The Disaster of Eddication

My Girl Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) who, you will be delighted to know is

Congressmember for WA-07 and lifelong organizer for immigrant, civil, and human rights. Progressive Caucus Chair. Bold, unafraid, and a proud mom. She/her.

recently sent out the following tweet: 

Student debt cancellation is racial justice.

Student debt cancellation is gender justice.

Student debt cancellation is economic justice.

— Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal) April 16, 2022

Isn't she special!

I suppose that in progressive LaLa-Land, this pathetic effusion is considered part of the Fight for Justice. Naturally, I have already sent her -- my congress-critter -- a slashing email, reminding her aides and staffers that they -- as Ben Rhodes well said -- "literally know nothing."

But let us work backward from the student debt cancellation demand. As in,

• Why should college be so expensive that students need to borrow money? Can you spell Injustice?
• Why does the government encourage students to borrow money against their education -- that connot be discharged in bankruptcy -- when borrowing has traditionally been collateralized, and a student, with no work experience, has no collateral? Can you spell Injustice?
• What exactly are students getting from a college degree that they couldn't get with an internship or an apprenticeship? Can you spell Injustice?
• What exactly are most youngsters getting from high school? Can you spell Injustice?
• What exactly is so vital about elementary school that the educators have time for LGBT grooming? Can you spell Injustice?
• What exactly is the whole point of our education system, besides keeping youngsters from competing in the labor market with adult workers? Can you spell Injustice?

It happens that I've been reading -- accidentally -- a lot about how education used to be in the olden time.

First of all, the education of David Copperfield. First they sent him to a school owned by a Mr. Creakle, a failed hop-dealer. Then he was sent to work in a warehouse by the River Thames in London, Then he got to go to Mr. Strong's school in Canterbury. Then he was apprenticed to a lawyer at Doctor's Commons. Presumably this education has some echoes of writer Charles Dickens' own experience.

Then the education of Tom Tulliver in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Tom is the son of the miller Mr Tulliver, and Tulliver thinks it would be a grand thing for his son to get a real education. So he talks to a business friend, who recommends sending him to board with a curate in the country. Where he unwillingly learns Latin and Geometry.

Then the education of Benjamin Franklin. His dad sent him to grammar school (where you learn the Latin that you need for Harvard). Then changed his mind and sent him to an ordinary school for a couple of years to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Then he apprenticed him to Ben's brother the printer for nine years. Then Benjy escaped to Philadelphia and worked for various printers before setting himself up as a printer.

Do you mind if I suggest that the brilliance of Dickens, of George Eliot, of Benjamin Franklin had nothing to do with their education?

And I wonder what education means in the lives of everyone else?

Really, what are we trying to do with schools and education? Bueller? Anyone?

Why exactly do we make such a big deal over a college education? Bueller? Anyone?

Suppose we say that the most important thing in education is to bring up the children of the poor. So why are the schools that the poor attend almost always the worst?

Why do teachers have almost lifetime employment? Shouldn't the people teaching our children be evaluated every ten minutes and fired if they don't measure up?

Why do we have government running education when government is all about fighting the enemy? What enemy?

Let us return to the empty slogans put out by the "bold, unafraid" Pramila Jayapal.

I get the vital importance of trolling indebted Twentysomethings by handing out Get Out Of Debtors Jail Free cards. But just where is your Five Point program to reform the disaster of our education system, noble Congressmember?

Starting with the question: why in the world do we prompt college students to get into debt?

Chasing "The Latest Thing"

The Zman notes today that the COVID Thing is over, what with the Trump judge invalidating it and the TSA immediately removing the mask mandate from the air travel system. "The CDC appears to have conceded the point and will not appeal."

[T]hese mass hoaxes that have become a feature of life. People wake up and see that everyone is now into the latest thing. Maybe that thing is outrage over a police shooting or maybe it is some new abstract concern. All of the right people are on their soapboxes and all of the best people are following along with them. It is only normal for people to want to do the right thing and support the latest thing.

