Why Teachers In Low Tax States May Have No Choice Other Than To Leave Their Profession

Graphs tell the basic story of why so many are bailing out of teaching (From Money magazine, August, p. 66)

The news ('I Didn't Really Have A Choice', MONEY,  August, p. 62, by Jennifer Calfas)  that dedicated teachers around the nation are ditching their jobs because of low pay and dwindling benefits is not something this country can afford.   But as the graphic shows, is quite understandable given the squeeze our national economic model has put on these stewards of education. Those like Mallory Heath, presented as one example in the piece (among several) -  who had to leave her job as an English teacher in Arizona's Chandler School District  - because she realized she couldn't even afford to go to the ER for a medical emergency.


Mallory Heath - had to quit teaching after a health wake up call.

In 31- year old Mallory's case, her moment of truth arrived one night in October, 2017 when she was unable to speak  for 12 minutes.  She couldn't write or talk as she usually could and her words came out jumbled and nonsensical. Reading about her ordeal in many ways reminded me of the speech aphasia Janice experienced in the fall of October, 2016 - triggered by a TIA (transient ischemic attack). Fortunately, I was able to quickly discern from her rapid finger pointing - at a note tacked to the fridge - that she wanted to go to the Memorial Hospital stroke unit. I phoned 9-11 immediately and within a half hour she was in the ER stroke unit - being cared for- and with neurological tests run,  Plavix  (blood thinner) given subsequently.

Mallory subsequently found out  her aphasia was migraine-associated, and we learned (p. 64):

"Amid the  terrifying episode, Heath chose not to go to the emergency room. She knew she couldn't afford it."

Further, quoting Heath in the article:

"I realized, how often do I put my health on the line because I just don't have the funds to take care of myself""

And so:

"Almost a year later Heath has left the profession she calls her identity."

In many ways this Hobson's choice in respect of a coveted career was foisted on her by her state, which opted for low taxes as opposed to paying teachers and other civil servants. Arizona is but one of a number of states in Reepo land - including West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, North Carolina and others - going the lower tax or tax cut route. So they were unable to properly pay their first line of civil servants - educators.

 As reported in The Nation, July 30-Aug. 6,  p. 22,  "without the Oklahoma income tax cuts implemented between 2009 and 2016, there would have been $356 million available", e,g. to cover higher teacher salaries and enhanced benefits.  Further: "Arizona, Kansas, North Carolina and Oklahoma are among the  states that passed income tax cuts rather than restore spending on classroom, despite all four seeing huge drops in per pupil spending over the past decade."  In Arizona alone, where Mallory taught, "K-12 funding fell by nearly 37 percent" between  2008 and 2015.  Of course, this is disgraceful, and unworthy of any nation - or state- that claims to put its children first.

The MONEY article featured talks with a half dozen teachers who left and their reasons, including years long salary freezes, second or third jobs taken to make ends meet and classrooms "filled to the brim with students amid teacher shortages and dwindling funding".

Further:

"As pay fell or grew stagnant, their costs for health insurance rose. Meanwhile, a public employee pension crisis left teachers concerned about attaining a financially stable retirement."


In respect of the last, I had already (Feb. 13) cited the parlous condition of Colorado's state pension fund (PERA)  from a Sunday Denver Post  piece which observed:
"PERA is barreling toward its second funding crisis in a decade...Any attempts to water down a proposed reform package could leave the retirement system that 1 in 10 Coloradans depend on as a replacement for Social Security in grave financial peril. "
Adding:  "PERA has only 58.1 percent of the money it owes in future retirement checks."

But a potentially more toxic dynamic appears to also be at work as expressed by another teacher (Brian Steinberg) in the Philadelphia School District.  According to Steinberg "It's not just the pay, it's a profession that should be treated almost like doctors, but we're treated like babysitters."

The takeaway from his comment is that even if many teachers now abandoning their profession might be prepared to put up with all the stress and strain from the meager remuneration - the lack of respect is the killer. Why work and slave all hours of the day (and night) when you can't get a scintilla of respect from the larger society?

Much of this, obviously, is because of the ignorance and myths spread about teaching - i.e. it's a cushy job because it ends at 2:30 p.m. or whatever (in any case "not 8 to 5"), not  processing all the indecipherable homework, test papers, reports and other assignments that must be marked. But since our society is replete with dummies who know nothing -and many take after the top know nothing - this is a byproduct.  By contrast the more educated and intelligent citizens of Germany accord teachers proper respect, and demonstrate it with concomitant pay and benefits.

