Althouse: "[S]ome students embrace Mr. Trump as a way of rebelling against the intricate rules surrounding privilege and microaggression, and provoking the keepers of those rules."

July 13, 2016

"[S]ome students embrace Mr. Trump as a way of rebelling against the intricate rules surrounding privilege and microaggression, and provoking the keepers of those rules."

"... And Mr. Trump’s rise is shifting the country’s racial discourse just as the millennial generation comes fully of age, more and more distant from the horrors of the Holocaust, or the government-sanctioned racism of Jim Crow.... For a generation weaned on a diet of civic multiculturalism, supporting Mr. Trump breaks the ultimate taboo. Students writing Mr. Trump’s name and slogans in chalk have been accused of hate crimes and spurred calls for censorship. And on campuses frozen by unyielding political correctness and expanding definitions of impermissible speech, some welcome the provocation that Mr. Trump provides...."

I cherry-picked that from a NYT article by Nicholas Confessore titled "For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance."

163 comments:

Michael K said...: Trump is the candidate of those who resist the cultural suicide pact. I wonder how many students are willing to face the left on campus ?

My youngest daughter was unaffected by the leftist propaganda that was fed to her in her courses in general ed. I think most of it was gone by the time she was well into her major.; 7/13/16, 9:59 AM
Brando said...: Anyone angered by the excesses of the swampy Left can understand the catharsis of supporting someone who spits in the eye of such people. If "who can I support who will piss off some people who really deserve it" was the prime consideration in an election, that'd be one thing. But when that person is a con artist, and we'd be saddled with him for four years, it all falls flat.

To hell with the swampy Left, and this huckster (who has plenty in common with them) too. This is no choice, but rather a capitulation to the rot that this country's politics have become. We have no decent options.; 7/13/16, 9:59 AM
rhhardin said...: Microagression and privilege are always jokes. It's the MSM which is oppressive, and which Trump takes on and overcomes.

That in turn offends soap opera women that the media write for, and this author, who writes for them.; 7/13/16, 10:02 AM
Rick said...: I think it would be better to say they're sensing the decline of serious issues. It's hard to believe screaming fits over Halloween costumes translates into fear. If no one else can tell the children to grow up it seems they'll turn to Trump.; 7/13/16, 10:03 AM
Gusty Winds said...: Whites are sensing everyone's decline. Socialists are happy is everyone is the same amount of miserable. Obama says we're not divided. We are. He says the economy is good. It's not.

The intellectual down slide on College Campuses is just one of the most glaring examples of regression disguised as progress.

Ironically, Trump actually represents sanity for everyone.; 7/13/16, 10:05 AM
Humperdink said...: Michael K. said: "Trump is the candidate of those who resist the cultural suicide pact."

Reading the swing state polls this morning, it is apparent that more than a few have chosen to resist the left's suicide pact. If the trend continues, look for Hilda to go nuclear very soon.

BTW, did the former Commander-in-Heat go subsurface? Haven't seen him a while.; 7/13/16, 10:07 AM
shiloh said...: "I cherry-picked that ..."

Indeed, as you do most every article posted here. You were totally infatuated w/Scott Adams when he fit your pro-Trump/anti-Hillary spin. Now not so much.

Go figure!

Althouse is nothing if not flexible ...; 7/13/16, 10:07 AM
Nonapod said...: It's a simple fact of humanity that a younger generation will often rebel against rules and structures set up by the older generations. In the world of higher education, the rules and structures have become more and more authoritarian in nature in recent years, with strict oppressive codes mandating behavior.

It's not hard to see why some young people may take exception to that.

No doubt someone will point out that many millennials in fact set up and enforced this new regime of microaggressions, SJWs, and safe spaces. But it was the older generation who gave them the material and tools to do so. It was the professors and teachers who set up the framework that lead to this absurdity by putting so much emphasis on cultural unfairness and social justice.; 7/13/16, 10:08 AM
SteveR said...: Confessore has to explain this as "whites sensing decline" but maybe its a realization that they are being treated stupidly. The sooner they grow up and face the real world, the sooner they get some self respect.; 7/13/16, 10:10 AM
William said...: Don't get your hopes up. I used to think that all those lefty professors would spawn some kind of counter movement, but no such luck. The kids rebel by being even further left than their teachers. They're sck of hearing nostrums from establishment lackeys like Bill Ayers and Ward Churchill. They want the real truth such as you hear at BLM rallies.; 7/13/16, 10:13 AM
Michael K said...: I think shiloh needs to start stockpiling Zoloft pills from his/her usual sources. They will get to be quite valuable on the left this fall.; 7/13/16, 10:18 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: It's never wrong to cry "Havoc!" before unleashing words of resistance.; 7/13/16, 10:18 AM
n.n said...: ... the horrors of abortion rites (i.e. "final solution"), or the government-sanctioned bigotry of [class] diversity policies. Why do they have to try so hard?; 7/13/16, 10:18 AM
Kathryn51 said...: Tomorrow, my husband and I leave for Cleveland - he's a delegate bound to vote for Trump but will be wearing his Cruz T-shirt on the convention floor.
If the election were held today, I would vote for Gary Johnson. However, Loretta's performance yesterday was a big F*** U to the American people - I'm getting closer to pulling the lever for Trump as my small F*** U gesture to the crooks running this country.

I won't hold my breath for the NYT to identify or acknowledge the large cohort of American voters that are fed up with our government - they are determined to find latent racism, white insecurity, etc. etc. than recognize an alternative explanation for Trump's rise.; 7/13/16, 10:18 AM
Michael K said...: "The kids rebel by being even further left than their teachers. "

I disagree. Even tough I am as old as the hills, I spend a lot of time with people under 25.

A lot of them don;t know what is going on in colleges as they are joining the military.

The college kids I talk to don't say much on campus but they see the BS.

The kids you see in the media all the time are the affirmative action failures who would rather raise hell than study and the white kids who are looking for friends among them. My guess is that they constitute about 25% of the "Studies" majors and 1% of the STEM majors.; 7/13/16, 10:21 AM
Michael K said...: "Tomorrow, my husband and I leave for Cleveland"

Be safe. I am very concerned about those attending.; 7/13/16, 10:22 AM
Curious George said...: "shiloh said...
"I cherry-picked that ..."

Indeed, as you do most every article posted here. You were totally infatuated w/Scott Adams when he fit your pro-Trump/anti-Hillary spin. Now not so much.

Go figure!

Althouse is nothing if not flexible ..."

For a small fee I will copy and paste this post into all future Althouse threads and save you the trouble of taking your bike to the library and using one of their PC's...; 7/13/16, 10:22 AM
CJ said...: It's not that I like Trump. At all.

It's that I absolutely *despise* the type of people that claim to like Hillary, or tell me that Trump is somehow less qualified than Obama.; 7/13/16, 10:22 AM
mccullough said...: Trump is the samizdat; 7/13/16, 10:24 AM
Hagar said...: The ruling generation in the media and in colleges are the student rebels of the late '60s-early '70s?

Last chance before they die?; 7/13/16, 10:27 AM
Wince said...: Why invoke race?

Seems to me that the build-up of those "intricate rules" on campus, especially around sexual conduct, are likely to affect black male students disproportionately for all the same reasons the BLM protesters say about law enforcement.; 7/13/16, 10:29 AM
Luke Lea said...: Milo Yiannopoulos, an outspoken Trump supporter, certainly illustrates that aspect when he appears on college campuses. Chants of Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump are used to shout down Social Justice Warriors who attempt to disrupt his appearances. Part of the irony here is that the radical post-modernists a generation ago loved the idea of being "transgressive." But it turns out it all depends on whose mores (prejudices?) are being transgressed.; 7/13/16, 10:31 AM
eric said...: Blogger Kathryn51 said...
Tomorrow, my husband and I leave for Cleveland

I hope he stays safe. The left is desperate to cause a scene this year.; 7/13/16, 10:35 AM
Michael said...: I have been around a lot of college sophomores the last few days and to a man they are righties. Despite the best efforts of the media and their teachers these men sound like the conservative commentators here. They find BLM ludicrous. They mock the campus PC police. They enumerate every silly pose of their lefty classmates and can articulate rebuttals to the bumper sticker ideas of the progs.

For the first time in a while I see hope!!; 7/13/16, 10:36 AM
YoungHegelian said...: Notice that the NYT readers seem to think that by some magic, they won't be among the whites whose fortunes are declining.

