Ice Floes Revisited
Posted on March 2nd, 2009 by Tintin
Shorter Victorates Thermopylae Davisopolous Hansitotle:
- The best way to manage increasing health care costs is simply to stop treating old people completely because no matter what you do, sooner or later, they all die.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Praise the Lord! New thread. Pure and unadulterated by the stink of boring RW trolls. Yippeee!
Baseless accusation.
Repeated, oft-refuted talking point.
Unearned sense of accomplishment.
Ridiculous prediction.
Declaration of victory.
To the topic at hand, this was a chortler:
The reptilian mind, in a nutshell. Sure, the evil fascist corporations are gouging us, but they have no choice! It’s our fault you see!
GOP, why do you hate America?
Repetition of belief that presence makes blog less boring.
man, you could see that last thread from space…
Again, please do not feed said trolls, just asking for trouble
Dear VDH,
Jonathan Swift did this better and funnier a couple decades ago.
It is fortunate that we have so many ice floes.
And also…
Yes, with only a radical change of heart, those obviously inferior brown children can easily overcome the schools with cracked walls and no books, taught by greenhorn teachers who couldn’t get work anywhere else (all of which is the darkies own fault). Radical changes of heart are much more effective and repairing broken walls and buying school supplies than money.
Funny thing is, they told the construction contractor that they had a radical change of heart, but the bastard still wanted cash.
You forgot page two:
Shorter VDH page 2:
Kids these days. GET OFFA MAH LAWN!
Engagement
Declaration of having pwned troll
Expectation of recognition for the heroic task of pwning the troll
Still as empty and lonely as troll
Repeat
Statement that TrollToy has, instead of pwn1ng troll, run and hid.
Knock it off already. Cripes.
He HAD to shoot me! I made him do it!
Lord Cheney, I am sorry for having caused you to shoot me. It was all my fault. Please don’t boil me in oil!
Jonathan Swift did this better and funnier a couple decades ago.
That’s kind of the point. Hanson makes very, very few points that others haven’t beaten him to. I actually got into an argument a couple of years ago on another site with one of VDH’s acolytes who advanced the inane notion that VDH was one of the first historians (cough cough) to point out in print that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings saved the lives of American servicemen. Putting aside the absolutely horrifying mental calculus that obviously goes into such an assertion, it was one of the arguments used in support of actually dropping the damn things.
But yeah, anyone who thinks that nuking cities is a good thing can easily make the leap to ‘stop spending so much on health care so old people hurry up and die already.’ It’s not a long drive from one to the other.
Further musings on VDH page two:
Says the man with a Ph.D. in classics.
What were Spartans without Helots?
VDH was one of the first historians (cough cough) to point out in print that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings saved the lives of American servicemen.
Uhhh, that argument was used even in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. Which I guess was central to OB-GYN’s point.
Says the man with a Ph.D. in classics.
I’m sure that VDH is one of the ‘many academics’ conservatives love to cite when it comes to a discussion of global warming. You know, how they like to say that ‘many academics’ say that more research is needed?
It’s just that those ‘many academics’ have degrees in economics, history or teh classics. Not something geeky like meteorology.
Uhhh, that argument was used even in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. Which I guess was central to OB-GYN’s point.
You are correct.
Statement that TrollToy has, instead of pwn1ng troll, run and hid.
Re-engagement with increased levels of anger and verbiage
Reassertion of pwning
Knock it off already. Cripes.
Assertion of TrollToy3000’s value add; provides otherwise helpless fellow liberals with valuable talking points.
Says the man with a Ph.D. in classics.
I believe he also has a vanity vineyard. (You can take that either of two ways.)
Hello Governor of Colorado Dick Lamm Redux!
What were Spartans without Helots?
Perhaps if they had some Shelots they’d have been less fight-y all the time.
I gots no problems with folks studyin’ dem “lie-beral arts” and such, it’s just that when the military historian/classics professor starts harranguing today’s yoots about wasting their edumacashuns, oof. Hey VDH, the reason you didn’t see people taking vocational training or even professional courses when you were teavhing – is because you were teaching the fucking classics. It’s like the nursing prof wondering why guys can’t get into university.