So what's going to the the next "Latest Thing?" Obviously Ukraine. When will it all end?

When the current thing is real suffering, people will remember all the previous things were lies.

You mean like ditching fossil fuels and tossing gas prices into the stratosphere?

But I think we need to understand and accept the notion of The Latest Thing. I'd say it is a fundamental part of humans as social animals. As in flocks of birds. And herds of antelope.

Some Canada goose starts squawking and moments later launches itself into the air. And most of the other Canada geese in the area stop grazing on grass and launch themselves into the air as well. Or don't.

Why do so many of the nice liberal ladies in North Seattle decide to buy an electric car? Because they believe in the "Climate Change Thing." Do they know a thing about Science™? Or climate? Or variations in the Earth's orbit? Or the various theories in respect of Ice Ages? Not a thing.

And yet all over the western world educated women all feel good about their commitment to fighting climate change by appropriate shopping and voting. And when you talk to them, there is not a shred of doubt or skepticism about climate: merely a cheerful confidence. They accept the Latest Thing and feel good about accepting it.

In men, I think, the relevant instinct is the rush to join the colors when an enemy has been declared. That's what a lot of young men felt after 9/11. And the old geezers like me felt good about the CIA riding horses on the steppe in Afghanistan and the army invading Iraq and teaching Saddam Hussein a lesson. At the time.

And I dare say that, for the ordinary middle class American Donald Trump's 2016 Make America Great Again campaign was The Latest Thing.

There's only one thing to do about The Latest Thing. Make sure that your Latest Thing is better than their Latest Thing. Because if you don't fill the Thing hole with your Latest Thing someone else will fill the need. And chances are that their Latest Thing is not as good a your Latest Thing.

After the Foreign Policy Catastrophe, What Then?

Our problem, writes the Zman, is that the politicians have handed over foreign policy to a permanent cabal.

The political class in the West has handed foreign policy and war making over to a professional class that operates independently from the political class.

And so, no matter who is president or controls Congress, the professional foreign policy elite keeps on keeping on.

It is this narrow group that has been running Ukraine policy since the Obama administration, and they are the people responsible for the current war.

OK, fellahs, so what is the point? What is the grand plan behind your two-decade Ukraine policy? What is the point of being anti-Russia? What is the point of all the little wars all over the place?

Zman doesn't say, but I have an idea. The foreign policy elite really doesn't know. It's just that they all sign on to the agenda, whatever it is, in order to join the club and get ahead.

Maybe we could use the Nazi Carl Schmitt notion that in any politics there must be an enemy.

So, for any foreign policy elite, there must be an enemy. Otherwise there wouldn't be a need for a foreign policy elite.

We could say that back in 1948 and the Berlin Airlift there was a real enemy, the state of Stalin's Soviet Union. And so we had 40 years of Cold War. Jolly good fun, and all, for the foreign policy elite. Sorry about the kids killed in Vietnam and in Iraq, and all.

But after the end of the Cold War, what are we trying to do? Well, we are fighting extremist nationalism, or an expansionist China, or a revanchist Russia, or mad mullahs, or Islamic terrorists. 

In other words, we are making it up. Oh, sorry, not we. I mean the international foreign policy elite.

But really, they don't have a clue.

Don't be discouraged. The Zman sees a silver lining to the black cloud. He thinks that the Ukraine thing will end in a bloody catastrophe. And for what?

This may be what saves the West from another catastrophe. The looming disaster in Ukraine cannot be covered up with clever messaging or media censorship.

And the disaster will delegitimize the foreign policy elite,and the global elite, and the Democratic party elite. And then we can sit down and do a reset and decide just what the heck we are trying to achieve with our politics. Other than give jobs to foreign policy experts that have got everything wrong for the last 30 years.

So What if College Women are D+38

I expect you've seen the poll that shows College+ women as D+38. They are the most Democratic among men and women, educated and uneducated. Scott McKay has a long article about it at The American Spectator. He goes into the travails of the educated woman, particularly the single educated woman.

