Ruler.

He was absolutely insane. But, I’m afraid, that doesn’t prove he was born with anything; there is such a thing as a manufactured insanity.

Update: Business as usual for our friends on the left; “truth” is whatever fits the narrative.

IJReview:

While Charlie was initially unsuccessful in his efforts to find the abandoned infant, he decided to try one more time. Then he heard a faint whimper…

Life is precious.

“What am I missing here?”, asks Allahpundit at HotAir. I wish I could say for sure.

Allahpundit continues:

There must be some inside joke or allusion I’m not getting that explains why you’d introduce this slogan during the one week more than any other of his presidency that illustrates what a terrible, disengaged manager he is. It’d be like the RNC rolling out a “Prosperity” bumper sticker the week of the financial crash in 2008.

So, obviously, it refers to something else. But…what?

I have my ideas. I’ve noticed often that the conflict with the modern-day liberal movement seems to orbit almost entirely around the perception that we live in “a universe of cause-and-effect.” They just can’t seem to get jiggy with that. They read a great deal into “income inequality,” they seem to be entirely on-board with the idea that those who prosper greatly must be doing something differently from the so-called “ninety-nine percent.” Normal, red-blooded people would then naturally conclude that they would want to find out what exactly that is, so that they, the ninety-nine percent, can do more of it and make themselves more prosperous.

But NO. Not even close. They don’t even seem interested in doing more of whatever magical wonderful stuff they think Barack Obama is doing, to be “Like A Boss.” It’s as if they doubt it’s the place of anybody, anywhere to actually do or not do anything; it’s more fitting to say that we all are or are not something. So you and I don’t do anything to make ourselves rich or poor — we’re just that way. Barack Obama could not have done anything to prevent the VA scandal, it’s just something that happened. It’s His voice inflection and His demeanor and His snappy comebacks that really matter. At least, that’s the most sense I can make of it.

Anyway, as Allahpundit noted, the NRCC had a fix:

And then the democrats had a rebuttal to that…it’s really juvenile and stupid. The most remarkable thing about it is the procession of “RT”s underneath.

It must be bring your kids to work day at Dem HQ. How thoughtful of you to let them take the twitter account for a spin.

come on. Stop.

if they mean empty suit then yeah “like” a boss.

A boss takes responsibility and acts maturely.

how often does a real boss hear about things going on in his organization from the news?

Ben Shapiro is making headlines this morning, and for good reason. He wrote the column that had to be written.

As the fallout from the Veterans Administration cooking of the books and the related deaths of over three dozen veterans continues, President Obama took to the podium on Wednesday to explain that problems at the VA are nothing new. On Wednesday, President Obama took to the podium to first express his tremendous anger – VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was “mad as hell” but President Obama was “madder than hell,” thus winning the rage sweepstakes – and then explained that the VA’s issues go back years:

[A]ll of us, whether here in Washington or all across the country, have to stay focused on the larger mission, which is upholding our sacred trust to all of our veterans, bringing the VA system into the 21st century, which is not an easy task…. caring for our veterans is not an issue that popped up in recent weeks. Some of the problems with respect to how veterans are able to access the benefits that they’ve earned, that’s not a new issue.

:
And herein lies the problem for the left: the failures at the VA, including its bureaucratic incompetence, its waiting lists, and its deaths, all debunk the notion that a government-run healthcare system will work. It’s a fresh slap in the face to all those commentators who, in pushing Obamacare, endorsed the VA as a model.

And then — he starts rattling off examples. With the relevant quotes. Ouch. Every single one of them self-assured, self-centered, smug, smarmy…seldom correct but never in doubt. Just like a liberal commentator unloading on a conservative blog, or something. Not that I have too much familiarity with that.

Just a sample:

Every time I read about a Teabagger ranting about how socialized medicine will destroy this country I think of the VA system. There it is, a huge and vastly important universal healthcare system — government run, single payer and therefore socialist — right here in the brave and privatized United States: The Veterans Affairs hospitals.

He’s got a list of excerpts and they all read like that one.

If we turn the clock back and repeat the whole exercise a thousand times, it’s gonna go that way a thousand times. No matter who the Secretary of VA is, the leviathan bureaucracy is going to act like a leviathan bureaucracy, acting toward its own preservation instead of toward servicing those it’s supposed to be servicing. And liberals are going to act like liberals: Throw billions of dollars of someone else’s money at the problem, “smug out” anybody who mutters a peep of protest against socialized medicine, hold up the “huge and vastly important universal healthcare system” as a model, then get embarrassed at the eventual results. Then talk up a storm about how angry they are, how they just found out about this the same time we did, but conversely, don’t blame them because they inherited the mess.

About that. A bit of Hello Kitty of Blogging wisdom that drew an unexpected number of likes:

Note to President Obama: “I just found out about this” is NOT good. You should stop using that one. “I inherited this mess” is arguably even worse. Using both of those, in Your sixth year on the job, is really, really, really bad.

Note to self: if ever leaving a job where Barack Obama will be taking over, don’t leave any messes. Tie up all loose ends. Because if Obama finds He’s inherited a mess, He’ll bring it up *all* the time. Whenever it becomes clear He can’t do the job, which will be often.

But only after He finds out about the mess. Which can take six years.

To be fair, a dysfunctional VA is not a partisan thing. But — for the time being — the elevation of mediocre bureaucrats above the people they’re supposed to serve, the circling around them and protecting them when they screw up, and the myopia against the ineffectiveness of big government, certainly are. The democrats have made such a fine art form out of manipulating public opinion that I’m afraid if they were ever interested in actually fixing something, they’d find that particular skill set to have been atrophied and displaced a long time ago.