And they won't be, by gumber! If you think that their little prince or princess is ever going to give up his admission seat into an Ivy League school for some damned darkie, well, you've got another thing coming! They & their offspring worked damned hard for everything they have, and deserve that place at the Ivy League.

Unlike, of course, those white trash yokels in the heartland, who need to learn how to decline quietly.; 7/13/16, 10:39 AM
Michael K said...: mccullough said...
Trump is the samizdat

Agreed.; 7/13/16, 10:44 AM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/13/16, 10:51 AM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/13/16, 10:51 AM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: I cherry-picked that from a NYT article by Nicholas Confessore titled "For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance."

Why is it always white leftists that seem to go on and on about whites being in decline?; 7/13/16, 10:57 AM
Kate said...: The last gasp of Whites in decline. I see this shopped by the Left a lot.

They don't understand that Whites, as a social group, are well-mannered. We've felt sympathy and guilt; we've agreed to establish affirmative action. We want to help. I'm sure we're very clumsy and tacky about it, so we may need pointers. But if you insist on calling us bad names when we're just trying to be nice, we reach a breaking point.

The Left is misdiagnosing which feeling is coming to an end. It's the last gasp of Whites as society's doormat.; 7/13/16, 11:00 AM
traditionalguy said...: Trump is Independence Day redux. And he always has been in favor of a strong USA that wins for the common men. Consider it the Middle Class Tenure Track. Under Trump the reparations will flow the other way.; 7/13/16, 11:03 AM
MadisonMan said...: I'm waiting for the Times article that describes people, like me, maybe, who find Hillary Clinton so absolutely and totally corrupt that they'd support anyone that runs against her, and that the Democratic Party failed spectacularly in promoting her as the Best. Candidate. Ever!; 7/13/16, 11:07 AM
mockturtle said...: Anyone who has visited the UK periodically has seen the decline. Because they are entrenched in it, many UK citizens don't see it. The old 'frog in the boiling water' analogy.

BTW, I DO wish the term 'microaggression' could be given an unceremonious burial.; 7/13/16, 11:09 AM
mockturtle said...: They don't understand that Whites, as a social group, are well-mannered.

You must not see some of the bozos I do.; 7/13/16, 11:11 AM
campy said...: "I'm getting closer to pulling the lever for Trump as my small F*** U gesture to the crooks running this country."

And the crooks running this country will count your vote in Hillary!'s column as their small F*** U gesture to you.; 7/13/16, 11:18 AM
Unknown said...: I hear this claim quite a lot in my corner of education -- that resistance to microagression, privilege, etc., is a reaction to a perceived "decline" in the demographic power of "whites." It is a very effective line of argument to levy at liberal/progressive "whites" whose own good sense naturally rebels against the implications for free expression and thought these concepts pose. It warns them away from their own good sense.

The dreadful problem with the concepts of microagression and privilege (trigger warnings are a separate issue, in my thinking) is that they, by definition, undercut the first principles of freedom of thought and expression in the public square. Rather than do away with argumentative fallacies such as ad hominem, they enshrine them.

It seems to me obvious that these are totalitarian concepts designed to bankrupt free exchange for everyone. If minority activists now feel that they can be used as leverage to power, they are naive to think they can keep them only working in their favor. The only limiting principle of microagression is the will of the individual to discover offense, which is to say there is no limiting principle.

(Not that) Unknown; 7/13/16, 11:18 AM
Anonymous said...: Well da' white man is da'debel.; 7/13/16, 11:18 AM
damikesc said...: They don't understand that Whites, as a social group, are well-mannered. We've felt sympathy and guilt; we've agreed to establish affirmative action. We want to help. I'm sure we're very clumsy and tacky about it, so we may need pointers. But if you insist on calling us bad names when we're just trying to be nice, we reach a breaking point.

Yeah. It's as if they ignore that whites did do bad things. We're very nice and polite now --- but few groups are more willing to destroy you in a thorough and total way than whites. When cultural mores against that start to wither, the whiners of today will not enjoy it.; 7/13/16, 11:21 AM
Peter said...: Well, yes, if you're white and the facilitator at the mandatory diversity training workshop demands you deliver a seemingly endless series of apologies for oppressing practically everyone, everywhere, in every way for the past millenium or so and, should you fail to participate enthusiastically, then what else could you be, other than a reactionary "White Sensing Decline"?; 7/13/16, 11:26 AM
veni vidi vici said...: The fact that these assholes have nearly succeeded in making support for one of two major parties in the American political system a "hate crime" should inform the NYT that something is seriously wrong with the assholes, not the Trump chalksters. Everyone in elite authority is a moron or crook anymore, it appears.; 7/13/16, 11:28 AM
traditionalguy said...: It all comes down to having many trained, independent thinking intelligent people in leadership.

The USA once had that in spades because we did not have an aristocracy keeping all the leadership jobs as snobs do. That was Europe and Japan's big problem.

But the attack on American independence started with disrespect for the American way by German trained University Snobs.

Trump is literally bringing back our Happy Days by telling the snobs their silly PC game is over.; 7/13/16, 11:34 AM
Unknown said...: MIchael K said "The kids you see in the media all the time are the affirmative action failures who would rather raise hell than study and the white kids who are looking for friends among them. My guess is that they constitute about 25% of the "Studies" majors and 1% of the STEM majors."

But who precisely is educating the moral sentiments of these STEM majors? Their STEM studies require a lot of time on the hows but little about the ultimate whys. Thinkers in the humanities are still in the position to have massive and important influence with young people -- and the humanities still have that influence whether what they teach is good or ill.

Perhaps their magisterial STEM major mind is more apt to be skeptical overall, but that does not match my experience. Are they somehow impervious to fashionable nonsense outside of their purview? In the absence of any other serious education of the sentiments (religious, classically liberal, etc.) these students are just as likely to assume socially approved soft-focus marxism as anything else. I would say more likely at present.

(Not that) Unknown; 7/13/16, 11:37 AM
mikee said...: In Joseph Heller's Catch 22, there is a scene wherein excessive PC behavior is brought to a screeching halt by a person of sufficient rank to ignore it. Of such moments are history made, hopefully this time by Candidate Trump.

Milo carefully said nothing when Major - de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. The
hubbub began to subside slowly as Major - de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre. He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:
'Gimme eat.'

Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major - de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major - de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.

'Gimme eat, I said,' he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.

Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.
'Give him eat,' he said.

Corporal Snark began giving Major- de Coverley eat. Major- de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:
'Give everybody eat!'
'Give everybody eat!' Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.; 7/13/16, 11:47 AM
mikee said...: And dear Unknown, STEM majors take liberal arts classes as electives, essentially vacations from their studies, and cream the libarts majors therein by simply doing the reading.; 7/13/16, 11:49 AM
n.n said...: An honest reconciliation of moral and natural imperatives produces limited normalization, greater tolerance, and exceptional rejection. The liberal and libertarian elites need to reconsider their selective schemes, especially what they choose to normalize.; 7/13/16, 11:54 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "And dear Unknown, STEM majors take liberal arts classes as electives, essentially vacations from their studies, and cream the libarts majors therein by simply doing the reading."

My engineering major son says required liberal arts classes are seen as easy 4.0's and targeted as such by STEM majors wanting to boost their GPA's for scholarships and post-graduate admissions. When he describes the reaction to BLM activity on the Udub campus it is clear that many, if not most, students see it as an annoyance or a spectacle. He doesn't know anyone who takes it seriously. Purely anecdotal, of course, but in line with every college student I've talked to.; 7/13/16, 12:02 PM
Anonymous said...: The chant erupts in a college auditorium in Washington, as admirers of a conservative internet personality shout down a black protester. It echoes around the gym of a central Iowa high school, as white students taunt the Hispanic fans and players of a rival team. It is hollered by a lone motorcyclist, as he tears out of a Kansas gas station after an argument with a Hispanic man and his Muslim friend.

Trump

Trump

Trump

In countless collisions of color and creed, Donald J. Trump’s name evokes an easily understood message of racial hostility. Defying modern conventions of political civility and language, Mr. Trump has breached the boundaries that have long constrained Americans’ public discussion of race.

Opening paras worthy of Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

The rest of the article is more interesting than that opening suggests, though. Reading it all the way through, accounting for the comforting cat-lady-nip thrown in for the subscription base, one might conclude that the "resentful whites" were rational folk with legitimate grievances. (I think it was Steve Sailer the other day who suggested that this fluff-first, meat-later method was intentional, since "the base" probably just glanced over the beginnings of articles for the purpose of feeling superior and confirming their biases.)

