What the Dickens?
I just saw a post of a young lady who says that she is a college student, but she's still going to vote for Trump, despite the offer of reduced tuition by the Democrats (and Jill Stein, incidentally). Her long article addresses most of the issues that concern Trump supporters, including very young ones. Here they are:
Free College will never work. Someone will have to pay for it, and of course Trump supporters hate deficit spending, because Trump, well, anyway, because it is bad. Jill Stein's solution will horrify fiscal conservatives, but seasoned economists will be divided on it. Some seasoned economists won't be horrified by anything.
The American Dream will stay alive. (A lot of young people believe that Trump's experience will be their experience, or something close to that. You can easily see that only affluent teenagers could possibly imagine that, which gives you an idea of where that comes from.) My personal belief is that The American Dream is a clever fiction: You can succeed if you work hard!!! A lot more than hard work is needed if the only work you can do is mopping floors. And that's all some people will be allowed to do. A more appropriate version of The Dream is that we can succeed a lot better if we work together, something that goes against the legend of the Rugged Individualist, which sells well with conservatives.*
He's Very Accomplished. Bullshit.
Aren't you tired of politicians? Well, yes. But not being a politician does not qualify anyone to be --a politician, though I have come really, really close to saying that I hate politicians sometimes when I'm really, really mad. But there is skilled work to do as President or a representative in Congress: drafting laws, making compromises, understanding the point of view of people of other beliefs and people from other nations. A businessman would hire someone (someone, let me tell you, who's really, really good, trust me) to do that stuff--this is what Trump tried to do when selecting a VP: put him or her (him; a lot of Trumpers are suspicious of women) in charge of foreign and domestic policy.
He's Confident. Well, I don't want to repeat myself. But some really ignorant people are supremely confident.
His immigration policy really makes sense. Well, it probably does if your mind has been poisoned into believing that it's foreigners who are the source of all our woes. I personally think that it is the ethnic and social diversity of US society that is its genius. But this is a personal issue, not a logical thing. It tells us just as much about the young lady as it does about Trump.
He's self-funded. If this means that Trump does not owe anything to anybody, it's probably true. Even if he did, he wouldn't care; he would do exactly what he wants. But bear in mind that he would consider that he does not owe anything to those who voted for him, either.
Hillary and Bernie are not the right people for the job. Hillary is a liar, she says, and Bernie is a socialist. Hillary is accused of lying, but a recent fact check revealed that she was the most honest in her claims as far as the campaign was concerned. As far as lying is concerned, a lot of politics has to do with lying; you just can't tell everyone the truth all the time. In particular, you can't always be telling the truth about security-related information. The GOP continually tries to "get" Democrats about lying about security-related matters. But remember that Reagan and both Bushes lied like champions in their time. The Democrats are just too classy to hound them about it. (But of recent times, even the Democrats have descended pretty low, and kept harping on poor George W. Bush's lies.) As for Socialism: once the conservatives rigged the economy and the political system so that the wealthiest citizens pay the lowest taxes in 80 years, it is inevitable that the country should start looking to Socialism to make life possible for the poorest sector of society. You reap what you sow, and the Conservatives and Reagan sowed this crap.
He'll balance the Supreme Court. She really means unbalance it. It's balanced right now. She should rightly fear what one more liberal justice will do; if people have an irrational fear of a majority of one left-leaning supreme court justice, imagine how the left has suffered under justice Scalia's ideological activism?
He'll make American great again. What does she mean by America? What does she mean by Great? What does she mean by Again? It's all semantics.
This brings us to my other point.
It is just so impossible to explain politics to young people like this young lady. There are two problems here. One thing is, of course, the numerous background assumptions that she assumes are everyone else's assumptions, too. I can't even begin to list them, but some of them are:
- America was once great.
- America is no longer great.
- a businessman will know what is good for America.
- keeping people out will solve a lot of our problems.
- money spent for anything must come from somewhere.
