Category: Rants

I secretly enjoy it when people go off on rants about the liberal Ivory Tower of academia; it gives me an opportunity to wait until the silly David Horowitz talking points stop flowing from their talk-holes and ask them a few specific questions about the ideological makeup of the typical academic community.

The truth is that the OMG LIBRUL BRAINWASHING hypothesis stands up well only under the conditions necessary for any right wing pet theory to hold up: cherry pick some confirming evidence and ignore everything else. Sure, you're going to find a bunch of bleeding hearts in the Sociology department. Anthropology is basically a hippie commune. Don't even ask about the "Cultural/Media Studies" departments. OK, great. We've just identified about 2% of the faculty and departments at any major university. Now let's take a stroll over to the business school.

Or the law school. Or the Econ department. Bastions of left-wing rhetoric, right?

The reality is that every department on every campus could be teeming with True Believer socialists committed to brainwashing their students and the level of indoctrination wouldn't hold a candle to the average two course Macro/Micro sequence in Economics. This is not to say that Econ professors are especially conniving, ideological, or bad at teaching. The problem is simply that teaching Economics in the modern American educational system means teaching Neoliberalism. It's basically Intro to Hayek and Friedman.

Fukuyama may have overstated things by declaring the End of History, but we've certainly seen something close to it in Economics.
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There is nothing but Neoliberalism now. Everything else is quaint, referred to only as a historical curiosity, and worth knowing only inasmuch as it sets up the victorious tomahawk dunks of Neoliberalism.

Some young Harvard students have made waves recently by doing the sort of thing only college undergrads have enough self-importance to do when they walked out of Greg Mankiw's Intro to Macroeconomics class and forwarded an open letter to the media to air their grievances. Mankiw's intellectual dishonesty is well known to veteran readers of this forum, and apparently his teaching is as well rounded as his journalism and commentary. That is, his students seem to think he's teaching a 16 week infomercial for his textbook and the One True Path to Economic Righteousness.

This is news because it happened at Harvard and to an economist with a non-negligible public profile.
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The reality, though, is that this is pretty much par for the course in that field. Introductory economics classes, as a prerequisite for admission to business schools, pretty much give the Alex P. Keatons of the world what they want. These departments think that intellectual diversity means throwing in a reading from Robert Reich.

This is traditionally justified with appeals to Neoliberalism's often touted empirical rigor. It is "positive" and highly Scientific, thus it can reasonably be put forth as the One True Economics. It's not that economics curricula are biased, it's just that there is only one economic school of thought that makes sense! What do we need multiple theories for when we already have one that explains everything?

Oddly enough, educating Americans to believe that there is one correct economics seems to be correlated with our collective inability to consider any real alternatives politically. Perhaps this is why our solution to every economic dilemma is, "Do it again, only harder." What was that definition of insanity again?

This is one of my favorite passages from anything written in the English language, in this case The Grapes of Wrath:

"Well, I was there. They wasn't no agitators. What they call reds. What the hell is these reds anyways?

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"

Timothy scraped a little hill level in the bottom of tile ditch. The sun made his white bristle beard shine. "They's a lot a fellas wanta know what reds is.
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" He laughed. "One of our boys foun' out." He patted the piled earth gently with his shovel. "Fella named Hines-got 'bout thirty thousan' acres, peaches and grapes-got a cannery an' a winery. Well, he's all a time talkin' about 'them goddamn reds.
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' 'Goddamn reds is drivin' the country to ruin,' he says, an" 'We got to drive these here red bastards out.' Well, they were a young fella jus' come out west here, an' he's listenin' one day. He kinda scratched his head an' he says, 'Mr. Hines, I ain't been here long. What is these goddamn reds?' Well, sir, Hines says, 'A red is any son-of-a-bitch that wants thirty cents an hour when we're payin' twenty-five!' Well, this young fella he thinks about her, an' he scratches his head, an' he says, 'Well, Jesus, Mr. Hines. I ain't a son-of-a-bitch, but if that's what a red is-why, I want thirty cents an hour. Ever'body does. Hell, Mr. Hines, we're all reds.'" Timothy drove his shovel along the ditch bottom, and the solid earth shone where the shovel cut it.

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Tom laughed. "Me too, I guess."