Another piece of idiocy has to do with myths surrounding "long" summer vacations and the great unwashed mass of Americans believing teachers just lollygag in the Sun every day or watch TV soaps while gobbling Twinkies.  No remote consciousness of the educator workshops, specialized training courses (e.g. in physics and chemistry)  or volunteer activities teachers undertake  - OR the temporary jobs in retail, fast food  etc. to try to make ends meet.

But  I suspect another more malign aspect is at work, driving the disrespect and lack of pay, benefits in Trumpdom, especially.  That is,  the entrenched anti-intellectualism which has been an abiding feature of U.S. society almost since the year dot.   I appreciated this backward strain even more on coming across some personal notes  (again unearthed by Janice in communication with other members of ancestry.com) penned by a teaching ancestor, Jacob Brumbaugh - ca. 1898.

My 19th century ancestor Jacob Brumbaugh, who was heralded as a "great teacher"  in the local (Philadelphia) press- once he reached the college level.

He wrote that: "I don't believe I received the respect I deserved teaching, until I became a college teacher."

Which is kind of counterintuitive , given that college teachers, professors, depend on high school teachers to have properly prepared the students who end up within their hallowed ivy walls.

Much of the nation's anti-intellectual strain has been documented in Richard Hofstader's book, 'Anti-Intellectualism In American Life'  Hofstadter delves into the reasons that intellectuals – mainly on the Left – are detested with such verve by the American Right. The reasons often aren’t pretty, or even comprehensible,  and in fact are often downright puerile and smack of envy, i.e. that the Right simply lacks the brainpower of the nation’s liberals. 

As recently as four years ago, this was revived with the Righties' attacks on Neil deGrasse Tyson in the news 'Cosmos' series.  The attack arrived in a despicable article in a National Review story by Charles C. W. Cooke entitled “Smarter Than Thou”. Therein, Cooke whined about “the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.” 

This was soon followed by a contribution from Fox host Greg Gutfield who, during one panel exchange, burped out- regarding Neil Tyson:

"I hate this guy! I remember hearing Chris Hardwick on a podcast talk about Neil deGrasse Tyson and he was just salivating. White liberal nerds love this guy so much, he could defecate on them like Martin Bashir’s fantasies and they would dance in the streets.”

So clearly, if such contempt could be held for an astrophysicist like Tyson, how much less respect do you think these knuckledraggers (and most of the nation enthralled by FOX News) would have for secondary school teachers?

The good news for Mallory is she landed on her feet, having recently started a job (p. 67) as a literary curriculum specialist at Pearson Education - a multinational corporation.  Working for a corporation may not have been her ideal gig but it "will keep her close to the profession she loves".

That's more than can be said for many others who continue to leave, and find they have to enter totally different careers, e.g. bartenders, nurses, auto mechanics, to survive.

Such departures may become more common as credit card debt rapidly increases (cf. 'Consumer Spending Rise Has Dark Side', WSJ, 7/ 16, p. B1) now having risen $24.6 billion in May, or nearly double  relative to a month earlier. This according to a Federal Reserve Report. 

No matter how much some will insist "Well, if they really loved teaching they'd find a way",  in the end financial reality will catch up even to the dedicated holdouts.  No one, after all, wants to be hounded by debt collectors or forced to declare bankruptcy.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-c-davis/80218/soft-targets-the-muddled-and-anti-intellectual-american-brains-that-made-election-meddling-possible

Excerpt:

"Trump voters were the target before they were Trump voters. The prerequisite for expending energy on such an initiative was an analysis of the fears, appetites and intellectual wattage of the targets. These are the people who could be seduced into bad mortgages, Jimmy Swaggart, Colonel Sanders, cabbage patch dolls, Mitch McConnell, the Kardashians, and styrofoam.

It's the soft, muddled collective anti-intellectual center that made success possible. Yes - something sinister did get into the minds of, if not millions, the smartly located thousands. The soft spasmodic brain is now at the head but it was put there by the soft spasmodic guts of the country being fed whoppers. Even the expression - red meat - speaks to this. Feeding his base, "red meat." Disgusting imagery for a metaphysical reality."

