08-17-2022, 07:30 PM
Trump is what his name suggests: a trick. He is an economic elitist but also an extreme vulgarian. His taste is typical of some schmuck who won the Super-Duper Megabucks Lottery but did nothing to improve himself. Think of how easy it is to get some enlightenment. Just go to Barnes&Noble and get some books on art, as I did for a lonely time. In my case I got books on Monet, van Gogh, Klimt, and Erte.
A general rule is that one experiences shapes one. I have frequently mocked those people whose desires in life go no further than "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll"... yes, those can be deeply satisfying, but they are also ephemeral. Sex is far better if it involves interaction with a partner beyond the quick orgasm. Maybe a couple might share enough that they get multiple orgasms. OK, there might be a shared shower between those orgasms, but the couple could have a very erotic shower. I hate drugs for their destructive emptiness; if one did nothing to achieve bliss, then one is nothing more than a druggie.
One is what one consumes in culture, and a fortunate education is one full of great books, excursions to see great art (and nature), and listening to great music. Sure, classical music isn't for everyone, but there is folk; there is jazz; and there are spirituals and rhythm-and-blues.
To be sure, one needs little formal education to be a ranch hand, oil-field roustabout, or heavy-equipment operator. If anything, the greater one's formal education the more one might loathe certain such work. One of the exquisite punishments that one totalitarian regime had of people with mindful jobs who failed to toe the Party line was to assign them to farm labor or highly-repetitive factory work.
The GOP has pulled a dirty trick for about forty years. Although plutocratic in economics it sponsors extreme vulgarity in personal expression. The Republican Party used to be the party of educational elites by the standard of the time -- which in Eisenhower's day meant people who graduated from high school. An apocryphal story holds that Adlai Stevenson heard a story from one of his supporters that every thinking man ought to vote for him. One of the problems, he said, was that not enough people were thinking. Well. Ike wiped the floor with the votes of college graduates to an even stronger extent than Obama did (Ike and Obama were similar in temperament as politicians and as Presidents, so I have an explanation of why an Obama victory map looks more like an Eisenhower victory map than any other electoral map before 2008. The main difference was that Eisenhower won the Mormon and farm-and-ranch vote and Obama didn't Ike won three traditionally-tough states for Republicans -- Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island twice, which no Republican had done since 1924. Two of those three states were the only ones that Nixon failed to win in 1972 and Reagan failed to win in 1984. Republicans have won those three states a total of twelve times beginning in 1928, and Ike has half those wins.
In 1964, Goldwater won the college-educated vote despite the landslide that worked against him. It may be that educated people were less likely to fall for something so scary (appeal to fear) as the "Daisy" ad.
Republicans now trawl the bottom of the barrel in formal education and cultural experience while serving the economic interests of those economic elites who exploit the common man. Perhaps success in an MBA program has no connection to exposure to great literature, art, or music. That's unfortunate, as there is much to be had from those, and those are far more lasting in influence and satisfaction than does conspicuous consumption.
I suggested that one thing that must go if we are to solve global warming is conspicuous consumption that devours huge amounts of energy and natural resources and requires the dispersal of huge amounts of waste heat and vile effluents (pollution). We can make things to last or to be easily repaired. We have a housing crisis and traffic jams because we have committed so much housing space to houses with quarter-acre lots. We could get away with that in America when we had a population around 150 million; we are now double that. Technology can work wonders in creating excellent substitutes for things once fiendishly expensive from natural sources, like even diamonds. I predict that we will be able to synthesize fake meat for ourselves and some large carnivores that have much the same tastes as Big Cats. Indeed, we could synthesize something like mouse meat for the other, smaller carnivore. (The kitty-cat will love it!).
OK. Here is one of the wonders of our time. Anyone can get an inexpensive tablet that with Wi-Fi access gives one access to this:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/
If this is not among your computer bookmarks then you are missing something. With thsi one has no excuse for boredom -- or being a bore. Remember: much of what you are as a person is what you read. All books (mostly public domain) are free.
I am convinced that one of the best approaches to education is the Great Books approach, and with few exceptions (Faulkner, Hemingway, Pasternak, Camus, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Kundera, etc.) most of the Great Books are public domain and thus free. Inexpensive paperback editions. (Too many dead white males? OK, I'll raise you Harper Lee and Anne Frank, and recognize that contemporary Latin America is churning out huge amounts of excellent literature these days). OK, we do need cinema, art, and music...
