It has been some time since we have heard from Excessively Earnest and Overly Zealous, the creators of the Precious Party of Perpetual Perfectness, but they have been hard at work solving some of the country’s most intractable problems.

They recently developed a common sense proposal to resolve nearly everything including such heart-breaking issues as inequality, cost of college, student debt, income redistribution, participation trophies and date rape, all while feeling generally uplifted, superior and good about themselves.

The other day I sat in on a conversation in which they were perfecting their talking points for upcoming presentations to Bernie Sanders, British Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn and, if all goes well, the European Parliament. The United States government and the American Association of University Professors have already signed off on the idea.

Excessively Earnest

First, we are offended that you included the words “some time” in the very first line of this article. They made us feel unsafe and definitely required a trigger warning. We prefer the term “many moons ago” favored by our first citizens before the unfortunate arrival of the white Italian guy who made us all feel so privileged and bad about ourselves.

 

Overly Zealous 

Well said, Excessively, but sometimes you just have to let it go, especially when we need to be working on the talking points for the presentation of our big idea. Besides these issues were described as heart breaking, so my personal victimness needs were met. I feel validated.

Excessively – No needs are ever permitted to be met as need-meeting might allow a problem to be solved and people to get on with their lives but, just this once, I will get back to the talking points. We can do it as a Q&A.

Overly – Okay, here we go. Inequality, cost of college, student debt, income redistribution, participation trophies and date rape could all be solved with but one change in the way we do things in our corporatist hegemony.

Excessively – And can you tell us what that is, Overly?

Overly – Yes Excessively, thank you for asking. All of these problems are caused by college mating behavior.

Excessively – Really, please explain.

Overly – Well it appears that some selfish corporatist hegemonists go to college at least in part to mate with other selfish corporatist hegemonists who have been chosen and placed in those colleges where they share in these selfish mating goals.

Excessively – Do you mean to say that capable people seek others like themselves and attempt to mate with them? The long-term consequences are appalling. What if such behavior resulted in power couples and the clustering of talent into dual income high earning families? If marriages were delayed, there might even be more data available upon which to make such pernicious mating decisions. According to this, almost half of the economic gain from college relates to meeting a higher-earning spouse. It is called “assortive mating” and it is the cause of pre-K education, structured play dates, helicopter parenting, music lessons, computer camps, early sports specialization and college admission consultants, to say nothing of mandatory community service requirements.

Overly – Indeed they are appalling and they result from the social engineering practices of admission departments gone awry. Back in the 50s, the only people who went to the best colleges were boarding school softies and spineless trust fund children. Had we left the Ivy League to them, we would have ended up in a few generations with an educated elite composed entirely of people under reduced circumstances. They would have disappeared and been replaced by ambitious graduates of community colleges.

Excessively – What happened then?

Overly – The clever admission people realized that softy trust fund kids would amount to little and thus be unable to provide cushy endowments to support the all important gender studies programs.

Excessively – What did they do?

Overly – They started beating the bushes to find bright, ambitious, hard working kids who would go to their colleges then invent things like Facebook, driverless cars or high yield leveraged loans divided into multiple tranches thus making fortunes that could be given back to the colleges.

 Excessively – What went wrong?

 Overly – The admission people stopped talking to the biology departments so they failed to account for the wholly unexpected fornication problem. It seems that a contemporaneous relaxation of behavioral standards meant that these carefully selected students would seek to mate with each other both while in college and thereafter.

Excessively – Why was this not prohibited?

Overly – It was, but the rule makers were completely overwhelmed by the tsunami of fornication. They were left to police a few instances of fornication that was never properly agreed to in the first place or sometimes simply regretted. Most of the selfish up-market fornicators got away with it and they have gone on to marry each other, buy SUVs, invest in pre-K education and college prep training. They have produced a generation of children who are skewing the income figures by doing too well.

Excessively – Didn’t recruiting academically unqualified athletes help?

 Overly – No, this went very badly because nobody really understood Title IX. If the recruiting had been limited to male athletes, we would not have seen nearly the mating-induced dual income competence gap we are now seeing, but it was not. The colleges also recruited women and taught them teamwork so they could help to invent Facebook, driverless cars and high yield leveraged loans divided into multiple tranches. The capable boys decided they liked the independent minded girl athletes and wished to mate with them thus exacerbating the problem we face today. Who knew?

 Excessively – Can anything be done?

Overly – Yes and that is the gist of our program. All of the most able young people will be prohibited from mating with other able young people. They will be required to mate only with those who are deemed by the newly proposed Department of Partner Assignment and Fornication to be among the least able. Imagine long diagonal lies linking the best and brightest boys and girls to the dimmest of bulbs at the far end of the spectrum. Those of average ranking will have the advantage of selecting from others like themselves.

Excessively – That is a splendid outcome that should make us all feel uplifted, superior and good about ourselves, but how will it resolve date rape?

Overly – College fornication will be prohibited.

Excessively – Okay, that should work fine, but what about the high cost of college and student debt?

Overly – Nobody will want to go to college anymore so the supply of students will dry up and the cost will plummet.

Excessively – Okay and I guess that inequality and income redistribution will be resolved because in a few generations there won’t be any, but what about participation trophies?

Overly – Our carefully considered “common sense” regulations and executive orders will be designed to assure that nobody has any advantage over anyone else so that is the only kind of trophy there will be.

Excessively – Thank you Overly. This is making me feel very uplifted, superior and good about myself, but do we still have time?

Overly – I don’t know but we are off to a good start because nobody could disagree with such a common sense proposal.