You Know the Frankfurt School, Here's the Frankfort School!

For April Fool's yesterday I did a thing at the Tropics of Meta inspired by their illustrious editor Alex Sayf Cummings' joke that reactionaries should start something called the Frankfort School since they are always on about the evils of the Frankfurt School. I think it's pretty hilarious, please check it out.

Warning Signs That Your Elders Are Watching Fox News

Be on the lookout for pushers like this!

[Editor's note: I am giving over my blog today to Dr. WH Bear, an expert on the scourge afflicting our citizens in their golden years. Be vigilant, and don't forget to report seniors with dilated eyeballs.]

As we all know, the so-called "golden years" bring all kinds of emotional adjustments. Elders may start acting out for the first time, they may change so much that you barely recognize them anymore. I know that this can give many young people anxiety, and they never want to believe that the elders in their lives, perhaps even their parents, are using and addicted to Fox News.

Now you may want to dismiss this, and see it as just a phase they'll outgrow. After all, you'll say, "don't all old people need to have some time to experiment?" Or you might say, "I dabbled a little in Fox News, and it didn't hurt me!" You may say that now, but soon enough your sweet aunt will be talking your ear off about "chain migration" and will be ruining family events by going on about president Obama's birth certificate. You might think that your neighbors are harmless when you hear Sean Hannity's voice coming out of their windows, but soon they will be putting "Blue Lives Matter" signs on their lawn. You also might not be aware that the current strains of Fox News are five times more powerful and addictive than they were twenty years ago.

While some elders loudly proclaim their Fox News addiction, others may try to mask it. Here are some warning signs to look out for:

They use strange new lingo, like "Benghazi" and "Solandra"
One notable effect of Fox News addiction is that its victims become passionate about obscure issues embedded in larger contexts they don't understand. For example, most of them do not know that Benghazi is a city in Libya, or can even locate Libya on a map. However, they will use it in conversation as much as possible.

They have a sudden interest in buying gold
Fox News conditions its viewer to lose their sense of reason and to accept whatever claims, no matter how outrageous, are made on that channel. Many unscrupulous types know this, and like to peddle all kinds of rip-offs to Fox News viewers whose minds have been weakened. Those promoting the buying and selling of gold seem to be especially active, so beware.

They lack of awareness of major news events
If people watch news all day, you would expect them to be very well-informed by what they are watching. However, a Fox News addict will be strikingly ignorant of major news events, especially those that present the president in an unflattering light. If they talk at length about "Operation Fast and Furious" or "Solandra" but don't know about the latest Trump scandal, they are likely Fox News addicts.

They are scared of Antifa, the New Black Panther Party, and the "knockout game"
Now it is normal for elders to have heightened fear and anxiety about the changing world in their old age. However, Fox News addicts seem to show peculiar fixations on very minor and insignificant left-wing organization or moral panics with a subtext of violence committed by young people of color. Addiction to Fox News has been known to trigger increased levels of paranoia.

Once you know that your elders are addicted to Fox News, it can be very hard to know what to do. This is not the kind of thing any child imagines that they will have to deal with. Remember, the parental controls on your television are for your use, and your elders will likely not be capable of changing them back. They may protest, but some "tough love" is needed to save their minds and souls from the hell of addiction.

A Modest Proposal

(Editor's Note: tongue is planted firmly in cheek here.)

It has come to my attention that Congress has passed a bill drastically altering Medicare for those people 55 and under, who will not enjoy the generous benefits that their payroll taxes will continue to pay out to current retirees for years to come.  Even a strict fiscal conservative like myself can understand why Gen Xers and Millenials might feel as if they are getting a raw deal.  At the same time, however, we need to cut costs and end our nation's wasteful entitlement culture.

I have a modest proposal to do both, and to drastically reduce the 47% of "takers" in American society.  We can do this without raising the retirement age or providing new jobs.  For too long we have been beholden to the same old politics as usual, and solutions left over from bygone times.  We should break with the past with a bold, innovative, and disruptive plan.

For too long we have extended life expectancy without asking whether such a task is actually worthwhile.  People live to longer and longer ages, costing the government more and more money.  I am not sure that people are doing all that much in their twilight years, so we are massively subsidizing tired old people to sit around alone and feel miserably alone.  That does not sound like an efficient use of resources, does it?  All that tax money going for medical treatments to octogenerians could be added into the economy if our Job Creators could afford to buy more yachts and mansions!

So I propose this: at age 65 all Americans will henceforth be offered a deal.  If they so wish, they may terminate their life, and in return their families would receive a lump sum payment of $65,000, tax free.  With that money children and grandchildren could go to college, spouses would be able to keep their homes, and most importantly, the government could save a whole lot of money.  The Social Security trust fund would be stocked and Medicare costs would plummet!  Assisted terminations would take place at facilities managed by private contractors, so this plan adds no new jobs to the federal payroll.  In fact, by lowering the number of people in the two biggest programs, it would actually decrease the number of bureaucrats!

