Sarah Hoyt had a post up yesterday that started off like this…
Yesterday I took a shashay down to Otherwhere Gazette, where someone in the comments of the posts was asking what the difference was between us and the SJWs, except they had a college degree and we didn’t.
Go read the whole thing HERE and bring your BP meds (or the duct tape of your choice)!
I’m not going to rehash what Sarah said, as she’s much more erudite than I, but I do want to add my perspective, FWIW…
We all know that Larry Correia has been branded the International Lord of Hate for his fisking of the SJWs and the whole Hugo nomination and voting scheme, along with Brad Torgerson.
So anyway, about the edumacation thingie…
A few of the authors I know that are on the ‘right’ side of the equation (take that any way you want), are in fact degree holding individuals. But the thing that I think really separates us from the SJWs is real world experience and skills. Brad Torgerson, Mike Kupari, Tom Kratman, Tom Rogneby and John Ringo all US Army veterans; Peter Grant South African Army veteran, Marko Kloos West German Army veteran. Michael Z Williamson and JD Kinman USAF veterans; I’m a US Navy veteran. Kelly Grayson is a paramedic and nationally certified ALS instructor. Larry Correia didn’t serve as far as I know, but did work as an accountant and ran a business for a number of years. Most of the ladies, like Sarah, LB Johnson, and others I read have at least one degree too…
But to me the real separator is real world experience. Making payroll, serving your country in various parts of the world, teaching, flying, WORKING FOR A PAYCHECK, and a myriad of experiences that most SJWs never do. They seldom leave their ‘hallowed ivory towers’ to actually DO anything, preferring instead to continue their ‘education’, ensconced in a safe and comfortable environment of like individuals as they catalog the ‘damage’ people like us who are out there working do to the world everyday.
There is also, IMHO, a significant difference in the old farts of my generation and the younger, in that educated or not, they are not able to fix the simplest things… A leaking faucet, a light switch, change a tire, change the oil…
They have always had one of those ‘service people’ to do it for them, and I’m betting 90% of the follow on generations don’t even have a basic set of tools either in the car or in the house.
The other ‘push’ is ‘qualifications’, e.g. having a sprinkling of letters after your name saying you are certified in something. At dinner Friday night with Turin, his FIL, Stretch and I, the conversation turned to that. Turin, in a previous position, was tasked with putting together training programs for the military and one of the ‘requirements’ was an instructor classification code, and a Master Training Specialist (MTS) designator, plus X years of experience. It got a laugh out of me since I would not have qualified for the position even with a BS degree in Adult Education/curriculum development, 14 years military instructor experience, and a 9502 NEC; because I wasn’t an MTS… Because they DIDN’T HAVE that designation when I retired…
Education means many things to many people, my parents never finished high school, actually neither one made it to the 7th grade. They grew up in the Depression and had to work. They were both self taught and lifelong readers, who kept up on not only local but national and world events. My dad traveled the world drilling oil wells until he married my mother and settled down in the pipeline side of the oil business, and he was a district manager when he died. Not bad for a ‘uneducated’ Southerner… My mother, along with running rental houses, also managed a school kitchen for a number of years.
I look at the work I do now, turning PHDs ‘dreams’ into reality… That reality is by and large accomplished by folks without a ‘degree’, but who can get the job done, navigate, design a plan that works and they execute it. The have a PHD in real world…
I think the last difference is we take responsibility for what we do. We don’t try to foist blame off on others, we admit our mistakes (mistakes are experiences one lives through), and get on with life. We accept the cards we are dealt, and play the hand out win, lose or draw.
If you’re still here, thanks for reading and I’d be interested in your thoughts.
