Opening Remarks
Bit Of Background
Perspectives
Cultural Impoverishment
The University
The Elite’s Real Agenda
Collapsing Narrative Network
Closing Remarks
Bit of Background
And where did Critical Race Theory come from anyway?
The short version is, Derrick Bell got a job at Harvard.
Ok. That's too short. Of course, there was a little more to it than that. Actually, Derrick Bell got a job at Harvard after a group of mostly peaceful protesters demanded that Harvard hire more black professors or they'd burn the university to the ground.
And then Derrick Bell got a job at Harvard.
Naturally, as soon as he was hired he expressed his gratitude to Harvard by accusing it of, Drumroll!.....
He then proceeded to publish a paper so that everyone would know exactly why Harvard didn't have a lot of black professors, though he thought he was doing something else. In any event, Bell is considered to be the father of Critical Race Theory.
But, this is to look at CRT from the point of view of personalities, which isn't exactly the approach we're going to take here. I'd prefer to, as the great Bill Wilson once said, in so many words, though to be sure with a different intent and emphasis, put principles before personalities. Namely, these principles.
Since both CRT and any alternative, including the one I’ll offer here, are explanations we’ll take a look at those explanations
from the point of view of Western Cultural History, US History and the History of the University in the US in the 20th century, and all of the above from the point of view of Explanation itself.
The purpose of doing this is to give the subject of this entry some historical and contemporary perspective, (a perspective CRT doesn’t provide at all*), while also directing attention to what unites those perspectives, CRT, and any alternative. And what unites them, of course, is Explanation, or explanatory behavior.
*CRT, Identity Politics, etc. certainly talk a lot about history as if they owned the truth. But, as I will discuss later in this entry, since there is no General Theory of Interpretation, there can be no General Theory of Historical Interpretation. So what do CRT practitioners do in response to this? They simply call their interpretation the truth. A better example of weak-mindedness and intellectual corruption would be impossible to imagine. Which is why such people are so dangerous whenever they get into positions of power, and why it doesn't take long for the social institutions of the culture or country their power controls to collapse.
Explanation vs Exemplification
Certainly one reason for this, in regard to CRT, is because CRT isn’t even capable of explaining itself, let alone anything else. It does not provide us with a formal demonstration of what it is.
Why? Because it can’t. That’s why. Obviously! Of course, it can offer what on the surface can be called explanations. But these really just amount to generalized instructions for how to respond to whatever it is they are talking about. That’s why so many of their explanations are so unsatisfactory and even nonsensical.
To prove this, simply ask a CRT practitioner, or a believer in CRT, to give you their theory of Interpretation. Or, ask them what the conditions of Explanation are. This is what you’ll get.
It’s important for us to know that CRT practitioners, writers, teachers and lecturers, are essentially professional explainers.
So, not only should they be able to explain themselves and others, they should be able to explain Explanation itself. They should be able to say something about the conditions of Explanation and its place in human behavior. But they can’t. So? What does that mean? Well, it means, what we have here is a group of professional explainers who can’t explain Explanation itself!
From this perspective their arrogance is a mask used to conceal their intellectual and professional incompetence. A better example of educational malpractice would be impossible to imagine. That’s because, not being a theory, CRT isn’t interested in understanding Explanation, or Interpretation for that matter.
What they’re all interested in, without even knowing it or being able to say why, is Exemplification. Though it was hardly called that at the time, Exemplification goes all the way back to the Alexandrians, and even before them. But the most conspicuous practitioner of this mode of verbal response was, of course, St. Augustine. We’ll return to Augustine shortly. But first, a bit more on Exemplification, what it is and it's place in human behavior.
Exemplification is when one uses their explanation of the world, dogmatically asserted to be true (but incapable of being proven) to validate what they like and invalidate what they don’t like. It's literaly as simple as that folks. Or better yet, as simple-minded.
In other words, any statement they come across is used to exemplify the truth of their explanation. If they like it, it is validated and those involved receive their approval. If they don’t like the statement in question, like, for example, the statement that their position is absurd and insane, then that statement is immediately invalidated and the person, or persons, in question demonized, pathologized and marked for severe punishment.
Though Exemplification is totally in error its constant recurrence throughout the history of the West, beginning with the Alexandrians, and even before, indicates that its very existence involves serious issues, and that to defeat it requires not just a formal demonstration of its inadequacy but also an explanation of why it exists, how it functions, and how it is put to use. It's possible to argue against it, and I will here. But it's also impossible to ignore the fact that it never seems to go away.
