Justified left
This is Sonic Charmer’s description of “the leftist problem in general”:
[H]ow does one support a system characterized largely by credentialed, centralized bureaucratic privilege and unconstrained power, while continuing to always posture as an egalitarian populist on the side of the masses?
This would seem like an invitation to cognitive dissonance. Then again, we can rationalize our way out of anything if we work at it a bit:
The answer seems to be to continually harness your brainpower to come up with elaborate theories about this and that (why things are so bad for others, etc.), and in particular to extrapolate whatever conflicted personal hang-ups and obsessions you happen to have into a social theory. Hence, “I didn’t keep my kid out of that school cuz it was mostly Hispanic, I kept my kid out of that school because, um, the teachers are so bad. Which raises a troubling social question, why are Our Society’s Teachers so bad? We need to fix that, and you should put me in charge of fixing that!”
“Fixing that,” in general, means throwing more and more money at it under the assumption that — well, actually, you can’t tell what they’re assuming, unless it’s the standard government-as-tumor dynamic: grow or die. One of the few departures from this mindset came via Oklahoma City’s MAPS for Kids, which put half a billion dollars into eliminating “inadequate facilities” as an excuse for crummy schools. Indeed this qualified as throwing money at it, but I admire its approach: isolate a variable and see if it makes a difference. What’s more, voters approved the temporary tax that financed the program, which makes it a lot easier to bear than the usual top-down spending decrees, especially the ones relying on so-called “Federal funds” glommed from the population at large; no one from Bangor or Bakersfield paid for any of this, unless he happened to be around here and bought something during the period the tax was in effect. (If he stopped at Mickey D’s and spent $5.99 on a combo meal, six cents went into the MAPS for Kids kitty.)
This particular program was low on grandiosity, which is why it’s not being shouted from the housetops in Washington or New York, where people don’t want to know from minor improvements in the hinterlands: they want to Save The World, dammit, and they want to make sure you know it. If Walmart, presumably via China, started selling a reliable, low cost Conscience Salve (use only as directed), they’d buy it in ton lots. Or more likely, they’d send the staff to buy it in ton lots, lest they themselves be seen in Walmart.
ak4mc »
30 September 2010 · 8:24 am
Presumably with explicit instructions (this time) not to tell Walmart employees for whom said staffers work.
Nicole »
30 September 2010 · 10:37 am
When someone is sure they are right, that is the fastest path to rationalization.