[HN Gopher] Will the US experience a violent upheaval in 2020? (...
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Will the US experience a violent upheaval in 2020? (2012)
Author : monort
Score : 175 points
Date : 2021-01-10 07:50 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.livescience.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.livescience.com)
| amelius wrote:
| If you use Google, you can find predictions of just about
| anything.
| rho4 wrote:
| I feel like an important often missed variable is what part of
| the population is actually not having enough food & shelter or
| not able to support their family.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Also work and leisure. Covid hit both of those. Bored,
| unemployed people are more likely to protest, and protesters
| are more likely to riot.
| rwcarlsen wrote:
| I think you meant - covid mitigations hit both of those.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I agree that is wrong, but it is not new. Standard of living
| are much higher than say the 50's. There is something else
| going on. A mix of nihilism, vast inequality and a societal
| sensory apparatus that is profiting immensely from churning
| hate.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| One of my high school classmates wrote a paper about this that
| was pretty prescient.
|
| I remember it because I thought is was insane, and then we worked
| together at a summer gig and talked about it at length - he
| flipped me. Prediction that were key was a long war in the early
| 2000s and significant unrest in the 2020-2030 timeline.
|
| His rationale was that the fall of the Soviets would take about
| 10-15 years to have a real impact on US policy and the 2020-30
| timeframe was when the ruined farmers (caused by the policies of
| the 80s and 90s) passed the torch to the next generation in full
| and the broader ex-urban economy would be dead beyond redemption.
|
| He was a brilliant kid, who unfortunately passed away too young
| in an accident.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| What is a "violent upheaval"?
|
| Without a specific definition, such as "civil war resulting in
| 620,000 deaths", they're fairly easy to predict.
| insert_coin wrote:
| Something other than a natural phenomena or war with an outside
| entity that makes you declare martial law in a considerable
| part of the country.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| In describing how he built his database Turchin says [0] it is
| about lethal events:
|
| _" Instability events vary in scale from intense and pro-
| longed civil wars claiming thousands (and sometimes even
| millions) of human lives to a one-day urban riot in which
| several people are killed, or even a violent demonstration in
| which no lives are lost. In constructing the database I chose
| to include only lethal events."_
|
| [0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343312442078
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Does the model predict or account for the Oklahoma Federal
| building bombing (1996, 168 people killed)?
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| It seems to be taken in account. From the article:
|
| _" Thus, although the most common fatality rate per event
| was 1 (48% of cases), in rare cases the 'butcher bill'
| could run into hundreds (less than 1% of events had a
| fatality rate of 100 or more). As a result, the rare but
| bloody events have a disproportionate effect on the
| trajectory. A good example of this effect is the latest
| 'peak' in the trajectory (during the 1990s) - it is
| entirely due to 168 deaths associated with a single event,
| the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing."_
| flybrand wrote:
| He goes into it in some detail in the book - the math goes
| beyond my ability to summarize. He looks at conflicts / murders
| / etc per year.
| [deleted]
| leereeves wrote:
| I think what happened in 2020 qualifies. While tame compared to
| the Civil War, it was comparable to the upheaval that happened
| about 50 years ago, and certainly not easy to predict.
|
| > between 15 million and 26 million people participated at some
| point in the demonstrations
|
| > arson, vandalism and looting caused about $1-2 billion in
| insured damage between May 26 and June 8,
|
| > By early June, at least 200 American cities had imposed
| curfews, while more than 30 states and Washington, D.C, had
| activated over 62,000 National Guard personnel in response to
| unrest.
|
| > By the end of June, at least 14,000 people had been arrested
| at protests
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_United_State...
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| To put that in perspective, the 1992 Los Angeles riots had
| similar damage and arrest numbers, and were significantly
| more violent (63 killed). And that was a single city.
| flybrand wrote:
| Technically he would have counted deaths, if I recall
| correctly. I agree w your idea though.
| leereeves wrote:
| I think 2020 might also qualify on that count.
|
| _Massive 1-Year Rise In Homicide Rates...in 2020_
|
| > New Orleans-based data consultant Jeff Asher studied
| crime rates in more than 50 cities and says the crime
| spikes aren't just happening in big cities. With the
| numbers of homicides spiking in many places, Asher expects
| the final statistics for 2020 to tell a startlingly grim
| story.
|
| > "We're going to see, historically, the largest one-year
| rise in murder that we've ever seen," he says.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-
| rise...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Is that really unprecedented? In 2016 Chicago had 60%
| more homicides than in 2015. Short-term spikes in
| statistics with small denominators can be expected. In
| 2015 Baltimore had 63% more homicides than in 2014.
| leereeves wrote:
| Sure, but the increase in the murder rate in 2020 wasn't
| a spike in a single city, it was a spike nationwide.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Right, it just doesn't seem that dramatic in context.
| They are saying a 13% year-over-year bump in the homicide
| rate is the greatest ever recorded, but there was an 11%
| bump from 2014-2015 and 10% from 2015 to 2016, according
| to the FBI UCR. So 13% is the highest but is it really
| such a shocking figure?
| leereeves wrote:
| AIUI, it's not saying that the increase in 2020 was only
| 13%, merely that 13% would be the largest increase in 50
| years.
|
| We'll have to wait and see what the final figure is, but
| the midyear figure in the article is much higher:
|
| > Murder up 36.7% in 57 agencies with data through at
| least September (though most have data through November).
|
| (Note: I have no idea if Jeff Asher is a credible source,
| but NPR seems to think so.)
| bencollier49 wrote:
| This Turchin fellow seems to have missed the boat by about 20
| years.
|
| The book "Generations: The History of America's Future" by
| Strauss and Howe was published in 1991 and predicted exactly the
| same thing. It was a bestseller at the time.
|
| It's so well known that it's notable on Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
|
| It predicted a "crisis of 2020" caused by a number of factors
| including the temperaments of baby boomers.
|
| There's an interesting interview with one of the authors here:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/us/politics/coronavirus-r...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Turchin discusses this here:
| http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/prophecy-fourth-turning...
| zebrafish wrote:
| Also Peter Zeihan forecasted a lot of this based on
| demographics and finance in his first book.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I expect Marshall Law declared within 24 hours. Before
| impeachment vote. Pelosi asked the military to ignore commands
| from Trump. They turned her down. So that tells me they are on
| his side. But this act is in itself sedition. Media speaks almost
| in one voice now, joined by big tech. I don't think Trump would
| accept beig barred from running in 2024. This is his only move
| right now. The national guard is already in the capital. Booting
| him off of Twitter and social media, was a plan to disrupt his
| ability to address the nation. As TV stations will probably block
| the emergency address. As I expect Apple phones as well.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Cycles in history are an ancient and intriguing idea; modern -
| disputed - forms include Strauss-Howe generation theory.
|
| This "cliodynamics" seems to be an effort to put these sorts of
| ideas on a more academically respectable footing.
|
| https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generati...