I've just stated how it functions and will have more to say about that in a moment when we return to St. Augustine. As to an explanation for why it exists, that's simple. We need to exemplify explanations. But as to its inadequacy, there are two explanations.
One explantion is historical and the other behavioral.
The behavioral explanation is because both explanation and exemplification are the two poles of verbal behavior. And, as I said at the beginning of this entry, proof is what happens in the real world. But, it is very possible, and far more common than most people are even aware of, or would admit to, for both explanation and exemplification to never leave the realm of verbal behavior. And, in fact, in theological and ideological explanations (and their exemplifications) this is the norm.
But, it's also the norm of the Humanities as they are now practiced. And, of course, nowhere is this more obvious than with the very subject of today's entry, Critical Race Theory.
So, the behavioral inadequacy of CRT is found in the fact that its explanations and examples never leave verbal behavior long enough to make contact with reality. That's why it isn't a theory.
The historical explanation is related, of course, because the subject matter of history is, after all, human behavior. And the primary means of controlling human behavior is verbal behavior.
The defining attribute of verbal behavior is explanation, and the behavior that controls explanation comes from Culture. The primary function of Culture is to create a reasonable amount of stability, principally for economic reasons, so the people in that culture can eat and live. But, by itself Culture can not successsfully channel behavior. That's why all cultures are constatnly threatened with disintegration, undermining, and impoverishment. For this reason, controls are set over Culture.
Those controls are Social Institutions. And what do social institutions control? Human Behavior, of course. And how does a social institution control behavior? By controlling explanations.
This is another way of saying that behavior controls behavior.
Historically, it would be wrong to judge those in the past for relying on exemplifications, because, as I said above, they didn't even call them exemplifications. To those in the distant past like Augustine one's explanation and the truth were synonymous.
So, from an historical perspective the use of exemplification is understandable. They couldn't possibly have engaged in interpretation from the point of view of an extensive knowledge of verbal behavior because there was nothing to be known. But that is not at all the case today, with any of us. But especially with a form of explanatory behavior masquerading as the truth.
That is, given what we now know. And what do we know now?
Well, as I said in Part I, we know that in terms of cultural history the movement of explanatory behavior in the West has been from Myth to Metaphysics to Science. So, science has displaced mythological, theological, ideological (same thing) and metaphysical explanations, giving us an immense power and control over that part of the world not created by human beings.
The principle of science, of course, is that no explanation - or theory - is to be accepted unless it is supported by feedback!
The first stage of modern science was the belief, carried over from religion and philosophy (old habits die hard), that feedback stabilized explanation. But we are now living in the second stage in which that belief, itself an explanation, has been modified, so that experimental feedback is conceived of as continuously modifying the theoretical-explanatory structure of science.
So, the aim of the truly modern scientist is not to stabilize explanation, but to exploit its inherent instability, an instability that arises from the fact that the meaning of that explanation is not inherent in the explanation but is a matter of response.
Again, it's here that one finds the source of that feeling of fraudulence in the writing and teaching of Critical Race Theory.
Because nowhere in the writing and teaching of CRT do they show any awareness of, or interest in, what a theory is or does.
The analytical tools that Cancel Culture and CRT are using to attack and dismantle Western Civilization are pre-modern.
Earlier I said that Critical Race Theory, itself a tributary of Critical Theory, is not really Critical, implying that, to some extent it is critical. And it is. But only in the most general way.
Strickly speaking, Criticism is any verbal response to a subject matter. But, Critical Theory, as it is practiced, is an oxymoron.
In other words, both Critical Theory and CRT are oxymoronic.
The fact that it’s not a theory calls into question its critical status while exposing its intellectual pretentiousness and deceit.
And this explains the dogmatic nature of those involved. Since its dogmatism is a mask used to conceal its intellectual inadequacy, moral bankruptcy and their consequences - societal collapse. This explains their addiction to virtue signalling and victim-blaming.
In any event, a proper Criticism, one worthy of gaining the confidence, not just of the academic world, but of the general public, has a responsibility to demonstrate an awareness of and competence in Explanation, Interpretation, and Intention.
But Critical Theory in general and CRT in particular can not do this. Because, again, if they did their theory would collapse and their entire explanatory system would be reduced to rubble faster than you can say Whiteness. Which, mark my words, it is going to do anyway. CRT will collapse on itself. Not because I said so. But because it deliberately avoids contact with reality by stubbornly refusing to translate its theory into operational statements that are capable of being tested in the real world.
