Brandon Zicha

🇺🇸 Philosophy Politics Economics & Liberal Arts College Prof in 🇳🇱 | Catholic⚓ | Likes, Follows & Retweets = curiosity =/=identity | Opinions: My Own

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

How are you using the term socialism?

How does the prevailing understanding of most Catholic bear on the matter? Why is it true that American Protestantism is obviously the driver of the deviation and not European and south American Marxism?

Indeed, are we sure that this even a largely semantic disagreement that results from the different loadings of words influenced by these divergent non catholic influences?

Would like to say, private property is also a fundamental human need. even the hardest core Soviet recognized the importance of owning one’s own toothbrushing and beyond. But, your language sounds totalizing as the ‘American Rightist’ looks restrictionist with regards to private property.

My read of the compendium, to MH at least leads me to think the church’s position is between the poles of ‘pp rights can. Never be allowed to override needs, dignity, cg’ and ‘regimes of limited power concentration are coterminus with absolute pp rights for small holders and individuals so long as it doesn’t result in power concentration.’ I think both characterizations flatten out the very real presence in church teaching of the other camp’s emphasis.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

Summarizing:

The concern isn't my (actually heroic) student, but the trend that student is tackling under her own steam...

I routinely here professors complaining about students who:
1.) Can't or won't read at levels we have never seen.
2.) When they do, their ability to connect between texts and evaluate is poor. Indeed, grasping the text is not great. It's increasingly the norm, and it used to be the opposite.
3.) They struggle to reason, honestly.
4.) Most weirdly, we struggle to talk about 'reflecting on ones ideas'. They often struggle to understand *what that means*. This suddenly started where student's didn't understand what this meant.
5.) They have declining writing skills.
6.) They have lower interest in ideas
7.) They are less sophisticated in their ability to manipulate ideas
8.) They are much worse on many of the metrics associated with high level reading ability.

At the same time
1.) Study times have declined.
2.) Assigned workloads have declined a great deal
2.) Hiring employer complaints about graduate quality has declined continually.
3.) Grades have remained the same or gone up.

... in the past decades, but particularly the last decade to an alarming degree. This is not about one student's situation, or whether or not one should be 'readmaxxing' in college, reading 500 pages plus.

... and just look at the examples cited in this thread.

We have a major issue to address here, folks. Civilizational level issues. And, I genuinely don't feel we are having the conversation we need to be having yet.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

@johnmilbank3 @IfganzOekologie This is almost exactly my read on Leo. At least my healthily hopeful one.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

The NL is very similar. I don't find complaining does anything. Camps don't cover all holidays.... Thankfully we have a region system for the specific dates so only a fraction of families are vacationing at any one time. We comment all the time you're if werent university academics with flexible schedules managing the arbitrary teacher study days, no teacher stay home, come in early to do this, etc....we don't know how we would do it all all without extended family around.

Everyone we know who manages has extended family around.

[Dale Chu @Dale_Chu]

“The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.”

[Tyler Austin Harper @Tyler_A_Harper]

I wrote about the Pope and why Christian tech critics often have a more compelling response to the AI crisis than their secular counterparts. Simply, Christian writers aren't afraid of "human nature" talk, and they understand THE question of the AI Age is: what are people for? 🧵

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

@wil_da_beast630 *international

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

Dude. Don't get me started.

A few years back a drunk boater hit a brother and sister, killing the sister (like,13), injuring and obviously traumatizing the younger brother... Got 300 hours of community service.

Maybe I'm very American but, if that was my daughter,I would accept the 300 hours if I could beat that guy to death in court... I mean, if that's how we are sentencing. I accept those terms.

If your sentencing system has this quality, it's not a good sentencing system.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

@PAHoyeck

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

Totally.

My nerves surround the tendency to suggest that in societies not in such throws that harsh unbalanced and reactive authoritarian law and order pushes can easily lay the foundations for the next round of mickey mouse sentencing and limitations on policing.

Every law and order push in the US since the 70's has created the foundations for it's own destruction. Balance is key, so while illustrative in extremis I say a cautionary tale.

Great clip.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

@CKrullemans @visegrad24 @nayibbukele Two = too but now you know I'm not a bot.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

No, quite the contrary. I am arguing for a system where victims rights are only respected by real trials with real process to publicly affirm and prove the crime.

Victims don't have rights to put people who never did anything to them in prison forever.

A system that ignores victims and justice will eventually lead to demands for totalitarian means. This is my point.

The is no justice for victims, suspects, or criminals in a system that uses aggressive sentencing, minimal procedure, and which in prison the innocent. But it becomes necessary if you ignore the needs of justice for two long.

In the US the biggest problem for victims rights isn't even sentencing (which has gotten bad but it's still better than most of Europe). It's unsolved crimes. This is much like El Salvador before as well.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

Denying basic trials a process while imprisoning people indeterminately without contact is, by any def, a totalitarian means.

In a state of national emerhency due to previously aggressive deluded Mickey mouse sentencing it - as with El Salv - is definitely better than the status quo.

However, the crisis is over, but the totalitarian powers remain. The idea that these powers will be limited or will make El Salvador better long term is likely false.

I agree with you, basically, that high crime is a choice, and good governor's can manage it. But drawing lessons from totalitarian brute force methods that responded to previous failures should be a cautionary tale rather than an example.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

Dark. It was total the norm before 1980, it was still the majority experience of at least one friend at work until 2020.

So, people who have lived in the world,and find this cold sociopathic shit lonely and anxiety inducing do.

Now, why one would expect to go into a trade filled with narcissists that work in the same place with the same people for a few months at a stretch….? Better question.

Temp work isn’t where you find friends. Not even before 1980. lol.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

@CKrullemans @visegrad24 @nayibbukele Yes. Totalitarian methods can solve nearly any problem… you know save preserving our humanity. But any material problem it can solve.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

@Madame_Ennui @CathyYoung63 He mentioned neither racism nor xenophobia in the post..
And honestly such statements aren’t hard to find. Now you look like someone that this Islam is a foreign race.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Professors: This is the real long-term threat to your jobs, not AI.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

I forgot how fun baseball is.

How did I forget this?

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

@TSHamiltonAstro @leboyneski It's the scottish space programme that really impresses me.

[Brandon Zicha @ProfBZZZ]

Yeah, I just don't know, tbc. Def not saying you are wrong.

Yeah, as an American with a mixed family who spent half hours love now on both sides of the Atlantic I kind of feel like we are all just diving into our worst qualities and justifying it by the qualities of 'the other side'.

It's quite depressing, but as you say, it's also Algo shaped feeling, possibly.