Cat ladies (of both sexes) reign in the comments, though. I think the NYT has the cat-ladiest commenters in the world.; 7/13/16, 12:02 PM
Anonymous said...: Aside - loved this phrasing: On campuses clenched by unforgiving debates over language and inclusion...

"Clenched"? Lol. Never seen it used like that, analogizing campuses to jaws and anal sphincters. I imagine reports of our time from the future: "In the long hot summer of '16, butt-clenched campuses across the nation..."; 7/13/16, 12:03 PM
Michael K said...: "Thinkers in the humanities are still in the position to have massive and important influence with young people"

Yes, baleful influence that makes them useless for society at large.

It is mostly Humanities types who claim they are great at figuring out virtue.; 7/13/16, 12:04 PM
n.n said...: Americans expect, and rightly so, the assimilation and integration of both native born, immigrant born, and immigrants. The implementation of [class] diversity (i.e. race-based, sex-based, color-based, etc.) policies has been disruptive and corrosive to the social fabric, in America, but also in nations that experience mass emigration. The establishment of a Pro-Choice Church has further undermined the reconciliation of moral and natural imperatives.; 7/13/16, 12:11 PM
buwaya said...: You know, this all could be defused and avoided with a simple change in rhetorical program.

All the BLM and similar types, all the feminists, La Raza and such, all the campus ragers, could put a big dent in Trumps support by simply switching out of hate mode to love mode.

"Kiss a White Person" day, or similar exercises. It seems so obvious.; 7/13/16, 12:18 PM
buwaya said...: And, for that matter, suing bakers and pizza joints over gay matters, or little old nuns over contraception insurance - love works better than lawsuits.
Why this isn't understood is puzzling.; 7/13/16, 12:21 PM
Hagar said...: And dear Unknown, STEM majors take liberal arts classes as electives, essentially vacations from their studies, and cream the libarts majors therein by simply doing the reading.

My time was before the "automatic 4.0s," and even today you don't get A's if you are a deviant rightist.

The required "humanities" courses required were, however, largely a waste of time and money at a time when I could ill afford either.

I did find out that some BusAd courses were also listed as Econ and qualified as "humanities." I especially remember one taught by old Doc Parrish, who was a very stiff old bird and demanded a lot of work. I got a B and was aching about it after neglecting my engineering courses to study and write for this one, and one of the other guys who heard me said to be quiet since Doc had given no A's and only 2 B's and you don't even belong here!

Something that perplexed me even more was a required minimum of hours. Coming from a Norwegian high school, some of that was accepted as college level, but that left me short of US hours, and they told me I had to make it up with whatever; they did not care with what, but I had to have the hours.
Makes no sense whatever.; 7/13/16, 12:31 PM
Michael K said...: "When he describes the reaction to BLM activity on the Udub campus"

Back in the 60s, I had an OR nurse friend who was getting her BS at LA State College. She was black and had begun as a surgery scrub tech. Then she went to nursing school and got her RN. I used to do her homework on Saturday nights while she got the OR running faster.

She got her BS and ended up, the last time I saw her, as the OR Supervisor at LA County hospital. I knew a lot of black women who worked their way up in the County system.

Anyway, she was taking a criminology class at LA State when the black power people invaded the classroom and told them they were shutting down the school. She laughed and told me more than half the class was cops and they were all armed. The black power types quickly left when they figured this out.

She used to joke about "specials" on TVs during the riots.

I wonder how she gets along with the present groups? I'm sure she is long since retired.; 7/13/16, 12:35 PM
shiloh said...: "For a small fee"

How small?

My post in the final analysis is redundant ie goes without saying.

Althouse = Priceless!; 7/13/16, 12:36 PM
buwaya said...: Hilary Clinton could be elected on a sea of love, of patriotism, of accommodation, of little Latino children singing "God Bless America", of Beyonce kissing Newt, of the City of San Francisco offering to help the Archdiocese hold a procession down Market or up Geary (to the Cathedral), or to the Mission; upon the Feast Day of St. Francis (Oct 4).
Its just a matter of turning a few switches in the general program. It doesn't need to cost anything.
I doubt that's going to happen, but it could. It so easily could.; 7/13/16, 12:41 PM
Original Mike said...: "Why this isn't understood is puzzling."

They're more interested in acting out their anger than in success.; 7/13/16, 12:46 PM
Hagar said...: If you try to kiss me, I will defend myself by any means necessary; 7/13/16, 12:47 PM
hombre said...: My community is pretty eclectic, but it is not particulary racially diverse. When people here say they are "thinking about" voting for Trump it is for one of three reasons: Hillary represents a continuation of a corrupt, out of touch, D.C. elite that is damaging the country and Trump MAY turn that around; Hillary and Bill are personally dishonest and corrupt; Hillary will politicize the SCOTUS for a generation.

The first includes the cost to the taxpayers and detriment to national security of untrammeled immigration, but the only time people speak directly about race is to express the opinion that Trump is being tarred with the racist brush by the Democrats and their pals in the media and he "should do something about it."; 7/13/16, 12:47 PM
DanTheMan said...: buwaya,
Do you think you could get the local Jewish kids to sing "God Bless Nazi Germany"?

When you ask the far left to embrace their opposition, that's how they will frame it.

I think you would have better luck getting Beyoncé to kiss a dead moose than Newt Gingrich.; 7/13/16, 12:49 PM
Anonymous said...: buwaya puti @12:41 PM et supra:

Droll, mr. buwaya, very droll.; 7/13/16, 12:51 PM
buwaya said...: All of Hilary's friends could continue to rob and embezzle as they wish, and the Feds to grab all the power they like, all they really need to do to get their way nice and smooth like is to smile and be friendly while they are at it.

But they don't smile. Somebody really needs to have a word over there.; 7/13/16, 1:05 PM
buwaya said...: "When you ask the far left to embrace their opposition, that's how they will frame it.'

But its not the far left. And its not the far left that takes the far left seriously, but the center-left, the establishment. And how they frame it is their choice. They aren't limited by anything in how they frame whatever.; 7/13/16, 1:07 PM
Paddy O said...: Donald and Hobbes; 7/13/16, 1:13 PM
n.n said...: Not only do they not smile, they actually smirk. Also, they carry an oversized gavel... Not in a clownish humor. With a decidedly hard, disruptive footstep. Roosevelt, Theodore, would be dismayed at the evolution of [American] Liberals with Progressive names.; 7/13/16, 1:15 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Why is STEM different? Because, for the most part, the answers are binary. You either got it right, or you got it wrong. And, if you got it wrong the prof can show you why. I remember turning away from the humanities after I took a philosophy course between my freshman and sophomore year in college. The prof asked us what a work by Plato meant. I told him what I thought. He told me I was wrong. I asked him why, for him to prove his work. His response was a resort to authority - that this was what philosophy profs (like him) thought it meant. Which said to me that it was nothing more than mind reading and guessing what the prof wanted. After that, the only humanities I took were Latin classes (amazingly, the college magazine had an article about that prof, and indicated that he was still teaching, better than 4 decades later. Amazing guy). The bridge is either going to stand or fall. The chemical experiment is either going to get the right results, or not. Much more objective.; 7/13/16, 1:18 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: My goddaughter's husband, who I believe is generally more left than right, said "They better not" when I mentioned that the Green Party candidate wants to forgive student loans. It seems he had dutifully worked hard to pay his loans off already.; 7/13/16, 1:21 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Let me add to my last point. In physics, chemistry, engineering, etc, feelings don't count. Micro aggressions don't count. What matters is getting the objectively correct answer.; 7/13/16, 1:21 PM
Michael K said...: "The bridge is either going to stand or fall. The chemical experiment is either going to get the right results, or not. Much more objective."

Many years ago, when I was doing pre-med, I was an English major because pre-meds could not get student loans.

I took some classes and enjoyed them thoroughly. Many included exams that required memorizing lots of poetry and many plays. The exam would be a quote and a request to explain where it was and what it meant. Not much philosophy. The prof wanted what act and who was talking.

Pretty objective. I am convinced the Humanities students today are lazy.; 7/13/16, 1:25 PM
Original Mike said...: "Why is STEM different? Because, for the most part, the answers are binary. You either got it right, or you got it wrong. ... The bridge is either going to stand or fall."

