Today In Socio-Politics

You may have seen during the past week the results of a  Economist-YouGov poll. Zhou is put at a 49% approval rating. However, as usual, the devil is in the details. Those details are probed at AmThinker this morning: Poll-dancing: Is Biden really at 49 percent approval? Follow the link for the details, but here's a spoiler--the internals of the poll are as skewed as you'd expect. The takeaway is that Zhou's approval is likely significantly lower.

The amount of demographic jiggering that pollsters have to engage in is probably a result of the changing political landscape. Earlier this week Victor Davis Hanson observed:

The two parties are switching class constituents. Some 65% of the Americans making more than $500,000 a year are Democrats, and 74% of those who earn less than $100,000 a year are Republicans, according to IRS statistics.

With that kind of switch going on, it's getting harder and harder for pollsters to get the results they want.

Other developments also draw that level of approval into question. For example ...

The Washington Examiner reports that:

Virtually all people in the United States, 88%, believe inflation is here to stay and will soar more, continuing a troubling trend under [Zhou].

...

As a result, many are bummed out and ready to sock it to politicians. The hashtag #Bidenflation has been trending recently.

The notion that 49% of the public approve of the WH occupant who is bringing them this level of inflation is difficult to accept.

Here's another consideration. Virtually every day we're seeing increasing unrest on the part of parents, who are upset with the way government schools are being run--especially as indoctrination camps. The persons responsible for this deplorable state of affairs in government schools are closely identified with the Dem party. Now, over the past months we've witnessed strenuous efforts on the part of the Zhou regime to control and shape public knowledge of what's going on in their communities through influencing social media--the MSM following regime talking points is a given. This past week the regime's spokesman openly admitted that it is pressuring Facebook to ban individuals whose views conflict with those of the regime. While the topic under discussion at the time was Covid, is there anyone who doubts that regime pressure extends to other topics as well--such as CRT in their schools?

The legal point here--and the remarkable stupid aspect of the regime's flaunting of their efforts at censorship--is this. While Facebook and Twitter are private companies and, in the current legal environment, are free to censor their platforms, that all changes when the government gets involved. It is illegal for the government to pressure private parties to do things that the government cannot legally do itself. Thus, it becomes illegal government censorship when the regime pressures Facebook and Twitter to ban persons who disagree with government policy positions. Which is exactly what the regime has admitted that they're doing. Note in the second tweet below the reference to Zhou's bizarre claim that Facebook is publishing "disinformation" that is "killing people."

Jen Psaki just suggested that people spreading misinformation be banned from other/all platforms if they're banned from one. pic.twitter.com/SlNXJTXi0I

— jordan (@JordanUhl) July 16, 2021

This person needs to be banned from all social media platforms for spreading misinformation. She might get people killed. https://t.co/CJSb6fIj2E

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 17, 2021

You can read more on point commentary at Red State--Jen Psaki Gets Caught up in Her Own Call to Ban 'Misinformation'. The point is that the notion of the Zhou regime as the guardian of First Amendment protected speech is as disingenuous as the notion of George Bergoglio as the guardian of tradition. In each case we see the same totalitarian willingness of the Left to lie and to deform institutions for whatever purpose they have in mind.

Finally, Don Surber has a post that draws a number of stories together--something I appreciate. However, Surber's take on these stories--Let them drop out--is one that shocks me (and, yes, I think Surber was riffing off the NAACP firebrandess who advocates letting CRT opponents "die").

Here's what's going on.

Joanne Jacobs has a blog post entitled Teens choose jobs over high school, college. If you're guessing that the teens making this choice are male and minority, then you're guessing right:

Locked out of high school in Memphis, Hispanic boys are working construction jobs and taking pride in helping support their families, reports Chalkbeat’s Ian Round.

Will they return to finish high school diplomas or follow up on plans to attend community college? Probably not, says José Ayala, a college student and a counselor for Streets Ministries.

I've been warning about this for months, and was urging that Trump should have made this an issue in Election 2020. It was always pretty much a no-brainer that when the government teachers unions locked the kids out of school, those who were least scholastically inclined--which is a pretty significant percentage of the total--would tune out and drop out. In other words, they would never return. Who thinks in this day of BLM that they police are going to be sent out to round up 'truants'? Not happening. In minority-majority schools this could amount to a major portion of all students becoming former students. Choosing jobs? No doubt some will, but others will choose the gangsta lifestyle and will be out shooting up the cities. Oh, yeah, that seems to be happening. If these young boys were mostly seeking jobs, why are jobs going begging?

And what qualifications do these kids have for any real sorts of jobs? This story that Surber also cites tells you what you probably already knew about their job prospects: Baltimore City Schools: 41% of high school students earn below 1.0 GPA. In a time of rampant grade inflation--I suppose that would be called 'grade equity' now--what does that tell you? It tells me that you're likely talking about functional illiteracy.

This is what I find so shocking about Surber's rather flip response. To me, turning out a functionally illiterate mob of kids onto the streets to--maybe--look for jobs is the height of irresponsibility. But then we are talking about Leftist government teachers unions, aren't we? And meanwhile we're importing millions more who will end up swelling the ranks of the young and restless.

Yet here's what Surber writes:

College is expensive and anymore is geared toward women. An accusation is a woman needs to get an ex-boyfriend expelled for rape.

Why should young men go into debt when they can get a job, get a car, and get a girl without the hassle of being accused of rape when they break up?

As for high-school dropouts, they help themselves and their schools by eliminating someone who does not want to be there. A GED at 18 is just as good as a diploma, especially as they have been downgraded to a certificate of faithful attendance. 

Turning the schools over entirely for the purpose of Leftist indoctrination of girls, while feral males roam the streets? As if these young men are really going to get a GED at any point in their subsequent lives? Surber seems to me to be advocating for the ratification of all the worst Dem social policy failures since Lyndon Johnson. And we know that those policies were designed to enslave blacks to the Dem party, not to help them.

Fortunately, I suspect that parents across the country will realize what's going on. I just hope the GOP will start speaking out.