It seems to me that, now that we are building a better idea of the effects of inheritance on a person, that humanity needs to somewhat re-assess how we treat offspring, in both positive and negative manner.
For example, I am endlessly grossed out by Hollywood’s apparent assumption that the child of a great actor is more likely to be a great actor, too. It’s as if Hollywood thinks there is an acting gene, or something silly like that. I used to ponder this, until I realized that it’s not that at all, it’s that:
- Hollywood is basically lazy about who it picks to portray whom, and it reaches for known quantities rather than looking about for, you know, good actors
- The Hollywood market is driven by name recognition
- Casting depends less on casting calls than on who knows whom, and having a successful parent in the business is a door-opener; rumors of a parent agreeing to be in Movie A in return for a child getting considered for Movie B are fictional
Get her some plastic surgery at age 18 and acting lessons and she might be a big star some day. Mostly, though, get her an agent.
I’m sure it’s extra difficult in an industry where shallow, vain, and desperate for attention are actual selling points rather than disqualifiers.
I have nothing against Angelina Jolie, for example, in fact I’m a bit of a fan of some of her dumber work. But, her father – also a 2-bit actor – dragged her into the Hollywood scene before she really had a chance to make decisions of her own. It’s worked out for her, but I do think that consumers of movies ought to be asking ourselves “why?” especially in an era where Hollywood is being revealed to have – shall we say – a serious inclusivity problem.
Now, let’s talk about Hunter Biden.
I haven’t mentioned Hunter here before, because I used to want to think that he didn’t register as a blip on my radar-screen. He was simply a fly-speck that got dragged in in an attempt to tarnish as corruptible a presidential candidate that is already manifestly corrupt. But the reasoning is dodgy: it’s not as if there’s some genetic predisposition in Bidens to trade political access and influence for money. Hunter Biden did not inherit, in his genome, his father’s ability to service the credit card lobby to the tune of millions of dollars for his entire career. These are not innate behaviors that are inheritable; it must be learned. Hunter Biden had to learn how to take $50,000/month from sketchy Ukrainian gas companies in order to do nothing except maybe carry an idea to daddy now and again. I’m sure that learning such behaviors is easy: some guy comes along and says, “want a $50,000/month job?” and – as we all would – you say “sure.” Imagine how much better Hunter would have done if he’d had an agent out there beating the bushes for deals. There, except for the testicles and uterus from which I sprung, go I.
In my mind the issue about Hunter Biden is that he demonstrates an aspect of the systemic corruption of the political class. He’s a perfect case study of “why nepotism serves to put incompetent people in places of power.” The Andrew formerly known as “Prince” is a swappable example for this, except the British actually track the blood-lines of their theatrical class and act as though “blood will tell.” Monarchy is nepotism raised to the level of public policy.
We have to either make the obviously wrong assumption that there remains a “divine right of kings” and a “divine right of acting” or a “divine right of being a congressperson” or we have to accept that these are all learned behaviors, governed by opportunity – opportunity that has absolutely nothing to do with merit.
Abdulraman
Merit, or culpability. And that’s what makes me uncomfortable as hell about all of this bullshit.
A 16 year-old US citizen is eating lunch in a restaurant in Yemen, when a drone strike rips his body to pieces with a hellfire missile. [wik] The airstrike was cleared 2 weeks earlier by president Obama, so let’s have none of this “it was collateral damage” crap – they stalked and killed him because of who his father was. And this wasn’t even part of some mythologized role-playing game or Hollywood dreck where he was killed to keep him from heading to Washington for a showdown, “Barack Obama, you killed my father, prepare to die.” He was just a kid but they blew him away because, why? Did he have terrorism DNA that was going to make him someday blossom into a, um, not particularly threatening wordy guy like his dad? I need to remind everyone that pere Al-Awlaki was hardly a great threat to anyone except himself. Its as though the assholes in Washington mistook Star Wars for a documentary and felt that they must kill the child because he inherited too many midiclorians from his father. The same logic, naturally, applies to Hunter Biden and let me say for the record that I don’t give a fuck if anyone blows him up with a drone. He sounds like an asshole. Take his dad, too, I just don’t care.
