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Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per... by cmurf on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @06:34PM (#10748248)
Me -> 0-18 Kansas. 18-35 Colorado. 35-42 NYC and Aspen. There are friendly people everywhere. There are assholes everywhere. The notion middle America has disdain for culture and intellectual achievement is two parts in conflict:

1. quite a few people in middle America are poorly educated because of their religion and politics, and the political system, permit them to elect ideological morons to school councils, and those fuckwits are ruining facts. There are so many line item "vetos" editorializing history and science books that school book publishers have thousands of derivatives of a particular book title and edition to cater to every county in the country. So it's a circular problem that the American education system is itself political.

2. Middle Americans used to be relatively wealthier than they are now, because we used to believe, as a country, that is was a bad idea for a handful of people to end up with all the marbles. And that wealth meant that at one time, Americans as a whole were some of the most well traveled people in the world. Now, something like 80% of Americans don't even have a passport.

And that means confusing the difference between "culture and achievement" with condescending assholes which you do in fact get on the coasts; just like there are ignorant assholes in middle America. If we were more well traveled, we'd know the difference, and we'd properly be condescending to the assholes, and we'd embrace more of the people who just want to get good things done, instead of being so adversarial all the time.

You know, if one wants to thoroughly embrace stereotypes and all.

Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per... by FussyZeus on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @08:42PM (#10748914)
> "Me -> 0-18 Kansas. 18-35 Colorado. 35-42 NYC and Aspen. There are friendly people everywhere. There are assholes everywhere. The notion middle America has disdain for culture and intellectual achievement is two parts in conflict:"

Please point out to me where I said that middle America has no culture and we're all friendly, and that the coasts are nothing but cultured snobs.

While you're doing that, look up the definition of "flyover states" and tell me what it says and why I probably brought it up.

Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per... by someguydave on Thursday December 17, 2015 @01:23AM (#10749933)
"So it's a circular problem that the American education system is itself political."

Out of curiosity, do you think it is possible that a government-monopolized school system could be anything other than political?