Why are educated women so strongly Democrat? It seems weird. But not if you believe my maxim that "women expect to be protected."

If a woman is protected, she is happy. If she is not protected then she's going to find a new protector today.

The reason that educated women -- and especially single educated women -- working on their careers and living in urban condos are all Democrat is that women expect to be protected. If there isn't a husband to protect her then she expects the state to protect her.

Only, of course, the state doesn't protect you. The state will shovel loot at you, in return for your vote, but it won't protect you. The subhead for the American Spectator piece is:

Why are they surprised that they’re living alone with no prospects when they still think it was a good idea to vote for Biden?

Well, because women do what they are told, and expect to be protected in return. For getting on for a century, the feminist movement has taught women not to rely on men for protection but to get an education and a career. When they find they are not protected, and find they are not happy, they get angry, and they start to complain. Did I mention my idea that women have a Culture of Complaint?

It slots in with my maxim that "women expect to be protected." What does a woman do when she finds she is not protected? She complains to her friend. She votes Democrat. Eventually, she finds a new protector.

And that is what is going to happen in the next year or two as women are terrorized by the Biden inflation. They will find themselves utterly unprotected. They will complain to each other. They will complain to their Democratic politicians. Then they will abandon the Democratic Party and go find a new protector.

As the sainted Rush Limbaugh used to say: "Don't doubt me on this." 

Progressives: The Bill of Indictment

I think that there are three basic issues on which the ruling class of our time has utterly failed.

The first is the welfare state that supports the working class. I believe that this has been a strategic mistake that has Made Things Worse for the working class. I believe that what we should have done was encourage the mutual-aid aspect of labor unions, set up a legal framework to encourage workers to save for retirement and against sickness and unemployment, and keep government and its heavy hand out of the market economy.

The second is the promotion of feminism and the sexual revolution and abortion. I believe that this has been a strategic mistake that has Made Things Worse for women. I believe that the idea that the highest and best thing for women is to have careers is an utter misunderstanding of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" for humans in general and women in particular. We humans are social animals, not economic animals. We only work in the market economy to bring home the bacon. Men have careers so they can acquire high-status women for marriage. The sexual revolution goes against the instinct in almost all women, that sex is something you gladly and freely give to the man you love -- forever. And, of course, sex means children. A society needs abortion only when its women are expected to give themselves to men who can summarily dismiss them after they have won their love, or when women are expected to schedule children to suit the demands of their careers.

The third is the utter injustice of the post civil rights era. I believe that the resort to quotas and affirmative action and diversity and "underrepresentation" and equity in race relations is more than a strategic mistake, it is a vile injustice that has divided society and Made Things Worse for blacks and whites, but great for the administrative class. The point about law is that it is a replacement for the culture of revenge. You gotta problem, you appeal to the legal system for redress, not to your kindred or your race or your class. The whole point of law is that unless you treat everyone as an individual you enter an impossible thicket of special pleading  that will fail to resolve anything. That is the point of saying, in law, that government and businesses may not discriminate on the basis of race. It means that institutional decision makers are expected to treat people as humans, not as members of a particular group. That approach is not perfect, because humans are not just human individuals but people with individual characteristics and history and ability and weaknesses. But any other approach in a large society is doomed to failure and conflict.

Because our ruling class has imposed these three great errors on us and Made Things Worse, and doubled down on its mistakes, it must be removed as a ruling class and replaced with another. I suggest that the new ruling class should be drawn from the ordinary middle class, because the ordinary middle class is not that interested in power, and I believe that human society in the future is a society that needs a lot less political power. That's because, I believe, the last two hundred years of the Great Enrichment has demonstrated that the market economy is a much better way to resolve human differences than the old way of defending food-growing land from the Other.

The only question remaining is whether our present ruling class releases its grip on political power voluntarily or not. The only question, therefore, is the size of the mountain of skulls. It could be zero. Or not.