Why do we tolerate this kind of absolutely ridiculous family-based retaliation for presumed crimes? So, now apparently the EU has decided that it’s time to step on Putin’s daughters because of their fathers’ crimes. [dailybeast] Good god, people, we can’t even step on Ginny Thomas for actually encouraging crimes, but does anyone imagine for a second that Putin’s daughters were tugging the elbow of his jacket saying, “come on, daddy, invade us someplace!” No, in fact Putin has tried hard to keep his daughters out of the limelight, as would any proud oligarch. Come to think of it, Biden tried that, too. I wonder if Putin’s daughters are on the boards of directors of any oil companies?
Similar punishments doled out to Putin’s daughters would largely be symbolic, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, as it’s unknown if the pair possess significant assets outside of Russia.
Given that they committed no crime other than being Putin’s daughters, isn’t a symbolic attack on them kind of … immoral?
Anyhow, I just want to say for the record that: it’s a moral crime to attack children for their parents’ actions, and it’s a moral crime to reward them for who their parents are. It’s straight-up medieval behavior, based on very old (and wrong) notions of inheritance, or an assumption of corruption on the part of the child and the parent.
So much for “meritocracy.”
One minor wrinkle in the whole inheritance thing is that so long as people believe it, it can become a self fulfilling prophecy. There are plenty of examples of usurpers failing to butcher the offspring of their former ruler, only for half the aristocracy to rally behind said child in a bloody civil war. The child has no right to rule, but so long as people believe that shit, it’s de facto reality.
It seems to me that we take for granted that children follow in their parents’ footsteps, never knowing how much of it could be avoided by weakening the parental influence. It may be inevitable that parents will want their children to think and act in ways the parents approve of, whether they’re good people or evil dipshits. There’s likely no objectively correct way to raise a child, so all social or cultural pressures applied to child rearing must be derived from arbitrary moral values.
I suspect anyone growing up with Vladimir Putin as a father has probably already suffered enough.
Ian King@#1:
The child has no right to rule, but so long as people believe that shit, it’s de facto reality.
Yeah. Bonny prince Charlie comes to mind. There are a lot of examples of royals who get pressed into a revenge-role who’d really more or less rather lead a normal life.
I suspect anyone growing up with Vladimir Putin as a father has probably already suffered enough.
Certainly not a “normal” childhood. Whatever that is.
I often think of this photograph:
That’s Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana. She also had a rather odd childhood; pictured here sitting in Lavrentiy Beria’s lap…. …. … what else need be said? Well, maybe her Wednesday Adams look sort of argues against my point. But by all accounts she was not a monster.
Some years ago, I hired a carpenter born to and raised by two carpenters: no surprise, he knew his stuff.
Acting is a learned skill; it does not seem inherently implausible that someone raised by actors can act better than others. (Vide: the Barrymores, the Fondas, the Hepburns, et alia.)
A pity Hunter Biden’s father didn’t teach him to keep better track of his laptops.
Who do we blame for Hunter’s and his sister’s drug weaknesses?
They’re not just Putin’s daughters. They’ve been actively involved in, and have profited from, Putin’s oligarchic kleptocracy. So no, I can’t get too excited about someone with millions in ill-gotten gains going after people with billions in ill-gotten gains. It’d be even better if he went after everyone with billions…
Lebedev in the UK isn’t just son of a KGB agent and an oligarch, he may be actively involved in passing information to Moscow or a conduit used to control Boorish Johnson (e.g. alleged private meetings without UK government security in Johnson’s presence). Johnson appointed Lebedev to the UK’s house of lords **against** the advice of MI6.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/evgeny-lebedev-british-boris-johnson-alexander-litvinenko-lord-b2034684.html
I long for the days of Billy Carter when at most being related to a politician **might** be embarrassing, for one or the other.
“The airstrike was cleared 2 weeks earlier by president Obama, so let’s have none of this “it was collateral damage” crap – they stalked and killed him because of who his father was.”
Wikipedia does not support you in this claim, they say the strike was authorized on the day. What is your evidence?
As far as Angelina Jolie, I assume you know that she dropped “Voight” from her name because she hates her father. I, personally, have enjoyed everything I have seen her in, but I think her personal life is a mess and a half. Hollywood is a disaster for people because lots of money is potentially available, just like every other aspect of capitalism. I have spent my career in Silicon Valley, and it is much the same, except the publicity aspect is a bit less.
Hunter Biden is pretty much what I think we should all expect. His mother and sister were killed when he was young, his brother died of cancer prematurely, and his father was more interested in politics than he was in his children. If Hunter’s worst crime is that he accepted money that he didn’t really earn, except for being his daddy’s son, is that so bad?
There are actually some good reasons as to why medieval societies tended to emphasize heredity. Countries wherein everyone believes “We have to follow King Thag’s son, even if said son is a total idiot” will tend to be more stable and prosperous in the long run than societies where, every time the king dies, it’s a mad scramble of warfare and backstabbing until the last man standing takes the crown.
Likewise, when wealthy people who can afford to arm and train a squadron of soldiers represent your country’s entire military, you want to encourage a system of heredity that ensures a constant number of rich people. If your nobles can’t field an army and show up when needed, you will be conquered by someone who can.
However, like religion and many other concepts, these ideas have outlived their usefulness but continue to strangle us centuries after they provided society with a benefit.
@#3
“Who do we blame for Hunter’s and his sister’s drug weaknesses?”
Sister? What sister? Naomi died at one year old, Ashley, did “verbally intimidate” a cop twenty years ago, because she is one of the elites, and I have no doubt she experimented with pot and maybe cocaine and possibly mushrooms, as did I, but how does that translate into a “drug weakness”?
One thing which surprised me when I joined the military was how many of the people in basic training with me were military brats. I’d say about 20% of the other recruits in my flight were from families where one, or both, of their parents were career enlisted military.
When I chatted to a couple of them about it, their reason for joining wasn’t patriotism or a desire to follow in their parent’s footsteps, and certainly not a suggestion of heredity. It was because it was the most familiar style of life for them. They had grown up as military brats, moving from base to base, being educated in on-base schools. They didn’t have to learn much about how the system worked, only how their specific assignment operated.
Since then I’ve wondered if many of the people who follow in their parent’s footsteps are really only doing so because it’s the easiest path. I.e., They don’t have a passion for another career, so they follow the career they are most familiar with, be it acting, or politics, or running a dry cleaning shop. None of these careers ensure a feeling of fulfilment in one’s life. But then, what does?
moarscienceplz@#7:
As far as Angelina Jolie, I assume you know that she dropped “Voight” from her name because she hates her father. I, personally, have enjoyed everything I have seen her in, but I think her personal life is a mess and a half. Hollywood is a disaster for people because lots of money is potentially available, just like every other aspect of capitalism.
Yup. I think I subconsciously picked her as an example (Jane Fonda would have worked as well, or Drew Barrymore) a lot of the “Hollywood royalty” are extremely dysfunctional. Which, I suppose, means they’re super qualified as actors. I’ve always felt they deserved sympathy. There’s also an element of child abuse built into that system that has been hidden for a long time.
If Hunter’s worst crime is that he accepted money that he didn’t really earn, except for being his daddy’s son, is that so bad?
Of course not. It’s ordinary corruption.
moarscienceplz@#6:
Wikipedia does not support you in this claim, they say the strike was authorized on the day. What is your evidence?
I absorbed that, mistakenly, a few years ago. I’m not sure where it came from but I think it may be something to do with the planning window around when the US government killed Al-Awlaki’s daughter, too. She wasn’t a specific target, though, she just happened to be in the middle of a search and destroy raid.
I don’t think that my being wrong about the planning horizon substantially changes the point of this posting.
moarscienceplz @ # 9: What sister?
You didn’t hear about the diametrically misnamed “Project Veritas” illicitly obtaining Ashley Biden’s diary?
You must have blinked! Politically-aware Americans just can’t do that any more!
Marcus @12: The strike that killed the lad was two weeks after the one that killed his dad. Maybe that’s where the “two weeks” came from?
@2: I have graphics turned off in my browser, but as soon as I read “I often think of this photograph,” I immediately realized what photo you were talking about! I guess it made a real impression on both of us.