February 07, 2014
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But here is another jewel of degradation gleaming in the wan light of witlessness: A school (should I say “school”?) in Brooklyn, more than two-thirds of whose students are black or Hispanic, has abolished its (I mean “it’s”) advanced courses for the intelligent. Why this salubrious excision? Why, because too many of the students therein are white. That is, classes for the intelligent contain the intelligent. My god. This cancer must be corrected lest it spread.
“Citing a lack of diversity, PS 139 Principal Mary McDonald informed parents in a letter that the Students of Academic Rigor and two other in-house programs would no longer accept applications for incoming kindergartners.
“Our kindergarten classes will be heterogeneously grouped to reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in,” she announced in an ooze of perfectly normal priss-enhanced boilerplate bird-brainery. The dull crabs don”t want the smart crabs to escape from the pot.
The usual remedy for superior performance by superior students is to mandate the admission of unqualified students of color (“of culler” I meant so say, no elitist I (“Me” I meant)) (Damn the parentheses, full speed ahead.) who can”t keep up, so that the advanced courses have to be diluted. New Jersey, more direct, simply eliminates courses for the smart. This is a faster road to universal inadequacy than imposing quotas.
Gutting courses for the intelligent also means that bright students of culler don”t got access to the advanced schooling that would let them rise in the world, know what I”m sayin”?
Wisdom from afar: My wife Violeta, a Mexican, describes the United States as a Third World country with a First World infrastructure (un pais tercermundista con infraestructura primermundista). Ummm…ah….
We see the same principle of inadequacy voting itself the cookie jar in…everything. The Marines have opened the infantry to women. This is ridiculous, which is why I like the idea. Curmudgeons love the ridiculous and find the results to vary between amusing and hilarious.
It is obvious that women are not physically up to ground combat, that they get pregnant more often than men, and that training has to be enfeebled to maintain the pretense. But there are lots of them, and they vote. Reality is what the greater number say it is.
And in our fourth-stage democracy, everyone has to nod and agree. Is high-school calculus too hard for minorities? Why, get rid of it. Future engineers can count on their fingers just like Chinese engineers. If women can”t lift 175mm rounds, declare ammunition obsolete, or say that it weighs less. In wars today, you just push buttons anyway.
Militarily, watching the evolution of Pentagonal policy is like watching the fingers fall from a leper. You can bet on it. What falls next? The thumb? The little finger? Is there a point spread?
As a curmudgeon, I applaud the step toward equality. As a former Marine, I am fascinated that General James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps, signed off on it. He knows better. (What would Chesty Puller think?) But it’s democracy, see, and there are more women than Marines. If the National Organization for Women wanted Amos to wear a bra and panties, he would, with nothing to fill either. Let the ever-lovin’ show go on.