Tulip Mania in Washington State

Did you know that Washington State is a major tulip-growing region? Yes, in the Skagit River estuary there are tons of tulip farms. And we went to Roozengarde Farms where you can bury yourself in tulips for a mere $15 per person. You can enjoy an ornamental tulip garden, filled with all kinds of exotic tulip variants. And you can stop by the side of the road and enjoy acres of tulips in full bloom. And, even midweek, there are tons of people enjoying the tulip fields.

Crowds and crowds of people, all enjoying the remarkable diversity of the tulip plant. What a glorious thing it is to see people enjoying the magic of Spring. The camera is looking eastward across the Skagit estuary towards the foothills of the Cascade mountains.

Then we went to the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum in La Conner, Washington. We saw "The Quilt Road: Contemporary Korean Quilts." These quilts are mainly quilts-as-paintings-on-the-wall. If you, like me, think that most contemporary art is Sick and Wrong, it is a beautiful and liberating thing to experience these artworks that seem to know nothing of the nihilism of modern art. They communicate a joy in life that you won't find in your average rooty-snooty art museum.

And why not? Why is there no joy in your average rooty-snooty big-city art museum?

Could it be that when you mix art and politics you get politics? You may well think so: I could not possibly comment.

Here's something to ponder. For weeks, as I take a Wednesday walk around Green Lake here in North Seattle, I have been worrying about the clash between flocks of our good old American Widgeon, and marauding flocks of bad-tempered Canada Geese. You see, both widgeon and geese like to graze on the grass at Green Lake. But today the American Widgeon had disappeared, leaving only the suspicious-looking Canada Geese, almost certainly foreign agents of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Mounties. But maybe those American Widgeon have flown north, over the border into British Columbia, there to bring forth a new generation of good old American Widgeon to gladden our all-American hearts. But I fear that up in Canada they will be singing:

American Widgeon, stay away from me
American Widgeon, mama let me be

I just hope that Our Justin doesn't freeze their bank accounts. And the Mounties don't trample them, like they trampled the old woman in a mobility scooter in Ottawa the other day.

Elon Musk is My Man

In the last week Elon Musk announced that he had bought about 10 percent of Twitter. And it looked like he was going to join the board of directors. Until he wasn't. Says CNBC:

Billionaire Elon Musk’s reversal of his decision to join Twitter’s board opens the door to a hostile takeover and could lead to additional volatility in the stock, according to analysts.

God, I love that guy. And all the Twitter employees report being "super stressed" about the prospect of Elon Musk owning a good chunk of Twitter. But why should this be? Surely, the Twitterati are providing us the best in social media "healthy conversations" that educated lefty twerps can deliver. 

By the way, I just added the following maxim to my catalog of Maxims. 

Women: "Shelter in place." Men: "March toward the sound of the guns."

I wonder what that means, cupcake.

Did you see Elon Musk introducing his Starship launch facility "Starbase" in Boca Chica, Texas back in February? The show begins at about 35:00. He begins with the question "why are we doing this... why build this giant reusable rocket?"

His answer is basically, well, you can't be too careful. So it's best to become interplanetary. And really, there comes a point where Jackie Gleason's command "to the Moon, Alice" becomes insufficient. Let's "go to Mars," just to be safe.

Sorry, Elon, we know the real reason. It's the same reason that Edmund Hillary gave for climbing Mt. Everest: "because it's there."

But I had two big takeaways from Musk's show. 

First, that he has made a remarkable improvement in the basic Raptor rocket engine from Raptor 1 to Raptor 2. Raptor 2 is smaller but more powerful, with an improvement from 185 to 230 tons thrust. 

Second, that he figures that he can make reusable rocket travel cheaper than ordinary long-distance jet travel. Hey, If you can travel from the US to Hong Kong by Starship in one hour, you can have a lot more use of your spacecraft than your average long-distance jet plane. And Musk plans a one hour turnaround for booster and Starship between flights. Musk makes the point that reusability is basic. Hey, he comments: Imagine if your average long-distance $230 million jet plane was not reusable.

Yep. Imagine if Musk could bring off the two-fer of reusable space hardware and an end to censorship on Twitter. Talk about Hope and Change!