This post from NRO’s Mona Charen is a good example of how the distance between the Buckley Conservatives and the Progressives has narrowed to the point where it is hard to see any light between them.
The headline was numbingly familiar: “For Blacks, College is Not An Equalizer.” The op-ed in the Washington Post by Ray Boshara explored what he called a “troubling paradox,” namely that so many well-educated black Americans “feel so economically insecure.” It’s a startling fact, Boshara continued, “that blacks with college degrees have lost wealth over the past generation.” White college graduates “saw their wealth soar by 86 percent” between 1992 and 2013, while black college graduates experienced a loss of 55 percent over the same period. I made a little bet with myself as I read the piece: “Two-to-one he doesn’t talk about family structure.”
It’s funny, but the little bet I made with myself while reading it was “A bazillion to one says she dares not mention IQ.” I won that bet, of course, because the subject of intelligence is now a forbidden topic with the so-called conservatives. The subject of group intelligence, or even group differences, causes these people to faint. They have fully internalized the magic of the blank slate so therefore biology is ruled out of any discussion of human behavior or quantifiable group differences. Magic is always the go to move.
The fact is, the efforts to get more blacks into college, and out of college with a diploma, has not changed the fundamentals of group IQ difference. All the affirmative action in the world is not going to change this fundamental reality.
IQ is the single best predictor of life outcomes. The lowering of standards at colleges, in order to increase diversity on campus, just means more people with an IQ of 85 carrying around a college diploma. It has no bearing on the earnings gap between those with a 100 IQ and those with an 85 IQ. As everyone in the dreaded private sector knows, the diploma counts for nothing when the employee is being evaluated on their work product. Poor work produced by a college graduate is still a poor work product.
IQ is not the only taboo avoided in this piece. Immigration is also one of the banned topics with the so-called conservatives.
As I feared though, he avoided what I consider to be a key factor in the black/white difference. The great divide in wealth accumulation in America is founded on marriage. Married couples accumulate much more wealth than divorced or never married people do. A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the median married couple in their sixties had ten times more wealth than a typical single person. An Ohio State study found that divorce decreases wealth by an average of 77 percent. Jay Zagorsky, the study’s author, counseled: “If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married. On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth.” Now consider the demographics of black college graduates. The overwhelming majority are women. Females now account for 66 percent of all bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks, 70 percent of master’s degrees, and 60 percent of doctorates. Women tend to desire husbands who are as educated or more educated than they are, which makes marriage more difficult for black women with higher education degrees. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, the percentage of black women college graduates aged 25 to 35 who have never married is 60 percent, compared to 38 percent for white college-educated women.
That paragraph is hilarious for a number of reason. Mona Charen presuming to speak for the tastes of black women in the mating markets is laugh out loud funny. There’s also the fact that she confuses income and wealth. The bigger issue here is the fact that she cannot bring herself to mention the real reason black males have rocket high unemployment levels. That’s immigration. Cheap foreign labor and a willingness to tolerate idle black men, has resulted in lots of idle black men. This is really not difficult material.
The main reason Buckley Conservatism no longer has a constituency outside the ruling class is they have accepted all the premises of the Progressives. They are convinced that all humans are just amorphous blobs that can be shaped at will. Differences in outcome, therefore, must be due to society. That rules out the right answer and leaves them in the same carnival of magical thinking as the Progressives. The only difference is one side has slightly different incantations and abracadabra words than the other.
A quarter century ago, in 1992, conservatives were doing the marriage-family song and dance. While there is definitely truth in it, it’s not the whole truth, as this post makes clear. We already have a class of liberals who think it’s permanently 1972. Are we now getting conservatives stuck forever in 1992?
I would say the bottom 40% or <95 IQ is slow. It is worse for the AA's. Much of society is becoming invisible as they stay in welfare neighborhoods or home as domestics or relatives being taken care of by those smarter.
My experience is that most college-educated seriously underestimate how problem-ridden the lower 40% is. Of course they don't have a lot of wealth–they have trouble tying their shoes.
As a teacher I saw this for years.
The social policy left and right have no idea what they're talking about
Comment from the Richard Spencer speech at Auburn comment thread:
pyrrhus | April 18, 2017 at 17:17 | Reply
Zman doesn’t want to face reality, like most.
