Agreed that it’s not Epstein’s best writing, and much of the good parts are wistfully nostalgic.
My personal family’s WASP heritage ended with my father’s suicide at age 37 in 1974. It’s tough to look back a few generations and not think that something went wrong.
Culturally and academically I blame the acceptance of Marx in the Western Canon for the WASP downfall, personified by the traitorous impulses of Alger Hiss and his cadre.
My favorite movie regarding the subject is Metropolitan.
That is really dreadful about your father, you must have been very young, I’m sorry for your loss.
Of course, Alger Hiss is a great example.
I did think Epstein made a good point about being good in school (other than math and the sciences, which include a lot of math) is, to a certain extent, just about being good in school. It’s also sad that our country is run by so many lawyers, because very often these are the people who were not good with math.
But I thought he passed over the question of how good the Ivys are anymore, but I guess that is a long subject.
Right now it just seems like we have a bunch of incompetent boobs running the country and I don’t care what school they went to.
I’ve known a lot of smart and well educated people who can barely function in “real life”.
Well, maybe the “millennials” have gotten a needed wake up call, after all, the world is going to be their problem eventually.