| justinzollars wrote:
| I recommend reading William Strauss and Neil Howe's book The
| Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History
| Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny [1]. The
| book introduces the idea of generational cycles [2] According to
| the theory, historical events are associated with recurring
| generational personas (archetypes) and I couldn't put it down
| when I read it over the summer. Several people whom I deeply
| respect recommended this book, including the famous bond trader
| Jeffrey Gundlach.
|
| After reading the book, it was really no surprise to me when the
| capital was overrun with rioters. The book convinced me, we could
| very well have a bloody revolution or war considering the
| unaddressed underlying conditions: extreme wealth inequality,
| pandemic, desperation, hunger and feeling like one has no
| personal stake. The rise of China and decline of the United
| States contributes to another dangerous possible outcome. The
| tech industry's most recent moves to purge
| conservatives/libertarians may make our social condition even
| worse, by isolating rather than including the most desperate
| people in our society.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-
| Rend...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss-
| Howe_generational_theo...
| indigochill wrote:
| > we could very well have a bloody revolution or war
| considering the unaddressed underlying conditions
|
| A revolution/civil war in the US is impossible. The US military
| is the best-equipped in the world (with tons of equipment no
| private individual can ever hope to acquire) and backed by the
| world's leading intelligence community. Regardless of how angry
| or desperate American citizens are, they don't have the
| capacity to wage anything resembling a war on the government.
| Violent protests (and continued domestic terrorism) are an
| entirely different matter, though.
| tifadg1 wrote:
| > After reading the book, it was really no surprise to me when
| the capital was overrun with rioters.
|
| May it be possible you formed a bias? Take extreme examples of
| preppers or religious nuts - if something happened tomorrow,
| they'd be the first to say "I've been telling you for years".
| Does that mean they were right all along or rather that given a
| long enough time frame anything can happen?
|
| > unaddressed underlying conditions: extreme wealth inequality,
| pandemic, desperation, hunger and feeling like one has no
| personal stake.
|
| on the flip side, no revolution since and including arab
| uprising was successful, and unlike us, they're actually
| prepared to sacrifice themselves for their ideals.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's an interesting idea, kind of foundation trilogy
| psychohistory like but it's also in some ways very obvious and
| hard to disprove at the same time. He gives two generations as
| the length for instability to dwell up, and if you move that like
| a sliding window over American history most of the time it'd
| probably be true depending on your definition of violent
| upheaval.
|
| However if you expand it to other countries I think it quickly
| breaks down. In Latin America or the ME you have these cycles on
| a per year basis if they actually ever stop, in some regions you
| have way more piece and stability for hundreds of years.
|
| The 'two generations' logic makes sense if you sneak into your
| assumption that you're in what I'd call moderately violent,
| fairly stable society like the US, but the reasoning is kind of
| circular.
|
| Also assuming cliodynamics actually did have predictive power far
| beyond common sense then you have fully entire Foundation
| territory because then you're in some sort of strange loop where
| the acceptance of cliodynamics likely diretly impacts
| cliodynamics.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's also not helped by the graph for the USA the article uses.
| Sure, you've got three spikes of race-related events at half
| century intervals, but all the other time series are
| uncorrelated (and even for race related incidents there's an
| obvious structural difference between centuries).
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The full model posits two cycles, one of which involves these
| "fathers-and-sons" cycles, because there are deep underlying
| problems. One generation tries to solve them, violently, the
| next generation abhors revolution enough to not do that.
|
| However, eventually you get an actual success at fixing the
| underlying problems (often related to elites accumulating too
| big a percentage of the resources), then the "fathers-and-sons"
| cycles stop because there's not a big well of repressed anger
| for counter-elites (Robespierre, Cromwell, Lenin, etc.) to draw
| on.
|
| So, for each country, it will not always be a two-generation
| cycle because it depends on whether you have the intra-elite
| competition, fueled by an ever-increasing concentration of
| power at the very top, which causes the disaffected masses to
| have a counter-elite to follow down the path of upheaval.
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| What I am most worried about the global decline of liberal
| democracy and the rise of rise of autocratic ethno-religious
| nationalism. For example:
|
| Turkey and Erdogan with Islam,
|
| Poland and Duda with Catholicism
|
| Russia and Putin with Russian Orthodox
|
| India and Modi with Hinduism
|
| US and Trump with White Evangelical Christianity
|
| It seems the old liberal democratic order is under severe strain.
| insert_coin wrote:
| As they say, _history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes._
| wilsonfiifi wrote:
| That's brilliant! I wholeheartedly agree. In case anyone
| wonders where this saying comes from, my quick search
| attributes it to Margaret Atwood, from her book "The
| Testaments" [0]. [0]
| https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/as-they-say-history-does-
| not-repeat-itself-but-it-rhymes/
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| The quote is much older than the testements.
| [deleted]
| InitialLastName wrote:
| That quote comes from far before that 2019 book. It showed up
| as early as the 70s in that form, frequently attributed
| (without verified evidence) to Mark Twain [0]
|
| [0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/
| wilsonfiifi wrote:
| Aha! Thanks for the correction.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| What is "violent" in 2021? If everyone collectively stopped
| paying their bills and crashed the economy, is that violent? I
| would suggest that when (sorry, all things end) America
| collapses...not a shot will be fired.
|
| Likewise, if I were to advise a foreign adversay on the best way
| to "fight" the US, I would suggest currency manipulation or
| information manipulation. Why fire a gun? Someone might get
| killed!
| DaniloDias wrote:
| Anyone else feel like we're revisiting the conformity phenomenon
| of the 50's?
| flybrand wrote:
| Elite overproduction happens in several ways - with tech, new
| services, new hardware, we all have the capability of an elite
| from a few decades back.
|
| We've lowered the barrier to being an elite, to having that
| reach.
|
| Also, we've made it possible to see that everyone around you
| might also be an elite.
|
| Not only is elite over production occurring, we've lowered the
| cost to produce elites, and we've increased societal visibility
| of the elites that exist.
| [deleted]
| f430 wrote:
| I still think this article is on track to be correct. 2020 was a
| precipitation of the stormy clouds that will begin raining in
| 2021.
|
| Lot of people have this weird idea that 2020 was somehow the last
| of it. I think it was the beginning and 2021 and onwards will be
| a tough battle.
| throw0101a wrote:
| See also Samuel P. Huntington:
|
| > _American history is driven by periodic moments of moral
| convulsion. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P.
| Huntington noticed that these convulsions seem to hit the United
| States every 60 years or so: the Revolutionary period of the
| 1760s and '70s; the Jacksonian uprising of the 1820s and '30s;
| the Progressive Era, which began in the 1890s; and the social-
| protest movements of the 1960s and early '70s._
|
| > _These moments share certain features. People feel disgusted by
| the state of society. Trust in institutions plummets. Moral
| indignation is widespread. Contempt for established power is
| intense._
|
| > _A highly moralistic generation appears on the scene. It uses
| new modes of communication to seize control of the national
| conversation. Groups formerly outside of power rise up and take
| over the system. These are moments of agitation and excitement,
| frenzy and accusation, mobilization and passion._
|
| > _In 1981, Huntington predicted that the next moral convulsion
| would hit America around the second or third decade of the 21st
| century--that is, right about now. And, of course, he was
| correct._
|
| * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/collapsing...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Turchin's two main ideas are intriguing.
