https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/...ca.html?referer=https://t.co/v8CWd6Gx5c?amp=1
Op-Eds like this should never see the light of day. This is beyond stupid.
Or this one blaming smartphones for the reason why people bail:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/opinion/the-golden-age-of-bailing.html
This is not enlightened thinking. It is class warfare and complete selfishness. I am almost certain the second op-ed by David Brooks was penned because he constantly gets bailed on by his "friends." It's a joke that a major news outlet would not only publish such drivel in a Letters to the Editor page, but have a paid columnist spout such insanity.
Op-Eds like this should never see the light of day. This is beyond stupid.
Over the past generation, members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status. They have also become devastatingly good at making sure the children of other classes have limited chances to join their ranks.
How they’ve managed to do the first task — giving their own children a leg up — is pretty obvious. It’s the pediacracy, stupid. Over the past few decades, upper-middle-class Americans have embraced behavior codes that put cultivating successful children at the center of life. As soon as they get money, they turn it into investments in their kids.
Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.
American upper-middle-class culture (where the opportunities are) is now laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class. They play on the normal human fear of humiliation and exclusion. Their chief message is, “You are not welcome here.”
Or this one blaming smartphones for the reason why people bail:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/opinion/the-golden-age-of-bailing.html
It’s clear we’re living in a golden age of bailing. All across America people are deciding on Monday that it would be really fantastic to go grab a drink with X on Thursday. But then when Thursday actually rolls around they realize it would actually be more fantastic to go home, flop on the bed and watch Carpool Karaoke videos. So they send the bailing text or email: “So sorry! I’m gonna have to flake on drinks tonight. Overwhelmed. My grandmother just got bubonic plague.…”
Bailing is one of the defining acts of the current moment because it stands at the nexus of so many larger trends: the ambiguity of modern social relationships, the fraying of commitments, what my friend Hayley Darden calls the ethic of flexibility ushered in by smartphone apps — not to mention the decline of civilization, the collapse of morality and the ruination of all we hold dear.
This is not enlightened thinking. It is class warfare and complete selfishness. I am almost certain the second op-ed by David Brooks was penned because he constantly gets bailed on by his "friends." It's a joke that a major news outlet would not only publish such drivel in a Letters to the Editor page, but have a paid columnist spout such insanity.