Will-o-the-Wisp

Mankind too often has a insidious way of pushing a program or an ideology … particularly in this day of the ever-increasing pace of technology and communications … be it social media, Internet publishing, congressional law-making, financial derivatives, climate change "science," etc. … and that is what I chose to call "convoluted complexity." By this I mean that the real truth of an issue lies below so many layers of required understandings that proponents can pull a fast one on the general public with misleading rhetoric which obscures their will-o-the-wisp hidden agendas.

This strategy has been exhibited with Jonathan Gruber’s slight of hand with Obamacare (see: Washington Post Article), the convoluted misreporting of the University of Virginia gang-rape allegations (see: Daily Caller Story ), Elizabeth Warren’s attack on Congress's continuing resolution to finance our government. She says that it is helping Wall Street banks (see: Powerline Blog) and so many other current dust-ups that set my head to spinning.

What to do? How does one uncover the actual truths in these contretemps? I have fallen back on a strategy to catch the snipe in many of these seemingly hopeless media mazes. And that is to discount anything said or written by someone who appears to be creating complexity for the sake of complexity. Once an issue requires me to get a graduate degree in a discipline in order to understand it, I discount these arguments and assume that I am being hoodwinked. (I also use this strategy with most arm-waving television ads these days … for example … "call 1-800-BAD-DRUG"). This device is not of my invention … William of Occam was one of the first to propose it … see: Science Explanation of Occam's Razor. 

It seems to work in most instances.

Goose for the Gander

When the terms "rape" or "sexual assault" appear in the press these days (the meme that apparently keeps the main-stream media's blood flowing ... witness Bill Cosby's spotlight), the gender that is top of mind is female. This makes a certain amount of cultural sense in that females are generally thought to be weaker and more vulnerable (Lena Dunham being a major exception). However, when I just read that there are more male rapes in the military than female ones (raw numbers, not percentages), I was a little taken aback ... see: Enews Strory. And this then got me to thinking.

With Rolling Stone magazine's apology for its poor reporting in the University of Virginia fraternity gang-rape story, our current obsessive media focus on male sexual predation on females has taken a step backward. However, the huge numbers of males being raped in prisons usually engenders only unsympathetic snickers. And, if a female teacher is revealed as taking sexual advantage of one of her male students, the reaction is generally far more subdued than if the genders are reversed. Why this lopsided set of standards? Have we not been inculcated for the last fifty years that the sexes are equal in all respects? Should not female sports teams be wearing blue shoes in sympathy for the plight of male sexual victims?

In truth, goosing a gander should be just as serious an offense as gandering a goose (or gandering a gander).

Firing Squad

I have previously written about the threat to the American fraternity system based upon the gang rape accusation at a University of Virginia fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, as published in Rolling Stone magazine. This resulted in the president of this university closing down all fraternities there until next Spring ... see: The Alpha of the Omega. Now we learn that this magazine's article, which never had checked with the fraternity in question, is beginning to unravel as many of its revelations are unable to be verified ... see: Enews Article.

This non-scandal is quite reminiscent of the Duke University lacrosse team scandal of a few years back which blew up in the faces of many of the professors and administration at this other "prestigious" southern university when lie after lie was exposed. We "broad-minded" liberal-educated erudites too often critique the Ferguson riots or the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as resulting from a mob mentality ... but somehow ignore this same mindless behavior in ourselves or in those in whom we have vested authority. Sometimes we form the firing squad well before even the trial is held.

It does seem that liberal pedagogues have a penchant to follow that age-old adage, "fire, ready, aim."

Afterward: See also John Hinderaker's article in The Powerline Blog.

The Alpha of the Omega

The University of Virginia (UVA) has just suspended fraternities (usually titled with Greek letters) until the beginning of the Spring semester ... see: Breitbart Article for details. (Ironically, UVA was the birthplace of many fraternities.) And, at a faculty meeting at Dartmouth College recently, the vote was 116 to 13 to abolish the Greek system at this Ivy League school ... see: Inside Higher Ed Story. Is this the beginning of the end of the fraternity and sorority systems around the United States?

Reading the tea leaves, one would have to guess that this is the case. Tradition after tradition has fallen at Dartmouth as a genuflection to political correctness. Once Seniors there smoked clay pipes one last time before they ventured into the "wide, wide world" and then broke them on the stump of the Lone Pine as a symbol of their leaving their callow college days behind them. Then some general in the PC police decided that these pipes were "Indian peace pipes" and had to go. So they went. Tradition after tradition has met the dust bin there in much the same way during the last few decades ... all driven by similar misguided motivations ... not to be replaced by any warm-hearted and meaningful surrogates.

What is left? Insipid self-inspection and hyphenated curricula that have created an Inquisition-like frenzy at many colleges which, in turn, now paves the way for remanding fraternities and sororities "to the secular arm." (In Medieval Spain this was an euphemism for being executed.) So we soon will likely have one more legacy of college life that is to be recycled into an empty memory.