So, CRT has no predictive value. Since it can't make predictions it can't prove that what it's saying is true, since proof is what happens in the real world. And now we're back to why CRT is a form of magical thinking, because it avoids contact with reality.
Now, again, strictly speaking, from the point of view of human behavior, specifically verbal behavior, CRT is an explanation and it is an interpretation. But, exactly because it functions as an Exemplification, though, to repeat, without even knowing it, that exemplification disqualifies its use as an explanation and interpretation. Why? Because Critical Theory in general and CRT in particular don’t even look at themselves as Explanations or Interpretations. With typical, straight-faced brazen effrontery, they look at what they say and write as synonymous with the truth. But it’s not the truth. It’s just an Exemplification. That's all.
So, to understand this, we’ll have to take an even closer look at Exemplification and its relation to Explanation and Interpretation in the context of Western Cultural History. And now we’re back to St. Augustine and his use of exemplification.
An important part of Augustine's position was his invisibilia Dei.
Note: Notice how Identity Politics has appropriated the Latin word for God with its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI. Do you think that's a coincidence? Talk about The Great Replacement. DIE would be more appropriate. Also, they have appropriated Invisibilia as well.
Apparently for nostalgic reasons, Augustine was interested in preserving the culture he loved and, as a Christian, had to abandon. So, learning the general model of the Alexandrian allegorical explanations of Homer, he subjected classical myths to a Christian interpretation and established the Christian explanatory modes. But, there’s only one problem here.
He didn’t really explain those myths at all. What he actually did was exemplify Christian truths by drawing his material from non-Christian mythology. So? What’s your point? one might ask.
The point is this. No matter what Augustine and his followers interpreted they invariably generated the same Christian truths.
It’s as if someone were to use the word rectangle and when we asked them what they meant they pointed to the frames of doors, windows, and pictures. They have not in any sense interpreted or explained the function of those doors, windows, and pictures in the room and related them to an explanation of the function of the room in human affairs. Sound familiar? It certainly ought to.
Because this is exactly the mode and structure of thinking used by everyone in Critical Theory, from the Frankfurt School, the Postmodernists, PC, Identity Politics and, of course, CRT.
But, instead of pointing to rectangles, they're pointing to whites and calling them racists. Naturally, they're directing everyone else to do the same thing - and they are - and not just in the USA.
For the purposes of Exemplification anyone who responds in this way ignores the function of whatever it is they’re responding to.
Correspondingly, they can’t even explain how their own explanations function. And that’s why they’re so defensive whenever challenged and respond with the usual ad hominems.
In the same way Augustine, for the purposes of his exemplification, simply ignored the function of the myths in the culture in which they originated, so too does CRT ignore the important details of the very subject matter it is criticizing.
Note: Never the less, it has to be said, that not only was St. Augustine writing at a period of cultural development in which he couldn't possibly have known about the theoretical limits of his approach, he was at least respectful of the myths he was exemplifying. Plus, his work is still well worth knowing, especially in regard to his discussion of interpretational hints and clues, and his position that poetry is veiled or hidden discourse and that it's the task of the reader to penetrate those veils. There is nothing of comparable value in Critical Theory at all. Especially since it's fundamentally pre-modern.
Specifically, as with the rest of the Critical Theory school, CRT ignores, or is completely ignorant of, the specific details (whether in the past or present) of the situation those they are criticizing are, or were in, the specific problem or problems they faced, or are facing, and the tools they were, or are using, to solve the problems of those particular situations. That’s a lot to ignore for anyone passing such harsh and hateful judgment on others as if that judgement was perfect, final, and absolutely true.
But, there’s more. The most striking feature of this mode of response is that it can not be falsified. But, it can’t be verified either. Since its claims are never tested, it can only be asserted.
In short, there are no verifiable truths in CRT. Just assertions.
That’s why it’s explanatory system is chock-o-block full of vague abstractions, glittering generalities and absurd absolutes, none of which bear any relation to a concrete and unyielding reality. Of course, this is what accounts for the fanaticism surrounding CRT.
As we said earlier, CRT is a verbal cancer. And, for those determined to accept and submit to it, that cancer is inoperable.
