Decay + Friday Reads 3/6/20
Currently, Americans can look at any topical issue and witness institutional decay. Very few things work right compared to their preconceived idea of how they should operate. The entities are inefficient, are incompetent or have strayed so far from the initial mission that they have forgotten their true purpose. There are a variety of reasons for this.
The first is simply that institutions decay over time. The initial founder or founders are replaced by individuals without the same zeal, competency or commitment to the objective as the founder(s) had been. This is a feature because the traits and abilities selected for in founding a successful operation or entity are different than the traits and abilities that get selected for in one's rise up a corporate or organizational ladder. Carl Icahn bemoaned modern CEOs as the fraternity president. They would not be your best frat brother, but the president was the guy who enough people got along with and likely provided some booze or girls for the introverts.
America's institutional decay has a physiognomy component. The faces looking at us in television interviews as health commissioners, bureaucrats, scientists and politicians are plucked from the left's coalition. Not the strongest of coalitions for competency per Spandrell's bioleninism. The left turned every single entity into a patronage program to reward everyone in their coalition to further gain more power. This could work when it was just marginal jobs, but not the entire organization. The Washington metro's maintenance department has nearly derailed trains and killed passengers all because the entire staff resembles a Joe Biden voter collage. They just check the box; they do not do the actual maintenance.
There is a cultural element, too. Long gone are the days of pioneers and explorers probing Antarctica. If you watch a documentary on the people stationed there, you will come away thinking, "that's reddit on ice". It is a disservice to the men who went on the "Worst Journey In The World" to equate Antarctic endeavors with the quirky losers there now (read that book, forget the documentaries). Same applies to the medical field, "reddit with pills". NASA is "reddit in space". The upper middle class in America that has replaced the Boomers or Silent Generation is a reddit crowd. It is the SWPL reaching middle age and middle management. This subset are not the jovial, happy SWPLs, but the nerdier crowd with better degrees.
It is also a crowd that has been beaten via schooling to always follow the rules and to always defer to an authority to solve a problem or dispute. Risk taking, adventurism and vitalism are masculine behaviors. Schooling tries to destroy those traits. It creates adults who get scared at deviations from the status quo and desire someone else to tell them that the experts say. Companies go from energetic founders to bugmen who end all gun sales at the next appropriate mass shooting (white shooter, long gun, schoolchildren victims).
Take initiative. Take back some sovereignty. Be a founder. Start small. If the institutions are decayed, start your own.
Yes you can cap tuition - Mitch Daniels has been at the head of Purdue since leaving the governorship and has slapped a cap on the tuition. It is possible to slow the inflation of college tuition if administers only want to.
The AWFLs are the pimps - Wonderful essay on the socially destructive force that are the suburban AWFLs. The growth of overly open parents creates what the writer refers to as sex traffickers. It is hard to disagree. This is a reality that is the reverse of the silent parent caricature that supposedly was the reason schools needed sex ed.
Dying for sex - AWFLs know no bounds. A man stands by his wife dying of cancer, helps her through chemo and after the surgeries, but lawdy, girl gotta have it. She divorced him to catch a lot of dick. There is no pleasant way to describe it.
France's polarization - This is an interesting study on France. It has a great header of a people in search of a nation. This is not just France and it is not going away.
The Deep State Whines - The administrative state spends an article saying there is no conspiracy against Trump all the while performing a conspiracy to undermine him. This is projection and lies. On top of this, Trump has not destroyed anything. They have destroyed their reputations and whatever institutional prestige they may have had with the right wing.
Briggs on Corona - Informative. There are graphs, math and commentary.
The 1619 Project is garbage - The 1619 project is a horrible political project to brainwash the left and then they hope the children via curriculum insertions. It also is one of those mask off moments where the Times has admitted they do not care if they are factually wrong, the narrative is what matters. The Times and the left in general has decided America is irredeemable. There is nothing to celebrate.
French cheese is dying - Globalism even kills French cheese. The great globohomo process kills the most niche of products first.
Mike Tracey is going to lose it - Tracey writes on Biden's senility. It is obvious to anyone who hears this old man talk. Tracey is working himself up online to name every problem group. One day, maybe he and Tucker can bring about a Lega-5Star alliance. I hope for it in '24.
White Gay Men Are Destroying Queer Black Lives With “Party ‘n’ Play” Sex And Meth Addiction - That's the headline. "High on hate". This is a hysterical read. Blacks have zero agency and are just tossed about on the waves of the gay world by these older white gay men with meth. Anyone who remembers MPC's grindr catfishing thread remembers how often the guy would ask blacks to do race play and slave themed things and how every single time the brutha would agree. Maybe because it was consensual and they were not high on hate.