Spend a week in my neighborhood snowflake. You’ll learn what reality is in a hurry.
The key, economically speaking, is to move from the paycheck-to-paycheck middle-class, which is being hammered in this economy, and go up to the safer Realms of the upper middle-class or upper-class. The racial disparity breaks out probably in that black middle-class and white middle-class being compared – it seems that whites tend to move more easily into the upper reaches, whereas black middle class have social and relational struggles which keep them back. So the key determinative factor is middle class life in America has many challenges…
What is the average IQ of blacks raised in white families from infancy?
Within the range of their genetic heritage.
Being adopted is better than being in an orphanage, but this is the micro version of “Magic Dirt”. It might be fun for the barren woman to have some sort of baby.
Another unstated assumption is that everyone needs a college degree. College makes no sense for some people, and I am not talking just burger flippers. The engineering manager and chief designer in one of the computer companies I worked for, was a high school dropout. College would have been wasted on him as he learned as he worked, much faster than he would have in school. I too was an engineer without an engineering degree.
Our grandparents and great grandparents lived in a completely different cultural life than we do. Lileks’ weekday Bleat on-line is a great place to start. There have been things gained since then, but much has been lost.
Money quote!
They are convinced that all humans are just amorphous blobs that can be shaped at will.
Many of them are, but they can’t be shaped at will. They can’t be shaped in psychedelic leggings, either, if the examples at Walmart are typical.
Read books and newspapers from a century ago, or watch movies and listen to music from 75 years ago. Our grandparents and great grandparents lived in a completely different cultural life than we do. Lileks’ weekday Bleat on-line is a great place to start. There have been things gained since then, but much has been lost. I laugh when terms such as fascism and communism are thrown around today. While the meaning a long time ago is roughly equivalent, the cultural context, in almost all dimensions, was completely different. Our elders coped in their own way, and we do so… Read more »
Watch Flynn on Flynn :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vpqilhW9uI
There is no possibility of an IQ independent of cultural. Unless the populations have identical cultures in terms of the amount of abstract information flowing through their minds, they can’t possibly have the same average IQs, the same distributions.
If you think otherwise, you have to explain why your grandparents were morons relative to you as measured by your IQ test. I don’t know about you, but my grandparents were pretty smart, judging by how they did in life.
Three books which have made it very easy to understand commentaries such as the above are Davidson/Rees-Mogg’s “Blood In The Streets”, “The Bell Curve” and “The Fourth Turning”.
D/R-M noted that the pathway to a better economic future is to stay married, stay employed and only change from one job to another as a step upward. Granted that in today’s US that’s difficult, but it’s still true.
The Bell Curve speaks to far more than just racial comparisons of IQ. The first thirteen chapters never mention race.
And we’re obviously in a Fourth Turning.
ZMan,
Big miss in the lede in to your post. Ok so Blacks are feeling insecure financially and don’t get the bang for the buck from college. Step back, cause Whites are feeling the same pain. The VIX index between the two races may not be parallel, but all is not well in Honkeytown either.
The realization of that fact for either race blows a big hole in Charen’s woe is me missive. Everything else is downstream from that fact.
Mrs. Dutch dragged me to the soup kitchen yesterday, and we helped serve 200 homeless people. An enlightening but very depressing experience (for me, not for her, apparently). These people, whether through the genetic lottery, being dropped on their heads as babies, or through the effects of addiction, all had no ability to take care of themselves. They are helpless and hopeless, almost all of them. BTW, most were white males. A personal frustration for me is that this sort of so-called living is now held up as some form of noble existence. We are all God’s children and so… Read more »
This is one I take great issue with. I specifically remember Buckley writing a column at the time of all the controversy with The Bell Curve (Jensen{?} & {?}). Buckley wrote about the possibility with the comment that it was the ‘intelligent’ who had given the world most of its problems. I do think there is evidence that there is a difference. The problem is that IQs only measure what I call linear thinking. I think there are many other intelligences & in many of them blacks could excel explaining music and dance and other talents. There is a lot… Read more »
Spatial relationship thinking? Like geometry, physics, etc.? Well, except for their dearth of representation in the hard sciences and mathematics, you’d be right. Mathematics is numbers. Music is numbers in time. Geometry is numbers in space. Physics in numbers in time and space. The ancient Greeks called these four, half the pillars of wisdom, the Quadruvium. (The other part was the Trivium: Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic.) Most college-admitted blacks would be stumped to name and define those, let alone master them. So would most whites, which says more about our current educational system, and its being dumbed down to the… Read more »
Aesop, that is downright beautiful! A great way to think of those areas in the world of numbers. Thanks!