I am satisfied that just about anyone could get something from reading Dante's Inferno. Read that, and you don't want to be a mobster, a corrupt politician, a child-molesting clergyman, a Nazi or a Stalinist. Donald Trump could certainly have stood to read it. I can think of many other works, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, that might have changed his life.
A general rule is that one experiences shapes one. I have frequently mocked those people whose desires in life go no further than "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll"... yes, those can be deeply satisfying, but they are also ephemeral. Sex is far better if it involves interaction with a partner beyond the quick orgasm. Maybe a couple might share enough that they get multiple orgasms. OK, there might be a shared shower between those orgasms, but the couple could have a very erotic shower. I hate drugs for their destructive emptiness; if one did nothing to achieve bliss, then one is nothing more than a druggie.
One is what one consumes in culture, and a fortunate education is one full of great books, excursions to see great art (and nature), and listening to great music. Sure, classical music isn't for everyone, but there is folk; there is jazz; and there are spirituals and rhythm-and-blues.
To be sure, one needs little formal education to be a ranch hand, oil-field roustabout, or heavy-equipment operator. If anything, the greater one's formal education the more one might loathe certain such work. One of the exquisite punishments that one totalitarian regime had of people with mindful jobs who failed to toe the Party line was to assign them to farm labor or highly-repetitive factory work.
The GOP has pulled a dirty trick for about forty years. Although plutocratic in economics it sponsors extreme vulgarity in personal expression. The Republican Party used to be the party of educational elites by the standard of the time -- which in Eisenhower's day meant people who graduated from high school. An apocryphal story holds that Adlai Stevenson heard a story from one of his supporters that every thinking man ought to vote for him. One of the problems, he said, was that not enough people were thinking. Well. Ike wiped the floor with the votes of college graduates to an even stronger extent than Obama did (Ike and Obama were similar in temperament as politicians and as Presidents, so I have an explanation of why an Obama victory map looks more like an Eisenhower victory map than any other electoral map before 2008. The main difference was that Eisenhower won the Mormon and farm-and-ranch vote and Obama didn't Ike won three traditionally-tough states for Republicans -- Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island twice, which no Republican had done since 1924. Two of those three states were the only ones that Nixon failed to win in 1972 and Reagan failed to win in 1984. Republicans have won those three states a total of twelve times beginning in 1928, and Ike has half those wins.
In 1964, Goldwater won the college-educated vote despite the landslide that worked against him. It may be that educated people were less likely to fall for something so scary (appeal to fear) as the "Daisy" ad.
Republicans now trawl the bottom of the barrel in formal education and cultural experience while serving the economic interests of those economic elites who exploit the common man. Perhaps success in an MBA program has no connection to exposure to great literature, art, or music. That's unfortunate, as there is much to be had from those, and those are far more lasting in influence and satisfaction than does conspicuous consumption.
I suggested that one thing that must go if we are to solve global warming is conspicuous consumption that devours huge amounts of energy and natural resources and requires the dispersal of huge amounts of waste heat and vile effluents (pollution). We can make things to last or to be easily repaired. We have a housing crisis and traffic jams because we have committed so much housing space to houses with quarter-acre lots. We could get away with that in America when we had a population around 150 million; we are now double that. Technology can work wonders in creating excellent substitutes for things once fiendishly expensive from natural sources, like even diamonds. I predict that we will be able to synthesize fake meat for ourselves and some large carnivores that have much the same tastes as Big Cats. Indeed, we could synthesize something like mouse meat for the other, smaller carnivore. (The kitty-cat will love it!).
OK. Here is one of the wonders of our time. Anyone can get an inexpensive tablet that with Wi-Fi access gives one access to this:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/
If this is not among your computer bookmarks then you are missing something. With thsi one has no excuse for boredom -- or being a bore. Remember: much of what you are as a person is what you read. All books (mostly public domain) are free.
I am convinced that one of the best approaches to education is the Great Books approach, and with few exceptions (Faulkner, Hemingway, Pasternak, Camus, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Kundera, etc.) most of the Great Books are public domain and thus free. Inexpensive paperback editions. (Too many dead white males? OK, I'll raise you Harper Lee and Anne Frank, and recognize that contemporary Latin America is churning out huge amounts of excellent literature these days). OK, we do need cinema, art, and music...
I am satisfied that just about anyone could get something from reading Dante's Inferno. Read that, and you don't want to be a mobster, a corrupt politician, a child-molesting clergyman, a Nazi or a Stalinist. Donald Trump could certainly have stood to read it. I can think of many other works, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, that might have changed his life.
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.