It's not completely binary. Any fool can design a bridge that stands. It takes a really good engineer to design a bridge that just barely stands.; 7/13/16, 1:28 PM
Michael K said...: "It takes a really good engineer to design a bridge that just barely stands."

Neville Shute defined an engineer as "It has been said an engineer is a man who can do for five shillings what any fool can do for a pound...."; 7/13/16, 1:35 PM
buwaya said...: "The exam would be a quote and a request to explain where it was and what it meant."

This is similar to the sorts of questions in the old Chinese Mandarinate civil service exams.

Perhaps the "eight legged essay" could be revived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-legged_essay; 7/13/16, 1:35 PM
David said...: Identity politics have worked very well for the left as long as they could control what identities should be cohesively political. They do not like it so much when it looks like white people might become a conscious and organized identity group. To date (at least in recent history) the political and other differences between whites have outweighed any common ethnic identity. If that changes identity politics is not going to work out so well for the left.; 7/13/16, 2:01 PM
rhhardin said...: Taranto has Best of the Web with title "Catch Fire and Halt"

which refers to the fake 709 series IBM computer instructions HTR and HPR (halt and transfer, halt and proceed, the difference being the effect when the start button is pressed), with parody instruction HCF halt and catch fire.

Not catch fire and halt.; 7/13/16, 2:06 PM
jg said...: Yes. And if you don't like it, maybe stop provoking sane people to the point of "you know what, fuck it" [of course any claim that this is the *only* reason Trump has support would be laughable blinkered liberal thinking]; 7/13/16, 2:16 PM
buwaya said...: Off topic, but related to the Michael Milken discussion yesterday -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-13/spoofing-trader-who-outsmarted-citadel-and-hfts-gets-3-year-jail-sentence

The charge has to do with setting up a system that exploits defects in the algorithms used by large firms automated trading systems. Which themselves are set up to exploit trading patterns by non-automated investors.

A similar idea to the actual situations Milken was accused of exploiting, that of, effectively, being a parasite upon bigger parasites.; 7/13/16, 2:17 PM
Michael K said...: Somebody wake up ARM and tell him Millken is back.

I stayed out of it yesterday but Millken was prosecuted for inventing "Junk Bonds."

It was all political.; 7/13/16, 2:26 PM
Rusty said...: Their STEM studies require a lot of time on the hows but little about the ultimate whys.

An Engineer without the "why" is called a mechanic.; 7/13/16, 2:35 PM
Unknown said...: That micro aggressions shouldn't count "in physics, chemistry, engineering, etc." is not the same thing as saying they don't or won't count in the physics, chemistry, or engineering classroom of 2018 or 2020. If you think the marxian culture warriors are content with their hollowing out of the humanities, you're mistaken. One need only look at the "priorities" espoused by current heads of STEM departments and governmental science agencies like NASA.

My concern with blithely directing students toward STEM and telling them to ignore everything else they're forced to take is that it fails 1) to account for what curious young people are actually like and 2) to properly prepare students to combat faulty thinking that they'll encounter outside their field of expertise.

One can hope that the moral sentiments of young people are being educated outside of the college curriculum -- by parents, churches, coaches, personal exploration on YouTube, etc. But my experience with bright STEM students suggests otherwise -- that they are more likely to go along with those students who are loudest about matters of "social justice" and rehearse the pieties along with the true believers.

Perhaps the STEM student is in a stronger position to simply ignore or even outright deny the garbage they're forced to listen to in easy electives or required classes. But does he/she have the rhetorical/intellectual tools to openly combat this nonsense, to meet it on its own terms and explain its fallacies? Because the "nonsense" right now is setting the terms of the debate and creating the vocabulary for discussion across ALL education. STEM students won't be able to simply ignore it or keep their heads down and get through it for much longer. Soon "it" will be as much a part of STEM discussions as it is part of an education in the humanities. Feminist glaciology is a joke today, but it sure as hell received public grant money, while some worthier project did not.

It is possible for a philosophy class to fail you, but it is not possible to go through life without a philosophy, or a vision of what is good, what is just, what is beautiful. And once the young STEM student recognizes this hole and goes to look for a philosophy, what will they find on offer in the broader intellectual culture? Or what dimly remembered ideas from a required "easy A" course will she return to for a second look? Will they be able to reason themselves back to classical liberalism from nothing?; 7/13/16, 2:36 PM
Big Mike said...: Students rebelling against authority?!?! Has that ever happened in the whole history of the United States? I guess it's a shock to the leftist professors at UW and elsewhere that today they're the authority figures the students are going to rebel against.

And having been a college student in the 1960's, I think the authority figures of then were vastly more tolerant of people who disagreed with them than the campus authority figures of today.; 7/13/16, 2:39 PM
SGT Ted said...: "[S]ome students embrace Mr. Trump as a way of rebelling against the intricate rules surrounding privilege and microaggression, and provoking the keepers of those rules."

They are rebelling against the bullying behavior of progressive social justice warriors on campus. The keepers of those rules have become intolerant assholes and they deserve the push back.; 7/13/16, 2:46 PM
Michael K said...: I'm not teaching anymore but I have spent 15 years with very smart medical students, most recently with medical students who had engineering degrees in undergraduate.

They are simply not interested in learning philosophy because many if not most got that from their parents.

I have a young friend who is now doing a Masters in Petroleum Engineering. He is an excellent pianist and his parents did not have a TV all the years he and his brothers were growing up. His older brother is at Pensacola in flight school. His younger brother is in college and I don't know his major but I am certain it does not have "studies" in it.

My own college years were in the 50s and I had teachers I was very impressed with. I do not recall knowing the political sentiments of any.; 7/13/16, 2:47 PM
Kathryn51 said...: Michael K (and Eric) both noted my original post( "Tomorrow, my husband and I leave for Cleveland") and sent best wishes for our safety.

Security precautions are quite extreme it appears. We received a lengthy list of items that are prohibited in the security zone. All of us (including guests) will receive a transparent plastic tote bag for personal items - no large purses, backpacks, briefcases, camera bags, etc. etc. New credentials every day.

If Professor Ann/Meade post an open-topic café next week, I may post some mini-reports from the convention hall. Depends how much of it revolves around Trump (no report).; 7/13/16, 2:52 PM
M Jordan said...: @Katheryn: "If the election were held today, I would vote for Gary Johnson."

Ten years ago, maybe I'd have done the same. But I just watched this Johnson fellow on Fox today and I really couldn't distinguish him from Barack Obama. He gave a hollow salute to cops, then started in on how racist we all are. He earlier said he agreed with 75% of what Bernie stood for.

If this is libertarianism, count me out (and to think I campaigned for Ed Clark, door to door).; 7/13/16, 2:55 PM
Peter said...: "That micro aggressions shouldn't count "in physics, chemistry, engineering, etc." is not the same thing as saying they don't or won't"

The reason why they don't count (yet) is because Title-IX style proportionality quotas have not (yet) been applied to them?; 7/13/16, 2:59 PM
Michael K said...: "I may post some mini-reports from the convention hall. "

Dana Loesch has now been threatened but recorded the call and called police.

This will be a pattern for the next few months.; 7/13/16, 3:12 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Kate:

They don't understand that Whites, as a social group, are well-mannered. We've felt sympathy and guilt; we've agreed to establish affirmative action.

I know I ought to give people the benefit of the doubt, but at this point a lot of the Whites who are most vocal about supporting affirmative action also know what the effect of affirmative action is: it substitutes low-scoring Blacks and Hispanics for high-scoring Asians. For upper middle class Whites, this is not exactly a huge sacrifice.; 7/13/16, 3:16 PM
gadfly said...: After Mr. Trump attacked a profile of his wife, Melania, in GQ, the article’s author, the journalist Julia Ioffe, who is Jewish, was inundated with anti-Semitic abuse on social media, including a cartoon depicting Ms. Ioffe in a concentration camp.

Asked whether he condemned the attacks, Mr. Trump told an interviewer: “I don’t have a message to the fans. A woman wrote an article that’s inaccurate.”

When Melania posed for nude pics on the Trump jet in London, GQ had Trump's permission. When the Ioffe interview with Melania this year was done, Trump would have known what was going on as well. The GQ article was just like those in most supermarket trashy magazines - a whole lot of innuendo and gushing with little substance and if there were inaccuracies, they came from both sides. For example, Melania said she had no breast enhancements - so she obviously wears invisible skyhooks under those gowns.