The guy who cooked up the idea of multiple intelligences in 1983 has long ago confessed that there is zero science behind it. In fact, neuroscience directly disputes the claim. There’s *no* evidence of multiple intelligences. None.
I have never seen a shred of evidence of black superiority in spacial relationship thinking. You made this up from whole cloth.
There *is* a lot of evidence that men fare better in spacial relationship thinking than women. Further, there *is* evidence that links IQ to spacial relationship thinking, but it’s not definitive.
I teach college, and in my view it’s a chicken-and-egg problem now. The collection of Diversity Pokemon is the #1 priority of all Ed Biz administrators at all levels, so standards are lowered at every level, to the point where Not Sure really is the smartest man in the world. Which leads to the interesting phenomenon of White kids really believing this “white privilege” stuff. The reasoning must go like this: It doesn’t mean anything if you ace the standardized tests, because a concussed lemur could ace the standardized tests. And yet, lots of Diversity don’t ace the standardized tests,… Read more »
Are you seeing where it leads? Diversity and “Equality” is dress rehearsal for civil war? That is it’s main intent? Hard to get people going at each others throats if there is no conflict between them, and the best way to divide them is to make everything equal, rather get people to fall for equality, because it doesn’t exist and they will then be deeply and emotionally insulted and assaulted for their beliefs, and the conflict begins. It is really the equation of divide and conquer dressed up as social justice, aka cultural marxism. That is some really evil cunning… Read more »
Yes, I see it. It’s all just Gramsci (though most of the people doing it have no idea who Gramsci was — thanks, American college system!!)
Gramsci. What a utterly miserable creature. He makes Gollum a Saint. The truth so many knowingly adhered to his psychopathy speaks volumes as to how vile an ideology and agenda cultural marxism is, that he is revered is even more grotesque. I find it impossible to give the intelligentsia of academia the benefit of any doubt they are not aware of Gramsci and the evil of his notions into brainwashing the malleable minds of our youth. I think there is a toss up between the 5th column of the media, and academia as to which two are the most destructive… Read more »
Excellent point.
Holmes: “It’s seems there is a diabolical scheme to destroy American Blacks root and branch: They will be encouraged to compete at risk in professions in which they are at disadvantage. Then illegal immigrants will be brought in to poison the labor-market against them in professions where they could hope to compete. That is, outside of the brutal, common, sports contests, where no gentleman would ever venture.” Watson: “Egads Holmes, even the most black-harted Irish fiend such as Professor Moriarty could not be so base as to concoct such a devil-inspired conspiracy.” Holmes: “Au contraire, the game is afoot this… Read more »
Au contraire, you know it.
BFYTW, Sherlock
We all know that the equality meme is a bunch of hooey. I wanted to be pro baseball player. Didn’t happen. I wanted to be a Doctor. Didn’t happen. I wanted to be … Didn’t happen. You get the drift. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses. The power of works by Charles Murray is to point out what we see everyday and throughout history that all empires rise and fall. All regions, all peoples have had “dominants” who ruled over large swathes of land and people until they vanished for one reason or another. What has happened since the… Read more »
Amen, brother. But: those of us on the high side of the curve live in a world of secularized atoms in a brownian motion of chaos. No organization of aristocrats can arise when the guillotine awaits for those who may rise above the endless plain of ‘equality’.
Bravo! LP, Bravo!
Liberty is a dangerous thing. You have to be responsible and accountable for what you do. But that’s the beauty of it, there are no limits in what can be achieved within those restraints of personal responsibility. Much derives from that I believe.
Reminds me of that wise philosopher Dirty Harry “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” – Magnum Force 1973
Liberty is not a dangerous thing, freedom is a dangerous thing. Liberty is a demanding thing. That is why men do not particularly like it.
James, that is the profound truth. It isn’t easy and it isn’t free. Thanks!
I worked as a meat cutter in high school. In college biology labs, with all of those pre-meds, I realized I had knowledge and a skill set that they were working to acquire. I believe all surgeons should work as meat cutters first. There was also the customer interaction that taught me to be polite and to listen.