VDH needs a fashion sense transplant.
I bet we could save a lot more money if we went back to Galenic medicine. VDH could tell you all about that!
Says the man with a Ph.D. in classics.
Yeah, that ticked me off too. I’m getting (in theory, at least) a Ph.D. in history, and this guy is simply arguing in a way that undercuts both my field and his own. With seemingly no awareness that he’s doing so.
This is the best summary I’ve seen of how conservatives think about health care. Progress is bad. People live longer through better medical intervention — that’s bad. It costs a lot of money to extend patiuents’ lives — that’s bad. We have learned to undo the damage caused by smoking and other poor health habits — that’s bad. Let’s go back to the level of medical technology we had in 1959.
Why do I think this argument only works on healthy people? Why do I think that as the population ages VDH, PhD, will find fewer and fewer readers who agree with him about this? I just love the planned obsolescence of conservatism.
You tell most Americans that, Vic, and they’ll be asking you where to send the check.
I found the following VDH snippet most risible:
“One brilliant plumber, gifted carpenter, or adept auto mechanic does more for the American economy (and our collective values) than a dozen 20-something sociology majors in progress.”
One wonders how much better off American society would be if VDH’s folks had sprung for a certification from the Lower Alabama Academy of Tractorin’ and Hog Farmin’ instead of an education in teh Classix.
Physician, heal thyself.
I tried to read it. I couldn’t make it to the second page having gotten slight sick to my stomach by the racist bullshit finishing the first page.
While his “reasoning” is poor, obviously motivated by his fucking nastyness rather than any compassion, there are reasonable questions about the cost of end-of-life care. Again, from what I read, he’s not being reasonable; please don’t think I’m making some apologia pro VDH.
The most expensive day of your life is the day you die. VDH would have us make whatever measures to reduce the economic expense. He doesn’t make an equation of it though, it’s all in his opwn self interest. He doesn’t even consider the idea of doing it without increasing the cost in lives.
Where, I wonder does VDH come down on Right to Die? (honestly, I wonder very little about it but there it is) Would he support assisted suicide if we point out how much money it saves?
It makes me wonder who he thinks his readers are: Joe the Plumber perhaps, who knows he’s dumb dumb dumber than Victor Davis Hanson and therefore can be told what to do? The Republican elite, who do not need to bother reading the twaddle designed to fool the rubes? Or fellow propagandists looking for an angle?
We have learned to undo the damage caused by smoking and other poor health habits — that’s bad. Let’s go back to the level of medical technology we had in 1959.
Why stop there? People were a lot happier back when we bled people for fevers and hacked their gangrenous limbs off with axes!
Of course VDH is productive! Didn’t you know that “300” is about the US Marines in Iraq and is the only Iraq war movie that made money? And its not gay either!
From Hanson’s screed:
…providing … those who drink, smoke, and are chronically obese with drugs and weekly doctor visits.
At last, an NRO wingnut denounces Rush Limbaugh! Please forward this to him at once!
Of course, VD himself watches his diet and exercises religiously so he can continue to fit into his favorite cocktail dresses, ball gowns and cheerleader skirts.
Of course VDH is productive! Didn’t you know that “300? is about the US Marines in Iraq and is the only Iraq war movie that made money? And its not gay either!
So VDH is productive for a movie review / endorsement of a movie based on a comic book based on another movie based very loosely on a battle in which the side he backed got completely pwned…
Sadlynoughts, I believe we have discovered a rudimentary form of artificial
intelligencefanboy.Fuck old people! what did those wrinkly old bastards ever do for ME eh?
Who wouldnt want to die at the age of 53? live fast, die young. Rock an’ roll baby!
No wait. What is the point in dying young if you don’t get to do the “live fast” bit? I mean, not everybody gets to front a rock band right? What about the sad bastards who live slow?
Yah, fuck em. Live slow.. urm.. Die slow?
National review just doesn’t seem to be coherent it seems.. Oh well, that seems to be their trademark!
“A radical change of heart”??????
Sorry, Vic, organ transplants are much too expensive.
