ALPERN AT LARGE-Ours is a society that is so obsessed with being politically correct than it has forgotten how to be factually correct. The Peter Pans of our society that just hate growing up have done an excellent job of shutting down the grownups, and the "open-minded" and "free speech" crowd has done an equally-great job of shutting down those who dare to disagree with them...leaving us to wonder when being "open minded" is actually just plain "idiotic".
Case in point #1: The "educated elites" in the Westside and Hollywood who've decided not to vaccinate their children.
I never figured out when sweet but ditzy actress Jenny McCarthy supplanted the army of medical professionals (who constantly review and repeatedly advocate childhood vaccination) as the premiere authority on vaccination, but it should be noted that the doctor in Britain who "proved" that autism as a vaccination risk was thrown out of the profession...and the journal (Lancet) that published his work continues to apologize and reject that article.
Yet we now have all sorts of avoidable third world diseases now penetrating our nation and region, and it's the "educated elites" who have caused this problem. Not foreigners. Not poor people. Not minorities. It's wealthy "open-minded" folks like wealthy, white Westsiders who've opted to ignore the facts, the Scientific Method, and the dangers of what they're doing to society.
Rather than be "open-minded" these "educated elites" have chosen to be as dumb as a rock. And while I feel sorry for their children, any unvaccinated children should be barred from attending public school (or any self-respecting and responsible private school, for that matter) as a necessary measure of public health.
Case in point #2: The "educated elites" in Common Core and our top-down educational bureaucracy ask and demand us to be constantly open-minded to the point where they've embraced idiocy.
The idea of standards is an excellent one, and certainly our need to compete with other nations via standardized tests is equally vital, but the virtual dictatorship of the Common Core "elite" has led to all sorts of brusque, ham-handed teaching methods and priorities while the basics too-often get ignored.
We can have tests, and demand summer reading and homework to keep children educated and learning, but making education a self-defeating and miserable experience is not the answer.
Ditto for the colossal and epic fiasco that was and is the LAUSD/Deasy iPad "experiment". Wasting hundreds of millions of construction funds on a disastrous conflict of interest has now shredded any future attempt for our schools to raise more money for legitimate construction/maintenance needs, and our "open-minded" efforts to encourage computer literacy for all children has made the LAUSD (again) a laughing stock of the nation.
And, of course, the lack of school choice for our children and their exhausted-but-committed parents is anything but "open-minded". And, of course, no one has been hurt more by lack of school choice than poor minorities.
Case in point #3: The "educated elites" are so gung-ho about elevating the minimum wage and worker's rights that lower-income workers are slipping further and further into poverty...and the middle-class is being dragged down, to boot.
There's every reason to want lower-income workers to get paid more, and for their income to be stretched farther, and for their lives to be more fulfilling and happy. There's also every reason to grab large employers making record profits by the scruff of the neck and keep their workers out of poverty, and to avoid having the taxpayers pay for benefits that should come from reasonable and decent employers.
Yet there's a reason why socialism and communism keep failing (although the true believers would rather swallow a bag of broken glass than acknowledge this):
Capitalism is often a painful and infuriating experience (as is democracy), but every other system is worse. Such a concept is an awful and unpleasant reality to wrap one's brain around, but such is the adult world.
The LA City Council's passing of the minimum wage to $15.37 for hotel workers in large hotels is politically cute in the short-term, but if these hotels then opt to lay off many workers to make up for that, and if smaller hotels and other small-business industries (which are NOT always making huge profits, contrary to any convenient overgeneralizations) are forced to do the same, who have we helped?
After all, is Europe really the model we want to emulate, with its disastrously high-unemployment rate (hey, how did THAT happen, hmmm?) and moribund economies?
After all, is it THAT hard to tie employer health and retirement benefits for the top-paid employees with the lowest-paid employees, as they do with 401(k) plans that prevent top-paid employees from getting plum benefits unless they fund their lower-paid employees first? Wouldn't motivation for MORE money keep employers (who are leaving this state whenever they can) on the straight and narrow instead of a slap on the face?
After all, must so high a raise come so fast, when other workers who had to fight and prove themselves to get to that pay scale after years of alternate work schedules will be given the message that merit and developing one's skill set means NOTHING in the workplace?
After all, is it THAT hard to tell the environmentalists who do NOT know what the term "cost-benefit analysis" means and keep forcing homeowners and renters, particularly poor minorities, into the streets by exploding utility rate costs? Or do we just want the new elevated minimum wage to be thrown directly into the LADWP's coffers?
Case in point #4: Everything else.
There are dozens of other "cases in point", such as global warming, policies directed at African Americans and Latino Americans, the War on Terror, etc. where the "educated elites" are so invested over proving how "open-minded" they are that idiotic policies and paradigms result--instead of presuming that black, Latino, Muslim, environmentalist, and other Americans are smart and capable adults, and can be held to adult standards.
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{module [662]}
But such is the tendency of those obsessed with being politically correct, and in thinking they're smarter than God Himself. Those thinking they're smarter than the rest of us, and who are addicted to acting on behalf of the rest of us, can only drag us down when they forget they're only human, and inevitably and unavoidably do what humans do: make mistakes, and need others to advise them when they're wrong.
And it's up to these others (us, really) to make sure that the "educated elites" are brought both down to earth, and up to speed, lest we self-impose on us and our children an even more nightmarish mess to unravel than the ever-worsening conundrum our society is devolving into.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also does regular commentary on the MarkIsler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 78
Pub: Sep 26, 2014