GOP Distrusts College? What Manner Of Numskull Inhabits This Party?

Above: Loyola freshman Theology class, ca. 1964.

When I first arrived on the Loyola University (New Orleans) campus on scholarship, it was perhaps the headiest experience of my life up to then. Not only in terms of the new found freedom (from overly solicitous parents) but the sheer exposure to so many novel ideas in the courses. Apart from that, in the fall of 1964, there were the 'bull sessions' when opinions and ideas were exchanged with other students in the dorm (Biever Hall).

The college experience, then, was one to open a mind and also to excite it to plumb new depths. For this Loyola had the good sense to sponsor intellectual debates and lectures through the 1964-65 term, including one involving the French Existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre.  That exposure, in fact, began my path to atheism after reading his book ('Being and Nothingness') available at the Loyola Bookstore.

No one at that time, certainly not me or even the conservatives attending Loyola as well (most of whom were backing Barry Goldwater in fall of 1964) could conceive of college being a 'bad thing' or causing "negative effects".  Yet that is exactly what the case seems to be now with the Republican Party's perception.

A new Pew Research Center poll released on Monday revealed that there is one U.S. institution perceived through a larger partisan divide than even the media: It’s college.

This is nothing short of astounding, especially given - for the first time ever- a majority (58 percent)  of Republicans believe  "colleges are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country", according to Pew.

Specifically, the poll found that positive or affirmative views of college for Repubs under the age of 50 sunk by 21 percentage points from 2015 to 2017. This is nothing short of breathtaking. Even more flabbergasting, given conservos since William Buckley always strongly advocated the intellect,  65 percent of ALL identified conservatives now say colleges and universities have a negative impact on the country. (Positive  views of college even among Repub college graduates have declined 11 percent in the past two years.)

What gives here? What's going on? I suspect there are two primary perceptions at work: one is that colleges and universities are almost exclusively the preserve of the "left".  The other is that they are preserves of "political correctness" and all the academic theories the Right has come to hate, e.g. anthropogenic climate change, Darwinian evolution etc.

The former is more a pathetic excuse given most conservos have always been more interested in making money than the world of ideas.  Or teaching ideas.  Hence, they've leaned to business, becoming Wall Street big shots or CEOS, or running their own companies - not plodding the lecture halls of colleges with pay about one tenth what a banker earns -- so the whining rings hollow.

The second might have slightly more heft, but not much. This is because much of the Right reads into anything that isn't outright in the face as "politically incorrect".  Also, their opposition to highly intellectual theories have been known since the year  dot.

In his book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,  Richard Hofstadter delves into the reasons that intellectuals – mainly on the Left – have been historically detested  by the American Right. The reasons often aren’t pretty, or even comprehensible,  and in fact are often downright puerile and smack of envy, i.e. that the Right simply detests the brainpower of the nation’s liberals.

One of the best examples is provided in Hofstadter 's account of how Adlai Stevenson was relentlessly skewered ca. the 1952  presidential campaign. (pp. 221-22). This included barbarous and savage verbal assaults in the media(p. 225), portraying Stevenson as "a Harvard lace- cuffed liberal who trilled his speeches in a fruity voice.".  As Hofstadter notes (ibid.) Stevenson's wit was also detested even more than his intellect. Of course, wit often functions in the service of intellect, to amplify intellect's intent and render its goals more efficacious. Or to smooth the delivery of information related to weighty issues.

Fast forward to 2014 and one finds a National Review story by Charles C. W. Cooke entitled “Smarter Than Thou”. Therein, Cooke whined about “the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.”

Then there  Fox host Greg Gutfield who, during one panel exchange on the news 'Cosmos' series,, burped out:

"I hate this guy! I remember hearing Chris Hardwick on a podcast talk about Neil deGrasse Tyson and he was just salivating. White liberal nerds love this guy so much, he could defecate on them like Martin Bashir’s fantasies and they would dance in the streets.”

This, spoken by a confirmed moron who isn’t fit to lick the soles of Tyson’s shoes. Which brings us to Cooke’s polemic against Tyson in the National Review.  We pretty well know what’s coming as we eye an illustration of Tyson on the cover, drawn to look like a self-satisfied Elite who looks down his nose at any and all crackers.  This despite the fact Neil deGrasse Tyson hardly gives off that vibe in real life. He's an affable gentleman who's accepting of all and that trait carried over into his Cosmos appearances.