The free publicity backfired on the magazine and we can can expect similar backbiting from Trump whenever and for whatever reason that he doesn't get his way if elected President. Its a sickness folks and the Trump Trolls haven't got a clue. What if some Trump supporter really had decided to do revenge on the writer?; 7/13/16, 3:27 PM
bagoh20 said...: The tendency of the young will always be to go left. That's the pole of less responsibility, less effort, less sacrifice and easy esteem. We had more universal values of hard work and sacrifice in the past because at one time the alternative was to perish, so the values were obvious to people as soon as they approached adulthood. Simple survival no longer requires the conservative values, although real success still does everywhere except the bastions of the left like academia, government and union membership, but as Bernie Sanders showed, many people don't really want much more than an easy life of mostly free stuff.

For most arenas the highly successful of tomorrow will remain those with the conservative values in how they live and act, regardless of how they vote and preach. Their shrinking numbers remain the drivers of civilization, which is why that progress is slowing. How far it slows depends on how many maintain conservative values without a personal existential threat to motivate them.; 7/13/16, 3:32 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "What if some Trump supporter really had decided to do revenge on the writer?"

What if some BLM supporter shot 6 cops dead?; 7/13/16, 3:42 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: What if some nut, inflamed with anti-Trump hype, tried to steal a cop's gun and shoot Trump?; 7/13/16, 3:45 PM
shiloh said...: "What if some nut, inflamed with anti-Trump hype, tried to steal a cop's gun and shoot Trump?"

The NRA er gun lobby would be very happy ie increased gun sales, their bottom line.

This is not rocket science!; 7/13/16, 3:54 PM
rhhardin said...: Klavan reports twitter on easier to get a Glock and a book

1. Glock-a-book
2. Glockwork Orange
3. To Kill a Glockinigbird
4. The Hunt for Red Gloctober; 7/13/16, 3:56 PM
mockturtle said...: The tendency of the young will always be to go left.

A quote attributed [falsely] to Churchill went something like: 'If you aren't a Liberal when you are twenty, you have no heart. If you aren't a Conservative at forty, you have no brain'. That just about sums it up.; 7/13/16, 4:04 PM
Jaq said...: Unknown thinks that engineering departments should have political officers, like Soviet submarines did.; 7/13/16, 4:15 PM
Dr Weevil said...: shiloh just demonstrated the truth of James Russell Lowell's words:
"There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking."
Whether she believes what she wrote at 3:54, or (more likely) is just lying to earn a paycheck from someone who wants to damage this site, hardly matters. She is filth, and doing her best (=her worst) to justify the next person who takes a shot at Trump or his followers or policemen going about their jobs.; 7/13/16, 4:22 PM
Michael K said...: This should make shiloh very happy.

Mamba reported that four individuals with sniper experience were dispatched to Miami on Wednesday to prepare for their attempt to assassinate Trump.

Mamba additionally reported that two other individuals who were trained in the use of explosives were dispatched earlier this week to Dallas and that they would be travelling by car to Miami to meet up early Friday morning with their team members.

Stay safe Kathryn.; 7/13/16, 4:23 PM
effinayright said...: Rusty said...
Their STEM studies require a lot of time on the hows but little about the ultimate whys. An Engineer without the "why" is called a mechanic.
**************
You didn't take many STEM courses, did you Rusty....ditto to Unknown.

And if you knew any good "mechanics", you would understand that they have a pretty deep goddamn understanding of "why" devices, structures or mechanisms do what they do, and their relative strengths and weaknesses.

If you took any engineering courses (aka applied sciences) you would understand how much pure science and mathematics you have to understand in the first place.

And if you took any science courses you would know that science does not deal in "whys", only whats and hows. Ask yourself the child's question: "Why is the Sun?"

Does Science attempt to answer that question?; 7/13/16, 4:26 PM
effinayright said...: As for humanities dealing in eternal "whys", give us a break! Do you support the Judaeo-Christian view of human nature vs. the Secular Humanist position? WHY or WHY NOT?

Tell us "why" Marx was right, and Locke was wrong, or vice versa. Prove it! Give us Louis XV's reasons for WHY the French Revolution happened, and then Robespierre's WHY. Which one is correct?

Math majors can "prove" certain theorems, for all eternity. See Andrew Wiles' proof of "Fermat's Last Theorem."

But no Philosophy prof can ever "prove" Marx's or Locke's position, or Louis XV's or Robespierre's. NO Math major would ever be dumb enough to try!
*************
mikee said...
And dear Unknown, STEM majors take liberal arts classes as electives, essentially vacations from their studies, and cream the libarts majors therein by simply doing the reading.

YES!!! My own direct experience, when I was pursuing a Double Degree program!!!!
(History, Chemical Eng.) READ the material, and make an outline of the major points! Go over your class notes and the outline before you take the exam!

I enjoyed my lib arts electives, and took them seriously.
It was all essay or problem-solving ("show your work"), so you had to know how to reason or write, or learn how to! BEING ABLE TO WRITE WAS A HALLMARK OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION.

As for Bruce Hayden's comment:

"I remember turning away from the humanities ... The prof asked us what a work by Plato meant. I told him what I thought. He told me I was wrong. I asked him why, for him to prove his work. His response was a resort to authority - that this was what philosophy profs (like him) thought it meant.

I suspect you would find Law School very frustrating. My Torts prof (Jon Banzhaf, still teaching at GW Law) was an MIT graduate, a "Double E". In class he asked for a show of hands on the question, "What is Newton's First Law?" Half would raise their hands. Banzhaf would say, "That's like asking an engineer, "Can you read?"" He put forth several similar questions basic to an understanding of science, with similar results.

He then put up a diagram of a car going around a graded curve at a posted speed of 45 mph, and asked if anyone could determine, as a matter of physics, if the road design was sufficient to allow such a speed. (if the road design was faulty, then it became a tort issue).

He provided details such as the car's mass, radius of the curve, the coefficient of friction and the like.

A student said, "I don't think a person in this room could answer that question---generating hoots of derision from the half the class that could answer the one about Newton. (It's a high school Physics-level problem)

Banzhaf's point was that a technical education could be a real benefit to a lawyer. QED

But he also cautioned that great gobs of law are forever in a dynamic state, so there's very often no "correct" answer. There's only precedent, ever-changing statutes and regs (and Constitutional Amendments) to be interpreted and re-interpreted based on ever-changing history and legal arguments to support whatever position a lawyer wishes to take in a particular case.

Very messy. Very much like Life itself.

I'm utterly dismayed at the lack of rigor in today's education. Buncha ill-educated pussies, as I see it.; 7/13/16, 4:27 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: @Brando

I agree 100% (sorry!) about wanting to piss off the left, and Trump being no better. I refuse to vote for either Hillary or Trump.; 7/13/16, 4:37 PM
Hagar said...: I will defend Rusty on that one, though he should have said "technician" rather than "mechanic."

A technician may be very well versed in his specialty, but he is not held responsible for having sufficient general knowledge to know when he is getting out of his depth and should seek competent advice.
A Professional Engineer is responsible for the competency of whatever he puts his seal to and may even be criminally charged for negligence in addition to losing his license to practise, if he cannot defend his work.

And the example of the 45 mph curve is a bad one. Just following "The Green Book" on this may result in much too great super-elevation around the curve. With modern suspensions and tires, the physics are anything but simple.; 7/13/16, 4:47 PM
Nichevo said...: Char, it's not about annoying the Left.

It's about stopping the Left.

Which side are you on?

...The gunslinger would have understood...; 7/13/16, 4:49 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Michael K said...
It was all political.

This is the kind of deep thoughtful analysis we have come to expect from people called Michael.; 7/13/16, 4:49 PM
shiloh said...: Not to fear Trump loving Althouse cons as Vietnam draft deferment Trump is much like crazy Lt Col Kilgore in Apocalypse Now! ie he could stand in the middle of a battlefield and not get touched!

I love the sell of napalm in the morning ...

Apologies to Robert Duvall.; 7/13/16, 4:53 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: buwaya said...
Off topic, but related to the Michael Milken discussion yesterday

One of several depressing things here is that these are bright creative people. Once upon a time they worked for the auto industry or NASA or IBM. They created valuable technology. Now they are just parasites.; 7/13/16, 4:56 PM
Dr Weevil said...: No apology from filth shiloh for accusing the NRA of wanting someone to shoot Trump so they can sell more guns? Of course, I didn't really expect any. She continues to have no redeeming value whatsoever. If I were a lefty, I'd think that would justify killing her, but I'm not, so I know that it doesn't do any such thing.; 7/13/16, 4:58 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: 'NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
I cherry-picked that from a NYT article by Nicholas Confessore titled "For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance."

