Posts Tagged → spoiled
I wouldn’t hire a Harvard grad to tie my shoes
Like a bazillion other Americans, I run a small business. Mine is in the land and natural resource management sector. Every week I interface with men and machines, dirt, danger, hard work, and serious situations. Little margin for error, feewings, or personal tantrums.
And when I watched the whole Harvard University debacle unfold over last week, culminating on Friday in students, administrators, and faculty alike all rallying around the racist failure university president, Claudine Gay, I realized something profound: I would rather hire a young, hard-working rural person born to a serious work ethic and with a willingness to take reasonable risks to achieve the work goal, who maybe got tenth grade under his belt before going to work for a living, than to try to train a Harvard University mis-educated fragile weenie with no work ethic, an unreasonable expectation of life, and an obsession with unrealistic nonsense.
Said another way: For many years my experience has been that the attorneys I have worked with, whose law degrees were from “East Succotash University,” as opposed to, say, Harvard Law School, were the very best lawyers I have worked with. To a man and a woman, these so-called “no-name” law school grads are gritty, tough, take no prisoners, hard working fighters who zealously represent the interests of their clients. They always get me results. On the other hand, if I had a dollar for every big name lawyer who only wrote letters to my defendants, and who was afraid to actually file a legal complaint and follow it up with court room litigation, I would be a wealthy man.
Perhaps this comes down to rural character versus urban, because graduates from the small schools, the community colleges, the trade schools, almost all come from rural working backgrounds. These are kids who don’t come from money, don’t really know what having money is like, but they do have a strong work ethic and pride in accomplishment. Because in the communities they grew up in, tangible results are the name of the game. Their families got by with a roof over their heads and food on the table because they daily delivered actual hands-on results that America is willing to pay for, and got paid, as opposed to the spoiled, whiny, entitled urban kids populating Harvard University and the other purportedly high quality Ivy League schools. These kids come from the world of manicured lawns, expensive clothes, and fancy cars from young ages whose parents engage in vague numbers work and white collar make-work paper-pushing administrative exercises whose value-added to America is, well….vague.
Forget the poor technical training, the mis-education and Stalinist/ Maoist/ fascist indoctrination that Harvard University inflicts on its students, just on family and cultural background alone, I would be very unlikely to hire a kid from Harvard University, in the off-chance that such an opportunity presented itself. Unless it’s in the hard/ physical sciences, computer science, or math, a person with a Harvard University degree today would not interest me either as a conversationalist, a lunch partner, a book club member, or an employee/ contractor.
I don’t think Harvard University produces high quality graduates any longer. Probably not for the past ten or fifteen years, and maybe even longer. I think the opposite is true, that this school produces societal and workplace misfits who can’t think their way out of a wet paper bag. They have had little to no critical thinking and analytical skills training. If you are foolish enough to hire a recent Harvard University graduate these days, you are going to learn quickly just how failed that school is and how useless these human beings are who are graduating from it.
Yes, all my life I have known Harvard grads, as well as other Ivy League grads, and today’s Ivy League grads are not that old caliber, not anywhere close. The old reputation has been lost because of people like Claudine Gay, who have traded it for short term power over foolish young people.
Most Harvard University graduates today are not fit to tie your shoe. Not for money or for free.
Long live the Queen
England’s Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday, aged 96 and wise beyond her years. A monarch beloved by so many of The People in an age of individualism, as she was, must be special. What is intriguing is that it is not so much what Queen Elizabeth said, but both how she said what she said, and even more important, what she left unsaid. Her mere dignified if mute presence was all that was required to ensure that some event stood proudly and solidly. That is true power.
Queen Elizabeth stood as a symbol of times gone by and hopefully not completely gone through our fingers. The past times of which we speak here included dignity, respect for others, following the law, placing others above one’s self, making sacrifices in the present for future gains, fealty to a higher order and set of rules than what I myself wants right now, and so on.
You could call Queen Elizabeth the last living representative of Tradition. Not just English tradition, but Western Civilization’s traditions. As much as someone such as I might oppose monarchy on its face (more on this below), I have also come to appreciate and value the role of that tradition. Especially in light of the violent anarchic abyss swallowing up America and Europe as you read these words. Monarchy in general, and Queen Elizabeth in particular, today stand for tradition’s consistency if nothing else. And it is consistency Western Civilization needs so desperately now.
Into the breach steps Charles, Prince of Wales, and soon to be coronated King Charles or perhaps some other historic name. Perhaps he will become a King George, a name which has both greatly positive and also very negative histories. Either way, a change of name will do Charles good, especially if it changes him. It is hard to imagine a person less befitting the role of king than this Charles, because he is a spoiled playboy whose private life often reflected the 1970s’ wilder freedoms and lack of seriousness. That Charles pretends at climate change environmentalism makes him even worse, because his carbon footprint must be the size of…well, a large island I have seen somewhere. Yet he speaks down to us about our own consumptions. Yuck. Nothing undermines authority more than spoiled, contemptible authoritarians like Charles.