You might think that few would take the government up on their offer, but you underestimate how few people have any real money to live on in retirement.  With pensions being scrapped and wages stagnant, more Americans than ever will be facing a grim end to their lives.  Instead of making them suffer through those years, why not let them die, and do something to make their families happy and secure in the bargain?  "But this is morally repugnant!" you might say.  I ask you, is it not more morally wrong that we must mortgage our future because our elders refuse to spend our nation's tax money more efficiently?  Is it not a moral outrage that 47% of our country are "takers"?  What kind of moral example does that leave to future generations?

I ask you, why are we letting disruptive practices bring glorious progress to the rest of American society, but leaving death off limits?  Valuing life is such a 20th century way of thinking, it's time to think outside of the box in innovative, data-driven ways about the new normal we live in and how to best adjust to it.  It's also a lot more cost effective than the fanciful notion that every citizen deserves to live into old age.

A Modest Proposal for Putting the Excess of PhDs to Good Use

Although some still try to deny it, you know as well as I that dire economic conditions and the corporatization of the university have led to a large number of PhDs going without employment.  You also know that universities are under pressure from the highest levels to cut costs and increase efficiency. Yet we should not fret, we can turn this situation to our advantage, and even use it to solve other problems bedeviling our profession at this time.

In order to give these poor overeducated souls some security and a job, I propose that we establish a system of indentured servitude for those PhDs unworthy of the lofty tenured heights that we occupy. Many might protest that this is a barbaric and unequal institution. Fair enough, but the current system has only lead to job insecurity and a dangerous potential for revolutionary agitation, wouldn't it be better to accept reality and deploy an unequal system that will result in bountiful new opportunities?  In any case, if we are to reduce costs as political leaders demand, we dare not take funds from the many hard-working administrators whose salaries reflect their worth on the open market, or the building projects we need to advance our enrollments.  How shall we ever do so without big time athletics, luxury dorms, and rock climbing walls ensconced in new student recreation centers?  Temporary faculty come a dime a dozen, yet we still offer them as much as three thousand dollars a class, which is hardly a bargain when they could work for nothing.

Make no mistake, the indentured PhD solution would certainly be mutually beneficial. As you well know, each year in departments around the country we scramble for warm bodies to fill out the course schedule, which often means press ganging graduate students or the burdensome and expensive process of hiring adjunct and "visiting" professors. Often we don't even know who will be teaching certain courses semester to semester. With my new proposal our indentured associates (I think "associates" sounds more attractive than "servants," don't you?) would always be at the ready to teach whatever course we ask them to. For example the biggest survey courses are in the field of history are American History and Western Civilization, and since most of the jobless are in the fields of US and European History, it should be easy to plug them in. Furthermore, we on the tenured side would no longer have to deal with the maddening business of educating freshman students and can thus focus our energies on pursuits more important than the shaping of young minds, such as writing monographs for a specialist audience.

Moreover, a system of indentured associates would help allay the fears of our pesky critics in the political arena. Politicians complain about the rising cost of tuition, but this system will save plenty of money in the long run and save us from having to spend any of our precious endowment money on such piddling trifles like undergraduate education.  This will free up even more cash for much needed rock climbing walls and flat screen televisions in the lobbies of the library and rec center.  Without these amenities, how can we be expected to draw in the next cohort of students?

Furthermore, amazingly innovative and wonderful resource of MOOCs will provide our associates with plenty of opportunities to grade online quizzes while our students learn from the best professors on their computer screens.  We all know that the key to great education is to deliver over computers, since we know the little bastards can't seem to take their eyes off of their smart phones.  Of course, we will still need peons to do the basic physical work that the machines cannot do for themselves (yet).  Indentured associates can easily be trained in the basics of the software, and plugged in and pulled out whenever necessary.

This system will also ensure a great level of flexibility, something our friends in the corporate world usually benefit from but we, with our arcane rules dating from the Middle Ages, do not. For instance, many of our colleagues without graduate students lack people they can browbeat or pressure into housesitting or providing child care for them at below market rates? Others actually have to stoop to the indignity of taking their own books back to the library and proctoring and writing their own exams! Contracts of indenture could include clauses that would make this kind of labor part of the overall servitude agreement (although the rather ugly word "servitude" is to be avoided.) We all know how hard it is to get good help these days.

What if the indentured associates revolt or refuse to participate, you say?  We will just remind them that being a scholar is what they love, and they dare not cheat themselves out of following their bliss.  Our potential recruits would be horrified at the prospect of punching the clock at a 9 to 5 like the rest of the schmucks out there. This tactic of reminding adjuncts of their good fortune to work for a university seems to have worked in getting a veritable army of adjunct cannon fodder to teach classes for under $2,000, which might as well be nothing.

Lastly, this system would reduce a lot of the social awkwardness in many departments stemming from a desire by non-tenured labor to be treated as social equals. The ambiguity of their current positions often confuses them into thinking that most of their tenured colleagues actually care about them as human beings, rather than seeing them as space fillers on the course schedule. Believe it or not, some of them even have the cheek to presume they could get hired on permanently! To make things easier on them, the position of "indentured associate" will clarify their position in the hierarchy and certainly reduce hurt feelings and misunderstandings.

Editor's Note:  I wrote a version of this in a different form back in early 2008, and find it to be even more relevant today in light of the worsening market, the treatment I've seen of adjuncts, and the political attacks on university faculty.  Of course, this post's proposal is entirely Swiftian in nature.