How did we get to this point? How did we get to the point where the cultural life around us today is like some nightmare that’s part dystopian novel made into a bad Hollywood movie and part Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers and Leviticus?
Literary Study: A Theory and a "Theory"
To offer an explanation we’ll need to back up a bit and take a look at the two basic approaches to the Humanities that were in use in the 20th century, and how these two approaches are essential for an understanding, not just of CRT and any possible alternative, but for how human beings respond to anything.
Briefly, starting around WWI the two tendencies regarding theoretical arguments about how to approach the study of Western Civilization from the point of view of its literature were, on the one hand, to severely limit the discipline of literary study, and on the other, to expand literary study into Cultural History. In fact, an example of this can be found in our entry Where To Begin?
The expansion of literary study into Cultural History included the history of the other arts, the history of philosophy, and the history of scientific theory (specifically the philosophy of science).
Cultural History as a subject of study was the inevitable outcome of American Pragmatism, itself the product of European Romanticism, and all three rooted in the historicism, realism and dynamic organicism of 19th century culture in the geographical areas of Western Europe and North America, ie; the West.*
*The Land of Whiteness.
All of them were the product of Romanticism and the scholarship that had been building around Romanticism in an attempt to explain it. Why was that scholarship necessary? Because
Romanticism is the single greatest cultural redirection in history, since the abrupt changes that took place between humans and the natural world during the Neolithic period 6,000 years ago.
We’ve already discussed Romanticism in a previous entry and plan to go into more detail and from a different perspective in a future entry. The point here is, it’s exactly this need to understand what is arguably the most important period of cultural history for which we have a record, that dogmatic thinkers on the Right are either oblivious of, or indifferent to, and rigid and fanatical ideologues on the Left absolutely forbid.* For a reason.
*This has not kept the Left from using and debasing Romantic concepts, such as diversity and identity. Talk about cultural appropriation. They're dependent on the very people they hate for their ideas.
It exposes their position as fraudulent, because it is. But as long as we have the breath of life in us, we should continue in our efforts to understand something so important. And we will.
Why? Because we’re convinced that the position derived from that of Romanticism is not only both relevant and useful, but actually represents the only human hope. It very well may be.
Again, this is why they are trying to take the breath of life out of the life of the mind and the world of ideas by barring further inquiry, demonizing dissent, and pathologizing opposition.
Which, as we said earlier, is odd, since truth doesn’t fear investigation. But frauds, imposters and pseudo-intellectual charlatans do! In short, the truth-claims of CRT are invalid.
Why? Well, we’ve already said why. Because Critical Race Theory is not properly Critical, it’s not about Race and it isn’t a Theory. It’s simply a mode of indoctrination, though, admittedly, a lot more hard-headed than most. That’s why their theory rejects, bafflingly enough, attempts at falsification, while automatically and unquestioningly validating any and all of their own claims.
And some of those claims are not only absurd, they are also incomprehensible. Of course, the more irrational, illogical, absurd and incomprehensible CRT’s claims are, the less they are questioned. The less they are questioned the more it becomes a moral force. The more it becomes a moral force the more one is forced to believe their claims. The more one is forced to believe those claims the more the questioning of those claims is forbidden. The more the questioning of those claims is forbidden the more those claims are used to control your behavior - all of it.
This ought to work wonders for the full and healthy functioning of the very social institutions that the hostile elite’s power now controls. Hard to imagine a better example of a Pyrrhic Victory.
The real point here is not simply that all of this is about Explanation, but that we are living during a period of extraordinary and unprecedented Explanatory Collapse. Which would also explain an equally unprecedented Culture Crisis. Obviously, since Culture is impossible without Social Institutions and Social Institutions without Explanation.
In fact, a social institution doesn't simply use explanations, strictly speaking, a Social Institution is an Explanation.
And, since explanations control behavior and the overwhelming majority of our behavior takes place in social institutions, the fact of explanatory collapse means the collapse of our social institutions, all of them. And that means the collapse of civilization itself. A civilization that is far more dependent on coherent explanations than ever before exactly because this civilization is by far the most complex and unpredictable civilization in history. So, given what’s at stake, everything, it’s the fact of the elite’s recalcitrance that needs to be accounted for.
In any event, and to return to our look at the two basic approaches to the Humanities that were in use in the 20th century, the approach of severely limiting the discipline of literary study, has a long history traceable to the very roots of the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian traditions. Because, for all of their many differences, and in spite of their historical significance and the valuable insight into life they offer, each one was unified by a static vision. This is better known as, The Great Chain of Being.