This is illustrative of a very important hill on the rhetorical battleground in modern politics, the idea that self-interest is good for some people (say, high income earners who don't like paying taxes) but evil when pursued by others (say, people living hand-to-mouth). We are inundated with this message by our media and political elites. Banks have a right to make a profit; people who want to retire at a semi-reasonable age and perhaps collect a few Social Security checks are unreasonably greedy. CEOs must be rewarded with outsized compensation packages; workers must be Reasonable and understand that wages have to fall. Shareholders deserve a return on their investment; those greedy bastard teachers are destroying the country with their incessant demand for a 2% cost of living raise.

If you pay attention you will be floored by how often you hear expressions of condemnation or surprise because some individual or group is logically defending its own interests. Look at the salary those lazy UAW bastards want! Look at all these hippie protesters demanding more, more, more! Look at these old geezers complaining about Medicare cuts! Look at how Joe leaves work every day at 5:00 on the dot…it's almost like he doesn't want to work uncompensated overtime! The problem with the world these days is that everyone wants to work as little as possible rather than as hard as they can!

This is little more than a symptom of the market-as-religion mantra – that you and I can't make any demands about our salary, working conditions, and so on because they are set by The Market. Mortals must not distort The Market by trying to get anything more than what the company feels like paying. When The Market decides that you no longer get vacation days or health insurance you are a greedy SOB for trying to hang on to them. A normal person would just accept that with a big smile and keep working harder, according to the David Brookses of the world.

In reality, any rational person would defend his or her own interests in this situation. If Social Security was the most bankrupt, lavish, excessive pension system on the planet, it would still make perfect sense for seniors to try to prevent cuts to it. It benefits them. Why would they give it up without a fight? That would make no sense whatsoever. It doesn't imply that they're right or that Social Security (in that hypothetical) is a well designed system, but from the individual beneficiary's perspective it makes perfect sense to fight any attempt at cuts.

I make it a habit to answer rhetorical questions of this type. When someone asks, "Can you believe that these UAW guys want to get paid to not work?" I respond with a hearty, "Of course. That sounds awesome." This type of response is not only irritating but also completely honest. What in the world could be better than getting paid to not work? If someone offered to pay you to not work, you would throw your back out jumping at the opportunity. While that is the unassailable truth, you won't find many water cooler blowhards, media personalities, or comment trolls willing to admit it in the "OK for me, but not for thee" society we have built for ourselves in the past thirty years.

Last weekend I watched and read about the aftermath of the Oakland police department's decision to forcibly remove camped out protesters. At the time this struck me as a very strange choice on the part of the city. The Storm Troopers of America approach to dispersing peaceful crowds is public relations suicide when every cell phone is a still and video camera.

To wit, it didn't take long for video of the serious wounding of a protester and Iraq War veteran to contradict the official line that he was injured by other protesters throwing rocks and bottles. Even absent anything exceptional happening, the standard "cops beating and tear gassing people" footage tends to reflect poorly on city leaders.

Our government at every level makes decisions with public relations in mind and a media strategy in place. This media strategy seemed odd to say the least. Police have learned a few tricks since Chicago '68, namely how to break up crowds without resorting to medieval battle tactics. There are ways to deal with "noncompliant" people that don't produce these Twitter-friendly pics of projectile injuries (If you've ever been paintballing, you know goddamn well what that person's bruise is from.) Cops are not renowned for their brilliance, but someone in the room when this decision was made had to be smart enough to realize that this was a PR blunder in the making.

Looking back, that was something of a naive reaction on my part. Just as the removal of the protesters had nothing to do with permits or whatever official excuse is proffered, the use of force in doing it has nothing to do with the nature of the protest. It's about a different kind of public relations. Police appear with their full array of paramilitary gear for the same reason that people painted their faces and chanted before going to battle thousands of years ago. It's about intimidation and sending a message about who is in charge.

Sure, there's an initial wave of bad publicity when the images hit the news. But people forget quickly, and the story becomes just another reminder to know one's place. Never forget who is in charge or what awaits you if you challenge it, however ineffectually. Then the media goes to work, encouraging the usual victim blaming mentality – If the police told them to leave and they didn't, then anything the police did to them is their own fault, you see – and smear tactics (Dirty hippies! Potheads! Anarchists! Malcontents!) to convince about a third of us that it's a damn good thing that the police did what they did.
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The suburbanites terrified of the outside world and the blue hairs who love nothing more than young, preferably brown people being arrested make up the bulk of this group. It also includes the elites who see the police for exactly what they are – the security force of the status quo. It's not a huge group of people in total, but they vote and elected officials care what they think.

