Palin takes John Kerry to task for his joke about those who don’t study getting “stuck in Iraq,” but the story of her own son proves that he was right. Track joined the military after deciding that he didn’t want to bum around after high school like his friends. This implies that he wasn’t smart enough for college.
We’ve managed a neat trick in this country: to raise up generation upon generation who never know what it is to sacrifice for something bigger than themselves. People whose biggest inconvenience is a long commute to an office. People who see and read a great deal but understand nothing about how the world works.
Richard Hoste, you will never know, nor understand how profoundly ignorant you are.
You have my pity.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Sadly, we will never EVER run out of morons.
Comment by Joe — 20091202 @ 0913
The problem is the educated elite have become so blinded by the loftiness of their education they fail to acknowledge there are other paths to ‘education” other than their cherished halls and official paper. They still see the military through the lens of the 60’s conscriptions where those with means could avoid the dreaded draft, and those without (or were unlucky) got caught up to become fodder in fact for the nightly news. I think this instilled an arrogance that pervades out politics today in:
“*I* was (smart enough, rich enough, connected enough, dodged enough, pick one) to avoid becoming a body bag on a Vietnam origin C130 which gives *me* the right to tell *you* (the uneducated military volunteer today) how to be, just because I was *smart* enough to avoid the military which obviously, since you are in, are not.”
Looking through their Vietnamese era colored glasses, they see the only way to utopian society is through _higher_ education, and unless you have that almighty paper from an established vine covered hall, you are part of the unwashed masses, forever condemned to sully your hand in the soil of the earth. They look with astonishment and disbelief when one of the un-graduated class excels (Bill Gates, Michael Dell to be a name dropper), unable to believe that without that parchment, there obviously is NO WAY that anyone could achieve more than McDonald’s for employment. And when someone of a lesser hall (University of Idaho) achieves notoriety, they must strive to denigrate any achievement as a fluke… as patronage…. as anything but ability… for ability is only bestowed on a head covered by a black hat that crossed a stage at ivy hall.
I just think it will be a long time, really until the passing of the Vietnam generation, before many of those beliefs will fade and die. Or maybe not. Maybe it has always been that way in “*I* have a parchment, you don’t” snobbery and I am just an outside observer of the phenomena. Could be I’m sensitive to it in my disclaimer:
I do not have a degree, I’m a two time college dropout. But I would venture I have far more hours in a classroom setting than any 4 year college graduate and even more than some doctoral grads. I guess in my 35 year technical career I have spent far more than 200 (40 hour) weeks in a classroom studying some electrical and/or software arcana.
I have to say with some shame, out of 5 children of my parents, (I’m the middle child), I alone have no degree. I also make far more than any of my siblings alone.
Education is far more than paper hanging on a wall. Someday, the Kerry’s and Kennedy’s, and Obama’s may realize that. Probably not.
Comment by JoeC — 20100106 @ 1918