Briefly, it’s the belief that a perfect and final explanation of the world, one capable of solving all of our problems, is possible.
In the West this can be seen in each of the four pillars of Western civilization, the Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman traditions, leading forward to the Middle Ages, and through to the 18th century Enlightenment. And, since the USA still operates almost entirely out of Enlightenment principles and assumptions, this line leads straight through to today to Critical Race Theory itself.
In one sense, The Great Chain of Being broke at the end of the 18th century with the French Revolution, the collapse, or failure of which, being what Romanticism was a response to.
And it was Romanticism that laid the foundation for modern science, which explains why there was an effort during the second half of the 20th century, little known and so not at all discussed today, to place the Humanities under the Behavioral Sciences. Now that would’ve shut a lot of people up. Which, of course, is why it didn’t happen. Because such an effort, if successful, would have been the death knell to utopian thinking.
Why?
Because, if that were to happen, they would then have to give a formal demonstration of their truth-claims. Which is something no believer in any Salvantion System is prepared to do, at all.
Millions for the Belief. Not one red cent for Reality! That is the great human motto. Why think when you can just believe?
Or, Yes We Can!*
*For an answer to how that turned out just look around. Yet more proof there's one born every minute.
But, we have to think if we want to live in reality, especially since reality doesn’t care what we believe in. Unfortunately, however, as CRT, and not just CRT, makes perfectly clear, most people simply are not all that fond of thinking, or of reality. A very unpleasant but easily verifiable fact. Again, just look around.
Of course, this has never stopped people from constructing the most outrageous silliness and then using that silliness to slaughter millions of other human beings as if it were nothing.
Or, as the quote often attributed to Stalin goes, one death’s a tragedy, a million is a statistic. It doesn't matter if Stalin really said that or not. What matters is that he actually lived it.
Why tolerate when you can just kill the intolerant because they don’t accept the claims of your belief, that you can’t prove but dogmatically assert to be true, and all in the name of tolerance?
This is what is meant by moral insanity and moral imbecility.
The very foundation of all scapegoating families and socieites.
In any event, not having the Humanities placed under the Behavioral Sciences is exactly what paved the way for quasi-religious, pseudo-intellectual monstrosities like CRT (as long as we're on the subject of moral insanity and moral imbecility).
The Cultural History approach is actually about theory. The dominant approach now, of course, is all about ideology. Or,
Literary Study: A Theory and a "Theory"
We’ll go into more detail about all of this in the next entry of our WTF? series titled High Culture. For now we’ll need some way to help us better understand the explanatory behavior involved in both CRT, the proposed alternative, and the consequences.
Note: The metaphor for the ideological approach is, appropriately enough, a machine, like a computer. The metaphor for Cultural History is an organism, such as a plant, or a tree.
Dogma vs Pragma
To simplify a complex matter, we’ll refer to the attempt to severely limit the discipline of literary study as Dogma, and the efforts to expand literary study into cultural history as Pragma.
The practical value of doing this for the purpose of today’s entry is to show that there is no difference between the interpretation of literary study and that found in ordinary everyday behavior.
Our model for understanding the interpretation of complex phenomena, such as a real theory, is in everyday behavior.
The other value of doing this is to show the connection between the character of the explanatory systems of Western Civilization, the USA, and those in our universities for the last 100 years.
So then, what’s the difference between Dogma and Pragma?
Simply put, Pragma is willing to expose its ideas to a process of continuous feedback and correction - and Dogma isn’t. As we said above, Dogma has a long history. Pragma doesn’t. And this is a problem, a very serious problem, for all of us. Why?
Because, again, we live at a time when life is more complex and unpredictable than ever before in human history. That’s why.
More importantly, and perhaps more ominously, is the fact that we live in an Interpreted World. Interpreting that world is how we both adapt ourselves to it and adapt it to us. This is of the utmost importance. Since no interpretation can be perfect and final, the belief, asserted to be true (but impossible to prove) that any response can be perfect and final reduces to irrelevancy the act of interpretation, which is the source of human adaptibility.
Note: For this reason, and many others, it’s time we give CRT the boot, and not just CRT.
Pragma recognizes the fact that life is dynamic, not static, and we’re imperfect, not perfect. So, it sees that process of feedback and correction as something that is absolutely necessary for human survival. And for a reason. It is absolutely necessary.