|
| a) 50 years is enough for "institutional memory" to go out of the
| window. This may change with longevity breakthroughs, but 50
| years is currently enough for a complete generation exchange, so
| the new leaders have no memory of the previous upheaval and will
| make the same mistakes again. Or at least the same kind of
| mistakes, details are always different.
|
| b) elite overproduction is a "dangerous" topic when even treading
| on this ground invites charges of anti-intellectualism, but I
| cannot help looking at the 25+ crowd with fresh degrees, tons of
| debt and not-precisely-excellent earning opportunities and see
| that universities have a great racket out of this, while their
| graduates not so much. If you apply the old "Cui prodest?"
| question (Romans used to ask "Who profits?"), the answer would be
| that tertiary education complex is at least as influential as the
| military industrial complex, and most of the value captured does
| not even accrue to professors.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| I'll add this brief comment as a reference in case anybody
| wants to research it more.
|
| There are 20-year cycles that I've heard of recently.
|
| For Cultural Marxism in the US, 1970, 1990, 2010. Those are
| roughly the generational periods of new counter-cultural US
| university professors.
|
| There's also a related cycle starting with Betty Friedan's
| Marxist-Feminist book, The Feminine Mystique, in 1963 and each
| generation after of about 20 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique
|
| When Marxism, Marxist Feminism and CRT and BLM overlap, you get
| the amplification and extremism you see in the left in 2020,
| like AOC being an elected yet open Marxist, and antifa
| fascists.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Yeah we have fascists in Germany again. People forget. And who
| the fuck really reads history books anyways?
| tpmx wrote:
| Side-note: Why are clearly _leftist-oriented germans_ saying
| "fuck" in English language forums, over and over again? I've
| seen it so very many times now. What's the linguistic
| connection that I'm missing?
| neartheplain wrote:
| Perhaps unfortunately, 50 years might not be long enough for
| generational turnover in US government. Joe Biden and Mitch
| McConnell are both 78 years old. Nancy Pelosi is 80. Senators
| Diane Feinstein and Chuck Grassley are 87.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| It's 48 years since Joe Biden became a senator, and he was
| one of the youngest senators ever. None of those people held
| a national-level office 50 years ago. There has been a
| complete turnover in leadership in the past 50 years.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Whew, thank goodness! I'd hate to see centenarians in
| Congress!
| jkinudsjknds wrote:
| The new Georgia senator is the youngest elected senator since
| Biden. That was... an odd factoid to take in for me.
| orange_tee wrote:
| The way I understood it, elite overproduction is about
| successful wealthy people, not enjoying the political influence
| that they believed they would enjoy after attaining their
| wealth.
| simonh wrote:
| It's not really about wealth or political power specifically.
| It's about status and power generally. Some of the pseudo-
| elite may pursue wealth, others social status, others
| political influence, etc. These are largely fungible though,
| so the problem is when you overproduce the elite class
| generally, all of these go into deficit.
| flybrand wrote:
| Idle hands among those who have far reach will eventually do
| things that lead to conflict.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _tertiary education complex is at least as influential as the
| military industrial complex_
|
| If you gave me full control (on the sly, so they maintained the
| role they currently have) of Harvard, Yale, NYT, and WaPo--I
| wouldn't care who held the Presidency or sat in Congress, and
| the military is a distant afterthought. All would follow my
| dictates _to the letter_ and I would be able to entirely
| transform every aspect of the country.
|
| So who, again, is in power? Votes (and by extension, voters)
| don't matter because they do not affect actual power. It's
| kayfabe on a grand scale.
| vmception wrote:
| yes but how many false positives are there and how many of
| those have just as succinct rational
| bjourne wrote:
| B) is a myth. Statistics show consistently and over and over
| that those who do the best in the US are the college-educated.
| Media is produced by the college-educated so it is their class'
| problems gets the most attention but it is clearly not their
| problems that are the worst. It's all those who were too dumb
| or too socially disadvantaged to get a higher education what
| will be SOL in the future. Those who voted for Trump and will
| vote either for him or his successor in 2024.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Within the professions that make up "tech" 10 years is enough
| time for institutional memory to go out the window.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Well except certain groups within Apple, TSMC, the big
| japanese corps, IBM mainframes, and lesser known places.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Are you saying most tech people only spend~10 years in the
| industry?
|
| That's much less than what I would think.
|
| But maybe I misunderstand. It happens regularly :)
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Taking b) and running with it, education is, in my opinion, the
| silver bullet for a number of societies ills. It's very
| interesting to note how higher education in the US has such a
| high barrier to entry that it actively discourages outsiders.
|
| It feels as if the Australian Government wants to move in the
| same direction, and / or have already been doing so for a few
| years.
|
| Education has its own benefits to society as a whole, therefore
| we all suffer when a majority are locked out of pursuits that
| require and encourage depth of thought and logical thinking.
| onethought wrote:
| True, if you are on the right (political spectrum) you do not
| want to encourage higher education, it shifts people to the
| left, as analytical thinking starts undoing idealism. US is a
| good example of this, with most universities having more left
| communities around them.
|
| Perhaps it is an intentional long play by the Right in
| Australia to pursue this kind of minimisation of education
| VLM wrote:
| How a "shift" interacts with identity politics is
| interesting to consider.
|
| One cannot "shift" demographic group merely by attending
| classes and many groups are highly polarized by demographic
| group often in excess of 3 to 1 for one party or another.
| johngalt wrote:
| "education, it shifts people to the left, as analytical
| thinking starts undoing idealism."
|
| True; college students are noted for their lack of
| idealism.
|
| Conversely right leaning occupations such as veterans, oil
| rig workers and farmers always have their head in the
| clouds with high minded idealistic notions that don't work
| in the real world.
| kodah wrote:
| > Conversely right leaning occupations such as veterans,
| oil rig workers and farmers always have their head in the
| clouds with high minded idealistic notions that don't
| work in the real world.
|
| Is this a joke?
|
| When people enter service they come from a lot of
| different backgrounds and their experiences are quite
| varied during service. Some veterans experience combat
| (interesting side note, only 10-20% of service members
| ever see combat during deployment) which alters their
| worldview, some live very kushy lives, others are
| constantly living in very regimented environments. Lots
| of factors even play into each of those like funding,
| operational tempo, unit culture, unit mission, etc...
|
| The overarching point being that veterans get out with
| many different worldviews and much of that is shaped by
| public policy and experiences from when they're in
| service. As a Marine with many friends who were in
| Helmand or Fallujah, I can tell you that a majority of
| the friends I stay in contact with are not people you
| would refer to as "patriots" anymore nor do they align to
| any political culture sphere. In contrast, other veterans
| I know end up in very established camps like
| progressivism or conservativism, but generally the result
| is the same -- they rarely adhere to political culture
| camps.