But another reason this lady appears to be so dense is that modern students have been conditioned from Kindergarten to have everything made simpler for them. Not only the students, but some of the parents insist that difficult material should not be taught their children, never mind that the sum total of human knowledge has multiplied by many factors since the parents were in school, and of course, wealthy adults were able to manage quite well despite being poor students in grade school, because what ensured success "when America used to be great" was that you could buy success with money. But now, poor people want to be successful, and teachers trying to present the material that will ensure success for their students get knocked down both by the poorer students, and by the wealthier students, all of whom have parents that can't see the point of difficult school material. So teaching practice drifts towards easier material constantly. And the same goes in college: Make It Fun.
Listen. One of the most important skills an adult can acquire is to obtain satisfaction from teachers of B grade, or even C grade. If you only accept fantastic teachers, and refuse to get any benefit from a typical teacher, can you imagine how long you're going to have to wait? If you never read a book, but only wait for the movie, how poor is your experience going to be?
I have long maintained that I only had wonderful teachers. But it is entirely possible that if any of those teachers were to try to teach a typical high school class today, they would be in tears. Not because standards of teaching are higher, but because teaching has become more entertainment today. Kids have low attention spans, and are accustomed to having the teacher do more work for them. This despite the well-recognized fact that student effort ultimately helps the student more (than teacher effort). A simple example: students who write their own notes learn the material a lot better than students who get printed notes. But this doesn't cut any ice with the students; they keep begging for printed notes. Fine.
Students ought to be able to do a little arithmetic in their heads. But most students and even adults have a terrible time without a calculator. The basic tricks you need to use to calculate the tip after a meal at a restaurant are considered beneath the attention of many adults. Fine. This is America; we can't be doing arithmetic like penniless Mexicans do.
We can't even operate smart phones like teenagers do. (Wait . . .)
But I maintain that it serves no one if we encourage our children only to tolerate the highest standards of teaching. How do students at State Universities (usually accused of having very pedestrian faculty) go on to being fantastically successful in their careers? Because they train themselves to extract as much as they can out of their courses, encourage their teachers by showing that they're getting it, participating in their classes, doing their preparation--yes, students have to prepare for classes too.
Early in my career, I told a class of students not to wait until the night before a test to study. I told them to look over their stuff every day after class--at least do a couple of exercises--so that the class material sinks in. They resented this so much, that they wrote in my evaluations that "Dr. Arch does not understand how American students study." Unfortunately I knew only too well, and I was trying to head off the disaster at the pass. I quickly learned that American Students were resentful at being forced to succeed. "Students have the right to fail," a Dean said a few years later, and that has been my consolation, bitter though it is.
So people have the right to vote any way they want, and to doom the country to the US version of Brexit. But the intelligence to learn from logic rather than from bitter experience is not found in everyone. Logic is on the wane, and bitter experience is on the rise, helped along by a very short memory!
Arch
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*This paragraph is an instance of one that could be completely misunderstood by some people. Here it is again, written so that it is a little easier to follow. Additional text is in color:
The American Dream will stay alive. (A lot of young people believe, mistakenly, for the most part, that Trump's experience will be their experience, or something close to that. You can easily see that only affluent teenagers could possibly imagine that, which gives you an idea of where that comes from. If a teenager from an ordinary family were to imagine that they will be as successful as Trump with as little work, we have to think that that teenager is extremely foolish.) My personal belief is that The American Dream is a clever fiction. It says: You can succeed if you work hard!!! A lot more than hard work is needed if the only work you can do is mopping floors. And that's all some people will be allowed to do, if they live among prejudiced or racist people, if they do not have a college degree, if they cannot afford to commute to a location where there are employment opportunities, if they are a single mother or father. A more appropriate version of The Dream is that we can succeed a lot better if we work together, something that goes against the legend of the Rugged Individualist, which sells well with conservatives. This is a different dream, a cooperative dream, not a competitive one. Many individuals, newly come to the Conservative philosophy, regard such a dream as un-American.
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