George Rebane
Our American public mind has been taking some hits in recent decades, and is now in a power dive into the mud if we see what is happening in academe and in content of popular entertainments. After having devastated K-12 education, the Left is now in the process of delivering a coup de grace to academe where critical thought and dialogue have been replaced by diversity’s dumbth. But there are some vestiges of opposition left in the public universities as reported by Robert Bellafiore, a millennial student at the Univ of Oklahoma who tells us of a very challenging and yet very popular course ‘Fate and the Individual in European Literature’. Mr Bellafiore writes, “Give students heights to aspire to, and we will reach them—just as surely as we will settle for mediocrity if that is all you ask of us. Too many students are seeking clarity and purpose and finding only cacophony and aimlessness. The Western canon offers the challenge of a lifetime, and it’s one I believe my generation is willing to accept.” (more here)
And on the opposite side of the ledger we now have movie after movie coming out with comic book superheroes battling it out in mind-numbing combats, entertainments that are free of science, art, philosophy, or any takeaway other than ringing in the ears from exposure to 120db multiplex theater sound systems.
Washington’s swamp allegators are having a field day. (Allegator – a person given to wanton, gratuitous, and evidence-free allegations against prominent public figures, especially when so goaded by third parties or motivated by ideology and/or cash.) Their latest victim is Radm Dr Ronny Jackson, President Trump’s nominee to head the Veteran’s Affairs Department, who withdrew his name today after a week of pummeling in the lamestream media. Such attacks are part and parcel of the double (here we have called it ‘assymetrical’) standards applied to Democrats vs Republicans in today’s politics, especially if the Trump administration is involved. Victor Davis Hanson’s 26apr18 commentary (here) on such double standards highlights some particulars worth noting by those who still consume rather than deflect information. Dr Hanson reviews the Mueller investigation and makes a case for an impending “investigatory train wreck” as the special prosecutor “searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he ignores the actual lawbreakers.” And if it touches Trump, the allegators’ cry remains, ‘Guilty, until proven innocent!’
Americans are fleeing leftwing regressive states. Connecticut is the latest state to become a posterchild of progressives’ putrid public policies. Federal income data tells the story of the Connecticut exodus of wage earners that is catching up with what is happening in neighboring New York and, of course, Krazy Kalifornia. Gov Daniel Malloy’s “eight year experiment in public-union governance saw income grow by a meager 1.5% for the year” well below that of neighboring New England states. And if you take out dividends and government transfer payments, its wage growth was at a stagnant 0.1%. The 26apr18 WSJ observes “the fact that Connecticut, which is next to America’s financial capital, has grown so poorly amid an expansion that was especially good for financial assets is a damning indictment of its political leadership. It is a particular tragedy for the state’s poorest citizens who may not be able to flee to other states that aren’t run by and for government employees.”
[29apr18 update] As government has become more pervasive in our lives, it is easier than ever to demonstrate that ALL productive approaches to solving social problems should begin with the proviso that ‘Government is guilty until proven innocent.’ The current gun control fiasco is no different. Here it would pay to again first determine the role government’s derelictions and incompetence played in the recent Parkland and Waffle House shootings. Since the Left’s objective is gun confiscation by whatever means available, their lamestream media and activists’ literature turns a blind eye to the dereliction and incompetence aspects of enforcing gun control laws already on the books. The Left’s perennial solution is to never waste the most recent tragedy to roll back the Second Amendment another notch as part and parcel of their overarching objective to fundamentally transform America. Two recent analyses of government's dereliction and incompetence in the Waffle House (here) and Parkland (here) killings illustrate my point, the latter done by Kenneth Preston, a heads-up student in Broward County where the massacre occurred.
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