|
| I have corrected, supplied feedback, and written opinions
| on many veteran and military related threads on this
| website before, but this opinion is by far one of the
| most dangerous I have read in recent times.
| onethought wrote:
| So why are the countries I listed Right way more
| progressive than the US? Is it's function of culture
| something unique about US culture?
| SantalBlush wrote:
| A lot of them were very supportive of the wars in Iraq
| and Afghanistan. Just because someone is more blue collar
| absolutely doesn't mean that they don't subscribe to high
| minded idealistic notions.
| loopz wrote:
| You could say that analytical thinking undo gullibility.
| Idealism and principles though, may better be understood,
| applied and defended, with well-rounded education.
| onethought wrote:
| Good point. I think that is a better way to describe what
| I mean
| brokenkebab wrote:
| In Soviet Union, and I believe generally in socialist
| block, in its final times most young highly educated people
| were visibly right-leaning.
|
| Probably it's fair to say education may give feelings of
| better understanding of things (whether it justified or not
| is a separate topic), and when it is not translated into
| higher social, and economic positions it naturally leads to
| growing hostility towards _current system_. Will it take a
| right, or left form, or something you cannot reliably put
| in this spectrum - is the issue if present conditions.
| simonh wrote:
| I think that's a mistake, because while I agree there's a
| left lean among academics, I don't think that necessarily
| translates into the graduate population generally.
| Conservatism needs educated leaders as well anyway. If
| there is a problem there the answer is balancing out
| education, not reducing it.
| aksss wrote:
| Diversity of thought in the education system is a problem
| - like hires like, and is demonstratively intolerant of
| challenge, so the dominant mood gets entrenched. If the
| political poles were reversed (conservatives dominating
| education) this would be just as much of a problem - it's
| a function of human behavior.
|
| (UCLA's) Eugene Volokh's blog has been examining this for
| some time from the perspective of legal education, and of
| course Bret Weinstein rather famously came into contact
| with it when (literally) run out of Evergreen.
|
| I remember we used to make jokes about how off the wall
| Evergreen was, but now I think those things we used to
| laugh about have become more normalized. They are
| certainly avant garde, but it seems the tendency of
| entrenchment dictates that where Evergreen goes so goes
| the nation's education system. If you want to see where
| the nation's education will be in another 15-20 years,
| look no further than Evergreen today.
| WatchDog wrote:
| I don't think analytical thinking has anything to do with
| political leaning, I'd argue that the US higher education
| system particularly the humanities is a breeding ground of
| idealogues. I would say the tendency of education to lean
| left is largely due to left leaning people being more
| attracted to working in academia.
| onethought wrote:
| This is an umbrellas make it rain reverse causation. If
| you look outside the US the education level does
| correlate with the political spectrum. The higher
| educated the population the entire spectrum shifts left.
| See Northern Europe, Japan, Australia, Singapore, China,
| even political ideology (democracy vs socialism) doesn't
| change this correlation
| tested23 wrote:
| I guess your education did not teach you that correlation
| does not imply causation. The simpler explanation for why
| people that are educated lean left is that the people
| teaching them lean left. Why do teachers lean left?
| Because they are often broke and underpaid. The fact that
| there is such uniformity of thought in higher education
| just goes to show the power of indoctrination.
|
| I feel bad harping on common talking points but most
| degrees do not teach analytical thought.
| onethought wrote:
| I'm talking the whole spectrum, you are caught up on
| American domestic ideas of left v right.
|
| As my example stated, the far right in Australia would be
| considered left in the US... the whole spectrum has
| moved... not talking about individuals... they still
| exist across that spectrum
| WatchDog wrote:
| > This is an umbrellas make it rain reverse causation.
|
| I don't see how.
|
| > If you look outside the US the education level does
| correlate with the political spectrum.
|
| I didn't mention anything about the US, it's a global
| phenomenon. Personality is a largely biological
| construct, and it's also highly correlated with political
| leaning.
|
| Looking at the big 5 model, left leaning people tend to
| be high in neuroticism(emotional stability) and openness,
| and low in conscientiousness. Right leaning people tend
| to be the opposite.
|
| These same traits influence peoples decision to work in
| academia, openness is a beneficial trait for learning new
| ideas.
|
| Meanwhile people high in conscientiousness, low in
| neuroticism are highly sought after in industry.
| onethought wrote:
| I'm saying even the right shifts left. It's not about
| "left leaning people" it's the entire spectrum moves.
| There are still of course right and left leaning people
| on that spectrum
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I can tell you that in the former Soviet bloc, higher
| education correlates very powerfully with leaning right.
|
| I'd bet it's more likely that higher education correlates
| well with elitism, and that elitism happens to have a
| left-ish flavor in some countries and a right-ish flavor
| in others, simply by accident of history, not by some
| general rule.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I don't think there is any general rule, the fact that
| higher educated elites in the US and western Europe
| happen to be left leaning is a self-perpetuating accident
| of history. In many other countries, higher educated
| elites are right-leaning.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Samuel Huntington observed 'convulsions' every 60 years in
| American history:
|
| > _American history is driven by periodic moments of moral
| convulsion. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P.
| Huntington noticed that these convulsions seem to hit the
| United States every 60 years or so: the Revolutionary period of
| the 1760s and '70s; the Jacksonian uprising of the 1820s and
| '30s; the Progressive Era, which began in the 1890s; and the
| social-protest movements of the 1960s and early '70s._
|
| *
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/collapsing...
|
| The 2020s was about when the US was 'due' for something to
| happen, so the next decade or so will apparently be a bit of a
| ride.
| dehrmann wrote:
| How was the the revolutionary period "moral convulsion?"
| Political, sure, but not moral.
| marcusverus wrote:
| The widespread adoption of the civil libertarian ethos
| (under the guise of unalienable rights, endowed by a
| creator) might be the greatest moral convulsion in human
| history.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > civil libertarian ethos
|
| People living in the colonies already had this. When
| Parliament started asserting more control over the
| colonies, they fought to restore their control over
| government.
| wwweston wrote:
| I feel like there's an important data point overlooked in the
| 1860s?
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Not to mention the labor upheavals of the early 20th
| century.
| watwut wrote:
| Elite in pollitical sense does not equal "someone with college
| degree".
| yyyk wrote:
| Turchin (not in the linked article, but elsewhere[0])
| explicitly refers to rise in number of underemployed
| graduates as a trigger for the creation of a counter-Elite.
|
| [0] http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-
| u-s...
|
| "Elite overproduction, and especially overproduction of the
| youth with advanced degrees, continues unabated. Our
| institutions of higher education have been churning out law,
| MBA, and PhD degrees, many more than could be absorbed by the
| economy. In a Bloomberg View article published just a few
| days ago Noah Smith provides the numbers for the
| overproduction of PhDs (America Is Pumping Out Too Many
| Ph.D.s)."