The actual article (it’s more like recovered anti-intellectual dreck from the 1950s)  more than lives up to the cover art’s promise of the “green-eyed monster”, as Cooke expands his attack beyond one of the country’s pre-eminent scientists to include policy-oriented journalists, economists, other scientists, and “anybody who conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.” (Cooke also drags in economist Paul Krugman and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, neither of whom he considers the real deal. Instead, he argues that the emphasis by liberals, on things like evidence, rationality, and empiricism is purely insincere,  adding it’s “nothing more than a way to signal that you are better than southern, politically conservative, culturally traditional” types.)

If one critically reads much of the Right polemics against climate science or evolution, one finds the same sort of tawdry, two bit attacks. It is then but a small step to generalize the animus to the sources of funding and intellectualism that harbor such "nerds": Colleges and universities!

Sadly, with these latest Pew survey results the Repubs have merely shown even more convincingly they are the new "Whigs" - a party bereft of ideas and solidly anti-intellectual. Just look at their god-forsaken "health plan".

Obama Takes On "Trumpism" In His State of The Union

Obama educated Trumpsters on the nature of government, democracy, the limits of power and citizenship in his SOTU speech.

Lord knows Trumpsters need a clue. Unable to reason their way out of anything, they more or less follow their insane, splenetic blowhard no matter what he says. As one Trump follower put it in a recent TIME article on the Trump phenomenon, "It's time to get insane and shake things up!"  So given just "shaking things up" not a  useful prescription for much of anything it was superb to see Obama giving his best trying to educate these knuckle draggers to the role of citizenship in the United States.

As one UK Guardian lead article put it:

"Obama’s rhetoric reflects his study of the nation’s founding documents – the US constitution and Declaration of Independence – as well as basic texts of our civic culture, from the Bible to the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D Roosevelt, John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr."

Which is more than needed, given most Trumpsters  in their hostile and arrogant anti-intellectualism, are proud not to be familiar with the basic texts of our civic culture. But then, this is the profile for those who can't even see that reducing the members of one the world's largest religions to "ragheads" plays into ISIS' hands. Or yapping that anyone who supports respect for the vast majority of this religion is "bending over for ragheads" - when in fact they are unwilling to take the vile path into dehumanization - which almost always precedes genocide and "ethnic cleansing".

Obama was no less severe in taking these knotheads to task for sabre rattling when the U.S. is clearly - bar none -the world's 'hammer' not anyone's 'nail'. As the Prez put it:

"The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It's not even close,"

Hence, to idiotically proclaim "World War Three" or "the world is on fire" (as Paul Ryan did in one op-ed) actually confers on these vermin what they want: the equal power of a nation state - when they are merely parasites occupying a failed state. Obama's words:

"Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence.  That's the story ISIL wants to tell; that's the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don't need to build them up to show that we're serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world's largest religions,"

But again, his words likely were missed by the pseudo-macho Trumpsters.

Ahead of State of the Union speech, Obama has regrets over US political divisions

Obama's final foray into our toxic politics was a tour-de-force of intellectual power but which was likely lost on most of the audience.  As Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC put it, "the (TV) audience was dumbed down by Trumpism".  So when Obama said "the people should pick their representatives instead of the politicians picking their voters" it likely sailed over their heads.

Why this anti-intellectual strain? Where did it originate? Let's first agree that Trump isn’t the cause, just the symptom. In fact, a pervasive anti-intellectualism  runs through the roots of American culture and has for decades. Richard Hofstadter in his terrific book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life puts his finger (p. 133) on:

"such a thing as the generically-prejudiced mind. Studies of political tolerance and ethnic prejudice have shown that zealous church-going and rigid religious faith are among the most important correlates of political and ethnic animosity."

But it has to go beyond religious aspects, in order to account for the teeming millions who hate intellectuals but aren't necessarily religious. One possible insight  raised by Hofstadter was an engrained tendency by the undereducated to tie the exercise of intellect to being "effeminate". He presented the example of Adlai Stevenson and how he was mercilessly criticized by the media for his speeches and choice of words in the 1950s.

