06-16-2020, 10:10 AM
(06-16-2020, 01:24 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(06-14-2020, 12:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: America has no monolithic "blue" culture. "Blue culture" includes much diversity in class, ethnicity, and religion. That "Blue" America is itself so diverse reflects the weakness of "Red" culture. Start with music: "Red" America surely listens to much more country music than the rest of America. Country music may be honest in expression of realities of personal life in much of America, but it seems to be rather light on intellectual content and musical innovation.
We "Blue" Americans are, if white, decidedly better educated than the rest of America. If Asian, much better educated. To be sure there are some ill-educated blacks and Hispanics, but the black bourgeoisie and middle-class Hispanics recognize the poor in their own ethnic group as people to uplift. Middle-class white people of "Red" America seem not to do much for poor white people in the Mountain and Deep South.
I do not have a problem with relatively-conservative parts of "Red" America getting "Blue" results with limited resources. Maybe we in "Blue" America could pick up some pointers. On the other hand, some very "Red" areas are very poor.
Are you really better educated than me overall? Are the blues really better educated than the reds overall? I don't think so myself. I mean that's what really counts and determines outcomes these days. I mean, look at you. You're living proof that education alone does not determine outcomes and the way you write and what you write about and the side you support proves it too. You have an economics degree. Me, I've just been in business for almost thirty years and I've just worked with thousands of people. I've been through shit and dealt with shit that you couldn't handle or financially survive. I've been in situations with people that you couldn't manage or emotionally handle either. I've made decisions that you wouldn't have the balls or the heart to make either. Your economic degree means squat to me.
Go ahead... put me to the test. Obviously I would lose to you if the topic were related to HVAC. I don't know everything, and some knowledge is specific to an occupation. Yes, even if it is a criminal act such as drug trafficking or arson for hire, neither of which I care to know about.
Education isn't everything. If I had to choose between character and education, then I would take character any day. Character may be the difference between being able to do menial labor and not hating the world for it and harboring great resentments toward everything that lead one to do horrible things. Some people do quite well despite a lack of formal education. In general, people who have college degrees are more job-takers than job-creators. One reason is that people don't need much formal education to start a small business. With an MBA one is looking to be an employee, and not a business owner-operator.
Should the plutocratic tendency in America intensify, then 90% of the people will be suffering for about 2% who treat them badly because such is their prerogative in a pure plutocracy. To be sure, the top 2% typically has college degrees... but I can't be sure that the typical college offers any course in "character". The only schools that can inculcate character about which I know are the military academies.
So you have dealt with thousands of people. So what. So does a retail sales clerk or a fast-food worker. The dealings in such environments are typically quite simple... "Welcome to (business name). How can I help you?" What is so complicated about finding a man's white Oxford-cloth shirt with a 17" neck and a 34-35 sleeve? Or asking some short-order cook for a cheeseburger and fries? If you want your job more complicated than that, then you go into some other line of work at the first opportunity.
Before anyone assumes that better-educated people are better because they are smarter, such is not so. Life is simply easier for someone who has strong academic skills. It is easier to meet basic needs if one has an above-median income. For the poor people who insist on living large without doing anything valuable to any but themselves... crime is a temptation more difficult to resist. Yes, the typical armed robber or drug dealer is a dullard.
But know well: well-educated people have done horrible things in the past. The main participants in the Enrob scandal mostly had advanced degrees. They got greedy and thought that they could get away with what they were doing. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer speaks of the "intellectual gangster", a smart and often cultured person who was able and willing to put his talents to the use of Adolf Hitler as a mass-killer, a brutal administrator of an occupied country, a plotter of aggressive warfare, a jurist serving Nazi "justice" (if there ever were an oxymoron, "Nazi justice" is possibly the worst), performing cruel experiments upon unwilling people, issuing Nazi propaganda, or designing the plant and equipment for mass murder as at extermination camps. So how could people do such despite having impressive education?
Repeat after me:
Education isn't everything. If I had to choose between character and education, then I would take character any day.
Character is far more important. For many people, character is what allows them to do a job that they hate that pays badly and not hate Humanity for it... and to accept the role to which their limited talent consign them.
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.