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| > a) 50 years is enough for "institutional memory" to go out of
| the window. This may change with longevity breakthroughs, but
| 50 years is currently enough for a complete generation
| exchange, so the new leaders have no memory of the previous
| upheaval and will make the same mistakes again. Or at least the
| same kind of mistakes, details are always different.
|
| That's why education is the most important pillar of democracy.
| Education is everything.
| brightball wrote:
| This is basically the Old Testament IMO. Same mistakes over
| and over, separated by a couple of generations once one
| generation gets comfortable.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Education doesn't work when people only watch their
| propaganda media. And when your entire social and
| professional circle is in the cult good luck breaking out.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "That's why education is the most important pillar of
| democracy. Education is everything. "
|
| The kind of people who get into positions of power - well, my
| impression is that they think they know better. Even if they
| are aware of the fact that in 1930 someone fucked up, they
| will not entertain the fact that they themselves might do the
| same.
|
| Also, some events are really complex. You can educate people
| about the 1929 or 2008 economic crises from very different
| perspectives, from far-left to libertarian, and the lessons
| will be very different.
| jsmcgd wrote:
| I think that's why an education has to be broad. A
| selective education can be tantamount to
| brainwashing/propaganda. Give the students as many
| perspectives and hope that they will do something sensible
| as they process the information; knowing that not all will,
| but most.
|
| I believe that the more perspectives you are aware of, the
| less likely you are to be dogmatic and extreme in your
| beliefs and actions. You will be reminded how dissimilar
| real life is to simple ideas and rhetoric, that it is a
| shifting ocean of nuances and caveats.
|
| Or society can go the other route, assume you cannot trust
| the people and create a tyranny of disinformation and
| control.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| > Give the students as many perspectives and hope that
| they will do something sensible as they process the
| information
|
| I don't know if you've gone to college recently but that
| was not my impression. It's a woke monoculture. Discourse
| is gone.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Discourse is narrower than you'd like; that doesn't mean
| it's "gone". When someone makes extraordinary claims like
| "Discourse is gone," that is a red flag that they are not
| viewing the situation objectively.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| Precisely demonstrating my point: a hyper-sensitivity and
| censorious attitude against _any_ advocacy for
| unmitigated debate.
| squidlogic wrote:
| So perhaps a better claim would be that the new discourse
| is unduly confined and the older modes of discourse are
| gone.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| That's a better starting point for a productive
| discussion, but still hyperbolic.
|
| Moreover, do you notice that my comment is being grayed
| out as people who disagree are downvoting it? A lot of
| people who claim to value discussion really don't; not on
| Hacker News, and not elsewhere.
| jessaustin wrote:
| The discourse has always been unduly confined. We never
| discussed whether it was a good thing to slaughter all
| the Native Americans, and we're not discussing whether
| all our stupid wars nowadays are good, either. War is
| off-topic in the USA "discourse". I'm sure other
| important things about which I'm less concerned are also
| "unduly" left out.
| [deleted]
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Perspectives are important and so is a humble study of
| history as way to understand human nature. We are so in
| love with your technological prowess that we forget it
| all sits on top of wetware that is very close to what it
| was 10000 years ago. Recognizing we are driven largely by
| instinct, some of which we can inhibit some we cannot,
| would help all of understand what works and what does not
| in a human society.
| mrfusion wrote:
| The most educated people I know seem the most partisan
| right now and most likely to parrot main stream media
| talking points.
|
| It's making me question my assumptions about education. On
| the other hand Im just one data point.
| rblatz wrote:
| Mainstream media talking points vary from Trump and his
| family are breaking norms and traditions in a very
| dangerous way to our country, all the way to the Biden
| crime family is going to ruin this country. With major
| undertones of a lot of hurt, anger, and feeling like
| there is no hope among minorities or rural whites
| depending on which sources you choose to consume. Both
| are true, both need addressed. And it's likely not a
| coincidence that both groups think the other's movement
| is their enemy.
| undoware wrote:
| I get routinely modded down on this site for pointing out
| issues that are ostensibly too political, like workplace
| discrimination.
|
| But on this same site, somoene can literally carry on a
| discussion echoing the (proven false) propaganda points
| ("biden crime family"? dear lord) and it stays up without
| downvote for (checks watch) an hour and counting.
|
| Everything this past week has been a chest x-ray of our
| collective spirit, and it came back solid white.
|
| This is vastly smaller in degree but not in kind.
|
| Time for some introspection, dear readers.
| DaniloDias wrote:
| The behavior that helped the most educated succeed was
| being informed. It's not surprising that they maintain
| that pattern and in so doing, parrot mainstream media.
|
| Most people have limited experience in managing
| information that they consider authoritative which turns
| out to be wrong.
|
| I think the best example of authoritative misinformation
| for 2020 is Anthony Fauci's guidance that masks don't
| help until they do. I'm looking forward to watching
| people's reactions when he inevitably asserts they don't
| again.
|
| 2020 was a good year for skeptic production, boy howdy.
| mrfusion wrote:
| You raise a great point. Trust in authorities is a very
| powerful mental shortcut. You don't have to research
| anything. Go with the mainstream and you'll always be
| right.
|
| Until that shortcut goes horribly wrong.
| esja wrote:
| Many people who seem on paper to be highly educated are
| merely highly indoctrinated.
| xxpor wrote:
| On the other hand, there appears to be a "skeptical"
| strain of discourse now that is just as arrogant, but in
| the other direction. As in, I disagree with the
| mainstream cultural view on a topic, so I therefore have
| the correct view on it.
|
| This is best exemplified by someone like Michael Tracy or
| Glenn Greenwald IMO.
|
| In my view they're more wrong than right, but they do
| have the occasional nugget where they do see through the
| BS. However, the mainstream view is correct more often
| than not. Additionally, a significant proportion of their
| takes are in bad faith.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I think you have something there. There's certainly a
| phase when you stop trusting the mainstream where you
| overdo it and think everything is wrong.
|
| The goal should probably be a balance. And probably
| realizing that nobody including the government or media
| deserves your blind trust.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Have you considered that maybe the "mainstream media" is
| right?
|
| I know it seems almost impossible-what with them
| basically espousing the same values that used to be
| generally accepted as "good" a decade or so ago:
| overcoming division, not burning coal just to piss off
| the libs, not killing vice presidents on Wednesdays and
| Fridays, international cooperation, arms control, caps
| lock control, etc...
|
| And that YouTube guy you adore does make a lot of sense
| when he shouts at the camera. Not just on dietary
| supplements but also how the loss of traditional gender
| roles has specifically disadvantaged high-IQ males with
| STEM affinity.
|
| That pronoun thing might even get someone killed, in a
| very convoluted way.
|
| But even then it just doesn't seem to have the potential
| to end the republic quite as easily as, say, musing about
| having the military re-run the election in states you
| lost, in such an obvious way every living former SecDef
| signs a letter asking the military to disregard such
| orders.
