How it is: My friend Heather Heying and her husband Bret Weinstein were run out of their university with baseball bats while the wilted lily of an administrator flopped around trying to kowtow to the "woke" bullies of the student body.

On the positive side, those that attempted to silence Bret Weinstein have instead given him a greatly enlarged platform and greater wealth. He could live quite comfortably now for the rest of his life, without ever having to work again. Who would have heard of Bret Weinstein today had it not been for these woke fascists?

Now we have this endless privileging of victimhood, with a pathological vulnerability seen as the default human mode.

Of course, if you can manage to convince everyone you're the victim you picture yourself to be, you don't actually have to be good at anything else. Nasty ideas like "merit" and "skill" can be cleanly dispensed with.

On the other hand, the pitfalls are the same as those found in office politics, namely: No matter how good at it you think you are, there's always going to be someone better. Watch your back.

How are we not entirely, totally fucked when this generation starts running things?

Who says they'll ever really have a chance? Ain't nothing says they have to.

I was lucky in college way back in the day. I had a tendency to feel sorry for myself, to think things were just too hard, but there was no reinforcement for such beliefs so I just had to suck it up and get better.
The idea that this generation's problems are at least in part due to having been spoiled is true. I have friends who are legal immigrants who came from difficult circumstances--they understand that things can be very difficult in life and are so grateful to be here.
I worry that these kids do not grasp that the grocery store is only overflowing with organic foods and vegan snacks due to capitalism, that civilization is a precious achievement and is easily destroyed. Just look at San Fran and LA with their intractable homeless problem: man-made disaster.

> a greatly enlarged platform

…True, if by the most backhanded means imaginable…

> and greater wealth.

How do you figure? IIRI, Bret & Heather got a quarter or half-million dollar settlement for the end of their employment and their futures at the school where they'd served nobly for many years. I'm not sure the notoriety from their experience can be readily converted to income from game show appearances or anything.

How are we not entirely, totally fucked when this generation starts running things? ~ Amy

Who says they'll ever really have a chance? Ain't nothing says they have to. ~ Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at September 1, 2019 7:28 AM

Every generation despairs of the one that follows it. And yet, the human race and the country persevere, despite the shortcomings of the upcoming generation.

Nonetheless, we may actually be screwed this time. A generation that has been raised to honor victimhood and denigrate merit and hard work is not one that has had inculcated in it the strength of will to create or sustain a great nation.

The Millennial generation and Gen-Z may be the "most educated" in terms of degrees and time spent in a classroom, but they are not the most informed or the most aware.

According to Business Insider, “Millennials spend far less time consuming news overall than older adults, and the time they do spend is concentrated on digital consumption. Millennials ages 21-37 consume only about 30% of the amount of news as adults age 38 and older.”

According to Forbes, “...38% of students at public and private four-year colleges reported that ‘Books have never gotten me very excited.’ And 45% said ‘I don’t enjoy reading serious books and articles, and I only do it when I have to.’”

I suspect that, as they get older, the news consumption and reading habits of these generations may change. However, I fear that the lack of a stored pool of knowledge in their heads will, in time, exact a terrible price.

The good news is that the US won't collapse as quickly as Venezuela did. Venezuelans embraced Chavez because they had been conditioned by decades of corrupt mis-rule already. As early as 1875, the Finance Minister confessed that the country's books were 20 years out-of-date and the government had no idea to whom the country owed money or from whom it was owed money. 100 years later the situation had not improved.

Chavez promised to

1. End the corruption that had already seen hundreds of billions stolen from the country's oil revenue
2. Convene a constituent assembly to re-write the country's constitution (AOC anyone?)
3. Fight poverty and social exclusion (make everyone equal)

Have we started down that path? Will Millennials embrace an American Chavez, or raise and educate the generation that will?

> overflowing with organic foods
> and vegan snacks due to capitalism,
> that civilization is a precious
> achievement and is easily destroyed.
> Just look at San Fran and LA with
> their intractable homeless problem:
> man-made disaster.