LetsPlay, your brother fell for the social stigma about his work. Don’t let him fall for that.
It is definitely a skilled trade. Since the coal mines have been shut down I been working part time for a custom meat cutting shop. Breaking down whole halves of hogs and beef, is some seriously labor intensive work. Getting a 650lb side of beef down off the trolley, and break it into man handleble sections takes two hefty guys with razor sharp knives. And every animal is a little different how it is built, and different between breeds too. There may be a lot of fat hiding your cuts. You have to make quick decisions where to make your… Read more »
There is texture and dimension to the work that cannot be learned other than by doing, ideally as an apprentice so that the student is supervised and guided, and nothing is wasted along the way. There are also the muscles, ligaments, bones and joints, and how they all work together. If you can put aside the “yech” factor and focus on the work, it is a fascinating way to learn about how God and nature have done things. Fair animals were always the best, but they were also someone’s project to hand raise, typically by a 4-H kid around here.… Read more »
Man you said that real nice like! Makes me remember when you raise your own critters for food, you have this profound responsibility to care and treat them with a kind of loving husbandry, stewardship. My wife had never raised her own livestock, when it came to the first time she was involved in killing and butchering them she asked how did I do it it. It was one of those great questions in life. I told her about the first time hunting as a little kid and I shot a squirrel, my grand dad asked me how I felt… Read more »
Just one other point that seemed high on my brother’s list of complaints and that was the “Union.” No end of “beef” with the union. he he
This string of comments reminds me of the movie Breaking Away, which came out in 1979. I commend it to everyone. One of the underlying themes is about college education vs. skilled manual labor. The most relevant scene is near the end of the movie when father and son are strolling through the campus of Indiana University and his “uneducated” father is reminiscing about his experience as a stonecutter. One of the more subtle take-always is the ignorant stonecutters are the ones who built the university buildings that the spoiled, and often, not so bright, kids occupy. Watch the movie,… Read more »
LetsPlay, I sure wish there were still a “thumbs up” feature here. Then again, one little thumb up would be insufficient to express my appreciation. I commend you for your advice to your brother. You were wiser than I in the same situation. Whenever I’ve been stuck listening to someone whine about their job, I haven’t been as inspirational as you; I merely pointed out that if they were unhappy in their situation, they had two options: change their situation, or change their attitude. One or the other. You always have a choice. And even if you have no control… Read more »
You are too kind Kathy. Believe me, there were plenty of “tough” love times with my brother and I had to grow to a point where I could offer that advice in a caring manner. He would complain about customers and their demands. He hated how everyone shopped “last minute” or wanted special handling for their complaints. While I could relate (who doesn’t shop last minute!), that is the nature of the business. So why complain? But you are correct. The one thing we do have in direct control is our attitude. By focusing on that and different aspects of… Read more »
Ah yes, the no true Scotsman argument. Here’s a little smack to the face: they ARE true conservatives, and they always have been. You just think that conservatism is something other than what it really is. You don’t know, or won’t admit to yourself, that conservatism conserves. That’s it. That’s all it does. It doesn’t have an ideological north of its own; it is defined by its conservation of the progress achieved by the liberals/progressives/left/whatever. The progs move the left edge of the Overton window; the cons move the right edge of the Overton window. Obamacare persists though there is… Read more »
The ‘No True Scotsman’ Fallacy does not mean what you think it means.
Notice the subtlety; that if the NRO dudes aren’t conservatives, nobody is.
Dude, I sometimes find Tulsi Frikken Gabbard more intelligent, possessing of better judgment and more upright in moral character than most of the NRO Blowjob Blowhards. And this is in no way a ringing endorsement of Congresslady Gabbard.
This why I’ve been re-reading the Bell Curve after 20 years…(and to freshen up arguments against the Murray haters–none of whom seem to be familiar with anything he actually wrote)
Thing is this isn’t going to be settled by the legacy media mouthpieces. None of it is. They are already irrelevant as Z points out. Normie’s will always lap that crap up with a spoon. It is the hard right, it is undergoing a definitive preference cascade. At a certain point it becomes the second zeitgeist, but instead of a pen in it’s teeth it has a bone. There is a melding happening between Alt-Right and Hard Right, a modern Crusade is the outcome. This is about survival of men of the west, they are rising. The cultural marxists of… Read more »
Go outside and talk to someone.