But I suppose there’s no way to test that.

Independent Journal Review:

Students at the University of California-San Diego have run the “Ché Café Collective” for 34 years, and it’s something the Marxist guerilla leader probably would have loved. As Fox News reports, it’s a vegan co-op and concert venue, with “exorbitantly low” prices and a staff of volunteers. It’s a terrific example of communism. Even more so because, well, it’s failing.

It has cost the student body over $1 million over the years, and it’s frequently in violation of school safety and fire codes. At several times in its history, it has been unable to produce enough money to cover the (reportedly cheap) rent. The café has been such a costly burden that the University has threatened to cut off funding. But a band of students, failing to see the writing on the wall (maybe they’re too busy looking at the Ché-inspired murals all over the café), are protesting the university’s decision, calling it an “orchestrated attack.”

And, the smackdown…

A communist-style business lacking financial smarts? You don’t say….Going to college involves expanding your worldview and gaining a little sense. This seems like the perfect opportunity for these Guevara-loving college students to learn a valuable life lesson: communism doesn’t work. Period.

Me, in a comment:

We may debate how much the financial meltdown is related to this current lengthy string of bad years for employment. But it would be a useless debate. With a strong, thriving economy, a disaster that took place in the past is just that, something in the past. Even a big one would have no more effect on the future than, say by way of example, Jimmy Carter’s massive economic screw-ups had on my fortunes (graduated ’84).

It’s always like this when democrats run things, ever since the Great Depression. The misery drags on and on, and they blame the predecessor until it becomes just ridiculous, then they keep going. That’s because they don’t fix anything. They sit, like scavenging animals, waiting for something good to happen so they can take all the credit — and if anything goes wrong, they blame conservatives. That’s what they do.

They don’t live in a world of cause-and-effect. To them, that’s just something you put in a speech to make disasters look like the other guy’s fault.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed that liberals don’t make anything better, evidently. Derek Hunter, writing at Townhall.com, in an excellent column called “What the VA Scandal Exposes About Liberalism”:

Did you catch it? The president has spent more money on the VA than anyone else has, and to liberals that’s the solution. No concern for how the money is spent – whether it is being spent effectively, being wasted or stolen – just that it’s being spent. The appearance of caring, coupled with a big check, is enough.

We see this not only in the Veteran’s Administration, but in just about everything liberals touch. Washington, D.C., spends nearly $30,000 per student and fully 83 percent aren’t proficient in something as basic as reading.

In Maryland, another big-spending state, Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley is gearing up for a presidential run by touting how the Old Line State is No.1 in national reading tests. What he leaves out is that’s in large part because Maryland exempts more students who would score lower on that test that any other state – by a lot. As the Washington Post put it, “The state led the nation in excluding students on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, posting rates that were five times the national average and more than double the rate of any other state.” (Emphasis added.)

As I’ve said before, when you choose the unit of measure, or invent one out of whole cloth (jobs saved or created), you’ll always come out on top. When it comes to caring, liberals have set that unit of measure as money – always other people’s money. With that as the yardstick, no one cares more than liberals. But, like a distant rich parent in movies and novels that raise horrible children, a bottomless checkbook is no substitute for results. And when it comes to results, at least in the real world, be it health care, education, anti-poverty programs, the Veterans Administration, or anything else big government attempts to “fix,” liberals are sadly lacking.

Liberals, along with the receptive moderates they seek to recruit, seem blithely ignorant toward what is most cringe-worthy about all this: When the time comes for them to make their one big contribution, which is to present this “big check,” or rather to preside over the flow of money at the problem — they’re sorely lacking in even the baseline bragging rights held by, let’s say, your family’s Uncle Moneybags who throws money at problems that don’t have to do with money. Uncle Moneybags, for all his other faults, had something to do with making the money. Uncle Moneybags, at least, is going without a hundred dollars for every hundred dollars spent.

And there must be some practical wisdom there somewhere. Whether it’s useful to the matter at hand is another question, but Uncle Moneybags did know something at some point, in order to make the money. Unless he happens to be a politician…

You just can’t say the same about liberals. You can’t take money from a program proposed by, or supported by, or associated with, a liberal and say “Those people must know something practical, because look at all this money they gave me.” Not only are liberals lacking in the skill, critical thinking and strong work-ethic that someone else had to provide to make that money; they see those things as vices and not virtues. They resent the people who have them and are willing to show them. They always have. Always, all the way back to the very first cave pussies.

Liberals don’t go without when they manage to negotiate these investments. To them, they’re just making one more Faustian bargain between two others. They play the role of neither Faust nor of Lucifer, they’re more like agents who arrange the meeting. They don’t get paid on commission — as far as we know, since that would probably not be legal. Their angle is in the bad decisions that will be made by the Faust, once his signature is on the contract, once he starts failing to reach the level of good judgment and maturity that only the guiltless and independent can reach. Such negotiations are all in a day’s work, to them. Just building blocks for something much larger. Like connecting points in a large, vast spider-web. A web full of people making bad decisions to pursue material dependence. Manacled, endlessly, to solutions that don’t work, problems getting worse, and treasuries running out.

That’s what makes the liberal world go ’round. Detroit, along with a long list of other jurisdictions run by liberals and with poor results to show for it, proves that out. They don’t fix problems, because they won’t define what the problem is. To them, if the stated problem is solved and everyone keeps their independence, good judgment and dignity, that’s getting worse. If the stated problem festers without any end in sight, and we all have to do the wrong thing because a slavish state of dependence has eliminated any other option for us, then that’s a “solution.”

And no minds changed. Why am I not surprised.