Only in America

Only in America could someone as obviously incompetent as, the former administrator of the US-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer still get a hearing.  It illustrates why the political elite is not as threatening as would otherwise be possible.  They can do damage, but they can create nothing.

Shut the hell up, already

Q: Why are so many specialists Idiots?

A: The more you know of one subject, the less you know of others.  There is only so much time in the day.  The problem is most specialists don't seem to know this limitation, and spew on and on and on as if it were not so.  Their egos are inflated by achievement in direct proportion to its irrelevance in the greater world.  Shut the hell up, already.

Fine Minds Wallowing

i. "Being an expert in one's field does not necessarily mean said expertise is transferable."
- attributed to A Real Windbag

ii. Obsession is boring.

iii. Fine minds are perfectly capable of wallowing in pedantic philosophy.

Ignorance

America the Ignorant.  The surprise is why anyone is surprised.

The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY. It's no Unibomber Manifesto.  Even the wackos are boring.

School Reform = Nothing

When it comes to talk of educational reform (or any other for that matter), it pretty much is meaningless.  As pointed out in School reform's meager results:

The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren't motivated, even capable teachers may fail.

Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a "good" college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school "reform" is that if students aren't motivated, it's mainly the fault of schools and teachers. The reality is that, as high schools have become more inclusive (in 1950, 40 percent of 17-year-olds had dropped out, compared with about 25 percent today) and adolescent culture has strengthened, the authority of teachers and schools has eroded. That applies more to high schools than to elementary schools, helping explain why early achievement gains evaporate.

Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited "student apathy." The goal of expanding "access" -- giving more students more years of schooling -- tends to lower educational standards. Michael Kirst, an emeritus education professor at Stanford, estimates that 60 percent of incoming community college students and 30 percent of freshmen at four-year colleges need remedial reading and math courses.

Against these realities, school "reform" rhetoric is blissfully evasive. It is often an exercise in extravagant expectations. Even if George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind program had been phenomenally successful (it wasn't), many thousands of children would have been left behind. Now Duncan routinely urges "a great teacher" in every classroom. That would be about 3.7 million "great" teachers -- a feat akin to having every college football team composed of all-Americans. With this sort of intellectual rigor, what school "reform" promises is more disillusion.

This ultimately stems from the fact that too many parents except the school systems to raise their kids for them.   There are other reasons beyond parental laziness.  For one thing, too many parents are forced to work rather than raise their kids.  It's difficult to motivate kids when both parents are exhausted from work.  (True, they could chose not to have kids but the world does not work that way.)  In addition, the U.S. as a whole has come to expect something for nothing, and education is no different.  In addition, due to the Technical Morality pervading every aspect of society, the only conceivable solutions are punishing teachers and principals, and/or throwing money at the problem in hopes it will go away.  No other way is conceivable.  As public policy dulls to the point where nonsense like the "great teacher" drivel quoted above actually is given credence, it's not surprising that school standards remain stagnant.  In other countries, where education is considered a privilege rather than a right, anyone spewing such garbage would not be taken seriously--even to mock.

For any so-called reform to work, what is needed is a reevaluation of values concerning eduction (and economics as well for that matter), and that is most certainly not going to take place in this Age of Mediocrity.  Like suicide, the "Something for Nothing" mentality is so much easier.  Actually attempting anything requiring intellectual rigor is beyond the products some call leaders and academicians.  A toxic environment nurtures stupidity at all levels.

The Dangers of Believing Your Own Propaganda

As I've stressed repeatedly for years, there is a great danger in believing your own propaganda (or if I'm feeling a little earthier I might say "Don't believe your own bullshit").  Patrick Cockburn recently wrote a short piece about this truism with respect to the government of Israel:

An old Israeli saying describing various less-than-esteemed military leaders says: "He was so stupid that even the other generals noticed." The same derisive remark could be applied almost without exception to the present generation of Israeli politicians.

Such healthy skepticism among Israelis about the abilities of their military and political leaders has unfortunately ebbed in recent decades. As a result, Israelis are left perplexed as to why their wars, military interventions and armed actions have so often ended in failure since the 1973 war, despite the superiority of their armed forces

The latest example of this is the assault on the Gaza aid convoy by naval commandos, a confrontation initiated by Israel which thereby ensured that the convoy's organizers achieved their objectives to a degree beyond their wildest dreams. By using assault troops in a police action against civilians with predictably bloody results Israel managed to focus international attention on its blockade of Gaza, which the world had hitherto largely ignored. The Israeli action infuriated Turkey, once its strongest ally in the region, and strengthened the claim of Hamas to Palestinian leadership.

The capacity of Israel to shoot itself in the foot needs explanation. From the beginning the operation was idiotic, since Israel was always likely to look bad after any confrontation between élite troops and civilian protesters. Even more ludicrous is the Israeli explanation that their élite and heavily armed soldiers were at risk of their lives because they had to use thick gloves to protect their hands when sliding down cables from a helicopter and therefore could not use their weapons.

[...]

The problem is that nobody believes Israeli propaganda as much as Israelis. Pro-Palestinian activists often lament the fluency and mendacity of Israeli spokesmen on the airwaves and the pervasive influence of Israel's supporters abroad. But, in reality, these PR campaigns are Israel's greatest weakness, because they distort Israelis' sense of reality. Defeats and failures are portrayed as victories and successes.

The slaughter of civilians is justified as a military necessity or somehow the fault of the other side. Opponents are demonized as bloodthirsty terrorists. Comforted by such benign accounts of their activities, Israeli leaders are consumed by arrogance because they come to believe they have never made a mistake. Denial that errors have occurred makes it extremely difficult to sack generals or ministers, however gross their incompetence or record of failure.

Many Israelis privately take their own propaganda with a pinch of salt, though the number is diminishing. But abroad, the most third-rate Israeli politicians strut before fawning audiences as heroic defenders of the state. Not surprisingly they return home with a dangerously inflated idea of their own abilities and in a perilously self-important mood.

The Israeli propaganda machine, official and private, has been running full throttle in the last few days justifying the assault on the aid convoy to Gaza. Probably spokesmen feel they are performing well given the weakness of their case. In fact, they do nothing but harm to Israel. The greater their success in denying gross and culpable mistakes, the more likely it is that the perpetrators will hold their jobs – and the more likely it is that the mistakes will be endlessly repeated.

 And as a result, the US is beginning to re-evaluate it's relationship with this tiny little country that, beyond feelings of a moral obligation to support, has no real strategic significance and is becoming more of a liability with each passing day.  (The moral obligation will fade as new generations, which have never seen a death camp tattoo, ceases to care about the history.  In the West, a short attention span is the norm.)  Hence, the Israelis would do well to replace their leaders with those whom realize the danger (of course, they won't).  See Also.

Link.

The New American Dream

"The new American Dream is to get very rich and still be regarded as a victim."
                              - Charles Simic