Your faith in people and the great things they can accomplish really sucks George.
If you’re saying that I have no faith in the the volonté generale and derived concepts, then yeah. No faith.
Isn’t Charen a New York Jew? A neocon? The boundaries you mention were set a long time ago. As for the blank slate being part of conservatism, I would like to see, or be apprised of if it has already been done, a study of just how much of Locke was accepted by the people said to have been influenced by him. He is supposed to have been influential around the time of the revolution of 1688, a time that Burke often refers to. Yet I cannot recall Burke ever once mentioning the blank slate in any of his writings.… Read more »
Thanks for mentioning that Charen is a jewess. Considering zman betting that IQ wouldn’t be mentioned in the article he reviewed, it’s funny in an ironic way that “jew” isn’t mentioned in zman’s article, it only appears in the comments.
Doc; I think a big part of the problem is that there is a deliberate conflation of moral intelligence, which, when socialized, used to be called virtue, with largely-intrinsic ‘intellectual intelligence’, which is called IQ. Used together they can produce discipline. Virtue, intelligence and discipline combined with effort correlates highly with positive life-outcomes, which are still called success. And then there is Devine blessing, or fortune, if you will, in the mix as well. This explanatory scheme used not be particularly controversial as explaining variations in individual success in any given society. But individual success has too often been used… Read more »
Add to that, the environment you live in can either encourage or discourage certain behaviors. An argument can be made that once violence was deemed acceptable in certain black communities, the incidence of race riots skyrocketed. Once the indolence and drug abuse of the hippie community became “mainstreamed” in the ’60s, that lifestyle became very widespread, accepted, and even held up as an example to strive for. With what goes on in the university community today, the outlook is a gloomy one, if one expects that set of values to permeate the rest of our culture in the next few… Read more »
…well-educated black Americans “feel so economically insecure.”
I guess she just assumes that us well-educated whites feel all economically secure? Just because of privilege or something?
I was laid off twice during the W Administration and wasn’t feeling too confident for quite a while.
So assume all the inherent differences between races are accepted, then what?
Truth sets people free.
Yours is a good example of just how dominant the Left has been in America. It is just assumed that there must be an answer to “then what” and if not, then the struggle to reach Utopia continues on. Otherwise sensible people take, as a given, that there is some end point where all of life’s struggles are resolved. There isn’t. Through an accident of history North America has a population of sub-Saharan Africans. The best we can do is leave them to live their lives as they see fit. Similarly, the European and Asian populations should be left alone… Read more »
It is absolutely taboo in the mainstream media to look at the actual results of the Civil Rights movement, supposedly an inspiring American success story. Except for a handful of privileged blacks — many scarcely more than affirmative action corporate chess pieces or government hires — blacks en masse are far worse off than in the bad old days of segregation. Blacks were sometimes abused in the pre-Civil Rights era, and it is progress that they are no longer discriminated against based on skin color. But turning the majority of African Americans into government wards of one kind or another… Read more »
Much of the “discrimination based on skin color” was actually based on conformity to the Rules of Derbyshire’s “Talk”. Color has most often been a signifier of underlying
misbehavior.The tragedy is that even as Black behavior continues to become even worse, the corresponding White behavior has also declined in tandem, just not quite as severely.
In fairness, it was not an accident of history that North America wound up with a population of sub-Saharan Africans. It was a deliberate policy of bringing enslaved Africans to America to work in the plantation economy.
The rest of your comment is spot on.
an accident of history *they were allowed to stay*
Z-Quote: “Through an accident of history North America has a population of sub-Saharan Africans. The best we can do is leave them to live their lives as they see fit.” What ever are you talking about man? We can no more “leave them to live their lives” that you can leave your head at home when you go out in the morning. “The blacks” as Trump so accurately called them brought vicious riots, truly stupendous in size to the USA in the 1960s because they were not happy with being left alone. Wikipedia says that during the “long hot summer”… Read more »
Once you have paid the Danegeld, you will never be rid of the Dane.
There is a way to be rid of the Dane, even after foolishly paying the danegeld. It is by force of arms and deception.