There is a message. In the short term, the message is that the police are out of control. In the long term, it's that they are firmly in control. They got what they wanted and the protesters didn't. As someone put it many years ago, "Go back to bed, America!
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Your government is in control. Keep drinking beer, you morons.

Watch Love Connection or something. Get fat and stupid."

In a city renowned for the quantity and quality of its political spectacles, the upcoming debt supercommittee hearings might be the most superficial waste of time in the history of Washington. I've said enough about why and the extent to which I do not care about this – the predetermined outcome, the mindless rhetoric, the heavy, ponderous chin-stroking in the media, and many other common features of our kabuki theater politics – and I hoped to leave it at that. But to underscore the "predetermined outcome" part, consider the initial proposal made by the Democratic members of the committee:

The new deficit-reduction plan from a majority of Democrats on the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the “supercommittee”) marks a dramatic departure from traditional Democratic positions — and actually stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate’s “Gang of Six,” and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission. The Democratic plan contains substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan. The Democratic plan features a substantially higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases than any of the bipartisan plans.

The Democratic plan contains $92 billion more in Medicare and Medicaid cuts ($475 billion) than Bowles-Simpson ($383 billion), and the same or a greater amount of cuts in this area than the Gang of Six plan.

At the same time, the Democratic plan contains $800 to $900 billion less in revenue increases than the Bowles-Simpson and Gang of Six plans.

Remember, this is the initial proposal. The starting point. Whatever they finally pass will of course be far to the right of this. So what we'll end up with is a policy outcome to the right of a proposal that is to the right of the previous sham "bipartisan" committee's recommendations that were already to the right of center. Say what you will about the modern Democratic Party, but they sure know how to fire up their base.

For the life of me I cannot fathom their strategy here. It appears to be yet another round of "If we start negotiating by offering a thousand huge concessions up front, surely the GOP will negotiate in good faith." Yes, and surely Charlie Brown will kick that football this time. Of course the Republicans have already summarily rejected this proposal as Insufficiently Austere, thus we are assured of dozens more concessions in the next few weeks to produce a final bill that they will vote against anyway.

Once again the strategy, if any, being employed by the Democrats is a mystery to me. They continue to punt the talking point, "The GOP wanted to screw you and we opposed them," in favor of, "The GOP wanted to screw you and we proposed that they screw you slightly less, and then we settled on you getting screwed but with some lube and a Wendy's Frosty afterward." Who is the voter that they believe this approach will win over? Who do they envision responding positively to this inexorable march to the right, which not only eliminates the Democrats as a legitimate alternative to the GOP but also drives the already dangerously extreme GOP base even further rightward?

Obama and his party were successful in 2008. To repeat that in 2012, they're banking on the existence a few hundred million voters, contributors, and volunteers in the electorate who will get really fired up to support a Democratic Party so completely sold out to moneyed interests that its policy positions have outflanked the Republican Party of the 1980s on the right. For their sake I hope these voters exist, or else this very curious strategy is going to have to appeal to the same voters, contributors, and volunteers who put them over the top in 2008.

Good luck with that. But hey, I bet Jamie Dimon loves it. Isn't that what matters?

My name is Ed, and I am addicted to the A&E television series Intervention. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it cynically exploits people at their lowest point – drunk, addicted to meth, often homeless or sponging off family, etc. – under the guise of a "documentary" about addiction and recovery. Since each episode devotes about 2 minutes to recovery and treatment, it's pretty clear that the show exists to let us all gawk at train wreck addicts at their lowest point.

Like everyone who watches it, I watch Intervention to feel better about myself.

To discuss every messed up aspect of this show (not to mention its popularity or mere existence) would take too long, but one thing really blows my mind regularly. Many of the addicted people have bathrooms full of prescription pill bottles the size of pop cans filled with opiates, stimulants, and other varieties of addictive narcotics. Yes, obviously some of the pills a drug addict consumes are going to be obtained illegally. But that doesn't account for all of it. Some of the show's subjects reveal how they get legitimate prescriptions for insane quantities of Oxycontin, Xanax, and so on. And my question is, who are these doctors writing out 30-day scrips for 150 maximum strength Oxycontin?