| iguy wrote:
| And the type of education surely matters. If the goal is to
| break through this 50-year horizon, then presumably an
| important part is to really get inside the heads of people at
| least that long ago. Not to just translate our quarrels &
| concerns backwards, but rather to stay immersed in the issues
| of (say) 1920 long enough to feel what was important to
| people of the time.
| thewindowmovie5 wrote:
| ...
| roenxi wrote:
| I dunno, there are a lot of countries famous for their
| education which are nevertheless not ideal places to go.
|
| Culture might be a more important aspect than education.
| Education is relatively easy to transplant (c.f. China & the
| rest of Asia, or the US stealing many of Germany's good
| scientists after WWII, or the Brits leaching French expertise
| after the revolution). Culture is really hard to transplant
| because nobody knows which are the good bits and which are
| the bad bits.
|
| I'll throw these two in because I they are an interesting and
| relevant example:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel
| qwantim1 wrote:
| While there's not a 1:1 from education to happiness or
| prosperity, the least educated countries are really not
| doing well.
| VLM wrote:
| Possibly the cause and effect are flipped and education
| is merely a recreation expense item for the masses.
| iguy wrote:
| These examples are of technical education. German rocket
| scientists, and British blast-furnace wizards (to France).
| These things are important of course but seem orthogonal to
| political institutional memory.
|
| Scholars deeply steeped in Bismark's thoughts & mistakes,
| or in English constitutional law, didn't make these jumps.
| paganel wrote:
| > or in English constitutional law
|
| Carl Schmitt did in fact made the jump, and he's one of
| the most read constitutional law writers in the last
| century. Not sure if Max Weber would have done the same,
| most probably not (he was really versed in English
| constitutional law, his "Economy and Society" has lots of
| quotes to Maitland's "History of English Law"), but he
| didn't strike me as a fervent supporter of democracy
| rights either.
|
| And there was also the definite jump made by Heidegger,
| not exactly a legal scholar but a very well-read person
| nonetheless (and a mentor to Hannah Arendt, among
| others).
| iguy wrote:
| These don't seem like the sort of jumps I had in mind. I
| meant the wholesale import of a school of knowledge to a
| new place. As happened for instance with the arrival of
| many modern sciences in the US; lots of fields where
| everybody's family tree goes back to germany.
|
| The germans you mention were certainly well-informed
| about foreign traditions, but their knowledge didn't
| create a living continuation of these traditions where
| they ended up.
|
| (The context is, since it's been a few hours, was a claim
| that education was a way to circumvent this 50-year
| institutional forgetting, which I took to mean national
| institutions. And the counter-claim is that many places
| have good education and terrible institutions, why
| haven't they imported this ersatz institutional memory?
| If it works for local preservation, why doesn't it work
| for international transplanting? And I don't completely
| know, but the successful international knowledge grafts
| seem to be technical subjects. )
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Not just mentor, he was her boyfriend!!!
|
| And an ironic situation, given his nazi ties and her
| jewishness...
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| Well, obviously "education" is already a political term and
| will be defined as required. The way I mean education is in
| a holistic sense. Education is about learning to learn,
| learning to think for yourself, learning about history and
| science in an as-unbiased-fashion as possible. But the
| learning about yourself and how to think for yourself is
| the key. In countries with that sort of education you'll
| have less problems with free speech to begin with. Because
| first of all there are fewer people who come up with
| unfounded conspiracy theories and second of all fewer
| people who fall for it - because they learned to think for
| themselves. But it's gift that keeps giving ... third of
| all there will be less division in society because it will
| be a fairer society to begin with. Education is based on a
| fair society, leads to a fair society and stabilizes a fair
| society. But if a country is at a point where a Betsy DeVos
| is appointed as secretary of education - well, good night
| ...
| krona wrote:
| _" The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees."_
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| This is what I would expect a technocratic forum like HN to
| suggest. America's most poverty stricken regions have had
| public education for nearly a century with almost no
| meaningful improvement in prospects. Tell me how rural
| poverty in West Viriginia is reduced by giving people
| humanities degrees. Better educated voters? Who cares, the
| poor have no representation of merit anyway; their choices
| are to vote for one party who ignores them or the other that
| ignores them.
| eloff wrote:
| Public education in the US is awful and lags nearly the
| entire developed world.
|
| Humanities degrees are not terribly useful, but boiling all
| education down to humanities degrees is a blatant strawman
| that signals a lot about your willingness to have a nuanced
| discussion.
|
| I think it's fairly self evident that investment in the
| future is what improves the future and education is
| probably the most important and significant such
| investment.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Stupid people of every race, color, or party are the
| major problem. And covid lockdowns have made education
| just more ineffective.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| I'm not entirely clear on how many nations are able to be
| compared with the US within the developed world.
|
| Given its size, configuration, and geopolitical contexts,
| the US has few comparable nations against which we can
| test. I guess we can say Russia is closest, followed by
| Canada & Mexico, then the entire EU and the CCP. India
| maybe?
|
| > boiling all education down to humanities degrees is a
| blatant strawman
|
| No, it isn't. The other nations I just listed by
| comparison churn out very few humanities degrees. What
| people choose to do with their privilege of going to
| college is a relevant data point, which feeds back into
| the quality of the education system overall.
|
| > signals a lot about your willingness to have a nuanced
| discussion.
|
| Let's not go around insinuating such things when you
| yourself started this conversation off failing to address
| the nuances of comparing the US against other "developed
| world" countries.
| eloff wrote:
| Are you the OP posting under a different account?
|
| > Given its size, configuration, and geopolitical
| contexts, the US has few comparable nations against which
| we can test.
|
| Why does country size affect academic performance of
| students?
|
| Russia, China, India, and Mexico are not developed
| nations. I wouldn't compare their educational results
| with the US. I'd be more interested in Canada, South
| Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the
| European nations. The USA compares near the bottom of
| this list.
|
| > No, it isn't. The other nations I just listed by
| comparison churn out very few humanities degrees.
|
| You used humanities degrees as a strawman argument in the
| OP. You asserting you did not do that is just a waste of
| effort. Perhaps you need to look up what a strawman
| argument is?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Good education system does not neatly translate to, say,
| economic success.
|
| Italy has top-class university system, much older than
| Columbus, and yet the country seems to be stuck in
| stagnation for last 20 years and the talented fresh
| graduates of those top schools move abroad.
| eloff wrote:
| I would say it's one very important factor among others.
| Ray Dalio outlines many of the factors involved in
| nations rising and falling, including education in a
| freely available online book. I've found it an
| interesting read, although he takes a while to get to the
| point.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/
| klyrs wrote:
| Bush II's "No Child Left Behind" was replaced by Obama's
| "Race to the Top" was followed by DeVos's "invisible hand."
| The common thread in all of these education policies is
| that schools that are doing well get rewarded; schools that
| are underperforming get the same, or reduced funding, or
| get closed.
|
| To get better educated voters, you need better education
| for poorest performing students -- not more investment in
| the high performers. Additionally, poor kids can't focus on
| school for various reasons ranging from malnutrition to
| working multiple part-time jobs to keep their family
| afloat. Addressing poverty on a systemic level will be
| necessary to raise our baseline of education.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| Once again - the best educated voter still only has two
| choices, and neither of these represent the poor.