I'm not seeing how these sentences cohere. Homeless is by definition a man-made disaster, and indisputably represents a failure of, or certainly a failure to correctly administer, capitalist principle.

Charles Murray was the first to alert me to being built into our culture, but even he didn't see the scope of the break. Listen to this podcast, with the interview beginning about 10 minutes from the top, and keep your ears open for the phrase "Trump-sized hole."

"Homeless is by definition a man-made disaster, and indisputably represents a failure of, or certainly a failure to correctly administer, capitalist principle."

How is this NOT an individual's failure? There will always be persons incapable of useful work of any degree, but this is not a product exclusive to capitalism. As noted above, capitalism has produced such bounty that such are better off than in nations of poverty - it is the contrast that bothers us.

How are we not entirely, totally fucked when this generation starts running things?

We are already falling off that precipice. Despite (formerly) Great Britain banning guns and then knives in the insane effort to fix human nature with hardware restrictions, with the mayor of London saying that in a big city terrorism is a way of life... despite a gun ban in Australia... despite bans on drugs all over the world, thoughtless people bleat for government to solve what is really their own personal inability to cope.

In the USA - the United States of America - you have to get patted down by a useless government employee to travel on a plane, and some people not only accept but enjoy this idea, even as they can be placed on a "no-fly" list which is a goddamn secret!

Now, under criminally-negligent government policy, you can be attacked by a SWAT team on an anonymous tip that you have weapons and intend to use them, called, "Red Flag law". You will have no recourse whatsoever, you are a threat to the common good, comrade!

You have police in schools because you suck as parents, and you believe fearmongers that everyone around you wants to diddle your kids.

Jesus, look at what supposedly "adult" people offer as Presidential candidates!

Welcome to the America of low expectations.

> ...38% of students at public and
> private four-year colleges reported
> that ‘Books have never gotten me
> very excited.’

Maybe this should have gone straight into this thread rather than the one for gossip links:

Mattis:

"If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”

Once again I find myself echoing Conan's patterns of oscillating —or more correctly, moderated— distress. Specifically, the explosion of government -financed and -enthused administrative employment throughout education has created and enormous class of expensive, worthless technocrats demanding enormous servings of fresh red meat… i.e., students.

SO WE FEED THEM OUR CHILDREN, affirming the illusion that college is essential, sending hundreds of thousands into four-year schools for no good reason, and burdening them with lifetimes of crippling debt.

What I'm saying is that a substantial number of those sampled in that survey probably shouldn't have been present on the campus, or have been presumed to be literary, in any case. "38%"… Between a third and a half… Yeah, that's about what we might expect. It would be great if everyone in our lives read difficult books every week and made good sense of them… But that's not how humanity works.

And Conan, c'mon buddy, that our juniors "spend far less time consuming news" is an indisputable mark in their favor. We might hope that after turning away from the conventional sources, they would choose to investigate recent and ongoing events through the stunning array of incisive new information tools that have become available in recent decades.

Well, they probably won't.

But if their noses reject the ludicrous pretensions of television (with pathetic tobacco hucksters feigning leaderships of Western Civ) and discredited, antiquarian charades of print (with Restons et al shielding secrets for the powerful at the cost of a canape), then they're doing better than we were.

> Jesus, look at what supposedly
> "adult" people offer as
> Presidential candidates!

Raddy, you shouldn't curse… YOU voted for Trump. Yes, *that* Trump.

You liked his cell phone or something.

Welcome to the America of low expectations. ~ Radwaste at September 1, 2019 8:52 AM

In his 1979 Schrodinger's Cat trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson postulated something he dubbed "The Revolution of Lowered Expectations."

The whole neurosociology of the twentieth century could be understood as a function of two variables—the upward-rising curve of the Revolution of Rising Expectations, and the downward-plunging trajectory of the Revolution of Lowered Expectations.

The Revolution of Rising Expectations, which had drawn more and more people into its Up-thrust during the first half of the century, had led many to believe that poverty and starvation and disease were all being phased out by advances in pure and applied science, growing stockpiles of surplus food in the advanced nations, accelerated medical progress, the spread of literacy and electronics, and the mounting sense that people had a right to demand a decent life for themselves and their children.

