A Bag of Hammers

I don't have a lot to say these days about politics because, honestly, it's all so shameful. There is absolutely no reason for things to be as chaotic as they are, unless chaos is the point.

And I suspect that it is.

Meanwhile, our "press" have grown accustomed to normalizing authoritarianism rather than challenging it, and the average internet user doesn't realize there is a better than 50% chance that the person they're arguing with is actually a bot. Read that again.

So it's no surprise that NO ONE is calling bullshit on Dear Leader's latest reversal, today saying that if he kicked 600,000 Chinese students out of US colleges and universities, half of the schools would go out of business. Tacit recognition that the revenue these students bring is very important, which EVERYONE was saying when he was starting shit with Harvard earlier this year. 

And it's not just the revenue: it's the value we all gain from educating people and then encouraging them to contribute to the US workforce and economy. This isn't even debatable: keeping the most knowledgeable and best-trained people in our country is a WIN for ALL OF US.

Yet the bots have coalesced around the idea that, hey, maybe we'd be better off without those students. Here's a smattering of things I've seen and heard:

- Colleges are just left-wing indoctrination farms
- College is overpriced because of electives
- College degrees are worthless anyway
- Let colleges fail, high school graduates can do most of the jobs anyway

If I did not have the ability to see that these are mostly bots, I'd be utterly despondent. But they're mostly bots, programmed by people outside the US. They're not the Cletus and Jughead they appear to be, for the most part. 

But Cletus and Jughead are QUICK to agree with the bots. If that matters.

It will never cease to gall me when people say colleges indoctrinate students with left-wing values. It's infuriating, to be honest. What they call "indoctrination," is merely exposure. Absolutely NO ONE is sitting at the front of a college classroom telling students what they should believe. It doesn't happen.

Instead, what IS happening, is students are hearing things that no one has ever told them before. Student who grew up in small towns, who spent their whole lives listening to a singular set of values, are suddenly hearing, for the very first time, something else. Yes, shockingly, the pastor at the small town church never spent much time talking about how hard it is to be a Black person, or to be an immigrant, or to be transgender, because those aren't ideals that really have much representation in those pews.

And it's not a lie to say that those groups have it harder than some other groups do. Moreover, it's HIGHLY RELEVANT in some classrooms. One of the most common general education courses taken by students is Introduction to Sociology, where it would be wholly relevant to discuss different types of people and how their experiences differ. 

Facts, presented in an unbiased manner, are about as far as you can get from indoctrinating students. Students are always still free to listen to those lectures, shake their heads, and say, "I don't agree with that." NOBODY IS PUTTING A GUN TO ANYONE'S HEAD and making them agree.

Nobody.

Meanwhile, back home in Anytown, USA, Reverend White IS threatening eternal damnation upon anyone who dares to think differently. 

That's the real indoctrination. I'll die on that hill.

College isn't indoctrinating kids, and anyone who is threatened by the truth needs to STRONGLY consider where that feeling comes from, and who it serves.

Truth is not the problem, nor is knowledge.

Expecting everyone to adhere to one religion's view is a HUGE problem, and DEEPLY un-American.

Absolutely no one can pretend to love America if they can't get on board with the idea that we are not all required to subscribe to one set of values.