And that reveals another difference between Dogma and Pragma, or, another way of describing them both. Which is that of Myth and Science. Dogma = Myth and Pragma = Science.
Both Myth and Science are modes of interpretation. Because both are derived not from the world, but from us. In other words, they're not derived from empirical data. They're derived from preceding and less developed, explanations.
The difference, of course, is that unlike Myth, Science doesn't rest on its laurels, so to speak. It doesn't rest on a judgment of finality. It doesn't suffer from the illusion of permanence, that a final explanation is possible.
So, it doesn't suffer from the added delusion that, as a result of that imagined finality, its explanation (which is what a Myth is) can be used as a permanently stable guide for our behavior.
In other words, Science permits experiment to modify its explanations, or theories. Which is why Darwin referred to all theory as a mental convenience, and why Ludwig von Boltzmann spoke about the hypothetical character of all theoretical constructs. Because they knew, as any scientist knows, or should know, that scientific experiment works by generating more data than the current theory can subsume. This is called feedback.
Note: This isn't just something that scientists should know, this is something all of us should know, and the reason we don't all know it is of course the justification not just of this entry but of PRC.
That’s why all of Critical Theory is just pseudoscience, because none of its theories are ever tested. Which is why it has to be imposed by force. To the extent Critical Theory in its various forms has been imposed in the past and continues to be in the present, means that not only is it backed by real power, but that those who have that power are the real supremacists. Obviously.
We are living at a time when David has become Goliath, while still pretending he's David. Historically, this is unprecedented. And, though it might be a first, there's nothing good about it.
Clown World? More like Sham World. Sham in the sense that nothing about it can be confused with reason. Or anything else that makes us truly human, like empathy, humility and gratitude.
Be that as it may, anything aligned with Pragma, on the other hand, doesn’t expect to be believed. Such an expectation would only violate its own logic. On the contrary, Pragma only asks to be used and tested. And, if it turns out to be wrong, very well then, it can set to work immediately so as to improve its theory.
As G.H. Mead once said, a scientist is only happy when their theory turns out to be wrong. Of course, because then they get to be a scientist. In the same way, though we don't always want to be wrong, when we are wrong we can see it as an opportunity for learning, change and growth, and not something to be ashamed of. And shame is what CRT is all about. Of course, since shame is the controlling emotion, the hostile elite sees it as one of their principle means of controlling the public's belief in itself.
This is why Pragma also sees continuous learning, change, and growth as something that enhances the sense of one’s own value and identity, since it helps to make life more worth living.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Obviously, the alternative to Dogma is Pragma. And, since PRC is working out of the tradition of Pragma and CRT out of Dogma, the obvious alternative to CRT is PRC International.
Couldn’t resist :)
Seriously though, PRC is operating out of the tradition that attempted to expand literary study into Cultural History and subsume the Humanties under the Behavioral Sciences.
And CRT is operating out of the pre-modern tradition of severly limiting any and all responses so as to reduce response itself to one overrriding explanation that is closed from both sides, that of theory and that of data, while also ignoring, attacking, misrepresenting, or, if possible, eliminating any and all alternative responses it doesn't approve of. In short, CRT is yet another deposit squeezed out the bowels of authoritarianism.
In being able to recognize the fact that life is dynamic, not static, and we’re imperfect, not perfect, in being able to see the importance of feedback and correction for the purpose of continuous learning, change and growth, Pragma not only offers the opportunity for improving the individual’s creative imagination, but human biological adaptation as well.
What could possibly be more important than that?
Actually, as we’ll see later when we look at the elite’s larger agenda, of which CRT is merely a part, their answer to the above question is that human survival isn’t really important. Their survival is important, to them, naturally. But ours isn’t, at all.
Again, how parents can put up with this and not think about their children is explained by the fact that the USA has never really cared about its children.* It’s cared mostly about power, prestige and plata (money!). Who cares about children and their future when there are reputations to be made and money to count?
*This is not to deny that some parents in the US (and not just the US) really do care about their children. Of course not. But it is to say that the US has not lived up to its belief in itself as a serious country by refusing to take children, the family, and higher education, seriously. At least as seriously as they take sports, entertainment, gossip, politics, making money, having power and buying things. One thing, however, no one should take seriously is the American people's denial about this unpleasant fact. After all, does anyone think they'd be in the position they're in now if they took all of this seriously, when it really mattered, and not when it's too late, as it very well may be?
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