The Miseducation of Americas Elites • Hacker News Board

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#21

Post by parsimo2010 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #8

parsimo2010 wrote: post #5

I feel sorry for these people that can afford to send their kids literally anywhere have to make the decision about whether they should continue supporting the elitist system that they rode to the top, now that they found something they disagree with. You don’t like that the school is teaching that capitalism is wrong? Do the capitalist thing and vote with your wallet, send your kids somewhere else. If you don’t like…

Individuals can probably opt out of the system, even though at a possibly very high price paid in opportunities of their children. The question is what happens to the entire country if its elite adopts critical race theory as The Truth. It could tear itself apart in a way not too dissimilar from 1861-5. Systems in which your skin color is the most important attribute have little space for meritocracy and movement amo…

“price paid in opportunities of their children”

In the article one parent talks about a rumor that the school has three picks for Duke and if you spoke out that you would risk your shot. My graduating class from a public high school in Kansas (less than 100 people) had more than three people offered scholarships to Duke (only one went there because the other two had even better options). Maybe if those are the opportunities the elite school offers they should just find a school that makes their kids competitive instead of pedigreed.

Additionally, the idea that critical race theory is going to take over instead of just being a talking point to gain votes from minorities is nonsense. White elites won’t actually practice what they preach. This irony is even mentioned in the article about how this exclusive school is preaching inclusion. It’s not sustainable behavior. But more to the point, there are vast swaths of this country where CRT isn’t the prevailing viewpoint and is unlikely to gain a foothold. Who did the Democrats elect to heal the wounds of the country after an old white man hurt our reputation? Another old white man. The elites in the country won’t actually lean in to the idea because it would cost them. The only real risk is that people in LA and NYC overplay their hands, become further out of touch with the rest America, and lose some of their cultural dominance. There may be violence on the horizon for America, but CRT isn’t the wedge being driven.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#22

Post by wrnr » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

So, if want to help me make fermented cheese like Camembert or Parmesan out of anything else then cowmilk, please get in touch with me. We should be able to use the same bacteria cultures but need an other substrate. Cashew milk is an option but ideally we want something grown locally. It should not just be green but also make people feel secure about food politics.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#23

Post by travisjungroth » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

mycologos wrote: post #16

As an outsider to the world of elite private schools, is the idea that they will help your kid get a nice job even if they're actually just mediocre? Like, in my head the logic goes "if you're in the top 10% of your high school class and get 1500+/1600 on the SAT, you can probably go to a cheap honors program at a public state school, and then you can pick from several tracks to make six-figure salaries". But maybe y…

Their goal is not six-figure salaries. It's eight-figure salaries, political careers, etc.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#24

Post by drno123 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #17

drno123 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in communist Yugoslavia, and it is obvious both to you and me where this is leading to. You get downvotes from people who were sold a lie.

Is your argument that the ethnic conflict and genocide in several former Yugoslav republics in the 1990s was caused by an education system indoctrinating people with anti-racist attitudes? I didn't grow up in Yugoslavia, so please elaborate a bit how that worked, because I don't understand.

Not anti-racist but anti-capitalist. In Yugoslavia no one could own a business that employs more than 8 people, so all bigger companies were owned by the government, because anti-capitalist. As a result, management of all but micro business was selected not based on ones success and merit, but based on political connections, and in addition to that, there was no competition. The products mostly sucked and companies were performing badly. The economy was mostly surviving on international loans, and when this stopped, as a result, we had enormous inflation in the mid and late 80s. Food became scarce, I remember one time when you could buy only 1kg of sugar per household. Electricity was also scarce and there were periodic blackouts. Under such economic conditions, all it took is few “charismatic” sociopaths to start two bloody wars (the first one being in Croatia and Bosnia between 1991-1995 and the second one in Kosovo 1998-1999).

Again, anti-racism has nothing to do with it, and I am appaled at how you have tried to mark me as a racist.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#25

Post by raverbashing » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

One of the things Americans are "guilty of" are maybe taking social theories and taking them to the polarizing extremes.

Yes you can still be a capitalist and think that there are issues with extreme concentrations of wealth, monopolies, cartels, etc. Or think that maybe some problems are better dealt with (on average) by a buying consortium instead of individually.

(Of course capitalism is more criticized, it survived. XX century communism crashed and burned)

Same with some gender/sexuality conceptions and together with the "demonization" of those with different opinions (on both sides) - baring actual hate/bigotry naturally. Dividing and conquer ad infinitum

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#26

Post by travisjungroth » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

wrnr wrote: post #22

So, if want to help me make fermented cheese like Camembert or Parmesan out of anything else then cowmilk, please get in touch with me. We should be able to use the same bacteria cultures but need an other substrate. Cashew milk is an option but ideally we want something grown locally. It should not just be green but also make people feel secure about food politics.

Are you hoping this thread will catch a few stray vegan food scientists, or did you post in the wrong one?

