This is the best socio-political essay of the past 50 years, because it describes irrefutably what has happened to our so-called leaders (he calls them the Permanent Managerial Class, or PMC) as Afghanistan has reverted to a Muslim emirate.
It’s not too long — and even if it is, it will be the best time you’ve spent all day, perhaps all year. It’s impossible to summarize (like all good essays), but here’s my favorite part:
How long it will take for their institutions to disappear, or before they end up toppled by popular discontent and revolution, no one can know. But at this point, I think most people on some level now understand that it really is only a matter of time.
Go there now, and read all of it. I’ve read it three times. (Thankee, Insty)
I will also be reading this three times. At least. And while summarizing it does not do it justice (you are correct, one must read the whole thing), this might be the money quote …
“It is not just that the elite class is incompetent – even kings could be incompetent without undermining belief in monarchy as a system – it is that they are so grossly, spectacularly incompetent that they walk around among us as living rebuttals of meritocracy itself.”
From glowbull wormening, and all the backfiring eco-whacko nonsense it gives rise to, to the COVID fiasco, to progressive Economics, to … you name it, these morons could not have been more wrong on everything. Every. Thing. One hundred and eighty degrees out of phase wrong. Every f’ing time.
The thing is, the Progressive establishment did away with advancement through provable merit as they took over those institutions that (to any degree) made use of it. They replaced it with advancement through ideological purity, plus nepotism. And since they are, as a class, driven to always take positions that separate them from the Unwashed, ideological purity rapidly became synonymous with real-world incompetence.
The MBA and the LLD are the two most dangerous degrees awarded by universities.
You need to add the War College diploma to that list…
Looks at my “I Love Me Wall.” Gulps nervously.
(Guilty on two counts)
That one does deserve re-reading. It sparked several thoughts (in no particular order).
1. The number of managerial failures recently is legion. I may repeat some of his examples, but covid, homelessness, government-created recession through banking regulation, climate change hysteria, energy (though Mr. Biden’s results may be intentional), the CDC, the legacy media’s loss of credibility (they’ve been working on it for years), etc. all seem to relate to “experts” screwing things up royally (see what I did there?).
2. It interests me to see how the ruling classes’ duration has been decreasing. Kings had a long run. Socialists had about 72 years if we take 1917 to 1989 as the representative dates, though you could give them 100 years’ credit since some still persist. I’d read that the scientists/managers took over here in about 1950 riding their atomic success in WWII, so it looks like they’re faltering after about 70 years. How long will the next group manage to hoodwink the plebs?
3. Who will the next group be? The Woke appear to be making a run for it via CRT and BLM, but they could be just an offshoot of the elite managers looking for a new divinity (The Disadvantaged) to hang their hats on. I suspect this will have a short life, though, because it’s so easy to see through. It slightly appears to me that corporations may be making their bid to rule, but I can’t decide whether they have the will to power or merely the will to profit via symbiosis with whomever rules.
4. I begin to believe that education of the young is where we live or die. The hand that rocks the cradle, and all that. We homeschooled our kids. Looks like our grandkids will get the same benefit. More people need to do that.
N.B. I’ve only read it once. More readings may spark more thoughts.
The great flaw in ‘Progressive’ educational theory has always been that it was based on the success (often brilliant) of a swath of experimental schools, back at the beginning of the 20th century. And they WERE successful. They were also staffed with deeply committed teachers and populated with the children of equally committed parents. They were, in effect, self-selecting samples. It would have been surprising if they had failed. Yet the Progressive establishment took the methodology of those schools and tried to make them work with schools too often populated with children of indifferent parents and staffed all too often with drones.
The Progressive indoctrination drivel goes on top of that and, naturally, makes things worse.
BUT
We must keep in mind that right now homeschooling is ALSO a self-selecting sample. Right now it’s success rate is high. If everyone tried it, that would change, drastically. I don’t know that there IS a universal solution, but we should foster many different approaches.
Home schooling may not self select on what you think it does. I’ve known quite a number of home school parents, and many of them were not completely sure how to approach it initially. I will always maintain that a caring parent (not all parents are caring) will be more successful teaching his children than an average bureaucrat. And, I didn’t suggest it as a UNIVERSAL answer. I said more people should try it. 😉
If your experimental schools are charter schools, this is a great video: Thomas Sowell on charter schools
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9boQrCPwMws
The (fatal) problem with homeschooling is (as it always has been) that it *does not scale*. It’s only ever a small percentage of the overall demographic.
Until that problem is solved, don’t put your faith in it. Creating better (local) schooling will likely be much more successful, at least until they get to college, where it’ll all be undone.
The teachers’ unions need to be broken. A voucher system would help, and until then we need to fund scholarships for the inner-city poor. What little my Lady and I can do is aimed at that, through her (conservative) church, which has a sister institution in Philly.
Not sure where you got the idea that the Progressives were trying to improve schools. Their effort was to take control of the schools and selectively dumb down the curriculum, as they believed that a well rounded, intensely taught student was anathema to future factory worker requirements. A comparison of tests for various school grades over the length of the 20 century will clearly exhibit this. They have turned the US into a land of idiots.
It should also give sober proof that the claims we need “more scientists in government” is a disaster waiting to happen.
Cargo Cultists, all the way through and down.
The thing that we see burning is that post constitutional order that promised supreme achievement if we only just turned a blind eye to constitutional limits and gave the right people the power to manage.
In every age of Man, there has been (at least) one social/political elite that devoutly believed they were placed upon Earth by Divine Providence to tell the rest of us what to do. The current crop are much the same as all the rest. All of them have promulgated one sort of justifying bushwa or another. Some of these Elites started out reasonably well, but they all devolved over time into concatenations of mouth-breathing idiots.
Biden is the Perfect representation of the type; he’s incompetent, corrupt, and approaching senescence (if he hasn’t already reached it).
Great find.
Excellent.