07-13-2016, 07:41 AM
(07-12-2016, 09:44 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:(07-12-2016, 08:01 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: With non-college white people, Donald Trump is up 68-20.
That is not the demographic I would most want to lead 68-20 with, because it does nothing to help a cause doing badly with other groups. Under-educated white people are unlikely to convince minorities of any kind or well-educated white people. Even if there were fewer of them I would rather have a lead of 68-20 with educated white people because they at the least have the power of the word with which to calm those who at first oppose my political position.
Most of all this is an indictment of the USA's horrendous education system. Second most of all it's an indictment of post-modernism's utter failure to give the middle and lower classes a viable niche in the so called "New Economy."
The USA grossly under-invests in the education of poor people. Building another expressway (traffic volumes are not increasing, so it is often pointless) is sexy; investing in K-12 education isn't. Of course we have subcultures that show utter disdain for learning among poor whites and among some blacks who have yet to get a clue. I need be blunt: the "thug" subculture is not good for success.
But this said, K-12 education in rural areas and suburbs, and among some minorities (most Asian and some Hispanic groups) can be fairly good. Rural areas are able to keep competent teachers because career opportunities other than teaching are rare. Rural areas also end up with a brain drain as kids who now grow up in "Bedford Falls" and show some talent while in college end up in some place much bigger than Bedford Falls.
The real damage of post-modernism comes in the abandonment of the liberal arts as the objective of undergraduate education. Undergraduate education is still a time with a potential for improving the youth, and the liberal arts did that. Today if someone goes into a 4-year college believing that there is nothing more to life than sex, booze, material gain, pop culture, cheap thrills, "luxury", and bureaucratic power then should he graduate he will still believe that there is nothing more to life than sex, booze, material gain, pop culture, cheap thrills, "luxury", and bureaucratic power.
People who believe that life is all for the achievement of sex, booze, material gain, pop culture, cheap thrills, "luxury", and bureaucratic power do great harm if elites. It mattered little that people who worked on an assembly line got away with such. When such people are the managerial elite, one can only imagine the potential for abuse of subordinates. Worse, we can all see it. Narcissism has become the national character, at least among economic elites. When oats for another horse in the stable mean more than breakfast cereal for poor kids because such is a consequence of the exercise of economic power at its cruelest, then we have a sick society.
One post-modern scenario is that we transcend scarcity, so people no longer need to work as hard ro achieve what they used to. Another is that we return to the economic norms of the Agrarian Age only with high technology intended to stupefy and regiment people as if in a fascist order. Heck, if we want a real back-to-the-farm world, we might as well go Old Order Amish; the Old Order Amish do fine because they have no assets other than family farms and small businesses -- and no bureaucracy. They also end school at age 16... but just think of all the expenditures that they do not need for superhighways and military adventures.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.