If I may make A MODEST PROPOSAL, I suggest that next time Miss California Raisin Hanson sneezes, we pull the plug and put her out of her misery.
we pull the plug and put her out of her misery.
And save us all some money. It’s what Archidamus II would have wanted.
I really don’t know. I think it’s partly reflexive; this line about “silly” education like sociology has become so ingrained in conservative political opinion that it’s something you just say if you’re writing for a conservative audience.
National Review strikes me as a publication aimed at middle- and upper middle-class readers in white collar and professional jobs. Hanson’s article presents an opportunity for those readers to identify with salt-of-the-earth “real” people, especially if they’re not mechanics and such, by setting up an Other.
There’s a bit of irony in Hanson’s piece. I wrote my MA thesis on postwar-WWII American conservatism and its views about science (the focus being on physical/natural sciences) and I used National Review for a lot of my source material, since it was probably the most important gathering point for conservative thought at the time. What’s interesting is that most of the commentary about science and technology in National Review tended to be rather critical. Many of the writers thought that the United States was too strongly emphasizing “expertise in mere enginry” (to paraphrase one writer) at expense of a traditional or classical education that they thought was better at developing values. Of course, this negative trend (as the National Review set saw it) was the fault of leftists and liberals who were emulating the communists.
Now it seems they’ve made almost a 180, though the American right has long been suspicious of most social sciences, especially sociology.
I thought it was supposed to be a GOOD thing that we had all this cool medical technology and stuff to help people live longer healthier lives. I thought the US of A had the BEST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE and everything and that was one of the many reasons that we’re NO. 1.
People were a lot happier back when we bled people for fevers and hacked their gangrenous limbs off with axes!
My body, my shelf.
I thought the US of A had the BEST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE and everything and that was one of the many reasons that we’re NO. 1.
Clearly, the argument is put forth against socialized medicine, which might save even more lives.
Whenever VDH or anyone else at The Corner calls for “an honest discussion,” it is to laugh. To them, “honest” means “sharing my assumptions, biases, and conclusions.”
Also, Hanson, you eedjit, nowhere do you state the two most important facts about medical care:
1. It’s not optional, and not “another consumer choice” the exercise of which will result in The Free Market determining winners and losers. No patient is competent to argue with their doctor over what treatment they “prefer.” And no doctor will condone cutting corners, lest he/she be sued.
2. It’s highly technological and is therefore inherently expensive. Especially new technologies. One day an MRI may cost $99.50 (the way a new Dell desktop now costs $399), but until then it’ll cost $1,500 or whatever it is.
3. BONUS FACT: Insurance companies, I gather, build in 100% of their cut in the fees for services. I got a $12,000 bill for tests and exams at a hospital for my daughter (over the course of maybe six hours). When I discovered her insurance had lapsed, we told the hospital, and they cut it in half. Same at a dentist.
Ergo,hence, thus, to sum up: fuck you, Hanson. Or shall we have an honest discussion?
I thought it was supposed to be a GOOD thing that we had all this cool medical technology and stuff to help people live longer healthier lives.
VDH might tell you that modern medicine is a dangerous Muslim terrorist invention of which we must purge ourselves in favour of traditional Western culture, like balancing the humours and divining from chicken entrails.
VDH is about 56 years old.
TIck…tick…tick…tick…
No patient is competent to argue with their doctor over what treatment they “prefer.”
“Does that biopsy come in blue?”
VDH is about 56 years old.
But he looks 80 and writes like he’s a million
“The cost of our health care is soaring because…it does things routinely that almost no one else in the world contemplates__ such as providing 83 year olds with heart valve replacements, 78 year olds with hip and knee replacements, and those who drink, smoke, and are chronically obese with drugs and weekly doctor visits.” But…but…single payer health care would result in eeevil gubmint bureaucrats RATIONING health care!!! Not like VDH’s solution, which is to have the sick, lame, and everyone over the age of 78 voluntarily report to the Soylent Green processing facility.
Oh, yeah, is there any truth to the rumor that VDH’s college major was Classics, with a minor in HVAC?
3. BONUS FACT: Insurance companies, I gather, build in 100% of their cut in the fees for services. I got a $12,000 bill for tests and exams at a hospital for my daughter (over the course of maybe six hours). When I discovered her insurance had lapsed, we told the hospital, and they cut it in half. Same at a dentist.
Many moons ago, when I was still in grad school, I worked for a company that did billing and collections for doctors, hospitals and other medical providers. The tales I could tell you.
it does things routinely that almost no one else in the world contemplates__ such as providing 83 year olds with heart valve replacements, 78 year olds with hip and knee replacements, and those who drink, smoke, and are chronically obese with drugs and weekly doctor visits
And yet, we rank something like 30th on the life expectancy lists (45th if you include non-UN countries).
Um VDH? I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here.
Such profit-mongering entities may well gouge us
I hate that. VDH is unaware of any definitions of ‘monger’.
[Middle English
mongere, from Old Englishmangere, from Latinmang, dealer in slaves, probably of Greek origin.]— You’d think he’d know that.
Handjob’s argument against college degrees for poor kids is just about lifted from this NYT OpEd piece by Charles Murray a few months ago. Since Handjob is writing for the National Review though he can be more explicit about how lame he thinks black people are. Murray’s was much more subtle but they’re both motivated at least as much by the idea of who might be the recipient of government spending on education as they are by having to foot any of the bill. I think they both love the idea of a caste system and they’re writing for people who feel the same way.
Still don’t get it. Why should healthcare be about profit? If the country is generally healthier then shouldn’t business make more money as people are in work and not calling in sick?
Damn socialists, helping business make money….
When this guy is in his 80s and being kept alive by a respirator, I hope someone reads him that column before they unplug it.
When this guy is in his 80s and being kept alive by a respirator, I hope someone reads him that column before they unplug it.
I bid 400 quatloos on the newcomer.
it does things routinely that almost no one else in the world contemplates__ such as providing 83 year olds with heart valve replacements, 78 year olds with hip and knee replacements
About 11 years ago an English hospital didn’t hesitate to perform a second hip-replacement surgery on a 97-year-old.* Has VDH looked at surgery statistics for (say) Northern European countries, or does his argument work better without actual facts?
*The Queen Mother, who might have been a special case.
The US healthcare system is one which does not hesitate to provide a hip replacement.. As long as the patient has the $10,000 dollars, it doesn’t matter a damn how old they are!
Hey, just make sure the cheque clears before you bust out the scalpel.
Why do I suddenly hear The Immigrant Song?
Work PC not have speakers – this should be unpossible.
A 2006 study reported 60,000 total hip replacements done annually by the UK National Health. A report in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases [abstract] says that “According to administrative and literature data sources the reported crude primary THR rate varied between 50 and 130 procedures/100 000 inhabitants in OECD countries in the 1990s. The crude overall hip implantation rate, summarising THR, partial hip replacement, and hip revision procedures, was reported to range from 60 to 200 procedures/100 000 inhabitants in the late 1990s. Moreover, large national differences were seen in the relationship between total and partial hip replacement procedures.”
I didn’t register to get the full text of the report; maybe someone else can.
GOP, why do you hate my dad? He may be 90 but he always votes for your candidates.
He won’t need a heart valve replacement for at least another 10 years, the way he’s going. We are a long-lived family, and I certainly hope this idea of denying replacement surgery for 78 year olds doesn’t catch on. 78? We’re just leaving middle age.
I know I’m not as with-it as I used to be, but do I really have to consider subjecting myself to hip revision procedures?
Also presnt in VDH’s piece – that magical conceit of conservatives. Things were always better in the past. Is modern medicine but a mere shadow of 18th century leech and mercury salt treatments? Are the fantastic discoveries extending heart problem sufferers lives by a decade just coming out of nowhere? Yup. In VDH’s world, discoveries made now do not serve as a basis for future medical research – the only benefit is that some geezers get to geeze for another coupla years.
You’d think that a highly educated person like VDH, especially one who has studied hisory, would have an inkling of how science works. About increasing the volume of mankind’s knowledge. What if we’re only a handful of discoveries from having the basis to cure wingnuttism or Cheetos addiction?
I dunno, my grandma’s replacement hip is the only part of her that’s consistently remembered my name for several years now.
You’d think that a highly educated person like VDH, especially one who has studied hisory, would have an inkling of how science works.
Especially since he’s using that microphone right in in front of him instead of slashing at it with a sword.
We’ve got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.
Yeah, “YOU OLD PEOPLE GET OFF OUR PLANET!!
Spanische Banken
von Raivo Pommer-raimo1@hot.ee
Die Erste Bank hat überraschend einen neuen Großaktionär aus Spanien bekommen. Die größte spanische Sparkasse, Criteria CaixaCorp, teilte am Montag bei einer Pressekonferenz in Barcelona mit, dass sie über die Börse 4,9 Prozent der Erste-Aktien erworben hat. Die Zukäufe seien schon im Vorjahr erfolgt, sagte Criteria-Chef Ricardo Forensa. Den Kaufpreis bezifferte der Banker mit 628 Mio. Euro.
Die Spanier dürften damit durchschnittlich zwischen 35 und 40 Euro pro Aktie hingelegt haben. Inzwischen ist der Kurs der Erste Bank an der Börse eingebrochen. Am Montagnachmittag kostete das Papier 7,46 Euro
Okay, I admit I spent the Bush years in a state of apathetic despair, until about a month before the last election, so I really didn’t have a clue as to what was going on, but…what the hell happened to Hanson?
The last book of his I read had an afterword where he and his co-author expressed bemusement about the embrace of their cause (the revitalization of classical education) by certain people on the right, and said that neither one of them had actually committed any such atrocity as…you know…voting Republican, ever! How does somebody go from that to vicious right-wing shill in such a short time?
(This book seems to have disappeared from both the Seattle and the King County Library Systems’ catalogs. I wonder if there’s any significance to that?)
Not quite understanding what the German spam about a Spanish bank is doing on an English-speakin’ website.
Also not really understanding why anyone would be going long in financials or banking stocks right now, either.
Apologies if someone already posted this:
Ice Flow Song
His rant about those shiftless minority kids is choice stuff, too.
Kind of an odd POV from someone representing on behalf of “Teh Partay Of Life” if you ask me.
This is probably just a prequel to his upcoming “SOYLENT GREEN, OM NOM NOM NOM” column scheduled for May.
I went to a ghetto school. The school was new, high tech, had a beautiful gymnasium with small wood slat flooring, large airy classrooms, bathrooms with one inch ceramic tiles, new baseball and football fields, tennis courts, and science labs. The school was state of the art for its time. There were 2500 students; ten of them were white, four girls and six boys. On the first day one of the white girls was raped during the five minute break between classes. The following day there were six white boys. Each of us was beaten and/or robbed almost daily before or after school. There were also fights between and during class.
Racism was in abundant supply among the six boys and among most,, but not all, of the black students. A few of the black girls talked about sex to me, because they were amused by my turning red with embarrassment. I tried to date one of the girls, but she said her family would not accept it and I would not make it in or out of her neighborhood alive.
Outwardly, the school stood as a shining example of Northern white America’s attempt to put racism behind them except for the following details: one teacher was gay and the schools system used to rid itself of gay teachers was to send them to ghetto schools to teach, another teacher was a hard drinking slut who wore short skirts and sat on her desk facing the class as she crossed and uncrossed her legs repeatedly, a nerdy nice guy geography teacher had to be the most boring human alive, because only the dead could have bored students more, an English teacher sent a letter home with us in which she asked parents for permission to beat our asses if we were out of line. All of the parents signed the letter for the students to return to the teacher and she stored the letters in a folder in her desk. She was one of the good teachers. My hand writing is her hand writing. There was a hard ass red-headed Algebra teacher who taught us well, and a chemistry teacher who loved to teach, usually experiments that involved blowing things up, and a gym teacher ex-Marine who could do one-hundred one armed push-ups in the time it took the boys in the class to struggle with twenty-five. He saved my life not once, but three times.
The daily robberies/beating ended one day when the toughest black kid in school, (one of the few black males I have known who wore cowboy boots where he stashed a kitchen carving knife the length of his boot.)
He was the only student who had been in prison for assault with a deadly weapon. Knife? I didn’t ask. He was taller than anyone else who went to that school, and he was the oldest student.
He stopped me one day between classes. He told me that he was sick of seeing me get my ass kicked everyday. He told me that for the next couple of days we would act as if we were friends, hang out together at lunch time, walk together between classes, and hang out at each other’s lockers. He would meet me before school and after school so that the robbery/beatings would end.
As we walked together between classes I asked him why our hanging out together would change my life. He stopped on the middle of three stairs where the floor changed levels, as students walked past us in both directions. He reached into his boot and pulled out the long knife and twisted it in the air which allowed the students who passed to see it. He said, “‘Cause I’ll stick ’em.” He slid the knife down inside his boot and we walked on. Except for a couple of fights with psychopathic boys who had been beaten regularly by their fathers and a gang attack on the baseball field the daily violence ended.
The experiences at that school taught me that there are only two types of people on this planet, decent people and assholes. It is a little more difficult to determine which they are, and appearances do not reveal the difference.
And the polar bear tapped purpleOnion on the shoulder and said, “You don’t really come here for the hunting, do you?”
Weird slightly-OT technical question:
I refuse to even register a click-through or hit on pages like National Revew and Instaputz^H^Hndit. (I happily read the actual Instaputz.com — don’t get me wrong.) But I wouldn’t mind reading the articles referenced in these threads — as long as I don’t have to hit the actual websites of the NR and Putz varieties there driving up their “ratings” even a fraction.
The question: If you fetch a Google-cached version of the pages in question, does that in any way register as a hit on the original site?
Many thanks.
It often draws graphics or style info from the original, unless you hit the text-only version.
This is a handy thingamajig for that purpose and for research:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/977
How about Interclue? Do you know if that registers as a hit and/or passes along your info to the site? I’m assuming it does because they don’t say otherwise. Either way it’s great.
I’ve never used it, but it’s hard to see how it isn’t hitting sites directly if it’s pre-loading them enough for a snapshot of the page. People who are concerned about the loads on their servers hate things that pre-load everything, so stuff like Interclue might not be the nicest thing to unleash on the net.
Some sites also measure traffic from sources in various ways and block you if they think you’ve sucked up enough resources for a day. My favourite dictionary blocked me when I tried out Fasterfox for a while and you can see some pissed off people complaining about their server loads in the reviews.
using embryonic stem cells is evil but leaving sick old people untreated is A-OK.
Maybe someone should let his parents know their son isn’t there for them.
For what it’s worth, Interclue only fetches content from a link once the user has hovered over the link for a certain amount of time. It doesn’t grab every link on the page, and there is no “preload every link on the page” option for users to turn on in a foolish quest for more speed. It also doesn’t download any flash, css or javascript, although it may grab some images. We should probably create a Webmaster FAQ that explains this, as it’s a valid concern.
Seth, thanks for the info. I’m assuming Righteous Bubba is correct in thinking that a site will receive a user’s IP info when a link is hovered over using Interclue but can you verify?
I think “fetches content from a link” covers that. But thanks to Seth also.
Whoops, misunderstood. I don’t think it’s covered.
Hey! you don’t send crazy ass Hansonius down here to die! Fucking A!
Squawk
I believe he also has a vanity vineyard.
Yes, and when the probably-not-white-or-educated-in-the-classics laborers who do the actual hard work in VDH’s vanity-vineyard keel over exhausted at an age when NRO wingnut-welfare queens are just becoming ‘seasoned’, VDH deeply, deeply resents President Obama’s assertion that maybe these people deserve something better than being allowed to die where they fell. (Nah, I overreact, probably VDH would throw a couple of “his” younger workers gas money to dump their no-longer-useful fellows at the nearest community ER, or even give the wheezing wrinklies bus fare back to somewhere they’re not gonna suck up VDH’s tax dollars dying slow, painful death from agricultural chemical overexposure.) VDH is feeling especially pissy about this topic because his NRO mates only have one or two paid-under-the-table housekeepers or nannies to hassle them, so they can’t appreciate the Plight of the Small Businessman like VDH.
Lesley said: “Maybe someone should let his (VDH) parents know their son isn’t there for them.”
Too late. Miss Thing surprised her parents with a trip to Hawaii in 2002 and the last site they saw was the rim of a volcano…
From Hanson’s post:
“….We confidently expect all sorts of restorative dentistry and tooth implants to such a degree that the old common sight of a normal American middle-class fellow with a couple of missing teeth or even a shiny, crass glistening gold incisor is now the exception….”
Because only the wealthy should have nice-looking teeth?
The semi-rural/suburban middle class that I grew up with were not missing a couple of teeth nor did they have a “crass” gold incisor. And that word “crass” disturbs me since he is talking about the middle class. The only people I knew with either of those things were pretty far below middle class. I’ll be 59 on Monday and I am a native of Los Angeles county. He is an idiot.
really opie_jeanne, where did he grow up? I don’t recall (born in the mid-fifties) ever seeing any teen or adult middle class person with missing teeth.
I do see welfare recipients with missing teeth today because the cheapo government that pressures these same people to go out and get a job won’t fund tooth care for them anymore. (Few employers are keen to hire or interview people who have missing or rotten teeth, but try and tell the gov’t that appearance matters.)
He’s from Fowler CA, a blink-and-you-miss-it flyspot on state route 99, just south of Fresno. That tells me sooo much. The people missing some teeth were not middle class, but in that town he thought that was middle class.
Look what I found on Wikipedia. If he had lived in LA his family would have been considered upper-middle class. Maybe upper-upper. In a place like Selma they were the upper class. Selma and Fowler are only about a mile apart.
Hanson, who is of Swedish ancestry, grew up on a family farm at Selma, in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His mother was a lawyer and judge, his father an educator and college administrator. Along with his older brother Nils and fraternal twin Alfred, he attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. At Roosevelt Junior High, he and Alfred were in a band, “Mustard Outhouse”. Hanson received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1975[citation needed] and his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University in 1980.
California is a blue state, but east of I-5 it’s nearly all red and west of I-5 it’s almost all blue, where the majority of the population lives. You drive through some of that territory to the east and you see signs posted that let you know just how red the area is; Nutjob Red should be a paint color.
Jesus Christ, this is sickening.
More proof that “conservative” translates into “fuck you, got mine” in Latin.
Address this, liberals: faaaaaaaaaaaaaaart
Ferchrissakes, people (and I’m looking at you N.C.) please don’t feed the trolls.
I’ m still waiting for Troofie to post his study showing how blacks are a gazillion times more likely to commit crimes against white people than whites against blacks, but that remembers to factor out Hispanics from the category “white”.
You know this guy VDH wrote a good book once. Not a great one, just a good one (“The Western Way of War”) where he identified features of ancient Mediterranean economics and culture that explained why the Greeks fought battles the way they did.
It was pretty good and an interesting read, but he’s gone downhill ever since.
He first suggested that the West is congenitally more warlike (hmmm) and brutal (ok) than other cultures but then went a bit too far and said they were more likely to succeed simply because they are more – and scarifyling – brutal. (This is otherwise known as the “Kissinger Madman Theory of War” or in it’s modern form “Chenyism”)
He followed up with “The Soul of Battle” which is also an interesting read but develops a boring theme after a while. It’s like a Wagner opera but instead of being rousing is just stupifyingly tedious.
There is a rhythmn this second, later, more mature work, where he starts out calm and thoughtful and over a pretty strict 5 page tempo builds up into a self-rightous rant that rises in intensity and is sustained by ever increasing appeals to moral authority until it cannot be sustained further and – unable to reach climax – drops back, exhausted, flacid and bleating about minor historical details of the relationship between the warring parties before finally pleading “get me hard honey and I’ll f**k you like you’ve never been f**ked before”
Not his best effort. His early sophomoric work showed great promise that has been unfulfilled since.
His early sophomoric work showed great promise that has been unfulfilled since.
JM: My favorite classics scholar says that VDH’s decline since “The Western Way of War” proves that thesis boards are far more rigorous than wingnut welfare publishers. And, further, that VDH’s career arc proves that the scholarly rigor expected of thesis panels is a good thing.