Education Failure

Somewhat of a relief that all the big fuss is over with.  Most unfortunately, I’m better prepared than a lot of newcomers to the misinfo and conspiracy grifting network that is a large part of the grass roots support.  As has been said, misinformation has been around forever, it’s just a little more openly talked about nowadays.

This is mostly bits and pieces of things already said here.

More primitive societies had social issues taken care of much easier.  The internet was a shock to the system where suddenly conflicting social ideas spread around crazy fast.  One of the rings that has disappeared is the “trusted advisor” role to the leader.  And I somebody (like Fauci) doesn’t get you votes, what’s the point of using his wealth of knowledge?  The anti-science/anti-smart people movement has been pushing towards mediocrity.  What appeals to the most people makes sense for getting the most votes.  And now that an openly dictatorial personality has spread out so much contradictory vote getting promises it’s inevitable that promises will be broken.  (Yes, he really pushed the “I never wanted to take away abortion” line heavy at the end.)  Now it’s going to be interesting to see who is going to be available to throw under the bus when things go wrong.

Backing up to my parent’s generation.  A generation that had a lot of young adults that lived when WWII was raging and not being a fascist was considered a good thing.  America knew that ideologically there was going to be conflict with the Soviet Union post war.  The war itself proved a need for technological savvy, and simultaneously keeping people happy along the way.  Being educated, the American dream of going to college, getting a decent job and raising a family and all that stuff.  Capitalism works far better economically than communism.  And the “I must be smart because I figured out how to rip off people better” movement was in full swing.  An educated masses along the way was not a necessity.  It would just lead to a much more widespread group of future economic slaves who had an idea of what’s going on.

The need for too many educated people dropped off dramatically.  The Southern Strategy.  Don’t bother giving them right answers.  Give them a little religion, later some conspiracy theories, a gun and rose colored glasses.  And give them a scapegoat.  Some scapegoats became too obvious.  We never stopped being racist towards black and brown people.  We never stopped being misogynistic to women in the workplace.  We never stopped being selfish and cognitively biased.  The new scapegoat, the arbitrary scapegoat.  One so arbitrary that like a gematria decode that could mean anything was born.  And that more educated, more intelligent arbitrary scapegoat is what is someone living in the U.S.now is called a Democrat.

Since it’s not a one size fits all scapegoat and just like confirmation bias topics like racism and religion there are only some vague guidelines.  And of course (e.g. RINOs) since it can be applied to anybody, the accuser can point a finger at anyone.  But mostly, it’s empathy.  You’ve either got it or you don’t and it’s slipped away.  Eroded by generations of capitalism combined with instant gratification.

From my real life experience I’ve seen that the average middle class non Southerner with some decent education thinks there is unlimited resources and the goal is to hoard not just enough wealth for a comfortable retirement, but to gain enough passive income to generate more than you spend in a year.  It’s perfectly fine to them that getting into debt is a good thing.  Run up that credit card, and complain about how low your salary is to compensate for the difference.  The financial jobs hammer home the idea that greed is good.  Michael Douglas approves. 

  It's not office politics. It's politics, period.

When the person signing your paycheck is giving you your education on what works in life, it’s now the only source of socialization.  And the rich elites in power are often the worst people on the planet that care only for the continued hoarding of more wealth.  And what has never worked is having a dictator calling the shots when they only care about wealth.

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So what can we expect over the next four years?  We can make some darn good educated guesses that the uneducated have proven not to recognize.

1). The internet has made virtually no progress on hate speech and misinformation topics.  They’d rather not alienate a huge swath of the 50%-50% pie.  So belief in stupid shit, the scams and fraud are here for pretty much forever.  This is something that individually you can immunize yourself from.  And maybe it’s time to stop caring about others being scammed.  You figure that out on your own ‘cause it depends on how much you care about the other person.

2). Vaccinations and health care regress.  Doctors and nurses are part of the no-no group of educated empathetic people.  Could to be more likely to vote for compassion to others than goose stepping along with the capitalists.  There will be enough narcissistic doctors for some form of health care.  But an actual functional system, that’s not happening.  And not within just the next four years but longer term - look for life expectancy to drop by a significant amount.  Which of course they’ll blame on liberals because that’s all they know.  There’s too many pesticides, plastics and the unpopularity of vaccines to have anything but a drop.

3). Gun violence will remain unchanged or get worse.  Not caring about kids at school for a long time has become entrenched in the mentality.  And why should you pick a target that fights back?  Proper policing requires some empathy - who is the good guy and who is the bad guy?  Screw that.  I’ve got my gun.  I’ll arbitrarily pick and choose.  Domestic violence has never been a popular topic to get passionate about when people don’t give a shit about each other.  More math added to the life expectancy dropping calculation.

4). Climate change.  The big one that I can’t figure out of any of the group of wealthy people with no empathy has figured out.  The world has been quite literally cooking for a long time.  And Drill, Baby, Drill makes no sense as a solution.  Indeed, some of these wealthy people have no idea that it’s not a hoax.  The chances of there not being several extremely expensive hurricanes in the south over the next four years are about zero.  The inflation for this is going to be astronomical.  Other than blaming the libs I can’t see anything else to be done about it at this point.  And they’ve shoot themselves in the foot.  It used to be buy a retirement home in Florida or Arizona, which are now on the opposite ends of Mother Nature’s too much water too little water spectrum.  The upcoming food shortages and accompanying inflation are going to give them a lot to complain and blame about.

5). Deregulation and dropping out.  Now serious OSHA or FDA or infrastructure oversight.  They’ve been working on this for a long time, and holding people accountable who don’t want their stash affected is super unpopular.  Not that there’s any place safe to go anymore, but I’m not hoping on a Boeing jet anytime soon.  Chemical spill from a train wreck?  Screw that.  We’re all about white guys doing what we want.  NATO membership won’t be important; it’s not our problem, at least not directly and obviously to the uneducated.  WHO?  Why do we care about global health issues even when we know what happens with pandemics.  The only question is which other country gets the blame.

Even though you don’t identify as openly bigoted, you’ve learned it’s OK to use your confirmation bias to attack other people, and the effects on morale at the workplace where politics is part of socializing with people everyday has lead to this bipartisan mess we’re in.  Block and obstruct since that’s all that can be done under the current system.