Friday, April 18, 2025

The Story that Most Liberals Miss


Yes, Harvard has been threatened by the Trump Administration with funding cuts exceeding  two billion dollars. Liberals are rightly outraged by the Administration's reasons for the funding cuts, but they appear to be blind to the inequitable distribution of funds allotted to institutions of higher education. 

We live in a "winner take all" society in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That system of inequity extends to American colleges and universities—staffed, though they may be, by avowed "Liberals." 

If you've been following this story, you will have seen that billionaires have been rushing to Harvard's aid to make up the shortfall. That's what you call "resources." 

Meanwhile, a school like Boise State (for example), may not see its federal funding cut—but then, it never had the kind of funding Harvard enjoys to begin with. 

Researchers have to go where the money is, so those who try to justify Harvard's level of funding by pointing out that the school has some of the top scholars in their respective fields are only acknowledging the existence of these inequities without admitting to the reasons for them. 

The silver lining to Trump's Presidency (yes, there is one) is how it exposes to view the many ways in which our institutions (public and private and across all fields of endeavor) are weak, flawed, and unfair. 

We have an opportunity here to finally recognize some of the fundamental problems that have beset this country since at least the end of WWII and consider ways to correct them. 

I don't have a lot of confidence that this will happen, however, because far too many people (who, in my opinion, should know better) appear to believe that everything was just fine until Trump got into office and that things will return to being just fine as soon as we can get rid of him and his cronies. 

While I will admit that the "Liberals just want to get back to brunch" meme is insulting, it succinctly summarizes where things stand with many (if not most) of those who are in the best position, politically, to effect the drastic changes that need to occur if we are ever going to address the inequities baked in to our current system.

Friday, April 4, 2025

Seen in Ankara

 

The Turkish people actually believe in this thing called "democracy," and they go into the streets when they have to in order to practice it.

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Truth


If your God is in the real estate business and entitles some people to take land they want by force, you need a new God.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

NATO


                They could do it without firing a shot.