Out where the buses don't run

A treatise on cultural rot

Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park. The year was 1976. Looking ahead. I could have never imagined, in my wildest dreams, how it would all work out.

Each week, as I sit down to write this column, I have several topics in mind - each cultivated from the reading and contemplation which accompany my daily coffee shop ritual. Most of these topics are uplifting and would be a lot of fun to write about. But I keep getting drawn, each week, into criticism of contemporary culture, media, science and education. It's not so much that I want to go there, it's that I feel as if I have to go there.

I never thought that I’d end up like Archie Bunker, yelling at the TV, but here I am.

One thing that accompanies age is perspective. When you are far closer to the end of your life than the beginning, there is some comfort in having the opportunity to accumulate some wisdom. This has been the reason why, traditionally, older people have been venerated in many cultures.

But no more, at least not in our culture. And it’s been during my lifetime that this has changed. I will all but guarantee that social media is the principal culprit of this (among many things). It’s easy to be disrespectful at a distance. Not so much within arm’s reach.

I am the luckiest person that I know. My family is caring, loyal and supportive. I have friends all around the world. My fortune in life is far greater than I deserve - by a long shot. If I had to do it all over again, I'd be afraid to change anything for fear of ending up in a place other than where I am now.

To whom much is given, much is expected. This concept has been axiomatic for me. I’ve always felt that the obligation which accompanies great fortune is to spread some of it around. I try to do my part by calling balls and strikes, as I see them, without regard for how popular the call is going to be. That’s been my way for a long time. I’m taking it with me on that slow ride off into the sunset.

Because the trajectory of whatever remains of my life is mostly set, I’m free. I can say or do pretty much as I please. If you agree with me, it’s a bonus. But I’m going to say what I think needs to be said whether anyone likes it or not. I’ll argue that we’d be a lot better off if more people who should speak up, did speak up.

Like many, I self-censored a fair amount during my professional career. In academia, you must learn to pick your battles or risk not getting anything done. If you are in business, you have to take care not to alienate customers. Making a living requires a certain degree of keeping your head down.

Though I would not go so far as to say that I had this down to a science, I did do my best, in my working career, to ignore things that didn’t affect me on a day-to-day basis. The signal to noise ratio is simply better when you spend more time students and colleagues, and less time arguing with fools, over nonsense.

But there were certainly controversies that were worth wading into - many that I was, in fact, obligated to wade into. If you suspect that I didn’t mind, it’s because you are absolutely correct.

I spent a lot of my career taking up for good science and scholarship while excoriating the poor. As an academic, your salary is paid by taxpayers who have every right to expect that you are going to do your utmost to discern, dispassionately, what is true and what is not - and to stand up for what is true. You are supposed to call out nonsense when you encounter it. The satisfaction in doing so is a bonus.

I am willing to bet more than I can afford to lose that young, courageous academics like Colin Wright and Dorian Abbot know, all too well, the phenomenon whereby you find yourself in a conference room full of educated people, discussing something that is almost entirely nonsensical, even crazy. Out where the buses don’t run crazy. Most everyone in the room knows that the topic du jour is off the rails, but everyone is acting like it’s not.

When you finally vent the gall that’s been boiling up inside of you, and point out that what’s in the table is either unsupported by any available evidence, or even contradicted by the evidence, you can hear a pin drop. But later on, in the relative safety of a hallway or office, your colleagues are slapping you on the back. “Well said. Thanks for pointing out that was bananas. I wish I’d said it.”

Well, why didn’t you? Especially when it’s your job.

This is a problem that extends well beyond academia. There are far too many people who recognize crazy when they see it, but won’t stand up to it. There are a lot of people in the world who are smart and capable, but let’s just say, conflict-adverse. That won’t do. When the people who know what they are talking about are cowed by those who do not, a decline into cultural rot is inevitable.

Please tell me in what other alternative universe we allow a male sex-offender, a person who is in trouble specifically because he’s taken illegal, nonconsensual sexual advantage of women, to serve his time in a women’s prison because he decides, after sentencing, to identify as a woman. You’re going to have a difficult time selling me on that concept - unless you can gin up some facts that I’m pretty sure don’t exist.

Along those same lines, please explain to me how, despite a considerable body of evidence which shows that it’s competitively unfair, we allow biological males to compete in women’s sports. Many of my generation spent years championing women’s sports specifically to allow girls and women the opportunity to compete on a level playing field.

Now all of that is going down the tubes to appease a miniscule number of transgender athletes. Are the governing bodies of women’s sports run by those too timid to even propose an open class?

A few days ago, a 28 year-old woman with emotional problems (who had recently begun identifying as a male), carried a small arsenal into a private Christian school near Nashville, TN. This woman, who had attended the school for a while as a child, felt aggrieved enough, decades later, to kill three children and three adults in a senseless orgy of murderous violence, to fill a hole in her soul.

The media, generally being lapdogs of the left and their propaganda, immediately seized upon the fact that the perpetrator used two assault-style rifles to execute the victims during her rampage. Get rid of these, as the narrative goes, and no more incidents like this will occur.

I don’t have a problem with sensible gun regulations. Sensible, being the key word. But what I’d like to know is why no one in any newsroom or production meeting, including people who I am certain know better, seems to be as upset with a culture that allows an emotionally disturbed 28 year-old, still living in her parents home, to escape scrutiny as a potential menace to society when she’s already purchased one assault rifle while under the care of a therapist.

As it turns out, in more than a few school mass shootings, people who knew the perpetrator could see it coming. But the way it works these days is that if you call out crazy when you see it, you are callous, and the potential killer is a victim of your insensitivity. That insane gap in reason strikes me as having at least as much to do with school shootings as assault rifles.

Another contributor to cultural rot is the abandonment of rigor, merit and most traditional standards of achievement, for advancement, in favor of selecting those whose principal qualification is checking off the right equity boxes. Few things will ultimately prove to be as divisive. You can get away with this for a short while, but an unfortunate denouement, in chaos, is inevitable.

That’s us, by the way, right now. How else do you explain a Vice President who is unable to string together a coherent policy sentence? What about a Transportation secretary who doesn’t understand supply-chain issues? How about a non-binary nuclear waste official who may end up in the hoosegow for stealing luggage from airports? What about a prominent organization of atomic scientists which posits that climate change is a more existential threat to humanity than 10,000+ nuclear weapons in arsenals around the world?

The list goes on. But if you are a reader of this column, you know what is on it. I know that there are a sufficient number of people out there who have the ability to stand up to nonsense, but will not. That won’t do.

A general reluctance among the capable to confront nonsense may ultimately prove to be our undoing. Xi Jinping probably doesn’t need the biggest military in the world and thousands of nukes to defeat us. All he has to do is bide his time, and watch us defeat ourselves.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth