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As someone who grew up in rural Wisconsin, I can tell you that there has always been a streak of anti-intellectualism, but the past few years it has transformed
by bduerst 8y ago
As someone who grew up in rural Wisconsin, I can tell you that there has always been a streak of anti-intellectualism, but the past few years it has transformed into something even worse.
The suspension of critical thinking that comes from ingesting information, sourced from anything tagged as "Republican", has left the Wisconsin people vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
I speak from experience and discussions with people I had last summer. For example, some didn't believe me when I told them that Foxconn had to put suicide nets around some of their factories. They believed Foxcon is this shining star of a company come to save them, because that was what they were told by Republican leaders.
- yesimahuman 8y agoI don't think this is a problem unique to Wisconsin
- abfan1127 8y agore:suicide nets. Their employee suicide rates are equivalent to China. Its just that they employee so many people, its cost effective to place the nets. If only the rest of China was as cost effective.
- deogeo 8y agore:re:suicide nets. The suicide rate in China is 8.0 per 100k people per year. In the US it's 13.7.
- Pharmakon 8y agoI trust the numbers coming out of the U.S., grim as they may be. China has a habit of massaging numbers in a way that would have made Soviet propagandists blush.
- Hupriene 8y agoI agree that the numbers in the US are unlikely to be changed post-collection, but there are still pressures that lead to the under reporting of suicide rates here as well. For example, accidental overdose can be very difficult to distinguish from suicide. If there is any question, coroners will often err on the side of ruling the death an accident to spare the survivors additional emotional hardship.
- Pharmakon 8y agoA good point, but it means you can make a high estimate by including a statistical model accounting for a percentage of accidental deaths (including overdose) that are likely suicides. As long as you have all of the data, and it’s reliable, the rest is easy. Misclassification is a much easier issue to deal with than outright fiction. The problem with China is you can’t tell what if any parts of the dataset are reliable so no methods can be employed short of espionage.
- analyst74 8y agoThis kind of selective thinking/reporting has definitely hurt credibility of the "intellectuals". Who has the time to figure out how you lied or wrongly implied certain things with your data?
- bduerst 8y agoRight, according to Foxconn. Employees and insiders have stated that there are suicides that have gone unreported.
- lallysingh 8y agoanti-intellectualism has been a strong part of American history from nearly the beginning. It only went away for a while when the entire country was being drafted for wars.
- jessaustin 8y agoIs that backwards? ISTM when we let the intellectuals run things, they come up with all sorts of plausible pretexts for wars... Right now the most anti-intellectual politician in several years is the one who happens to be bringing the troops home from Syria, Afghanistan, etc. I'm reminded of a great passage from ITBWTCL: But more importantly, it comes out of the fact that, during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well. [EDIT:] Of course, in the next paragraph Stephenson describes a different sort of intellectual devolution in USA.
- anigbrowl 8y agoThe most anti-intellectual politician in years has also repeatedly asked his aides to provide him with military options for dealing with Venezuela so I'm not impressed with the quality of your analysis here - especially coupled with your deliberate misreading of other people's posts.
- rootusrootus 8y agoI don't have to look back too far to see that the last anti-intellectual occupying the hot seat had no problem getting us involved in more wars. ISTM that is not a defining characteristic.
- jessaustin 8y agoYou're right Libya was a terrible idea. [EDIT:] You mean Iraq and Afghanistan, of course. Bush the Lesser was not so much anti-intellectual as he was easily suggestible. If a Wolfowitz or a Paulson or a Cheney had a horrible idea, he didn't have the resources to challenge that idea. Of course all the worst neocons have some sort of Ivy League credentials.
- state_less 8y agoWe were talking about this a year ago. And no doubt before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16164106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16164106 Foxconn is a bad business partner and that should have been more obvious to everyone. Self serving politicians like Walker and Trump are looking for a photo spray with golden shovels and a big American flag in the background to sell to people desperately looking for jobs. https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/headlines/fox_conjob.jpg?itok=ctMmIm_i https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_l... It is transparent and a damn shame for the politicians and voters involved. It's like a Nigerian email scam bilking your grandma out of her savings.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- waffle_ss 8y agoI also grew up in rural Wisconsin, but lived in Madison for several years as well, and I've seen the other side of that coin too. There's plenty of snobby progressives who live in their blue bubble, often working for the state gov't or university, and assume they know what's best for the hicks in the rest of the state. The /r/wisconsin subreddit is full of the type. The tribalism from both ends is definitely disheartening.
- bb88 8y agoThe fact that you label the two sides as "hicks" and "snobby progressives" only hurts your stance. I think we can agree that both sides don't typically listen to each other, and if we're all using language like that then we never will. Why should I debate you on medicare subsidies, e.g. if you've labeled me a "snobby progressive" and then have taken the victim role to boot?
- stuart78 8y agoI think the poster was using deliberately provocative words to call attention to the emotional angle of the debate, not making those judgements themselves.
- bb88 8y agoExcept that it was awfully one-sided and appeared to be labeling actual people directly (those in r/wisconsin)
- waffle_ss 8y agoIt was one-sided because I was replying to a comment calling rural Wisconsinites easily-misled Republican voting robots. It was an attempt to show balance in the other side's perspective.
- waffle_ss 8y agoThis is what I was going for and I didn't realize my original comment would be misconstrued so badly.
- dorchadas 8y ago> As someone who grew up in rural Wisconsin, I can tell you that there has always been a streak of anti-intellectualism, but the past few years it has transformed into something even worse. Not just Wisconsin. I grew up in a rural town in the South, and it was horrible. I'm back there teaching and it's even worse, if such a thing is possible. The only light I see is that a vast majority of the non-"yee yee" kids are fairly left-leaning, and nobody actually questioned me when I mentioned global warming yesterday. Shame is, those kids usually get the hell outta Dodge and never return.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]