I've talked before about how American medicine is basically a big vending machine of prescription drugs. It goes without saying that the idea of actual patient care and accurate, thorough diagnosis is foreign to the American for-profit model of medicine. Doctors have every incentive to get patients out of the office as quickly as possible and with as few (expensive!) diagnostic tests as possible, and the easiest way to send the average patient on his or her way happily is with a prescription or five. I did assume, though, that if for no reason other than self interest, doctors wouldn't prescribe narcotics quite so casually. One would imagine, for example, that oversight by the DEA and state licensing authorities would make a doctor think twice and act conservatively when controlled substances are involved.

Is that hopelessly naive? I can't say I've ever tried it, but…is it really as easy as semi-reality TV makes it seem to walk into a doctor's office reeking of the symptoms of drug abuse and walk out with a Keith Richards sized allotment of mind altering drugs? My confusion on this point goes beyond reality TV. For instance, I regularly hear students telling tales of getting large prescriptions for Adderall and other stimulants at the slightest mention to a doctor of having "a hard time concentrating."

As a kid I remember our family pediatrician offering candy to patients who completed a visit without crying. This encouraged me to be brave, but in reality the good doctor was pretty liberal with the candy policy. In fact, no matter how I comported myself in her office I don't recall ever leaving without having been given candy. This seems like a good policy in hindsight; the kids would probably cry even more if they were denied candy in addition to being poked and prodded. This worked because the doctor figured that there is no real harm in one piece of candy, especially if it meant getting a child out of the office calmly and expediently. This same policy seems dubious when applied to addictive drugs, however. Is our system of assembly line, bottom line focused medicine really so broken that we're willing to hand out prescriptions for whatever the patient wants just to keep things moving along?

I think I already know the answer to that question, unfortunately.

One of the enjoyable things about politics is that it has the capacity to surprise us.
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Despite being largely predictable, occasionally something happens out of left field. Take the unexpected Republican support for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. John Boehner, House Whip Kevin McCarthy of California, and Floridian Steve Southerland joined the chorus in demanding to know why unemployment persists. Their message is simple: Where are the jobs?
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We all need a good answer to that question.

Wait.

I'm sorry, I'm mixed up. Boehner, McCarthy, and Southerland said that stuff 2 months ago, when they were trying to pin the bad economy on Obama. They were very insistent that an insufficient number of jobs exist to handle the current unemployment rolls. Now, of course, they're wondering why all these dirty hippie protesters won't grow up and get jobs. In an eight week span the GOP message has transitioned from "Where are the jobs, Mr. President?" to "Why don't you all go get jobs?" Only the American right could make sense of that.

The funny thing is that conservatives mirror a lot of the American public when they hold these two diametrically opposed viewpoints. The vast majority of us demand a more robust economy and realize that the banking/financial system is fundamentally flawed. Yet we also can't shake that ingrained Horatio Alger logic, the kind that leads us to conclude that any individual who fails to find gainful employment has only him/herself to blame. Thus we sound schizophrenic, as usual. The system is broken! More personal responsibility! The banks are screwing us! Pull up your own bootstraps!

Public opinion has always reflected a very strange attitude in this country toward movements – public protests, strikes, etc. – compared to other countries in which such displays of social-political displeasure are more common parts of public life. Even when Americans support protesters' goals, we still have all sorts of negative reactions to protesters themselves. This manifests itself in one of two different ways. One is calls for gradualism (i.
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e., the civil rights movement) and patience with the existing power structure.
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The other is outright hostility toward protesters, as we've seen during Vietnam, WTO/G7 type protests, and so on. We might want to see some change, but gosh we sure don't want to break any rules and we can't stand those dirty kids with their dreadlocks and bong smoke.

On the most basic level, this reflects a convincing victory for conservatism in the war for hearts and minds. We might realize that those Occupy Wall Street folks are right, but we're still more likely to be hostile than sympathetic. Why? Take a look at any of the "We are the 53%" crap and you'll see. It's a bunch of people with a consistent message: My life blows, so yours should too. I work two jobs, so I resent people who want to work one. I am grateful for the crumbs that fall to me in this system, so people who complain about it are assholes. I quietly and obediently accept whatever the system does to me, so why don't you?

It takes a special kind of self loathing to generate a reaction like this. Fortunately Americans have that in spades. So many of us have completely given up, surrendered, and chosen that life of quiet desperation that it's unsurprising when more anger is targeted at people who stray from the flock than at more appropriate targets. We're content to direct our anger at one another because we've been convinced that change is impossible and encouraged to blame ourselves for whatever problems we have. The biggest obstacle confronting social and political movements is neither social nor political, but psychological. The first and most difficult step is to silence the voice in people's heads that whispers, "Nothing will change, so stay home, keep quiet, and obey" when they see a few villagers taking to the streets with torches.

In the flurry of Steve Jobs related items that were thrown at you last week, you most likely saw quotes from his commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005. This quote, in particular, appeared on my Facebook feed no fewer than ten times:

You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

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Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

(Full text of the commencement speech here)

I understand why people find this inspiring or profound. But this is absolutely terrible advice from a practical standpoint.

Most of us are never going to get paid to do what we love. Work is something we do to support ourselves. Ideally, we don't hate it. That's the best most of us will ever do with our employment – we can consider ourselves fortunate if we don't actively loathe it. But love it? Steve Jobs got paid to do what he apparently loved, and good on him. He is not like most of us, though. He had a lot of talent and he happened to love something that was beyond lucrative.

I am biased here, not only because I am a negative bastard in general but also because I deal with so many people in the demographic Jobs was addressing in this speech. Many undergraduates are far too practical, choosing career paths that neither make them happy nor suit their talents simply because they have been promised that it will make them rich. An equal number of them, however, could stand to be more practical.
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The number of people who plan to make a living in creative fields (writing in particular) or whatever is the latest fad career portrayed on popular TV shows vastly exceeds the number who can conceivably do so. And let's face it – unlike Steve Jobs, most of us simply aren't good enough at the things we "love" to make a living off of them.

The kind of advice Jobs is giving is very common; we're all supposed to encourage people in this way.

Is that a good idea? Looking back on my life, I don't wish I had followed my dreams or any of that crap; I wish I had not chosen a profession I like in which there are no jobs and at which I am not good. Let's face it, most of us have pretty impractical dreams.

They're certainly not practical as careers – the kind that pay the bills – for many people. Unless you're fortunate enough to really, really Love devising consumer goods for which people will pay a ton of money, it might not hurt to think about a career path in slightly more practical terms.

It is indisputable that the gay rights movement has made substantial progress over the last three decades. The pace of change has accelerated in recent years, in part because the chosen tactic of the anti-gay lobby has become ineffective over time. They have attempted to turn the political tide against gay rights with the timeless "If we let the gays _______, then (insert apocalyptic prediction here)!" tactic. Then, when some state or city decides to let the gays _______, we notice that…absolutely nothing happens. If we let gays teach, all of our kids will get raped!
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If we let gays serve openly in the military, they'll be so busy fellating each other and converting the straights that our national defense will collapse!

Although it took a while, people eventually began to figure out that, well, nothing Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell predicted actually happened. Everyone met some gay people and realized that they're not bile spitting, child molesting monsters. Americans might not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but it appears that it is possible for us to see through these cheap scare tactics with enough repetition. After 99 dire predictions that come to nothing, very few people seem to put much stock in the 100th.

We have applied that logic fairly well to social issues – racial, gender, sexual orientation, etc. – throughout our history.

The scare tactics are still quite effective, though, when it comes to the politics of economic issues. No matter how many times the prediction is made and later proven false, "If we ________, then American businesses will (fail / stop hiring / etc)!" never fails to mesmerize the majority of the country and, more importantly, the media.

This line of argument has been trotted out by the top 1% in opposition to every meaningful effort at economic reform, regulation, or the creation of a social safety net. Because we are ignorant of history and even moreso of economics, we continue to fall for it despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the southern aristocracy claimed that agriculture could not be economically viable in the U.S. without slavery.

When Free Silver was a political issue, financiers argued that removing the U.S. Dollar from a convertible gold standard would collapse the entire economy.

The meat trust told everyone that the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 would bankrupt them all and shutter the packinghouses.

During the Progressive Era, the steel and textile industries swore that they couldn't keep their doors open without child labor.

The plutocracy made dozens of dire predictions in advance of the Sixteenth Amendment legalizing Federal income taxes, none of which came true.

During the Depression, banks swore that the New Deal would regulate them to death while what remained of American industry swore that legally protecting organized labor and instituting the minimum wage (in 1938) would be the final nails in its coffin.

The collapse of both the social and economic order of the country was predicted when women and blacks were integrated into the workplace.

The Great Society and higher corporate tax rates after the unprecedented economic growth of the 1950s was supposed to lead to unfathomably high levels of unemployment.

Then something strange happened. Despite this lengthy history of failed predictions – and there are many more beyond the few I've mentioned here – we started believing whatever the top 1% told us about the economy. Right around, oh, I don't know, 1980. They told us that they wouldn't hire us unless their taxes were lowered. They told us that Big Government regulations were killing them. They told us that they couldn't afford lavishing us with things like vacation days, pensions, or health insurance. They told us that they couldn't compete anymore unless we changed the laws and allowed them to make their products overseas. They told us about their "right to make a profit" after the government socialized their losses. And here we in 2011 listening to our economic elites tell us for the 200th consecutive year that we're regulating/taxing them to death and, golly, they just can't hire any of us unless we do something to sweeten the deal on their end – holding the vast majority of the nation's wealth, apparently, not being a sufficiently sweet deal.

We used to be able to see through this. That was before the thirty year marketing campaign to make us sympathize with the poor, poor folks up at the top who simply can't get by unless the rest of us work two jobs, make jack shit, and have neither health nor retirement benefits. At this point I'm not sure that most Americans can even conceive of a course of action other than praying to our Job Creators and hoping that they see fit to throw a few pennies in our direction. Because everyone knows that if we raise taxes, unemployment will triple and half of American businesses will go under…just like what happened when taxes have been raised in the past.

Bill Bennett, as you already know, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. His rhetorical style begins with his predetermined conclusion before devoting far more words than necessary to all types of fallacies of reasoning in an attempt to support it. Most recently he has shared his thoughts on the often bemoaned (but not actually a real thing) "Crisis of Manhood" afflicting young men today.

Long story short, women are now getting more college degrees than men, and their incomes are rising at a dramatically sharper rate. Could that second point have anything to do with the fact that female incomes are basically, you know, still catching up with males, Bill? The thing about growth rates is that they look really high when you start with such a small number.
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But I digress. Men aren't growing up. It's an extended, and possibly permanent, state of adolescence, as men become slackers in their twenties rather than employees, homeowners, husbands, or fathers.
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The sad thing is that there is an important point to be made here, and instead Bennett is trying to twist reality around his "Men aren't manly enough anymore since women cut their balls off" thesis. The real issue, which he hints at while pointing out that 18-24 year old males play more daily hours of video games than 12-17 year olds, is much more compelling: we have entire generations of people who aren't growing up because they are not going through the normal socialization process that is supposed to follow college graduation. When U.S. News estimates that 85% – !!!! – of the Spring 2011 graduating class moved back in with their parents, we have a bigger problem here than 1970s feminists making men feel all butthurt or whatever his point is.

Two real whoppers deserve further comment:

If you don't believe the numbers, just ask young women about men today. You will find them talking about prolonged adolescence and men who refuse to grow up. I've heard too many young women asking, "Where are the decent single men?" There is a maturity deficit among men out there, and men are falling behind.

Classic Bennett, with a dash of Friedmanesque unattributed quotes from strangers for good measure. I may be biased here, but Bill, the absolute last demographic that should be consulted on issues of maturity and adulthood is Twentysomething Women. I deal with men and women in this age group all day, every day, and I have the added benefit of having just been divorced by a 28 year old who spent the majority of the seven years we were acquainted struggling with issues related to direction, motivation, and maturity. I hold this against no one. My point is simply that it's beyond comical to point to 24 year old women for commentary on the state of male maturity. If there is a maturity gap, it isn't very big. The average 24 year old woman may think it is, but part of being immature is being deluded about one's own maturity level. For every young man sitting in mom's basement playing Call of Duty, there is a female counterpart either living with the 'rents or burning through their money living the same kind of extended adolescence Bennett bemoans – spending most of her days starting a dozen new "creative" projects she'll never finish, dressing like a Ugandan refugee, and wondering why no one else is mature like her.

Then, this:

While women are graduating college and finding good jobs, too many men are not going to work, not getting married and not raising families.

Uh, care to cite some stats there, Bill? Women are graduating college and finding…that the job market is shit, just like it is for us grunting cavemen. Setting aside the fact that women are more likely than men to get degrees in fields with little income potential – Again, I don't judge. I have two political science degrees and I earn exactly shit. – how does the fact that they have pulled ahead in degrees granted lead to the assumption that they are "finding good jobs"? Again, what we have here is an economic issue that Bennett is somehow trying to make a gender issue.

It isn't. It's a symptom of a larger problem: that young people are graduating college but continuing to live and act like children.
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Why wouldn't they? They're not earning anything, so they continue the Broke Undergrad lifestyle to which they are accustomed. They don't have jobs to force them into an "adult" routine of hauling their asses to work and back every day, for better or worse. They fail to become financially or emotionally independent of their families. They lack the means to take on responsibilities like home ownership, marriage, or parenting even if they were motivated to do so.
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But they lack motivation because they graduate into a world that has nothing for them except "No Vacancy" signs. Twentysomethings are disturbingly immature, perhaps even more so than in past generations, because they cannot get onto the conveyor belt that takes people to the kind of job-kids-spouse-house version of adulthood that Bennett believes they need.

Oh, and despite all that growth, women still earn less than men across the board.

But other than that, great points, Bill.

Long-time readers are well acquainted with my attitude toward law enforcement in the United States, which could be described tactfully as "skeptical." My argument is not, and never has been, "Cops are bad people." In fact I recognize that they are no different from any other profession, with some mix of slackers, idealists, pragmatic clock-punchers, and people with dangerous personality disorders. The reason so many people dislike cops is not that they are evil people, but because of the role of the police in our social, political, and economic system.

We are encouraged to think of the police Serving & Protecting, or perhaps listlessly filling out a report when our crap gets stolen. That's well and good. The problem is that they are not really "there" to help you. They exist to maintain a social and political power structure, and most of the time you are dealing with them they are actively trying to screw you. On the latter point, this is precisely why astute people know never to say anything to a police officer except "Hello", "Am I under arrest or free to go?", or "I have nothing to say and I want a lawyer." But let's put that aside for the moment and consider the first point more closely.

Nothing makes me feel sketchier as a blogger than to lapse into Marxist rhetoric as social commentary, but I defy anyone to watch the way police respond to public protests and offer a superior alternative explanation. OK, fair enough, there is one caveat: right-wing public rage spasms are permitted. Teabaggers, immigration zealots, and sundry other collections of angry old white people can take to the streets donning semiautomatic rifles and threatening to revolt against the government without fear of molestation by the police. Their misguided activism advances the agenda of the top 1%, so the media and political class define it as socially acceptable. Police treat them accordingly, in addition to being sympathetic to "protesters" who are demographically similar to the average cop. But good lord, get a bunch of people in one place protesting against the powers-that-be and the police are suddenly replaced by the Storm Troopers of America.

You can make or entertain all the excuses you see fit – Lefty protesters are more violent! Teabaggers are well behaved model citizens! You can't block traffic! If you don't have a permit, of course the police will mace you! – but those excuses persuade you alone. We know exactly why they react the way they do. They do it because the people in charge – economically, socially, and politically – use them to send messages when the proles step out of line. Sticking it to The Man by voting for Barack Obama (Ha!) but that's about it. Know your place. There are things one doesn't talk about here, people one does not criticize, and aspects of our system that are not open for debate. If you're feeling rebellious the proper way to express it is to buy some particularly subversive clothing, or maybe to express your individuality by driving an x-treme car of some sort.

This has been true of the United States since our elites rebelled against the British for the right to establish their own social hierarchy with themselves perched atop it. Pick any strike, movement, or protest against the entrenched power structure and you'll see the police (or National Guard) are not intermediaries or keepers-of-peace, but aggressive defenders of the status quo. It's their job. Literally.

This is why "Occupy Wall Street" protesters, as non-threatening and disjointed a bunch of disaffected people as you're likely to find, are subjected to the same "pincering" tactics the NYPD (Our heroes! 9-11! Flags!) made so popular during the 2004 Republican Convention. You know, permit the protesters to enter an area, close off the entrance/exit, and then arrest all of them. That's what happened during all those Tea Party circle jerks, the ones we were told had hundreds of thousands in attendance, right? No, the guy waving the "WE CAME UNARMED…THIS TIME!" sign has nothing to fear from the police. It's the person with the "Why does 1% have all the wealth?" sign that ends up cuffed, in a van, and squinting through pepper spray.

In this instance, it isn't an oversimplification to point out that this says all you need to know about our country.