Why is it always white leftists that seem to go on and on about whites being in decline?'

Because it's what they most wish and hope for.

mockturtle said...
'They don't understand that Whites, as a social group, are well-mannered.

You must not see some of the bozos I do.'

Are you objectively comparing the whites you know with other races, or are you applying different standards for different races?; 7/13/16, 5:00 PM
buwaya said...: "It was all political."

For a certain value of "political". Milken wasn't politically aligned. This is not an ideological matter.

However, he did greatly annoy The Powers That Be, at least those with influence with the SEC and other such bodies. So Milken was harassed by the government.
The case I just brought up is very similar.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-13/spoofing-trader-who-outsmarted-citadel-and-hfts-gets-3-year-jail-sentence

Other similar cases include that of Maurice Greenberg of AIG. Eliot Spitzer used his office in cooperation with a cabal of AIG executives that wished to take AIG in a new, risky direction, in which they effectively destroyed the firm and made a great contribution to the financial meltdown of 2008. That wasn't "political" either.; 7/13/16, 5:00 PM
shiloh said...: "accusing the NRA of wanting someone to shoot Trump so they can sell more guns?"

The NRA is filth and this is their reality.; 7/13/16, 5:03 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Care to offer any evidence for you filthy little charge, shiloh? Any evidence at all? Or are you just going to wallow in your filth, as usual, doing your best to wreck one of the best sites on the web for your paymasters?; 7/13/16, 5:08 PM
buwaya said...: ARM, you are completely correct as far as the waste of talent.

Seeing it from my side, the problem is that all the incentives are wrong for making things.
It is incredibly difficult to do that. The rate of business formation in that sphere is near-nil.

Bright lads capable of working out complex problems go into purely virtual lines of work, from software/IT to regulatory entrepreneurship (finding out new ways to make firms pay to "comply"), to financial manipulation. Not anything real or useful.; 7/13/16, 5:11 PM
Francisco D said...: ARM,

Are you jealous of Michael K's accomplishments?

I can think of no other reason for such an ad hominem attack by someone who (falsely) portrays themselves as a "moderate."

Please give up the pretense and stop the trolling. I expect better from this site, now that Garage Mahal and Inga/Amanda have disappeared.; 7/13/16, 5:21 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Francisco D said...
I can think of no other reason for such an ad hominem attack

So, in your world, MK gets a free shot at me but I am unreasonable if I return fire. OK. Perhaps not the most even-handed approach one could take. I might even suggest it is immoderate.; 7/13/16, 5:24 PM
narciso said...: this fellow is probably assigned reading,

http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/263490/obama-reading-list-author-says-murder-police-daniel-greenfield; 7/13/16, 5:29 PM
Francisco D said...: I am not a Trump supporter. I am a somewhat liberal, conservative libertarian. God forbid, anyone calls me a moderate. Moderates are too afraid to stake themselves to a position. They are liberals who are too open minded to make a coherent argument in favor of their positions. It's all about the virtue, isn't it?

It's not because I think Trump is crazy. The people who say that need to look in the mirror.

I don't support him because he has chosen to be a populist with no coherent governing philosophy. I think of myself as somewhat intellectual and cannot abide populists.

On the other hand, the Clintons have a very clear and simple philosophy, "What's in it for us?"

I will be voting for the crazy populist.; 7/13/16, 5:30 PM
Francisco D said...: ARM,

"Waking you up" is a shot? My, we are very sensitive.; 7/13/16, 5:33 PM
mockturtle said...: Are you objectively comparing the whites you know with other races, or are you applying different standards for different races?

To say that whites are more well-mannered than blacks, in general, is ridiculous. I travel all over the country and find that people in the South, black or white, are more polite than people in other parts of the country. I've been around both blacks and whites most of my life. Some are polite, some are not. It's not a racial thing but seems to be based on their upbringing and/or spiritual beliefs. My opinion is not the result of some sociological study but of my personal observations, which are extensive.; 7/13/16, 5:40 PM
mockturtle said...: I will be voting for the crazy populist.

So will I. Gee, we haven't had a populist president since Andrew Jackson!; 7/13/16, 5:42 PM
Anonymous said...: Shiloh, $0.07 has been deposited into your account by Correct The Record. Thanks for Shillin' for Hill!; 7/13/16, 5:43 PM
Michael said...: Buwaya

This guy was convicted of "spoofing" or placing orders he did not intend to fill. This was not illegal until Dodd-Frank. He was clearly manipulating the market at least at the edges. Wrong footing we used to call it.

Thanks for linking the article in ZeroHedge. Informative and funny and a different take from the mainstream press or even the story in the Post.; 7/13/16, 5:46 PM
Michael K said...: "This is the kind of deep thoughtful analysis we have come to expect from people called Michael."

Boy ! I go to Home Depot and warfare breaks out !

ARM and I agree one quite a few things and "wakeup ARM" was a joke. Has anyone else noticed how little sense of humor there is on the left ? Seinfeld thinks college students have lost theirs but college students kind of define the left these days, at least those who make the news.

I think the prosecution of Milken was political and spent quite a bit of time analyzing it at the time. He was very cocky and the junk bonds were not the most useful invention of the 90s but his "crime" was mostly pissing off the Clintons.

Just as significant as the pardons the president issued were the ones he did not hand down. Without explaining his decisions, Mr. Clinton declined to issue pardons to the onetime Wall Street financier Michael R. Milken; Leonard Peltier, the American Indian who was convicted of killing two F.B.I. agents in 1975; the former Justice Department official Webster L. Hubbell, who was a close Clinton friend and a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton's; and the spy Jonathan Pollard.

Milken obviously did not donate to the Clinton Foundation.; 7/13/16, 5:49 PM
Michael said...: buwaya

I saw the disruptions of the junk bond market first hand. A lot of firms were dismantled, a lot of good people lost their jobs. But a lot of these good people went on to create new businesses and to carry the technologies they had begun to develop to fruition. The old compact between employer and employee was broken, irrevocably, but a lot of good came out of it. When IBM went through a wrenching shrinking a whole lot of disappointed people ended up getting very rich. Because they had no choice once free of the tit.; 7/13/16, 5:51 PM
Anonymous said...: Mockturtle is correct that white people are no more well mannered than black people and that it depends on one's upbringing, etc. I've dealt with some rude unmannered people from all walks of life and very decent, well mannered people from places one might not expect to find them.; 7/13/16, 5:52 PM
Michael said...: On the topic of Milken it is also worthwhile to read Ben Stein's account of Drexel. He has keen insights on Drexel, all negative, as well as Milen himself, also negative.

I know a few of the guys who traded w/ Milken on his Beverly Hills desk. He kept brutal hours. Those guys were sitting there at 4 every morning already talking to the NY traders. Tough tough business. When Drexel collapsed a few of these guys started another business of buying and selling debt and used the very desk that they shared in Beverly Hills. Moved to their office at 405 and Wilshire trading mainly real estate debt. Very smart guys, hard working guys.; 7/13/16, 6:01 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Michael K said...
but his "crime" was mostly pissing off the Clintons.

This is from your link:
Mr. Clinton declined to issue pardons to the onetime Wall Street financier Michael R. Milken; Leonard Peltier, the American Indian who was convicted of killing two F.B.I. agents in 1975; the former Justice Department official Webster L. Hubbell, who was a close Clinton friend and a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton's; and the spy Jonathan Pollard.

None of these things are like the other. Did all of these felons 'piss off the Clintons' and is this your entire line of evidence that Milken was prosecuted for 'pissing off the the Clintons'?; 7/13/16, 6:07 PM
Michael K said...: "Did all of these felons 'piss off the Clintons' "

I doubt they donated. Milken could have afforded it. Plus of course, Pollard was a......; 7/13/16, 6:11 PM
mockturtle said...: Mockturtle is correct that white people are no more well mannered than black people and that it depends on one's upbringing, etc. I've dealt with some rude unmannered people from all walks of life and very decent, well mannered people from places one might not expect to find them.

