One thing I have noticed over the years is that too many of the supposedly "Educated" people I have met, read, or watched online, rarely know what they are talking about. Or maybe I am the idiot. So I have been told in many of my encounters, in person, and on social media. Censors at the Hamilton Spectator seem to consider my level of idiocy so profound that they consider it a violation of their "Community Standards" and delete about half of my comments on their "news" and opinion articles.
I met an old high school acquaintance one night in the early 1980s at the Winking Judge pub. It was around the time Canada was still reeling from the double-digit inflation of the print and spend effects of the first Trudeau administration. Catching up, he revealed that he had graduated from university, I think it was McMaster, with a degree in economics and was now employed in that capacity with the Ontario government.
Since inflation was a hot topic at that time, I described the Monetarist Theory of Inflation to him. His response surprised the hell out of me.
"Hmmm, I've never heard of that! It kind of makes sense."
I didn't say anything but I was thinking, "You have a university degree in economics but you have never heard of the Monetarist Theory of Inflation. WTF kind of education is that?"
My second thought was, "It figures you got a government job."
Over the next forty plus years I have had many similar such encounters.
Another personal observation of the degradation in the value of academic credentials occurred while I was attending the Chemical Engineering Technician program at Mohawk college.
In September, 1981, there were over forty students in the class. Some had to stand in the classrooms for lack of seats. That problem started to rectify almost immediately. Within a few months, many had dropped out and there was plenty of seating. How much government money had been pissed away by that, I do no know. By the time graduation rolled around, two years later, there were only a few of us left. I can't remember exactly how many, but it was something like 11 or 14.
Among the graduates were two guys who took three years to complete the two-year program. One of my lab partners also graduated. I've never known anyone to work as hard as he did, yet learn nothing. As the last semester wound down, I observed him and another struggling student at the front of the class asking the teacher to explain acid/base reactions. That was something we were supposed to have learned in the first semester.
Already well advanced in my libertarian/conservative thinking, I noted the event as just one more example of the failure of government-engineered programs to achieve their purported goals, indeed they usually accomplish the exact opposite, and to accomplish this at the cost of massive missallocation of human resources and capital. And I was a little ticked off. These guys would have the same credential as me, but neither were competent. What would the value of a Mohawk College Chemical Technician's Diploma have if that Chemical Engineering Technician "Graduate" were hired on that basis, only to blow up or release a deadly gas into the employer's lab?
One of those guys got a job working on an assembly line, which is what he wanted to do all along. He entered the college course under pressure from his parents. Two years of his life were wasted in addition to the tax dollars wasted on his "education." Well, he did learn what a graduated cylinder is, and what a gas is. But was it worth all of those subsidies?
As an example of the danger he represented, I will describe what happened in the lab one day. After forty-plus years, the details are a little foggy, but the salient point is still fresh. We were doing something involving orlon fibres. Part of the procedure involved collecting 5 mL of hydrazine sulphate solution in a graduated cylinder. My lab partner could barely read. He had slightly adapted to this learning deficit by reading the lab instructions out loud. As he read his procedure notes aloud, he would use a different word every time he encountered the word, "Orlon." It came out variously as "Orion," Olean," and "Oreo," etc. Made me think of cookies. Then it struck me. I told him one of the reasons he was having such difficulty with this program was that he could not read. I suggested he consider taking a remedial reading course. He was insulted. He indignantly informed me that he had won awards for literature at this high school. Yeah. Even in the early 1980s, Ontario schools were graduating students who could not read, and colleges like Mohawk were accepting them. This signaled a potential problem, I thought, especially in the vacinity of hazardous materials.
The quality of his high school's history department was no better than their literature department. One time, I asked him if he knew who Adolf Hitler was. Without hesitation, he replied, "Of course, everybody knows that. Hitler was an Australian who defected to the Nazis." Maybe he read it wrong?
So my lab partner picked up a 10 mL graduated cylinder and started ambling toward the fume hood where a canister of deadly H2S was waiting. I did not immediately warn him. I wanted to see how far he would go. To his credit, he stopped about halfway to the fume hood, scratched his head, and walked back to me. He said, "How am I supposed to collect 5 mL of hydrogen sulfide? It's a gas." I explained to him that the recipe did not call for H2S, and reminded him again about the advisability of a remedial reading course.
Six Months Later
I received a call from the Mohawk placement office in late September, 1983. The guy on the phone asked me if I would be interested in working in a research lab in Kingston, Ontario. He sounded almost frantic. We're counting on you to get this job. It will give Mohawk a foot in the door for future graduates. The first two guys we sent up failed the technical interviews miserably. I asked for the names of the two failed candidates. They were the two who took three years to complete the two year course. I knew they were the wrong choice because, in class, whenever they answered a question, they got the answer wrong almost 100% of the time. I was thinking, "Well, duh!" Not that the technical questions were difficult. I recall a question about gas laws, like "what happens to the volume of a gas if its temperature is increased?"