|
| Do people on HN really think the very rich or the very
| poor were at all bothered by the Capitol riots?
| Government is irrelevant to both groups, in different
| ways.
| kaitai wrote:
| The best educated voter -- any voter in fact -- can also
| run for office and transform the party.
|
| I dislike the rhetoric you're using that implies the
| parties are outside and beyond the reach of "normal"
| citizens. Of course they are institutions with
| substantial inertia and aims of their own. But as the
| elections of people as diverse as Cori Bush and Madison
| Cawthorne and Marjorie Taylor Greene show, it is
| certainly still possible to make your way from citizen to
| elected official.
| tathougies wrote:
| they are increasingly beyond the reach of normal
| citizens. If your views do not align 100% with either
| party, you are increasingly marginalized. See the
| treatment of Donald Trump (a republican outsider, and not
| a traditional conservative by any means, but not a
| democrat in principle either) by the Republican party.
| For the past four years, republicans have refused to pass
| bills due to not matching ideological purity tests from
| Trump. The best example of this is DACA (https://www.usat
| oday.com/story/news/politics/2018/01/09/trum...), for
| which Trump has repeatedly asked for a legislative
| solution that gives these children legal status. Because
| that is not the exact party line of the GOP, they didn't
| like his solution. And then along with that, he wanted
| the wall of course, which doesn't fall into line exactly
| with the democrats, so now, despite DACA and secure
| borders being an issue many care about, no political
| party would take them up due to ideological purity.
|
| On the democrat side, see the treatment of Bernie Sanders
| and Tulsi Gabbard (Both non-traditional democrats in
| different ways) by their party.
|
| Honestly, after seeing both how the GOP and Democrats
| treated Trump, Sanders, and Gabbard, I find myself
| supportive of all three of them despite them having a
| very different views. I simply like that they're not
| either party.
|
| It increasingly seems that both parties are becoming
| incredibly dogmatic, and anyone who doesn't fall in line
| is simply barred from public discourse or elected office.
| It is increasingly true that in order to even get to
| elected office you need the support of a party.
|
| In my state of Oregon, the democrats and republicans
| actually mandated that you be part of a party before
| being elected to office. You can no longer run as an
| independent. It's so bad, some people made an
| 'independent party' just to be able to have non-democrat
| or republican candidates on the ballot, but this suffers
| from the same issues as parties, in that those
| individuals still need to be 'nominated' by a select
| group of people annointed by the party organizers, which
| means even the independent party has a bias, even if they
| try to minimize it.
|
| We need major electoral reform, nationwide, but it
| doesn't benefit any party to do that. What I would like
| to see are protesters from both BLM, Antifa, or whatever
| and the capitol protesters (not the rioters of any group
| please...) band together for a change and demand a better
| means of governance from their legislators. The people
| need to band together on common principles, instead of
| being divided by stupid policy points.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Honestly, after seeing both how the GOP and Democrats
| treated Trump, Sanders, and Gabbard, I find myself
| supportive of all three of them despite them having a
| very different views. I simply like that they 're not
| either party._
|
| This seems absurd. If your political reasoning puts you
| in a situation where Trump and Sanders are both options
| for you then your system is broken - they are
| antithetical to each other in style, philosophy,
| character and most importantly _policy_. Based on your
| logic, if both parties rejected Stalin then you 'd be in
| favor of him.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I don't think this is too difficult to understand. It's
| anti-establishment versus establishment, populist versus
| elite, that sort of axis.
| root_axis wrote:
| I still don't get it. It just seems silly to favor a
| candidate based on who rejects them. If policies on
| opposite sides of the political spectrum are
| interchangeable then why care at all who gets elected?
|
| At least voting for a 3rd party one can be said to be
| contributing to a cause closest to one's ideal, but being
| favorable to anyone who the mainstream doesn't approve of
| just seems like flawed logic.
| datenarsch wrote:
| The establishment/mainstream is the real enemy of the
| people. It totally makes sense to support anyone who you
| think could realistically challenge and destroy the
| status quo.
| root_axis wrote:
| What if the person that destroys the status quo is worse?
| Is your argument that nothing could be worse than the
| status quo?
| alisonatwork wrote:
| A useful example might be to look at the fallout of the
| various protests during Arab Spring, and how it led to
| both more liberal and less liberal outcomes.
|
| Anti-establishmentarianism can bring together people of
| different political persuasions who all want to dismantle
| parts of the current system. What comes after that is a
| new battle, and that one may end up fought along more
| traditionally ideological lines.
| bproven wrote:
| i would have replaced Trump with Ron Paul (remember him?)
| as a Republican/Libertarian with strong support via
| grassroots and youth (that wanted real change) that the
| party did not want and did everything they could to
| destroy or co-opt.
|
| When we saw the same thing being done to Sanders by the
| Democratic party (almost an exact mirror of what
| happended to Paul) it was a strong hint as to what is
| really going on. Neither party is"better" in this
| regard...
| leesalminen wrote:
| This should be the top comment IMHO.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Gabbard is very lucky she is not in trouble for not
| registering as an agent of a foreign government after all
| her connections with VHP
| jessaustin wrote:
| Vishva Hindu Parishad? Has any American even heard of
| that? Why bother inventing something so arcane?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| There was quite a bit of press about her links with Modi
| and the Modi-supporting diaspora
| jonhohle wrote:
| Have you been involved in a party's political process? I
| participated in a primary caucus for a small district and
| was disgusted by the leadership and how the event was
| run. No one was heard, whatever the moderator wanted was
| how the vote turned out, regardless of how the group
| actually voted. All of the leadership was among the most
| smarmy, slimy people I've ever been in a room with.
|
| If you want to run for office, not only do you have to
| spend time with these narcissistic, power drunk
| politicians at the local level, you have to get them to
| support you.
|
| This meeting was on the extreme local level for a
| community of maybe 35k people. I can't even imagine what
| the county level, or national level would be like.
|
| Maybe others have had a better experience, but this
| disillusioned me from any participation in politics and
| politicians in general.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _disillusioned me from any participation in politics
| and politicians in general._
|
| It's so much easier when the troublemakers show
| themselves out of the room. Of course, nobody could be
| blamed for wanting nothing to do with politics, but its
| only the people who are disgusted by the system that
| change it.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| You need look no further than the concerted and organized
| effort to shut-down Bernie Sanders twice, and frankly he
| isn't even particularly radical. No one you mentioned
| represents a meaningful threat to the status quo -
| America has a single ruling class and the Capitol is
| their museum.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| You could also look at the concerted and organized shut-
| down of Tulsi Gabbard.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Judging by the unanimous and immediate technocrat and
| media response to the capitol riot I would wager the rich
| are very concerned about it. I agree noone wealthy seemed
| all that concerned about the riots before that
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Public education in the US is funded by neighborhood, so
| wealthy neighborhoods have far better schools and poverty
| stricken regions have terrible schools.