Thank you for the corroboration, Anonymous! It is unfortunate that many white people get their racial views from the MSM instead of life experience.; 7/13/16, 6:25 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Blogger Brando said...
"Anyone angered by the excesses of the swampy Left can understand the catharsis of supporting someone who spits in the eye of such people. If "who can I support who will piss off some people who really deserve it" was the prime consideration in an election, that'd be one thing. But when that person is a con artist, and we'd be saddled with him for four years, it all falls flat.

To hell with the swampy Left, and this huckster (who has plenty in common with them) too. This is no choice, but rather a capitulation to the rot that this country's politics have become. We have no decent options.

7/13/16, 9:59 AM"

I remember Brando as the Great Prognosticator (after the results were in) after 2014, so let us know: Does turnout exceed 2012's? By how much? Who wins?

Don't be your humble self and take credit for predictions you first made after the results, take the jump and tell us before the election the mood of the country, as you seem to think you know it very well.

If turnout exceeds 2012 by 5 million, will you still argue that people hate the options they foolishly label the rot that actually are the "choices?"

Seems to me it's been a long time that there has been a hugely significant apathy amongst the voting but especially non-voting public, and I think Trump will reverse that cycle, if only for this election.

So: Trump wins. Big. Mandate.

Even without Ol' Remus and Iowahawk's vote, which isn't the dictator's vote they seem to think democracy owes to them each simultaneously. Somehow.

Trump doesn't curse the darkness, he lights candles and don't curse 'em glaring neither. He didn't like the field of candidates this year, so he saddled up and whupped their asses, and he's not done.

Also capitalize "Hell" if using it as a destination, not because of any rules of writing but because I done did told you to. Ya follow?; 7/13/16, 6:25 PM
Swede said...: "The NRA is filth and this is their reality."

Not only are you unacquainted with reality, you've never even accidentally bumped into it.; 7/13/16, 6:26 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: @whotlotofsomething - LS turned out to be not that bad. Three things helped. My father was an attorney, so I grew up with knowing attorneys think. Second, I did it later in life, after a career as a software engineer. So, I never got as stressed by it. Third, I had just taken Dale Carnegie, both as a student, then as an assistant. So, I was a lot more used to standing up in front of people and not panicking. I remember early second term in Torts going one-on-one with the prof, and holding my own. After that, it was downhill for the rest of LS. high LSATs helped too. One of the things that I discovered was that if I got out front of a prof, early in the term, by volunteering a lot in class, I was inevitably able to fairly quickly get to the point where I controlled when I would get called in class, and so only had to brief half the cases the rest of the students had to. I do remember one big Hispanic woman in one class tried to tell me that the class didn't appreciate how I monopolized the discussions. Tough. I was paying my own tuition, as she probably was not, and was going to get my money's worth.

At one level, the difference between law school and the humanities seemed to me that in LS, there is often no right answer, just partially right ones. It depends, and seeing how it did so was what mattered. And I never felt that all the profs had engaged in some group think that I hadn't been privy too - or if there was, it was now precedent picked up by the courts. I also never had any dogmatic law profs, whom I saw trying to indoctrinate us. Rather, it was sometimes a surprise finding out later how liberal some of them really were.; 7/13/16, 6:36 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "Plus of course, Pollard was a......"

I believe "filthy little kike" was the term Hillary enjoyed using.; 7/13/16, 6:37 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Michael said...
On the topic of Milken it is also worthwhile to read Ben Stein's account of Drexel.

This is a good account of that book:
Ben Stein argues that Milken was just a crook all the way down. He didn't "unlock" the latent capital available for junk bonds; he bribed people into buying them and that's what created the market. There is no demand for junk bonds, at least not at yields companies could afford, except when Milken rewarded/tricked/coerced people (as the case may be) in positions of control over other people's money to risk that money on bonds that won't be repaid. Milken then sustained the illusion through rigged trades, creating the appearance of a liquid secondary market when in fact he was the only buyer. Most of the money invested in junk bonds was savings and loan deposits, insurance premiums, and pension assets -- in other words, money that fiduciaries gambled away in order to be part of Milken's scam. Also, the companies that issued junk bonds frequently issued more than they needed, investing the surplus in other companies' junk bonds, further perpetuating the illusion of a liquid market and also helping to artificially suppress the default rate of other issuers. Eventually this all caught up this Milken and most of the bonds he issued defaulted.; 7/13/16, 6:44 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: One other thing about the intersection of law and STEM for me - I ended up going where a lot of those students who understood basic physics went - into patent law. Law can be pretty boring. But the technology always kept it interesting. I do miss some of the high tech I used to work with. For much of my patent career I worked with computers, processors, and software. Some was serious bleeding edge. Great fun. Great inventors, some of the brightest around.; 7/13/16, 6:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Speaking of the the NRA and guns, it appears that Philando Castile had a gun permit..; 7/13/16, 6:50 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: "YES!!! My own direct experience, when I was pursuing a Double Degree program!!!!
(History, Chemical Eng.) READ the material, and make an outline of the major points! Go over your class notes and the outline before you take the exam!

I enjoyed my lib arts electives, and took them seriously.
It was all essay or problem-solving ("show your work"), so you had to know how to reason or write, or learn how to! BEING ABLE TO WRITE WAS A HALLMARK OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION."

You must be here looking for a lawyer to write a lawsuit for you on how your college failed to teach you to ALWAYS USE 5 or 6 exclamation points, NEVER FOUR!!!! You know, what used to be the hallmark of the educated, the ability to not stop at four and push it, push it to five or more.

But you have learned that CAPITAL LETTERS WORK FOR EVERYONE EVERY TIME THEY ARE USED!!!!!

Nobody can take that away from your college's methods and results, not even the Top! Sharks! here!; 7/13/16, 6:57 PM
Michael said...: Ben Stein is a great writer and ultra strong conservative. He is also averse to the kind of risk intrinsic in high yield bonds and has always been negative on the industry. He found Milken vulgar. The cut and paste from ARM is a pretty unsophisticated summary of Stein's thesis, especially the bits about selling bonds that "won't be repaid." Stein is too smart and did not make that observation since it can only be made in hindsight and with the idea that the bonds were meant to be defaulted from the get-go which is preposterous. The buyers of these very high yielding, very risky, instruments were pigs for yield and they chowed down. They were also sophisticated buyers using OPM. The default rate on junk bonds of the period, unadjusted for PIKs and other life supports, was on the order of 32% a very crummy record.

But losing money, thank God, is not against the law.

It is bad form to say that something is a "good account" of a book one has not read.; 7/13/16, 7:17 PM
Sebastian said...: "For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance." Someone sorta kinda got at this upthread, but all this Prog glee at white decline and Trumpist anger misses the point. They haven't begun to think about what happens when whites, en masse, really begin to behave not as responsible custodians trying to make life better in the country as a whole but strictly as a calculating interest group, willing to do whatever--i.e., living up to the leftist projection for real. If it comes to that, I don't think shutting down highways will be the worst of it.; 7/13/16, 7:26 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Here's some good quotes from the book:

"in typical Drexel fashion, the firm paid out several hundred million dollars in bonuses and bond buybacks to its high-ranking employees---while it knew it would have to delay or cancel payment to various labor union pension funds that had advanced money to the firm... Having stripped itself of its last big hoard of cash... Drexel filed... a plea for protection from its creditors under federal bankruptcy laws. To the end, Drexel knew how to use the law."

"the Drexel machine sucked the blood of its captive S&Ls like a vampire, draining the assets of their depositors dry. Plasma available through the federal deposit insurance blood bank could not even begin to replace their losses and huge transfusions would ultimately have to be drawn from taxpayers. For the Drexel Draculas, it was a feast. For their victims, S&L depositors and American taxpayers, it was an experience from which they would not soon recover."

"Overfunding, uncritically allowed by markets and regulators, was very largely a Ponzi in which earlier borrowers and lenders were kept afloat by later borrowers and lenders. It couldn't go on forever, but while it lasted, it was a miraculously simple way for Milken to pull buyers more or less out of thin air and thus to create a market for his junk. The scam worked so well that there were periods ... when Milken could create entities with no operating financial assets to speak of and raise hundreds of millions of dollars for them, to be used solely to buy junk."

