Smart fools and confident idiots

Way back in November 2014, well before trump even announced his candidacy, I blogged about a Cornell professor's research on "confident idiots":

What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.

As much as this alone goes a long way towards explaining trump and his enablers, in the big picture and in specifics like coal, this post is not about those assholes.

We are quite a few people, other than those assholes, who should be able to do something, right?  Furthermore, with a claim to the intellectual and cultural high ground--which is why trump constantly snarls at us "elites"--we should be able to do better, right?

Not only do we lack the ability, we are further contributing to the education of young people who will lack the ability to make the world a better place:

Our overemphasis on narrow academic skills—the kinds that get you high grades in school—can be a bad thing for several reasons. You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place.

My high scores and ability to do math and science did not impress me one bit.  I was not sure how I could make the world a better place through that route.  I quit engineering--mentally even during my final year of high school itself, and for good when I came to the US for graduate studies--with a hope that I would get on to the path that would help me become a better person and also help the world a tiiiiiiiiny bit better.

A few terms ago, a student--Bill--remarked something similar when he argued that, for instance, scientists and technologists working in various government and university research that was aimed at destruction to life and property are not engaged in any value-neutral effort.  His hypothesis was that maybe these experts were not asking themselves whether they were using their smarts to make the world a better place.  "I wonder if they take courses in the humanities" he asked.

The older I get, the more I am discouraged by expertise that is devoid of an understanding of humanity.  I care less and less about the SAT and GRE scores and fancy degrees, if the person cannot seem to understand and empathize with the human condition.

What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place.

I am not sure about the "other people’s expense"; otherwise, I am in agreement there.

You know, it’s easy to think of smart people but it’s really hard to think of wise people. I think a reason is that we don’t try to develop wisdom in our schools. And we don’t test for it, so there’s no incentive for schools to pay attention.

And we now have a president who is the antithesis of wisdom!

Not only do we not encourage creativity, common sense and wisdom, I think a lot of us don’t even value them anymore.

Therein lies the problem--a lot of us don't even care about these anymore.  We have met the enemy and ... it is us :(

We can't rewind, we've gone too far

It has been a few days since the president theatrically announced that he is pulling the United States out of the Paris agreement on climate change.  I cannot even begin to understand his (ill)logic!

I am increasingly reminded of my younger days in the old country, when politicians would simply lie through their teeth and say whatever they needed to say in order to get the votes.  As a tween and as a teenager, I would read Thuklak and laugh at the idiot politicians, but fully aware that I--like most others--was being screwed.

It is one thing when a local DMK or an ADMK thalaivar entertains the crowd in the nearby maidan with his lies, but it is another when it is the president of the US--words have global implications in trump's case.

If trump wants to continue believing that coal will come back, whatever happened to the brains of the rest of the GOP leaders?  Are they all zombies now?

Here in the real world, the data and the trends have been so clear for so long:

The coal-mining jobs that President Trump thinks were destroyed by government regulation — adopted to combat air pollution and global warming — were actually lost to old-fashioned competition from other American firms and workers. Eastern coal mines lost market share to Western coal, which was cheaper. And natural gas grew at coal’s expense because it had low costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s the conclusion of a new study by economist Charles Kolstad of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research ...
Government isn’t killing the coal industry. “Progress is the culprit,” concludes Kolstad’s study.

How much more clearer and simpler should this message be for the GOP idiots to understand?

Source

Technological progress happens.  And we are thankful for it.  Well, unless your livelihood depended on, say, renting video tapes of movies!  Without the technological progress, trump would not have Twitter, and he would, not have become president either back when coal was king!

Foreigners for five-stars ...

A couple of days ago, I read this short story in the New Yorker.   It felt so real.  I could easily picture in my mind the characters portrayed there, and their circumstances and emotions.

I then read the interview with the author, Sherman Alexie.  He says:

This story began as a reaction to the Trump election, in general. But, in particular, I was angry that I could be thought of as being part of the “liberal élite.” Even inside the literary world, I did not follow an élite path. I am a poor, public-school kid who got lucky. The only non-minimum-wage job I’ve ever had is writing. And writing is a minimum-wage job for most writers. So, yeah, I grew up in poverty and worked as a doughnut maker, pizza man, dishwasher, secretary, and janitor.

We are all a bunch of angry people now expressing, in our own ways, our extreme displeasure with this president and his 63 million voters.  I rant in my blog, post on Facebook, and tweet, while Alexie channels his emotions via fiction.  I suppose there is nothing new in that fiction is often borne out of real life experiences; but, to understand it unfolding in real time is pretty darn new to me.

I wanted to honor the physical, emotional, and spiritual strength of a blue-collar worker—of a woman in the service industry. I also wanted to write about a poor white person who, contrary to societal assumptions, is a kind and empathetic person. I grew up with tons of poor white Christian conservatives, but I also knew, and know, a few poor white liberals. So, yeah, I enjoy being the Native American writing favorably about poor white liberals in the pages of The New Yorker.

I don't want to write about the story itself, other than remarking that it is about a maid in one of those cheap motels.  Those cheap motels, too, have a hard time with finding workers who will clean the rooms.  In addition to the wage, there is an important reason for why there is this problem: It is hard, menial work.

On top of this being hard and menial, add a layer of seasonality.  Of course, Americans are not lining up to do that work.  Which is why even trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla, hires foreigners to do the job.  Remember this post?

So, now we have a trump administration that is clamping tight the importing of workers.  And it is beginning to affect even the five-star hotels in resort destinations like Mackinac Island:

So at the Iroquois Hotel, a Victorian property on the waterfront where rooms command up to $1,200 a night, the owner is trying to figure out how to maintain its high standards without 30 Jamaican housekeepers. Other hotels are contemplating closing off whole sections. Even those who own the ubiquitous horses are wondering if they will have enough workers.

You remember that in my previous post on these visas, I referred to my experiences in Alaska?  Yes, problems there too: Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, says that a “short-term fix is urgently needed.”  Good luck on that, Senator!

All kinds of businesses, from Alaska to Maine to Texas, are now feeling the trump squeeze on the seasonal labor H2 visa.

Phil Harrington, the sous chef at Yankee Rebel Tavern, has been coming in at noon instead of 3 p.m. to make sure preparations are complete before dinner guests arrive.
“With the shortage of visas, it’s more stress on me and others who have to work longer hours to do more of the grunt work,” he said while chopping herbs, a task usually relegated to foreign workers. Patti Ann Moskwa, the owner and a fourth-generation restaurateur, has been washing dishes herself.
“This is a legal program to supplement American workers,” she said of the visas. “We aren’t taking jobs from anybody.”

I wonder how many of the people complaining voted for trump, who is the very source of the problem. I am sure that trump's Mar-a-Lago is able to get the visas it needs for its temporary workers.  And, I am equally sure that his 63 million voters don't care a shit!

Too bad I don't know how to channel into fiction my anger at trump and his voters!