Hofstadter noted that especially during the 1952 presidential campaign,  Stevenson's wit was detested even more than his intellect. Of course, wit functions in the service of intellect, to amplify intellect's intent and render its goals more efficacious. Or to smooth the delivery of information related to weighty issues. For this Adlai was repeatedly slandered and referred to as a "comedian" or "clown" and portrayed in cartoons with a jester's cap and bells, e.g.



The New York Daily News (cf. p. 227) once referred to him as "Adelaide" and charged that he "trilled his speeches in a fruity voice."

Thereby rendering an additional slur - one that directly tied intellectual display or wit with homosexuality. Reinforced by the description of his followers as "typical Harvard lace-cuff liberals." In certain sectors of society today, this pernicious virus can still be seen - in many of our public high schools. There, day in and day out "geeks", "dweebs" and "dorks" are relentlessly assaulted by feeble-minded "jocks" for openly displaying any intellect. Many are also accused of being "gay" simply because they prefer the life of the mind and books- to football, gang hijinks, mailbox 'baseball' or cow-tipping.

Obama's confronting of the Trumpsters in his speech, was therefore somewhat like the class valedictorian confronting the high school football team and trying to teach them nuanced approaches - as in national security (forming a coalition instead of acting like the world's cop) - and respecting others even if their skin, religion or whatever is different. In other words a nearly impossible task given the jocks would likely take any such would-be educator and stuff him into a locker.

And so we have the basis for what now approaches nearly a civil war, given the partisan divide. Another element feeding the rampant anti-intellectualism (which also denies man-made climate change)  has to be the media - and here we come to FOX News. Incredibly, Fox News is currently the most trusted news network in the country. The problem is that “Fox News” is a misnomer. The network,  to quote Jon Stewart, is more of a “relentlessly activist” organization for conservative causes than an intellectually honest conveyor of information.

Don't take my word! There are to date at least seven academic studies that have found that Fox News’ viewership constitutes the most misinformed audience .  From climate change to healthcare, the Iraq War, to Obama's allegedly Muslim faith,  the zombies mesmerized by Fox News are more confident about falsehoods than viewers of any other news network. Several studies even found a positive correlation between how often one watches Fox News and the degree to which one’s worldview is misinformed.

Hence, one can regard FOX News as a breeding factory for anti-intellectuals, and given Obama's SOTU speech, the number one source of anti-citizens undermining the Republic. In this sense, Obama was far too generous when he insisted our citizen bonds "must be based on trust",  because well, how can you have a faithful discussion of facts with a purblind idiot who only accepts falsehoods from a propaganda factory? It's a non-starter. Citizen mutual trust must depend on all citizens having the same access to genuine facts, history and objective truth. If one side is co-opted by bullshit and anti-facts then all bets are off. 

But look, what’s most dangerous about Fox News isn’t its repeated failure to accurately report the facts, but its discouraging that all important form of rigorous curiosity called critical thinking. If people want a single cause to blame for the gradual decline of the American empire, direct your wagging finger at the devaluation of critical thinking skills.

Because make no mistake, any appreciation of Obama's State of the Union speech, whether his comparison of climate denialism to denial of Sputnik, e.g.

"Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn't deny Sputnik was up there. We didn't argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon."

Or to his nuanced argument for confronting ISIL but not doing it alone and half-assed, requires at least a modicum of critical thinking. It cannot be appreciated by a brain stewed in endless propaganda so that its medial pre-frontal cortex sees Obama only as 'Obummer' or "Obozo'. In other words, as the "enemy" or  "the other" despite his having fought to prevent cuts to veterans' and other benefits - which their weak memories forget all the Reepos wanted.

Obama sounded a definite note of hope and optimism but that was predicated on all of us taking the citizenship seriously. Alas, that cannot happen when one half the population doesn't know which end is up and is prepared to follows so-called "news" networks - that are really propaganda factories - blindly.

As Thomas Jefferson put it in his 'Notes on Virginia':

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED."