The Revolution of Lowered Expectations was based on the idea that there wasn’t enough energy to provide for the rising expectations of the masses. Year after year the message was broadcast: There Isn’t Enough. The masses were taught that Terra is a closed system, that entropy was increasing, that life was a losing proposition all round, and that majority were doomed to poverty, starvation, disease, misery and stupidity.

"The Revolution of Lowered Expectations had triumphed. By 1984 nobody in the country had any higher expectations than a feudal serf." ~ Robert Anton Wilson (The Universe Next Door)

And Conan, c'mon buddy, that our juniors "spend far less time consuming news" is an indisputable mark in their favor. [...] But if their noses reject the ludicrous pretensions of television ... and discredited, antiquarian charades of print ... then they're doing better than we were. ~ Crid at September 1, 2019 9:07 AM

Rejection of historic (and widely corrupted) sources of news is one thing. Rejection of being an informed citizen in a modern industrialized society is quite another. That they don't seek knowledge is the concern, not their mode of consumption.

Relying on alternate news sources is not, by itself, a positive. Being able to differentiate between reliable sources and unreliable ones is a function of being an informed person, of "consuming news."

Look at how many parents are rejecting vaccinations for their children based on faulty information sources that claim myriad dangers from the vaccines while discounting the dangers of the diseases the vaccines are intended to prevent. However, Slate argues that anti-vaxxing is not a growing crisis.

According to an Investor's Business Daily report on a YouGov survey:

The survey found that 87% of high school students flunked a five-question test of basic knowledge about American history, the worst of any age group.

High school students were also least likely to know who is on Mount Rushmore. Only 35% of them got it right, compared with 71% of boomers. Only 11% could name the rights enumerated in the First Amendment. And more than half of today's high schoolers believe Barack Obama was a more consequential president than George Washington.

I'm not sure that knowing who's on Mt. Rushmore is vital to being an informed American citizen, but the results of the survey do seem indicative of a widespread lack of general knowledge about the US and the world.

What result will that lack of general knowledge have on our society's future? Our world's?

> That they don't seek knowledge
> is the concern, not their mode
> of consumption.

Their generation is ill-served by media machinery that panders and flatters, as was our own. They are not answering this weakness with courageous curiousity: Neither did we.

Well, firsts of firsts of all, I distrust surveys of the kind you cite. They are part of the problem. I mean, they are the problem: Fragments of composed, thesis-affirming silliness sampling a public of better humor than the sponsor of the poll. Go ahead, try it... Come up to me waddling on the way out of a favorite diner with a bellyful of eggs and bacon:

"Should retarded babies be ground into a thick slurry for use in impact attenuators on our nation's interstate highway system?"

Uh… Sure. Why not?

As regards the vaccine crises, yes, people are absolutely fucking this up. These parents, much like Radwaste above, are imagining their well-being to be the product of their own good character rather than the product of generations of sacrifice and discipline by a surrounding culture. (See also, the frequent commenter here who glibly claims to have been "born healthy.")

In these instances, corrections are eventually provided, with or without conscious attention. It will not be pretty, and enormous numbers of nearby innocents will suffer terribly.

But [A.] the only other imaginable solution is an authoritarian slamdown which you and I would reject without comment, and [B.] the rectifying forces from invisible hands will be snarkingly gratifying to viewers such as ourselves, should we live to see them.

Live to see their work, I mean.

You can't see invisible hands, that's the point. But it'll be great!…

…Five generations later.

Those of us born before these snowflakes simply have to never retire. It shouldn't be hard, we have the work ethic. We don't hire or promote them, then it's a non issue.

I love my job, I don't intend to stop ever.

These fuckwits need to have their asses handed to them on a plate - a debate with Paglia, perhaps. One on one. Also, a certain number of compulsory hours working at Burger King for a healthy dose of humility before they graduate.

Homeless is by definition a man-made disaster

No, homelessness is the base state of man

FYI many homeless these days have smart phones with data plans