So when I refer to "the American Kool-Aid" I am referring to the irrational dogma hammered into every kid's mind by the American school system, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [understood as "people" because the language has changed since 1776 and the word "men" is now assumed to exclude females] are created [nonsensically understood in the American Established Religion taught in the public schools as "evolved" despite the fact that Darwin's doctrine teaches the opposite of the first line of the Declaration of Independence] equal."
It is "Kool-Aid" because it is patently obvious that people are not equal in any intelligible sense of the word. Some people are male, others are female, and still others are born either male or female but they are confused about who they are. Anyway, everybody knows that men and women are profoundly different, but that is a topic for a different essay. There are also differences in height and weight (although weight is more of a choice than innate) and culture + values, which is again usually a matter of personal choice, although few people choose consciously.
Values in turn significantly affect power and wealth, which in the United States is far more elective than in most of the world and in most of history. If you want to be rich and/or powerful, and you either are taught the necessary values as a child by your parents, or else take the trouble to figure them out (very few do), you can achieve it. The Kool-Aid says that anybody can do it, but the reality is that we are stuck in a value system that we acquired too young to consciously think about it, and nobody that we are willing to believe tells us any differently.
Most people in a pluralistic culture such as we enjoy here in the US of A -- including most people who think of themselves as "Christian" -- are syncrestic: we (unknowingly) mix elements of different religious faiths and believe the amalgum. Pretty much everybody in the American churches buys into, in whole or in part, the American Kool-Aid. The Bible makes distinctions between male and female, the churches try not to. The Bible recognizes that some people are rulers, others are not, a difference denied by our Kool-Aid formula, but very much dogma in every pastor's heart, because the pastor gets to tell other people what to do. Early in the Bible God chose out Jacob and his sons to receive special attention and favors, and then Aaron and his sons to be priests (think: "more equal than other Israelites"). Some of that distinction went away for Christians -- that's where the Kool-Aid originally came from -- some did not (which is why we recognize the Kool-Aid to be religion and not just facts).
Anyway, how does this Kool-Aid affect our lives? USA is most egalitarian nation in the whole world. If you want to do something, and you do wehat is necessary to get that job, you can do it. If there are more guys than women in that profession, it's not prejudice, it's because women think differently from men, so they cannot perform the job as well. The job is what the job is, not necessarily what the women want it to be. The people who do the job well succeed, and the nation as a whole is so wealthy we can afford to pay people to do mediocre work in mediocre jobs. But they are not the super-star workers. They are probably better as some other job than the one they want and are unwilling to perform -- or unable: remember, that "equal" stuff is religion, not the real world. Except for the top slots, effort counts more than innate ability. Superstars need both.
Just my thoughts for this 4th of July.
I did see in the TV serials section of the library several seasons called "Jack Ryan." It's not about transferring Clancy's great plots and insights to TV, it's more like the faux-Clancy novels I read last year, where the greedy management of Clancy's estate is trying to milk a few more drips of $$ from the decedent's cash cow. At least the successor novelist is paid enough to do a credible clone, this is just some second-rate staff writers working for the network inventing a second-rate back-story for three of Clancy's iconic characters, but only their names, not the real characters that Clancy invented. It's better than "romantic comedy" TV which is neither romantic nor funny, but I'm rather dubious whether I'll be able to swallow the whole first season, let alone a half-dozen or so subsequent seasons.
At first it looked like the pilot and next two episodes was a complete story ending with the Bad Guy killed, but as I said, these were second-rate writers, as the first episode on the next DVD made clear: the Bad Guy is still doing incredible Bad Stuff -- Bad Guys are never that smart nor well-informed -- and the Ryan clone is still too stupid to catch him. It's just formulaic writing, but they started higher than your usual TV fare, so it might take a little longer before I puke.
PS, I finished the first season, and I plan to conntinue with the second.
Like I said, it's better than your average TV show, perhaps like MacGyver
or a couple of the Sherlock knock-offs (see for example "Feminazi
Sherlock Holmes"), which got stale around the third season.
Earlier this year / Later this year
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