Speaking of science, when my youngest son was in Grade 8, I asked him what his favourite subject was. He said, "Science." Then I asked him what he was learning in science class. I was expecting a list of basic scientific concepts like precipitation, evaporation, freezing, sublimation, and so on; the kind of stuff I learned in public school. Instead, his answer stunned me. "Global Warming." (This is how they baste their chickens for future votes.)
Another time, I was with my daughter, who would have been in about Grade 6 at the time when we heard the name "Al Gore" mentioned on the radio. I asked her if she knew who Al Gore was. Her answer blew me away, too. "Yes. We saw his movie in school."
These kids were not being taught science. They were being propagandized. At public expense. More tax dollars were being pissed away to make con artists like Al Gore rich.
One thing I noticed an social media during the Covid mass hysteria event was the number of people who would confidently urge sceptics to "Believe in the science." This was when it occurred to me, based on the insights my kids gave me, that the word "Science" had different meanings to different people. And that a lot of naive young minds exposed to climate scam propaganda in "Science" classes walked away believing that the word "Science" was nothing more than a series of declarations made by their woke teachers and so-called "Scientists." And that many, perhaps most of them had never actually been exposed to any real science. (See Retired Hamilton cabbie gets himself on list of fake scientists declaring climate emergency. Get the "list of fake scientists" part. They fixed that in the paper edition.)
Finally, which political parties attract support from the cohorts with supposedly "Higher Educations?"
I asked Brave.
First, the Americans.
Which party do better educated Americans vote for?
Americans with college degrees now predominantly vote for the Democratic Party, marking a significant reversal from the mid-20th century when higher education correlated with Republican support. This "diploma divide" has widened since roughly 2000, with college-educated voters drifting toward Democrats while those without four-year degrees have shifted toward the Republicans.
Current polling data highlights this split:
Bachelor’s degree or higher: The Democratic Party holds a 13-point advantage (55% Democratic vs. 42% Republican).
Postgraduate degrees: The Democratic lead is even starker, with 61% identifying as or leaning Democratic compared to 37% Republican.
Without a bachelor’s degree: The Republican Party holds a 6-point advantage (51% Republican vs. 45% Democratic).
This realignment is driven by cultural and social factors, as college-educated Americans tend to be more liberal on issues like social values and environmental policy, while non-college voters increasingly prioritize populist economic messages associated with the GOP. (Duh!)
What about Canadians?
Which party do better educated Canadians vote for?
Better educated Canadians in Canada tend to vote for left-leaning parties, specifically the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party (NDP), while support for the Conservative Party has increasingly concentrated among less educated voters since the 1990s.
Liberal and NDP Support: University-educated voters are significantly more likely to support the Liberals and NDP, a trend attributed to their socially liberal positions and focus on issues like climate change and social equity.
Conservative Decline: The Conservative Party has seen a substantial decline in support from higher-educated demographics, with the party becoming increasingly reliant on voters with lower education levels.
Economic vs. Cultural Divide: While higher education correlates with left-leaning voting, higher income remains a stronger predictor of right-leaning support; however, the "diploma divide" has become a dominant factor, with educated voters prioritizing cultural and social values over pure economic self-interest.
Recent Trends: Despite the general trend, some recent polling indicates a shift among young, less economically secure voters toward the Conservatives, though this group does not necessarily represent the highest education levels.
"Highest education levels." Like the "economist" who had never heard of the Monetarist Theory of Inflation?
Need I say more? The higher the "Education" the greater the odds that they are dumber than two buckets of shit. They are not "Better educated." They are more thoroughly brainwashed.
I knew how this would evolve as a result of my visit to the McMaster University Bookstore, circa 1982. I browsed the polisci and economics sections to find some free-market oriented books. What I saw was that most of the available books consisted of left wing horseshit, Marxism, etc. As the result says, "University-educated voters are significantly more likely to support the Liberals and NDP, a trend attributed to their socially liberal positions and focus on issues like climate change and social equity." There's no mystery here because they have been marinated in commie ideology since Kindergarten.
Conclusion.
This phenomenon is not just endemic to Canada and the USA. It prevails across all of Western Civilization from Europe to Australia and New Zealand. The new word is wokery, but it goes back a lot further. The worm really started to turn in the 1960s. The weak and congenitally useless are now in charge. Just look at your elected representatives. And it has been accelerating.
Second Conclusion
Western civilization is fucked. It will take 1,000 years to extricate ourselves from this muck, if we ever do. I don't want to travel on this ship of fools but I don't think I have much choice.
Marshal McLuhan said, "To make an invisible environment visible, we must step outside it," and "Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment."
When it comes to chicken dancer thinking, I have always been an outsider, a part of the lunatic fringe. I have been observing the evolution of chicken dancer "thinking" from the outside for fifty years. Ayn Rand was right. What I see leaves me with no sense of optimism. I hope I am wrong.
Now on to what inspired this rant. It's well worth a read.
On the rot in higher education
And then there is the matter of Jason Arday.
More on Jason Arday
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