Today, January 31, 2022, I read with annoyance in: “The Hill”, “Biden is right, the GOP is on the wrong side of history” by Juan Willams. Willams’ opinion piece states his racially divisive position right out front, pointing out that the GOP is a “white people’s party, since 83% are white”. As if characterizing people only by the color of their skin can determine in some way how they think or vote…Come on Juan!
In an attempt to bolster this weak and dangerous argument Williams adds: “It is also the party that wins the support of the majority of non-college educated whites (57%) and of rural southerners (60%).” According to Juan Willams, the Democrats (must be much “better”) since they “have a majority support of women and white college graduates”. Williams casts his slurs all around ..apparently he does not like southerners, whites and non-college educated. But it is these non-college educated voters that these Democrats are always picking on as somehow unworthy (not smart enough?) to vote. As if Willams he was capable of deciding what was best or “good” decisions for these other free and independent citizens regarding the nation’s foreign or domestic policy. Willams identifies himself as one of the ideologues and “wanna be” elites with that non sequitur.
But let us evaluate these too often Democrat lauded “college educated” voters.
When I was a college student way back in the last century…the intellectual and academic ideal was for college students and the truly educated to courageously and persistently question all authority and to embrace what we called “critical thinking”. That intellectual goal and academic value seems to be totally missing today in the “modern” university.
Today’s academic institution is a place which seems to be fanatically obsessed with: denying or revising or inventing history, name changing, book burning, statue toppling- iconoclasm, imposing non-gender pronouns, as well as diversity, inclusiveness and indoctrination—all activities which encourage and insist on rigid regimentation. Conformity to an ideology, and lock-step thinking is the rule rather than open free inquiry. Today, the college educated may simply be those more likely to have been brainwashed, indoctrinated or re-educated and stamped out as robotic rigid ideologues, than their high school buddies they left at home when they went off to “Uni”.
Back in those halcyon days of the last century when the Cold War raged beyond our secure borders, college students would have characterized the regimentation and lack of free speech experienced in today’s university as Soviet or Communist China style “brainwashing” or indoctrination. We were free thinkers then.
Encyclopedia Britannica on “Brainwashing”: The term refers to a form of political indoctrination or ideological remolding: “The technique of brainwashing typically involves isolation from former associates and sources of information , an exacting regimen requiring obedience and humility, with strong social, pressures and rewards for cooperation and punishment for failure (such as)… social ostracism and criticism for non cooperation.”
How does it happen? Today a high school student who enters their freshman year at one of our many colleges and universities has first and foremost affirmed their willingness to be mentally indoctrinated, since they have actually made the conscious decision, often with great effort and cost to others, to make this step into this particular college or university. When they arrive they are desperate for acceptance by their peers and by those faculty and upper classmates whom they view as their academic or intellectual “betters”. So right off they are primed for indoctrination. And what do they get? Just like in a Chinese water torture or re-education camp, they are isolated from friends and family at home, and are relegated to an academic setting in which they must humble themselves in front of purveyors of “new” ideas and the great “fonts of wisdom”. They must obey and accept the political and social nostrums of those in power in this new setting, or be punished for failing to regurgitate the “facts” of their hard-line ideologue “masters” who lecture them and who promote and insist that they conform to the “font of wisdoms’s “truth” which is the only “truth”. It must be constantly restated and regurgitated just as it was set out.
These cadres of complicit and malleable inductees are faced with severe punishment in the form of social ostracism, and worse, if they fail to fall in line. While on the other hand, the fully compliant and cooperative “re-educated” cadres are rewarded with a flood of “benefits” in the form of grades and other valuable encomia if they do.
The long four year indoctrination period is very effective. The now close- minded, fully indoctrinated and re-educated leave university believing they are now endowed with special powers of all encompassing knowledge. They are unaware that they are just the stamped out manufactured product, endowed with the righteousness of the religious fanatic, and the zeal of a terrorist and implanted with inner mental workings no different than any other Apple programmed product. They are uni “bots”
These so called newly “college educated” enter society where they actively proselytize among the “unbelievers” and strive to set themselves above the masses where they rigidly conform to any new nostrums and policies directed from academia or the establishment so as to continue to be considered as a “member in good standing” of the elite “intellectual class”.
Today in these upside down Orwellian times, when wrong is right, old is new, and left is right, and in an academia where once truth reigned, freedom of thought and inquiry, questioning of truth and real science is shunned. Today the ivy covered halls and escutcheons emblazoned with mottos such as: “Veritas”, or “Scientia” stand for nothing. Too often today’s ¨modern¨ universities are shuttered elite enclaves, where free speech and open inquiry is limited. Where diversity of skin color, gender, and sexual orientation is championed, but diversity of ideas is discouraged or punished.
On the other hand, in this Orwellian world, where “universities” have become “mono product factories” venues where true free speech, questioning, and critical thinking, are now found only where the common folk meet. It seems to this observer that more true mental growth and real thinking occurs where young people learn from experience and trial and error in the machine shop, auto garage, factory floor, office common, farm yard, ranch-house, hairdresser’s shop and barbershop. In these places men and women with “no college” can lean to actually think on their own, question authority and formulate their own valid opinions about national issues.
So when the politicians and the pollsters continue to record which candidates the “college educated” supported in a vote, don’t put too much credence in the wisdom of the results . The college educated and the related “wanna be” intellectuals are today’s controlled, indoctrinated thinkers, part of a system that is sadly destined for the waste bin of history.
Real intellectuals question everyone, think for themselves…and permit no one dictate to them.
