Alvin Rabushka writes
First, there is barely a twinge of political diversity at Stanford. There was one Trump vote for every 27 Biden votes. Blink and you might miss the Trump votes.
Second, Stanford faculty and students are much further left on the political spectrum than the state itself.
Third, California voters rejected an increase in property tax assessments on commercial and industrial property, while Stanford faculty, staff, and students voted overwhelmingly for it.
I continue to think that the divide between the HEEs and the rest of the country is the most significant take-away from the 2020 election.
On HEEs:
In the days immediately preceding the national election, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with the Monty Python star John Cleese. Asked to name a book he found fascinating, Cleese cited J.D. Vance’s bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy”, saying Vance “went to Harvard [sic], he studied his hillbilly family and discovered that, more than anything, they didn’t want to be governed by anyone smarter than they were. I want to be governed by people who are much smarter than I am.”
What does this have to do with the election? It is an example of what is at the core of the Highly Educated Elites’ problem. HEEs are the party’s base. Cleese’s reference to Vance, who he incorrectly says went to Harvard and implies was made a highly educated elite progressive in the process, is not only a mischaracterization of the author, but also the book. Vance went to Ohio State and Yale Law and is a Republican who embraces, not rejects, his hillbilly roots.
Vance’s hillbilly relatives were not saying they didn’t want to be governed by anyone smarter than they were, as Cleese suggests, but that they didn’t want to be alienated by those same highly educated elites who manifestly deplore them.
I recall reading other characterizations of Vance and his book:
The working class: truckers, firemen, electricians, plumbers, barbers, etc.; should all take a two-week vacation all at the same time. Let the HEE call a prof of gender studies to fix their toilet, put out a fire, deliver goods.
It would be interesting to look at the differences in voting patterns between HEE s who are sinecured/tenured and/or in tax-exempt industry and HEEs employed in tax-paying businesses. The sinecured/tax exempt are likely much more leftist than the HEEs who are productive members of society.
A much more important divide in the USA electorate is between those who are employed and those who are retired, in school, or otherwise out of the workforce. Subtracting hard left sinecured/tax exempt from the working population and there are fewer workers than non-workers. The chasm in voting patterns between workers and non-workers is what drove senile strongman Biden to victory. But most importantly the dream of a Republican workers party is conclusively dead. From here on out the USA will be a dictatorship of the takers. The USA has no viable future.
I can’t find the right terms, but you’re laying out a familiar split. I’ve seen “makers vs takers”, but I think that’s not quite right. Maybe it’s whether folks are constrained most by physical vs social reality?
It rings a bell of descriptions of naive (usually young) communists who kinda just think production magically just happens (so they’re not really worried about disrupting it?)
(Now, I’m painting the “social reality” side negatively, but it also applies to positive impulses for empathy, etc)
Objective versus subjective.
Is your job to deal with reality or is “reality” whatever you can convince people it is.
I would say it’s about the the answer to the question: “Personal or Impersonal?” in terms of “What is the character of the most important incentives and feedbacks in your line of work or primary activities?”
Impersonal means tethered to the incorruptible discipline of harsh reality.
Personal is a function of belief, opinion, and imagination, which can go totally crazy without correction and is prone to various Social Failure Modes.
Hanson recently expressed his ‘project’ as trying to nudge the answer more towards ‘impersonal’, more often, for more people and professions.
Maybe plumbers should go on strike.
But may be HEE should go Galt and leave the plumbers without vaccinations, medications and cell phones so they’ll wallow in the Black Plague era they seem to relish.
Nice try, Jacques. The plumbers appreciate the things you speak of. The HEEs, though, have contempt for those who aren’t like them.
They may appreciate but have no idea where they come from (it could be from sacrificing goats for all they know). In the US they bring their cell phones to the Noah’s Ark Museum not caring that if their phones work, it’s thanks to the same laws of physics that makes the Big Bang a necessity and the Earth 5 billions years old. No different thn Iranian fanatics.Anyway, physics is what the nerds they beat up in high school study.
I live in a large canadian city which have both the highest proportion of science PhD and the largest share of school drop-outs. There are many radio stations where the bulk of the programming is directed at the damn intellectuals.
For whatever shred of contempt from the HEE,there is ten times more from the other side.
End of thread.
Your arrogance is suffocating
That’s nice, but those laws of physics don’t have much to say about whether gender is a social construct or if the 1619 Project represented even a plausible reading of American history or if white privilege explains black educational stagnation or what the fiscal multiplier might be or…you get the point. When it comes to “elites,” STEM types are not an important faction. They’re not even in the conversation, really, and no one really cares what they think, one way or the other. Nobody except you is touting that they have the high school physics nerd on their side. Quite the opposite. Really, this take is dated by about 25 years at this point. The fashionable view is that math is a tool of oppression and that it fails to account for other ways knowing.
Guys like you are why Trump won the first time around. A little humility goes a long way in all human interaction.
@ Jaques, ” the same laws of physics that makes the Big Bang a necessity.”
Please explain.
I’m lost. Can someone please explain this one to me? Any insights?
Prop 15: Rich commercial real estate owners vs. more school funding
This couldn’t muster 50% in California? And, even after Zuckerberg dumped a bunch of money into the cause?
(I know that the final vote is still too early to call, but I was expecting a landslide.)
One explanation that I have yet to see bandied about is that the all powerful spinster demographic, Biden’s strongest, is just not into children at all.
Another is that unmarried adults outnumber married adults in California.
Another is that the average starting salary for teachers in California, at nearly $50k is second only to that of New Jersey, yet California and New Jersey rank 12th and 13th worst among the states on average SAT scores. Even higher salaries are unlikely to improve anything. And giving public school teachers a year off at fullbsalary to campaign for Biden was also bound to stir resentment, even amongst the other comrades.
I don’t like the moniker HEE; I don’t think is an accurate description of a coherent class of people.
I’m specifically hung up on the “Educated” part. Is someone with a college degree “educated”? Is a PhD “Educated”? I think it depends on the course of study. I think there are a lot of people, for example, with PhDs in gut subjects who lack testable knowledge one would expect a decent high school graduate to have.
If you’re trying to describe a coherent group, why not make a distinction, for example, between truly “educated” and others who just went through motions of getting degrees. I think a physician or PhD in engineering has a lot more in common politically and culturally with a non-college educated mechanic or small business owner than they have with someone with a PhD in Ethnic Studies. And I think a PhD in Ethnic Studies or Sociology has a lot more in common politically and culturally with an unemployable person suffering mild mental disability.
HEE is a moniker they many fortunate but not-very-bright people would gladly choose for themselves. I think “certified but unintelligent” would better capture that group.
HCE: Highly Credentialed Elite
I like HEE as an acronym (High Ed Elite), and even the almost insult of it. Even if I am one, and among only 3-4% who supported Trump. This much less than the 23% of Santa Clara, itself rather low.
The arrogance of elites trying to run other people’s lives is a big part of the problem. Even tho, I know and it’s very clear, many many people often make bad decisions about their own lives. That’s a big part of freedom – the ability to make a stupid, lousy decision.
Allowing the rampant, tho secret, discrimination against hiring Republicans in colleges is the single biggest cause of increasing polarization, as demonization becomes more acceptable by the HEEs against those who disagree. They combine (a false) “moral superiority” with their (SAT/IQ justified) “intellectual superiority”.
One small caveat: the 27:1 figure is measuring folks who vote on/around campus. Specifically, that excludes: undergrad students from outside CA who still vote at home; and, international students.
Comparing Stanford to California as an example of how out of step they are is idiotic. Stanford is entirely consistent with the Bay Area, where it is located.
Presidential results by Bay Area Counties (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/How-the-Bay-Area-voted-on-key-races-vs-the-rest-15702065.php)
San Francisco: 86.1% for Biden, 12.3% for Trump
Marin County: 84.2% for Biden, 14.5% for Trump
Alameda County: 82.4% for Biden, 16.2% for Trump
Santa Cruz County: 79.4% for Biden, 18.4% for Trump
San Mateo County: 79.4% for Biden, 19.2% for Trump
Sonoma County: 77.8% for Biden, 20.5% for Trump
Santa Clara County: 75.5% for Biden, 23% for Trump
Contra Costa County: 74.4% for Biden, 24.1% for Trump
Napa County: 72.7% for Biden, 25.7% for Trump
Solano County: 64.5% for Biden; 33.5% for Trump
All the Bay Area counties voted for Proposition 15, as did Northern Coastal California (you can see the map at the link). Bay Area counties were the *only* ones who voted for Prop 16 (reinstituting affirmative action), but again, Stanford was consistent with its locale.
I don’t know how Stanford voted for Prop 22, but the Bay Area counties voted against it, while everywhere else voted for it, and I guess Stanford followed along in that.
So like I said, singling out Stanford as somehow out of touch is idiotic. The Bay Area is a huge population, larger than many states. To put it in perspective, more people in the Bay Area voted for Donald Trump (so far, at 80% or lower counted) than Montana and North Dakota combined (at 99% counted). So it has its own profile, yes, but it’s just as easy to say the rest of CA is out of touch with Bay Area as the other way round.