Jefferson understood that a citizen "depository" of false beliefs and misinformation would ultimately destroy the Republic on account of the regression of citizens' minds. He understood that citizens, as part of their duty, had to strive to attain mental improvement including being able to read in a focused fashion and not believe everything they read. Another Founder, John Adams, wrote:

“Facts are stubborn things,”

But epitomizing the blind stupidity of the Right, their favorite President,  Ronald Reagan,  famously misquoted him:

“Facts are stupid things,”

 Which could be the motto of all those who get their "values" regularly confirmed  via a reality filtered through FOX News or Limbaugh

Sadly, Obama's lofty goals to eradicate our toxic politics cannot be achieved until the source of that  toxicity is removed. As people learned after the Rwanda genocide, there is free speech and then there is hate speech. NO civil society can long tolerate the latter without facing destruction from within. The U.S. may well be able to put down every 'bully' around the world, but it cannot sustain division from within. United we stand, divided we fall - and it will be a long, hard fall.

One final note: Gov. Nikki Haley, who delivered the GOP response, even called out Trump and his angry bandwagon by admonishing followers to "resist the siren call of angry voices".  But, of course, anyone who's ever had to deal with a bunch of two years olds pitching tantrums knows that probably won't get very far before she's skewered by some of those angry voices. Most likely from right wing propaganda radio.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/65527/of-obamas-superb-sotu-and-supreme-fatheads

Excerpt:

"Pathologically playing today at your local Bund rally is the selfsame debauchery that sickens American politics from time to time — what with its "voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background"; and always, in some rhetorical version, warning us of "existential threats" being slighted by the commander in chief."

Revenge on the Nerds II: Why Conservos Hate Smartiepants Liberals

In his book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,  Richard Hofstadter delves into the reasons that intellectuals – mainly on the Left – are detested with such verve by the American Right. The reasons often aren’t pretty, or even comprehensible,  and in fact are often downright puerile and smack of envy, i.e. that the Right simply lacks the brainpower of the nation’s liberals.

 One of the best insights into hatred of the Left intellectual is provided in Hofstadter 's account of how Adlai Stevenson was relentlessly skewered ca. the 1952  presidential campaign. (pp. 221-22). This included barbarous and savage verbal assaults in the media(p. 225).  As Hofstadter notes (ibid.) Stevenson's wit was detested even more than his intellect. Of course, wit often functions in the service of intellect, to amplify intellect's intent and render its goals more efficacious. Or to smooth the delivery of information related to weighty issues.

 For this Adlai was repeatedly slandered and referred to as a "comedian" or "clown" and portrayed in cartoons with a jester's cap and bells. The New York Daily News (cf. p. 227) once referred to him as "Adelaide" and charged that he "trilled his speeches in a fruity voice."  Fruity voice? Hmmmm…so the implication was that Adlai was also a “fruit” – eh? And hence the generalization might be inferred by the knuckle-draggers that all intellectuals were “fruits”.

 Thereby rendering an additional slur - one that directly ties intellectual display or wit with homosexuality. This was reinforced by the description of Stevenson’s followers as "typical Harvard lace-cuff liberals." At lower levels of society today, this pernicious virus can still be seen - in our public high schools. There, day in and day out "geeks", "dweebs" and "dorks" are relentlessly assaulted by feeble-minded "jocks" for openly displaying any intellect. Many are also accused of being "gay" simply because they prefer the life of the mind and books- to football, mailbox 'baseball' or cow-tipping.

No wonder little has changed.

 We now fast forward to the 21^st century  (“Revenge II”) and the latest screeds against smart people on the Left as embodied in a despicable article in the recent National Review story by Charles C. W. Cooke entitled “Smarter Than Thou”. Therein, Cooke whined about “the extraordinarily puffed-up ‘nerd’ culture that has of late started to bloom across the United States.”

 “Started of late”? You effing moron! It was always there, but only recently has occupied more public prominence because more of these Left intellectual voices are afforded platforms they weren’t before. We now have an intellectual president, after all, who really did earn his place at Harvard and wasn’t allowed in as  a “legacy” – as Bush Jr. A fact that continually eats at the Right’s innards.

Then there is the Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, whose voice has consistently skewered the assorted shibboleths of the economic Right.  Finally, we beheld the charismatic and articulate Neil deGrasse Tyson who most recently provided perspective and voice to the remake of the Cosmos series. Tyson frequently interjected examples of scientific discoveries that infuriate the Right, especially to do with global warming, and evolution. (Presenting nearly one whole episode on each, with enough detailed, documented evidence to even educate a high school science flunk out).