"utter ruin of the Drexel-controlled S&Ls and the consequent multi-billion-dollar losses to taxpayers, the default of many Drexel-controlled insurance companies and the losses to policyholders of those companies, the bankruptcies of the Drexel financial service companies, the default rates of close to 10 percent a year in Drexel junk, the bankruptcy of dozens of large Drexel players, and the criminal convictions of a number of substantial Drexel operatives."; 7/13/16, 7:30 PM
Michael K said...: ARM is very moralistic, except when Hillary is concerned.; 7/13/16, 7:33 PM
mockturtle said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/13/16, 7:36 PM
Michael said...: In which post ARM cuts and pastes with alacrity if not understanding. LOL. This is a book, by the way, I recommend. ARM would not have found it with a seeing eye dog and would not understand it if it were read to him. LOL; 7/13/16, 7:39 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Michael said...
This is a book, by the way, I recommend.

I am agreeing with you. A very fair account.; 7/13/16, 7:43 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Here is the Publisher's Weekly summary. Also good.

By revealing the full scope of the damage that Michael Milken's junk-bond empire inflicted on the U.S. economy, Stein forcefully refutes the notion that Milken's scam increased national productivity. This concise, punchy expose is the best and clearest guide yet to the workings of Milken's money machine. Stein, an economist and lawyer who reported on Milken for Barron's, shows that insider trading was merely a lucrative sideshow for the Milken team at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Milken, he states, also earned millions by churning (trading clients' accounts to increase commissions), by "sucking the blood of captive S & Ls like a vampire" and by taking a hefty cut of the greenmail paid by besieged companies to Drexel-backed corporate raiders. The Securities and Exchange Commission knew in the early 1980s of Milken's stupendous price fixing but did nothing, a lapse Stein blames on Reagan-appointed SEC officials. He also shows how the Milken claque rallied moguls, accountants, the Harvard Business School and the New York Times to its cause.; 7/13/16, 7:45 PM
Michael said...: As long as I am making book recommendations a read of "The Predator's Ball" is worthwhile. More balanced than Stein's though still negative on Drexel and Milken but a much better read. Lot of fun and a very accurate reflection of some of the excesses of those heady days. The predator's balls were coveted invitations and I am happy to say that my friends at Drexel accommodated me.

Milken has spent another fortune on prostate cancer research. Not sure he has made much progress but the disease deserves attention and only money will make that happen.; 7/13/16, 7:47 PM
Michael said...: ARM

Dude, you have not read the book in 2 and a half hours. Take your time and actually read it instead of getting all mouth breathing at what you are seeing. Then read The Predator's Ball. Then read the Milken biased account. When you have read all three you might have a better understanding of what happened and why and who was responsible. You are starting with a bias that you are anxious to confirm versus actually learning about the junk bond industry and how and why it crashed. You might learn something taking this approach instead of randomly cutting and pasting.; 7/13/16, 7:51 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Another good review.

Benjamin Stein's License to Steal is the finest book available on the emergence of the original issue high yield market and the consequences of Michael Milken's abuse of newly emergent and naïve capital markets through a combination of the promotion of bogus research on the probability of default, burying fraud within the issue documentation, and providing groundless "independent' ratings for new issues. Not since John Law has there been another evil genius on the scale of Milken, whose re-writing of his own history also presages our modern world of constant spin by decades. Milken's debasement of capital markets begins with his misrepresentation of the seminal W. Braddock Hickman study of corporate bond returns, follows his testimony before Congress and his telling silence during his prosecution, and ends in a prison term he so richly deserved. Stein documents each detail carefully and well in a delightful and compelling style that is readable, funny, and horrifying. Unlike "Predators Ball" and other titles that focus on the glitz posing as glamour, and the fraud posing as capitalism, Stein's study is a character portrait that follows Milken's rise and fall while focusing on both the hubris and hamartia that makes up Milken's twisted worldview and sense of himself.; 7/13/16, 7:54 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: ARM is very moralistic, except when Hillary is concerned.

Lest anyone forgets, the last time Crooked Hillary almost went to prison was when she was billing partner for the Rose Law Firm for Madison Federal Savings. The billing records that were lost for several years in the residence section of the White House show that she, or her law partners (Vince Foster and Webster Hubble) were at almost every meeting in which the fraudulent transactions that eventually destroyed the S&L were put together. In short, they provided the legal whitewash of a major pyramid scheme that ended up costing taxpayers millions.; 7/13/16, 7:56 PM
Browndog said...: We have a generation of young ones that would rather the older ones die than seek their wisdom.

This, I think, more than anything else, is what has changed in society on whole.; 7/13/16, 8:18 PM
Michael said...: Bruce Hayden

With an eye for profit even greater than the evil Milken, Hillary Clinton parlayed a $1,000 investment into $100,000 in ten months. Cattle futures! She did it, she swore, by reading the Wall Street Journal. Yep. She read the WSJ and made 100K.; 7/13/16, 8:19 PM
narciso said...: junk bonds are a tool, as with cds, the last when overused, were like depleted uranium, junk bonds helped bring cnn into existence, which is a measured evil,; 7/13/16, 8:28 PM
narciso said...: the irony is michael milken went to jail, you can't find a single member of the subprime cartel's management that was so sanctioned, in fact one of the managers, mr, lew became treasury secretary, following turbo tim geithner, whose job at the fed, was to prevent such meltdowns, then we come to mf global, another bank heist organized by corzine, untouched by federal authorities, in fact a major dnc bundler,; 7/13/16, 8:32 PM
narciso said...: david paul was the frontman for centrust down in south florida, the owner was ghaith pharoan, one of the major player in bcci, ironically he also was treasurer of the senate democrats, appointed by future secretary of state lurch,

but avoiding the squirrels, with 93 million out of work, it's only natural, that some wise young people should consider an alternative to these failed policies,; 7/13/16, 8:43 PM
narciso said...: I did point out comey's report reminded me of major danby's nonsensical one in catch 22; 7/13/16, 9:02 PM
Michael K said...: "then we come to mf global, another bank heist organized by corzine, untouched by federal authorities, in fact a major dnc bundler,"

I even wonder if ARM has heard of him ?

Selective outrage is so simple. Just check the party affiliation.; 7/13/16, 9:09 PM
narciso said...: well perhaps he might recall.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/eric-holder-inspired-by-m_b_5797754.html; 7/13/16, 9:28 PM
narciso said...: another firm that wasn't prosecuted, in fact the recipient of same drafted legislation, procluding sanctions of officials,

http://gawker.com/5173647/meet-chris-dodd-the-senator-from-aig

michael milken is a tea dropper in a coffee cup, compared to these people, but you know who were also big recipients of aig pelf, obama and his trusted sidekick, biden (who I've dubbed
the solon, because irony,); 7/13/16, 9:33 PM
narciso said...: in mavericks defense, he did try to reign in the subprime bandits, but the likes of barnie frank, the other enabler, blocked it,

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2009/03/30/2911/obama-top-recipient-aigs-hefty-campaign-contributions; 7/13/16, 9:36 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Right. I'm sure he'll have a very big effect on all that stuff.; 7/13/16, 11:20 PM
iowan2 said...: Had a long talk with my mid 30's millenials children, and their spouses. They wanted to know why politics where such a disaster, and how can the rationalize voting for Trump.

Thats the deal, They are successful, in careers, family, community, church. They are informed, smart, savvy. They are not political junkies, they do pay attention. Last week, with the Comey explanation of the FBI criminal investigation, they all came away with the same message. Clinton's wife is an unrepentant liar that is playing them personally as a fool, if she thinks they are going to believe her basic defense that its a political witch hunt propagated by Republicans. That the FBI is playing along. In short they know Clintons wife is lying about this, and by extension, most everything. Now all that is left for them is to get comfortable in supporting Trump. They are almost there.

I did very little talking, mostly just asked questions to keep the converstion going. They just verbalized the conclusions they had already reached.; 7/14/16, 7:35 AM
Nichevo said...: On Miliken:

http://www.polyconomics.com/memos/mm-961217.htm

Submitted for your approval (or not); 7/14/16, 9:45 AM
Big Mike said...: @shiloh, there's a young woman named Kimberly who begs to differ with you

Readers of Bearing Arms know Kimberly’s story. She was a 20-year-old college student when a predator broke into her off-campus housing complex and assaulted her in the middle of the night.

Today, she is a mother of two, and if anyone ever tries to harm her family or her again, they’ll have to face the strong armed woman she has become.

The predators in this world count on their victims being unarmed and defenseless. But one organization fights for the ability of women to protect themselves and their families from evil.

We are the NRA ...; 7/14/16, 10:05 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/14/16, 9:55 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Nichevo, who is this Jude Wanniski? Is he an economist or zerohedgie or something? Interesting take on MM, who he seems to know.; 7/14/16, 9:57 PM