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#27

Post by dfraser992 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #3

This really sounds like late Communist Czechoslovakia to me, where lying at school was an obvious norm, everyone knew what was publicly unspeakable and which one of your colleagues was a snitch. The difference is that by late 1980s there were few true believers. Those who held the power and dictated the indoctrination standards were mostly tired pragmaticists who were in power to be in power and little else. There we…

I'd upvote you if I could... I think maybe one has to be old enough (I'm GenX) to see how this 'wokeness' is in part a cover story for some sort of authoritarianism coming from the left. i.e. the "Soviet Union" is not merely history to me, unlike millennials.

Is all this in reaction to - or in conjunction with - the growing authoritarianism coming from the right? I don't know. I am in all in favor of examining how America has failed Blacks, Native Americans, the working class left in the dust by uber-capitalism (aka Ronald Reagan and all that BS) etc, but what is going on now is becoming problematic aka a mindless ideology.

If you pair this with [0], then it seems the Elites [motivated by power, social dominance, etc] have figured out how to leverage entirely valid ways of looking at the world, but not the only ways created by the Gentry into mechanisms / an ideology with which to control society and those in lower social classes. Sounds much like China's Cultural Revolution... Having the Elites of a society be in thrall to any sort of ideology is a bad idea and so having all these students of elite super-upper class schools on the way to the Ivy League being turned into mindless robots will end up badly.

Of course, America is the Greatest Country in History (tm) and so having some sort of American fascism hit at the same time as some sort of Cultural Revolution is to be expected . The 2020s are going be a mess.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20210225030540/https://www.indie...

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#28

Post by mhuffman » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #17

drno123 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in communist Yugoslavia, and it is obvious both to you and me where this is leading to. You get downvotes from people who were sold a lie.

Is your argument that the ethnic conflict and genocide in several former Yugoslav republics in the 1990s was caused by an education system indoctrinating people with anti-racist attitudes? I didn't grow up in Yugoslavia, so please elaborate a bit how that worked, because I don't understand.

>Is your argument that the ethnic conflict and genocide in several former Yugoslav republics in the 1990s was caused by an education system indoctrinating people with anti-racist attitudes?

It didn't start off that way. They never do. They start off, almost always, as "fighting for the underdog or oppressed".

After time, that goes "viral" and gets lots of broad support from the people as it is very reasonable and eventually becomes the main, acceptable, opinion of society (this is where we are getting now with various "wokenesses" and "hatenesses").

After that, other opinions and points of view are added to the original positions. Then, dissidents to any of those points of view are ostracized, and eventually it becomes illegal or quasi-illegal to hold different opinions or say certain things or act certain ways. In fact, people that do are considered "enemies of the state" or just "enemies". And it goes downhill from there.

This is how you can go from a worker's support group, or a minority protection group, and eventually turn into people getting their heads cut off for political reasons, put in to work camps, or straight up tortured or burned to death in the streets.

It really doesn't make any sense how it goes from something so reasonable to something so unreasonable, but it has happened over, and over again in nearly every part of the world. South America, Europe, Africa, Asia. And it almost always happens the same way.

And there are signs of it are happening here.

That is what they are eluding to. And the worst part is that once it gets going, it doesn't take long.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#29

Post by the_why_of_y » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

drno123 wrote: post #24

the_why_of_y wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument that the ethnic conflict and genocide in several former Yugoslav republics in the 1990s was caused by an education system indoctrinating people with anti-racist attitudes? I didn't grow up in Yugoslavia, so please elaborate a bit how that worked, because I don't understand.

Not anti-racist but anti-capitalist. In Yugoslavia no one could own a business that employs more than 8 people, so all bigger companies were owned by the government, because anti-capitalist. As a result, management of all but micro business was selected not based on ones success and merit, but based on political connections, and in addition to that, there was no competition. The products mostly sucked and companies w…

Thanks for your answer, which I've upvoted. I'm sorry that I caused you offense - I don't know much about Yugoslavia, so I couldn't parse your comment as referring to anything else but the wars of the 1990s, so I couldn't get your point in the context of an article concerned primarily with anti-racism.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#30

Post by inglor_cz » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #21

inglor_cz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individuals can probably opt out of the system, even though at a possibly very high price paid in opportunities of their children. The question is what happens to the entire country if its elite adopts critical race theory as The Truth. It could tear itself apart in a way not too dissimilar from 1861-5. Systems in which your skin color is the most important attribute have little space for meritocracy and movement amo…

“price paid in opportunities of their children” In the article one parent talks about a rumor that the school has three picks for Duke and if you spoke out that you would risk your shot. My graduating class from a public high school in Kansas (less than 100 people) had more than three people offered scholarships to Duke (only one went there because the other two had even better options). Maybe if those are the opport…

"White elites won’t actually practice what they preach."

That is not new. Iranian ayatollahs are notoriously corrupt and ungodly. Communist apparatchiks lived an elevated lifestyle propped up by valuable Western commodities unavailable to normal folks. One of the reason why Protestantism took off was the famously corrupt Papal system.

A tyranny can be sustained perfectly well for some time even if the top brass consists of cynical power brokers and manipulators. You do not really need to top ones to practice what they preach.

It is probably not sustainable in the long run, yes. But what comes afterwards? If you look at post-Communist states, the ones that thrive now only gained some balance back because of intense contact with nearby free and rich countries. Russia or Moldova are likely ruined for generations.