It’s not an assumption as there is a factual basis. Still, to run with it, if you assume inherent differences you start with something necessary to enact effective policies: honesty. Buckley Conservatives are vile liars in the same league as left-wingers/communists, and perhaps worse as they claim to be principled.
The whole “then what?” question infuriates me too. It’s usually said by people who just want to force you to give out alternatives that they can pick off one by one.
Here’s the answer:
Honestly assessing the situation creates the possibility of coming up with a solution.
Dishonestly not assessing the situation guarantees that there will be no solution.
When I see the old photos and read or hear the stories of black individuals and groups from the bad old days of discrimination, segregation, and occasional hostility in the first half of the twentieth century, I see a very different people, far more confident of who they were and where they were going. They measured themselves against themselves, and then when they excelled in a thing, against anyone. When equality was made the religion of the land and then imposed by law they lost their dignity, their families, their respect for their ancestors, and finally their excellence. That job’s… Read more »
It was critical to success of Cloward Piven strategy of disrupting our Christian western race of men of the west that the negro be returned to the plantation to be slaves of the state. So anything that furthered that was fair game. And to this moment there is not much that is more dangerous than a successful educated common sense black man. Look at Congressman Lt Col. West, the witch burning public trial of a certain black supreme court judge candidate. The black American has been used as cannon fodder in the great cultural war, a most useful government welfare… Read more »
West and Thomas are solid progressives who have fed at the public trough for decades. Yes, they are dangerous as they provide valuable services to Leviathan.
Here’s today’s reality.
https://twitter.com/lordnifty/status/853801444738162689/photo/1
The truth is we were all better off in the fifties and early sixties. Not all society but certainly the left half of the bellcurve needs a stronger hand, needs a well regulated predictable system.
So the right half is marginally material better off (until you reach the rent taker class). But everyone else is going downhill on greased skids.
I’ve said for years, “blacks had a better life in 1958 than today” Black families existed in 1958 not so today. I.Q. being what it is everyone will have and enjoy a better life with traditional nuclear families as the norm.
So this White Devil gets a little excess income by hard work , what does he do with it? He probably invests it in safe dividend paying stocks or funds, and gradually the money accumulates. We all know how, even some blue collars know how to do this. And few splurges. What does our Black brother do when he hits the big income? BLING! And maybe bail. Sistah’s bling is weaves and extensions. Since I alternate between three hair styles – the George Zhukov cut, the Eisenhower cut, and the McMaster trim, even with tips my barber bill is probably… Read more »
The common denominator in stories like this one is that most of the people that pontificate on major journals are frequently deficient in IQ and/or purposely pitching a covert meme. Hence the real story is not about the degeneration of Buckley Conservatism, but the devolution of media divas. In a healthy society, membership in the upper echelon of investigative journalism would be earned based upon demonstrated merit and not fealty to political correctness.
One wonders if Mona Charon is even aware of her ineptitude.
d it, denominator, the lowest common denominator. Thing is if you don’t understand what Z is describing, and you read that magic dirt reasoning, the closed loop logic is comforting and sounds right. But what if it is even simpler, based on the law of water seeking it’s own level, where the product of “higher learning” is seeking a common denominator in the sense the media is populated by degreed low IQ writers and journalists. A first rate exemplar for me is the black dude who did a science series on TV about the cosmos. I couldn’t watch it after… Read more »
I didn’t see any of the NRO crowd in the trenches at Berkeley
very astute taco town
Thank you, Zman, for speaking plainly and truthfully. The awful truth, they used to call it.
I spoke with a middle aged Jewish woman sitting Shiva today. She mentioned Charles Murray and his treatment at a college. She said he had a good point to make and that the college would do well to listen to what he had to say.
By God, there’s hope in this old world after all.
Thought experiment: can anyone picture Charen (or any of the other TruCons) following the logic of her position and personally scolding a gathering of black Democrats about their marriage habits and reproductive behavior? You could put that on pay-per-view.
Even as I read the Charen quote, I could feel the boredom seeping into my mind. My thoughts wheeled back into normie ruts, safe treads leading nowhere but to futility. I’m so accustomed to the Conservative Inc. angle that it almost sounded reasonable, if strangely sterile. Then Zman derails the TruCon short bus with just a few obvious retorts. Obvious — that’s the rub. It should be obvious, but it’s amazing how easy it is to overlook the obvious when living in such a mendacious culture.