| thewindowmovie5 wrote:
| Agree. I think the current crisis in US is because of lack of
| education and the whitewashing or omitting of important
| events in history. Just yesterday I saw a comment in here
| adding that deejays now have control of all three branches of
| the government(which was obviously false) and that was
| dangerous. But i guess the poster had no idea about what the
| three branches of the government.
| paganel wrote:
| >at the 25+ crowd with fresh degrees, tons of debt and not-
| precisely-excellent earning opportunities
|
| There are numerous studies and theories saying that late 19th-
| early 20th century revolutions wouldn't have happened if they
| hadn't been coordinated by educated people who hadn't found a
| stable job (mostly as government employees, not that many
| private white-collar jobs back then). The Russian revolution
| definitely wouldn't have happened without university-educated
| Lenin and Trotsky, and I'd say that even Stalin falls under
| "educated but with no stable job" umbrella (if I'm not mistaken
| he had gone to a priest seminary).
|
| In my country (Romania) most of the inter-war intellectuals had
| turned extremists for exactly that reason, i.e. too few white-
| collar jobs to chase for people who had finished university.
| The most well-known examples are guys like Eliade or Cioran,
| but a more relevant one is Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu [1], which
| is currently well liked by some people in the US [2] and in
| Northern Italy [3]. A very relevant book on the subject can be
| found here [4], unfortunately for the time being with no
| English translation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneliu_Zelea_Codreanu
|
| [2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-
| charlottesvil...
|
| [3]
| https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/11/20/news/lealta_azi...
|
| [4] https://www.amazon.com/Limitele-Meritocratiei-Intro-
| Societat...
| Izkata wrote:
| Kinda fits the current US situation too: The political
| violence isn't as new as a lot of people seem to believe - it
| started years ago, on college/university campuses. While that
| early violence was done by the students, several times people
| got videos of their professors in the crowd helping to
| coordinate.
|
| Once that became normalized it spilled off campus and grew
| into what we're seeing now.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| Ahhh yes. Look at all the university students and
| professors who just stormed the capitol building in full
| tactical gear. Really everything bad is all the left's
| fault. Somehow.
| strombofulous wrote:
| This is such a ridiculously uncharitable interpretation
| of what the person you're replying to said. It makes me
| feel like I'm on twitter
| drewwwwww wrote:
| that's because you've fallen for their dogwhistle.
| nothing like what they described actually occurred, and
| blaming college students is coded language to allude to
| the manufactured and not-so-secretly anti-semitic boogie
| man of "cultural marxism".
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| Alright, why don't you start by explaining what you think
| they mean by "what we're seeing now", or by "violence
| done by the students", and how those things are causally
| linked?
| strombofulous wrote:
| Instead of letting you shift the goalposts, I'll explain
| why I think it was uncharitable.
|
| Imo, it is very clear that the OP was not trying to imply
| that the students/professors were the ones personally or
| even indirectly involved in these riots. I also feel that
| it is clear that they were not trying to say that the
| students were nessicary doing anything wrong. They were
| replying to their parent comment which was discussing the
| effects that education had on Russian revolutionary
| leaders, and connected that same discussion to what we
| see today.
|
| Do you think that they're wrong? Are they missing
| something critical? Reply to that instead of complaining
| about how it AlwAYs ComES bACk tO thE LefT.
|
| If the facts make a certain group look bad, arguing that
| it's unfair to make that group look bad doesn't add
| anything. Add your own insight to the conversation and
| tell us why you think it's wrong or more nuanced
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Hello fellow Central European :-)
|
| In interwar Czechoslovakia, we had quite a few intellectuals
| who were openly Stalinist.
| [deleted]
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| All of the Bolsheviks were well-read. Even their token thug,
| Stalin, was probably reading political theory at what we
| would describe as a doctoral level. While Lenin did not
| respect Stalin as an intellectual peer, we do know that he
| spent a great deal of time pouring over dense political
| tomes. No TV, radio, internet...people read books to
| entertain themselves.
|
| But, to put a fine point on it, the Russian Revolution
| happened without Lenin or Trotsky. The Bolsheviks overthrew
| the February Revolution in a coup.
| [deleted]
| satellite2 wrote:
| I think, it's an interesting model, and would probably work all
| else being equal. But in that case, I believe he misses one
| critical variable. We are much less violent than 50 years ago
| because kid beating largely went out of fashion.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "We are much less violent than 50 years ago"
|
| I would say that the population is, on average, much older
| and has more to lose. Fortysomethings do not regularly engage
| in street chaos. This is even more visible in Europe, even in
| formerly violent places like the Balkans or Northern Ireland.
|
| Once the share of the young hotheads in the population drops,
| you have much smaller probability of really serious riots.
| watwut wrote:
| Young people are less violent then they used to be. It is
| not just about their share in population, they behave less
| violently then young people 50 years ago.
| flybrand wrote:
| People who are less violent can easily become violent
| because they don't understand the cost and destruction of
| force escalation.
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, generations that grew up in violent times are more
| violent then those who grew up in peaceful times. Being
| used to violence, seeing it and/or being traumatized by
| it offsets whatever lack seeing the cost does.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| Really the violent people are the actual pacifists, and
| the peaceful ones are secretly capable of great violence?
| [CITATION NEEDED]
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The drop in violence is enormous and visible in crime rates
| across basically any age demographic you look at. It's not
| just a function of an aging society. It also doesn't seem
| obviously correlated with policing, since it exists across
| cities with radically different policing regimes. A lot of
| people think it has to do with environmental factors, and
| specifically lead.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> A lot of people think it has to do with environmental
| factors, and specifically lead._
|
| Ironically, we are studying whether lead caused cohesion
| problems for the Roman Empire [1] [2], so it isn't as if
| we didn't suspect lead before to cause civilization-scale
| problems. And while the modern drop in blood lead levels
| is big in the developed world [3], it is still orders of
| magnitude greater than pre-industrial levels.
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2019/1
| 1/29/ar...
|
| [2] https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_ro
| mana/wi...
|
| [3] https://www.who.int/docstore/bulletin/pdf/2000/issue9
| /bu0686...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Also because of the banning of lead in many products...
| mcshicks wrote:
| I read Turchin's Secular Cycle where he goes over the data sets
| he uses to draw these conclusions on earlier societies. While
| the things he's trying to measure are not easy (for instance he
| uses the number and dates of found coin hoards as a relative
| measure of instability in England), the amount of data is
| pretty impressive. I actually gave up after he did all the data
| on England and skipped France, the Islamic Empires and I think
| there was one other society, and went to the conclusion. I
| haven't read "Age of Discord" yet, but it looks like he has a
| pretty detailed summary here.
|
| http://peterturchin.com/age-of-discord/
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I realize this is what you meant but just want to clarify
| that Turchin did not skip the data for France, the Islamic
| empires, etc. He covers each one in some depth.
| mcshicks wrote:
| Yes sorry that's exactly what I meant. He had me convinced
| at the first few sets of data.
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