But these presentations particularly enraged the Righties to distraction. A month ago, for example, it was none other than Fox host Greg Gutfield who, during one panel exchange, burped out:

I hate this guy! I remember hearing Chris Hardwick on a podcast talk about Neil deGrasse Tyson and he was just salivating. White liberal nerds love this guy so much, he could defecate on them like Martin Bashir’s fantasies and they would dance in the streets.”

This, spoken by a confirmed moron who isn’t fit to lick the soles of Tyson’s shoes.

Which brings us to Cooke’s polemic against Tyson in the National Review.  We pretty well know what’s coming as we eye an illustration of Tyson on the cover, drawn to look like a self-satisfied Elite who looks down his nose at any and all crackers.  This despite the fact Neil deGrasse Tyson hardly gives off that vibe in real life. He's an affable gentleman who's accepting of all and that trait carried over into his Cosmos appearances.

The actual article (it’s more like recovered anti-intellectual dreck from the 1950s)  more than lives up to the cover art’s promise of the “green-eyed monster”, as Cooke expands his attack beyond one of the country’s pre-eminent scientists to include policy-oriented journalists, economists, other scientists, and “anybody who conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.”

 Oh, wearing glasses? So you don't know about the link between poor eyesight (myopia from young) and I.Q.? Babbling about statistics? Well perhaps because your I.Q. is too low to grasp even the most basic statistics, say like simple correlation and linear regression. So obviously you wouldn’t be able to handle Poisson statistics!

 Cooke, realizing that he’s fired a broadside against anyone who dares to actually do things like examine evidence or consider the logic of an argument, hastens to add:

 “The pose is, of course, little more than a ruse — most of our professional ‘nerds’ being, like Mrs. Doubtfire, stereotypical facsimiles of the real thing.”

Which is not only incomprehensible but misplaced. For one thing, if those like Tyson were mere “facsimiles” I am sure Cooke wouldn’t have been allotted so much prime magazine space to go after him and his cohort.  I mean why joust at a windmill facsimile of a “monster”? You’d have to be mad or crazies, as the well attuned former IRS official Ms. Lerner described the Right in a recent email to a friend. I mean, you have to be crazy to assert anyone (“nerd” or other) is a “facsimile” especially given you don’t know enough about their work to make that determination!

 But this is what Cooke – who’s probably never even taken a high school physics course-  argues!  That it’s all a big pose and all these people are just dummies pretending to be smart because they are “popular kids indulging in a fad.”

Hmmmm…..looks to me more like a pathetic excuse for a hack practicing a massive exercise in sour grapes, because he knows in his heart he will never be as gifted as those he mocks.  So he projects his obtuseness on his targets and hopes enough people will bite. Well, maybe the readers of the National Review and a bunch of FOX-ites but few people with any sense.

 How else explain calling Tyson a poseur, a stretch that even his extraordinarily gullible audience isn’t likely to buy. Oh, Cooke grudgingly admits that Tyson “has formal scientific training,”  you know the type that prepares one to do any kind of serious research?   But he refuses to go so far as to allow that the Director of the Hayden Planetarium is actually a scientist-  as opposed to some hipster in a lab coat costume.

 But the poseur scorn isn’t reserved only for Tyson.. This cornpone twit Cooke also drags in economist Paul Krugman and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, neither of whom he considers the real deal. Instead, he argues that the emphasis by liberals, on things like evidence, rationality, and empiricism is purely insincere,  adding it’s “nothing more than a way to signal that you are better than southern, politically conservative, culturally traditional” types.

 WhAAAAT?   Well, if those “southern, political conservative, culturally traditional” types aren’t well versed in science then we are superior – at least in science! (I do grant them other superior advantages in: picking out the best pickups, hunting ducks,  collecting guns, and finding chapters and verses for Bible quotes…..oh and cooking up great pulled pork!)

 But to do like Cooke does, and declare a whole swatch of Left intellectuals “insincere” because he’s too dumb to grasp what the hell they’re doing, is well……pathetic to the point of sickening.

 Sadly, this  whining BWAAHAA! behavior is hardly an anomaly. “You think you’re so cool” actually became the basis for an entire book by the formerly named Fox News dunce, Greg Gutfeld (the same goober who declared white nerds love to be “defecated on” by black elites like Tyson.)  Gutfield wrote an entire book called Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You.

