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Bozo_Casanova

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Everything posted by Bozo_Casanova

  1. That last part is false. It’s a mathematical impossibility that most of the top Texas kids went elsewhere. It’s also demonstrably false based on the prominence of UT alumni. What is true is that UT once had room for above average and good students, but does not anymore because of population growth. Nevetheless UT the institution is and was elite. Really silly to pretend otherwise.
  2. In high school? Oh, hell no. High school education has generally declined in rigor and relevance for decades. The majority of our parents generation were adequately prepared for most entry level roles needed in the workforce when they left high school. Most high school graduates today aren’t ready for that, or even the attenuated and irrelevant educational experience of today’s mainstream college classroom and spend the first 3 semesters or so in dressed up remedial classes. I disagree. I think what regular people, white and otherwise, got was sort of a pale imitation of those opportunities, purpose built to put them six figures in the hole and chain them to the wheel at 22. Meanwhile, the actual opportunity ladders for regular people were knocked down and broken up. A vital progressive movement would correctly understand that as a declining middle class standard of living. In the last 50 years the number of dual income houses has roughly doubled but their inflation adjusted income has stayed roughly the same, even while their debt increased radically and the cost of education exploded. But because progressivism is a dead ideology intellectually dominated by privileged navel gazers and bullshit artists, Democrats are genuinely confused about why they are losing the working and middle class.
  3. UT is an elite institution and was then too. Surprised I have to remind people, here of all places.
  4. That’s the point - most schools and most programs and in most places doesn’t do the other stuff and the educational product is useless. It’s just a sad, low grade imitation of the least valuable parts of attending elite universities, because the most valuable part can’t be imitated. One of the central failures of the progressive movement was to put their efforts not into ensuring that public high schools produced workforce ready graduates, but rather into making it easier for working and middle class people kids with no particular academic interests to go six figures in the hole so someone could tell them to read Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
  5. Weird it’s like you agreed with me completely without knowing it.
  6. Probably, but I don’t think most people who are not MAGA themselves understand how little visibility MAGA has to information about Trump and what he’s actually doing and done. But they know a lot about the Epstein thing. And they care about it.
  7. Holy shit! Chip Gaines off the top rope!
  8. The mood of the MAGAs has a suddenly violent energy, like the Kafiris who see his blood and realize all at once that Daniel Drevot is not Sikander.
  9. I feel like lately this game is punishing me for knowing too many words Wordle 1,486 4/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜ 🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  10. Completely disagree. Most of what families purchase from American Universities is practically useless, or at best anti-climactic, compared to the education delivered at the best and most rigorous public high schools, let alone elite, selective private schools.
  11. Abortions for some, tiny American flags for others!
  12. It’s another 0-0 vic-tie-ry
  13. Perhaps you could translate it into coonass
  14. That’s right. But how much of that “higher education” is higher than what’s offered in a good high school? And how much do they actually need to succeed? And after they buy that education with a debt they’ll carry for decades hence, what actual “access” to opportunity in corporate America do they get beyond $1 more than it takes them to quit before they are no longer needed? And those are the lucky ones! PREACH! And to me it is *extremely* important to remember (in the context of this thread) that the Democratic Party since the 1990’s has done many things in all kinds of areas that ultimately inhibit economic mobility and reinforce class barriers rather than working powerfully to demolish them.
  15. Wordle 1,485 4/6 ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  16. Sure. Economic mobility has decreased. The ladders of opportunity have been kicked over. For the lower middle and middle classes the value creation of the “American Dream” in the form of education, home equity, career advancement has been systematically repriced to carve away any real return on their investment and even things like a vacation or just a nice evening out now require financing and debt. For most people in the middle, our economy is just the “company store” to which they owe their soul. Of course, that’s not limited to Trump’s base and their kids. But to the very limited extent that DEI efforts and the inflow of talented and hardworking immigrants represent “cheat codes,” that represents for Trump’s base unfair competition in a system that is already rigged against them. Of course MAGAism doesn’t offer any real solution to them other than the validation of their misdirected resentment in return for their continued indenture. That’s why I posted the Trotsky essay about the rise of national socialism- for me it ties together the support for brutality against the immigrant labor we need with the sadly now literally suicidal behavior of people in Kerr County refusing flood warning system upgrades. The parallels here are very striking.
  17. At our best, we are mostly focused on the living our neighbors as we love ourselves. At our worst, we are mostly feeling sorry for ourselves while acting like assholes. In either case doctrine is more of an elective, like attendance.
  18. The entire premise isn’t false. The premise that “most of the children of Trump’s voter base” has been “systematically cut” out of “any realistic prospect of access to higher education and corporate America” is true. Of course it’s not limited to Trump’s base- it’s true for most of the population, but it’s particularly true for the children of Trump’s base.
  19. You don’t really want me to answer that question do you? Let me separate the issues and ask you this: 1) who is more likely to have capable cronies and 2) are capable corrupt cronies more or less expensive in the grand scheme of things than incapable cronies who are corrupt but cheaply bought? In the context of strong mayor cities, the answer really depends on what you consider “corrupt” and what you care about the government actually delivering. City Manager/Council systems are far less “corrupt” in either case, with the downside of being less directly accountable, but more immediately.
  20. He can’t until he does it, because who will stop him? That’s one of those “jokes” that moves the Overton window.
  21. This statement, taken literally and at face value, is not fully untrue. What’s deeply and insidiously false about it is the unmistakable upshot implicated: that those two things are the only things, or even the primary things denying the children of Trump’s base from access. Here again, Trotsky’s words resonate 80 years after his death, from the link above (emphasis added by me):
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