If there is one redeemable aspect of Charles it was his prior focus on conserving England’s spectacular countryside landscape. In that he did everything correctly, from outright preservation to careful low-impact development that reflected the ancient dovetail fit of English citizen into life sustaining shire, thatched roofs and all. Oh how I wish that this land conservation ethic had been Charles’ sole love and hallmark. This one cause alone is sufficient to mark a king with greatness and to make him a true leader of his people. England’s spectacular landscape shaped its people, and to preserve that landscape is to preserve its values and culture.
Sadly, Charles is as unstable as water, and stands at the opposite end of the character and intelligence spectrum as his now deceased mother. His endless tabloid blathering on about every ridiculous little leftist cause reveals a weakness of wit and backbone that augurs poorly. One does not know where Queen Elizabeth’s death and Charles’ ascension will take England and Western Civilization, but it is probably going to accelerate the current decline. We all can work hard to advance the cause of freedom, hope, pray, and even don Druid’s robes if it will move Charles in the correct direction as a leader. Success will probably require all of these efforts.
Half of my own family is Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, with very famous ancestors who in the 1770s bravely and successfully confronted an ascendant Britain to win freedom of choice for many from a tyrannical British monarch bent on subjugating everyone through coercive force of arms. I was raised to deride monarchy and aristocracy. And yet here I am, saying Long Live the Queen.
She was not just England’s queen, she was our queen, as well.
Queen Elizabeth, our shared civilization needs you more now than ever. May you intervene for the better from above.
Everything about this photo says “Leader.” Her steady, unflinching eye and solid, familiar hand shooting a firearm. The loving and approving gaze of the officer. How many American “leaders” today are there with her qualities? Hmmm?
One call I won’t take
Phony, fraudulent telemarketer calls are super annoying, and like you, I am fed up with them.
Another phony call just arrived, called “Call of the Wild,” a new movie loosely based on a Jack London book by the same name.
Jack London’s stories of tenuous life in the Yukon and Alaskan interiors are the stuff of pre-internet American boyhood. Just like coonskin Davey Crockett hats were all the rage among American boys in the 1950s and 1960s after Fess Parker starred in the same-named TV show, so too did London inspire many young men to get their forestry degree, build a canoe, cut down their grandmother’s favorite apple tree with a hatchet, or move to Alaska. His stories of nail-biting survival and creeping or sudden death in the boreal forests and frigid back country rang true, and a number of movies have been made about them. Some better than others, but all of them pretty good just because the story line is great.
London’s story about a young man caught at sundown in the winter time Alaskan bush, unprepared for the minus-forty-degree night, who gets down to his last match and finally succeeds at lighting a life-saving fire, only to have the snow from the branches above fall and smother the fire, is classic.
This latest iteration involves an unrealistic CGI human-like dog that giddy un-wilderness urbanites will fawn over. It also includes Harrison Ford, a man blessed with poor acting skills who nonetheless has landed a huge list of Hollywood roles and who made a huge pile of money. Play acting and playing dress-up; not exactly brain surgeon level or even bank teller level stuff.
And to be fair, Ford’s best movie roles are those that fit his kind of simple, bland, taciturn persona, like the Jack Ryan character, or Indiana Jones, or the emotion-less Blade Runner cyborg cop. Or those roles that are actually enhanced by his lack of acting skills, like Star Wars‘ Han Solo. Whenever Harrison Ford is tasked with actually acting, his lack of nuance or depth shines through bright and shiny. One suspects that this Call of the Wild will be one such role and performance. Or maybe not, because the 2020 movie poster for it shows Ford looking all serious and taciturn.
Now, because I am a wilderness hunter, fisherman, and trapper, any new movie like Call of the Wild immediately gets my attention. Bad acting or no, evil corrupt anti-America Hollywood or no, CGI human dogs or no, it is a movie I would naturally be inclined to go see. It is about nature and outdoor adventure, my favorite things. However, Harrison Ford finally performed honestly the other day and thereby blew up any chance of me seeing his film, and probably many other people feel the same way.
Last week, Ford appeared on not-funny Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, and blasted Preident Trump, calling him “a son-of-a-bitch.”
Out of nowhere, and for no particular reason. Other than pandering to Hollywood.
What a shame, because at one time Ford was a spokesman for Conservation International, a worthy environment protection organization. His other opinions about so-called climate change and carbon reduction are the usual Hollywood hypocritical hilarity, because Ford is also the guy who flies his own plane on a 400-mile round trip to get a single hamburger to satisfy his craving for fast food. Talk about a carbon footprint, and yet his lecturing never ends.
Now, everyone is entitled to their opinions, and like Ford, I am entitled to mine, too. And my opinion is that I will not support with movie ticket purchases those celebrity Hollywood actors who insult me, my values, my lifestyle, or the people I vote for. So I will not be answering Harrison Ford’s Call of the Wild. Though I might play it on one of the many black market bootleg websites, just so I can take from Ford a tiny bit of what Ford took away from me: A good feeling.
Below is just one video of Harrison Ford actually whining about his wild success, as if it ruined him as some sort of serious artiste. Oh please. Ford is just another out of touch, spoiled rotten Hollywood jerk. Where is comedian Ricky Gervais when we need him most? Every Hollywood actor like Harrison Ford should have to spend a week with Gervais following him or her everywhere they go, commenting on their vapid lives and stupid statements.