 It’s main talking point is that it gives the delirious, brainless Right base a bunch of pointy-headed Left intellectuals on the coasts to hate – while the banksters and corporate tycoons like the Kochs (who really fucked them) get to walk free without any complaints. It’s called adjusting the target and generally works for the lowest quintile of intellects. The key is to head off hatred of the genuine elite targets at the pass, convince the base not to listen to the critics’ arguments in the first place. Hence, they can’t actually hear the evidence for global warming if they’re too busy slagging on the messenger for thinking he’s so smart with his PhDs and his facts.

 Which 'Romper Room' is exactly where conservative leadership wants their audiences to be, and where most of them (who can’t think for themselves and lack adequate education) are. So much also for the conservative claim that individuals who work hard toward the top should be rewarded for their contributions to society. Not if you’re a successful liberal scientist, writer, or even just an actor. Oh no!  You are now one of the “termites of life” – who presumably should be extinguished, if not physically then by prohibiting your words,  ideas from gaining a major forum. (You can, of course, blog to your heart's content for a few dozen people.)

There's no sign this hostility of the American Right to the intellect will change any time soon, so very likely we will soon have 'Revenge on the Nerds III'.

Is Mikey Really So Effin' Dumb He Can't Tell a White Man from non-White?

Among the different faces that define the Caucasion or WHITE race. (from Wikipedia)


Ok, I know my youngest bro (aka Pastor Mike)  is a dumb shit, as assorted commentators have observed (see e.g. recent Mail Branes). He's ignorant, semi-educated, obtuse and all these things fuse together in his fervent commitment to anti-intellectualism and  Christian fundamentalism. We know, for example, that the fundamentalist brain is the archetype for anti-intellectualism in the US of A (See, for example, Richard Hofstadter's 'Anti-Intellectualism in American Life')


Anyway, Mike's latest Macguffin, apart from claiming he's 'checkmated' me again (in his dreams) - after he saw my blog post on evangelicals, sending his neurons into the crapper, is that I mislabeled one of the Boston bombers as "white". He implied I was "blind" as well as ignorant, and actually showed the image of the younger dude with his face in full front view.

So wait, Mike, then what is the guy's race? Black? (My belief is this dope thinks the guy and his bro are Muslims, so are both "black")

But as the Wiki article observes:

"In the United States, the term Caucasian has been mainly used to describe a group commonly called Whites, as defined by the government and Census Bureau.Between 1917 and 1965, immigration to the US was restricted by a national origins quota. The Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923) decided that Asian Indians were ineligible for citizenship because, though deemed "Caucasian" anthropologically, they were not white like European descendants since most laypeople did not consider them to be white people. This decision represented something of a contradiction because the court had itself equated "white persons" with "Caucasian" in the earlier Ozawa v. United States case, wherein it had declared skin colour irrelevant in determining whether or not a person could be classified as "white" and instead emphasized ancestry."

The article also notes:

"Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid) is the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia/Middle East, Asia Minor, Central Asia and South Asia.^. Historically, the term was used for many people from these regions, without regard necessarily to skin tone"

We see immediately here the complexity of issues of race with skin tone, and also degrees of conflation in the U.S. usage.  But irrespective of that, and in the context of either quote, the two brothers,  Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev -  meet the American criteria for being defined as "Caucasian" via the census, and hence "of the white race" - no matter how much half bro Mike's Islamic-obsessed brain may insist otherwise. Note also the two brothers actually originated from the region of the Northern Caucasus (of which Chechnya is part)  whence the term "Caucasian" arose!

One more thing, if this turkey can't even parse the race of a perp, how the hell can we trust him on anything to do with evolution? (Apart from the fact he flunked the evolution test  - which he submitted to me in secret, scoring a whopping 1 out of 50)

Methinks Mike needs to convert his whole blog to a graphics art forum, since one thing he does seem to be able to do is create garish  .jpg cartoons of himself and others, as well as demons. Hell, I've already begun to DL page by page to send to my great niece Shayle, a psychotherapist. I told her to regard it as material very useful to diagnose paranoid schizophrenia.  I also asked her to consider possibly committing the little fucker to the nearest asylum.

Who knows? He may end up in the same place as James Eagen Holmes if the latter manages to escape the death penalty and is found insane. Then the two of them can draw their demons together and also exchange views on the best way to clean a semi-automatic. In their minds!