In a fairly recent article,
I compared the attitude of the left and the right as mirroring that of two
characters in The Phantom Tollbooth: whatever one agrees with, the other
disagrees with. At the time, I was only using the metaphor as to how each side
views the other. I have had suspicions over the last couple of years that it
might apply to certain principle each has but I had little proof.
If you have been paying
attention to the conflagration involving Ivy League Professors appearing before
Congress in the last few weeks, you have witnessed this play out in real time.
And there is something truly unsettling by it given the context.
I can’t tell you how many
times I’ve read over the years the outrage that the left has shown at the antisemitism
and racism that conservative media and
Republicans show. They love to lecture about the dog whistles that the right once
used and now says openly. They love to say all members of MAGA are nothing more
than white supremacists and Klansmen. They love to talk about the ‘hate-speech’
that comes out of every single elected Republican or conservative media. And
they always love it whenever any Republican refuses to condemn a hate group or
Christian nationalism. To them ‘Republican’ and ‘bigot’ are synonymous.
So you would think that
when, a little more than a month ago, the House Republicans convened a
committee in which they grilled the presidents of three major colleges and
asked them if they would condemn antisemitism and hate speech at their universities,
when all three presidents equivocated on the subject in the eyes of Congress in
the world, the left and the Democratic party would acknowledge Congressional
Republicans for taking a stand on issue they equivocated on for years in our institutions
of higher learning. If you actually thought that you clearly haven’t spent as
much time among the left as I have the last few years.
To be clear what happened
before Congress was absolutely appalling for anyone with a pulse. To quote Chris
Rock in a different context Elise Stefanik gave these three erudite, educated
individuals “the easiest GED questions in the world and they could not pass the
test.”
I say this as a member of
the human race. Condemning antisemitism should be the easiest question in the
world to answer. Even if these people lied if they said yes, it would
have the easiest in the world to say. Instead, these three leaders of institutions
of higher learning – institutions which are supposed to shape young minds and
present them with clear directions – spent thirty minutes speaking in the kind
of double-speak that, frankly, would do many of the elected officials grilling
them proud. They couldn’t even muster up a condemnation of any form of
hate speech.
But did the left celebrate
the Republican Congress for showing that these elite officials were out of
touch? Did they condemn the university professors for not being able to make a
blanket condemnation of bigotry and hate speech the way that seem all too
willing to do? Of course not. None of the progressive newsletters mentioned it
at all in the last month of December. The more professional journals and blogs actually
did everything they could to defend them.
They argued the hearing in
question actually had nothing to do with antisemitism and hate speech. They argued
that the Republican elected officials bullied them and tricked them. They insisted
that the gobbled syntax these intelligent people said was actually a concise
insight into a complicated issue. They argued that all of these people had been
‘trapped’ into saying things they didn’t mean. They argued Republicans hadn’t
done this because they believed in anything but merely to score political
points with their base, as if every time a Democrat holds big business to the
fire they are doing so with the purest of intentions. They did everything but
say that the hearing was fake news.
Now often when public figures,
usually rich businessmen or Republicans, make similar points in a public forum,
they are either pressured to walk it back by the left and frequently they are
forced to resign. This past week Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard,
finally did just that. In addition to the public spectacle, it was revealed
that she had been involved in an extensive plagiarism scandal stretching back
nearly two decades, which meant her academic career was more of a fraud. Harvard
spent weeks defending her before she finally resigned.
But MSNBC did not mention
this part of Gay’s record or even mention how she behaved as offensive.
Instead, they chose to frame this as part of the Republican and the right-wing’s
‘War on Education’. I suspect they and the left are going to somehow frame Gay
as a victim of the right-wing war, because she is an African-American woman and
therefore is on ‘the right side of this.” The journalist barely mentioned the
circumstances of Gay’s firing, focusing more on a tweet by a right-wing figure
who misspelled one of the words in their response.
If there was ever a
clearer example of the contrarian nature of the left, I can’t think of a better
one. I have little doubt that if AOC or anyone else on the Squad had done this
exact same questioning to a white head of a religious university, she would have been hailed for being a truth
seeker and there would be petitions from every Democratic fundraiser calling
for that man’s resignation. Furthermore this is as clear an argument as any
that even when the Republicans take a position the left is ostensibly for and
it is proven in a public forum that they will still try to argue that it was
somehow wrong. I’ve sometimes thought the easiest way for the left to get their
agenda passed is to take the right’s point of view and they’d disavow it; the
actions of the last few weeks have convinced me that if the right argued in
favor of gun control, the left would suddenly become the firmest believers of
the Second Amendment.
And that this is being
framed as part of ‘The War on Education’ is as I mentioned, another huge joke
because the left has no real interest in education beyond making it a talking
point. Indeed when it comes to college, they have completely reverse their
position. When it comes to grade school and high school, the left has loved to
berate how the right is trying to destroy public school in favor of private
schools and state run which have their own agenda. But when it comes to
college, which are privately and state run institutions, the left is suddenly a
defender of their rights and that private institutions should be left to manage
their own business.
The biggest joke is that
when it comes to college, the left has been a waging war on it for more than
thirty years, or at least every part of their coalition has been. From the curriculum
to the faculty to the idea of the fraternity and sorority to every single
identity group demanding more representation in every single part of all the
above. Colleges are accused by the left of being racist, sexist, homophobic,
maintaining the power structure of the elite. And in recent years as tuition
bills have skyrocketed and the value of a specialized degree, the actual
importance of it has itself come repeatedly into question, far too often from
those who are prospective attendees.
I spent a fair amount of
time last year dealing with the issues of our educational system last year,
particularly because I feel that that our school as far along as high school are all fundamentally broken
when it comes to giving our students a way forward in life. I feel the opposite way when it comes to college.
College is supposed to be the training ground between childhood and adulthood
where we officially become prepared to be sent out to the world. Here, while I
do feel there is something said about the flaws in the curriculum and the
educators, I feel far more blame must be laid at the feet of the next
generation of students who are being brought into the college classroom.
In this series, I intend
to look at the flaws in our college system, and as before I will use models of
pop culture and literature as guidance. I’m still not sure I have any solutions
as to how to fix the problems these institutions are facing – certainly not
economically. But as to the problems on the campus, well, to quote one of those
Dead White Writers so many young people berate: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not
in the stars, but in ourselves.” And I am very clear on who the latter part of
this quote refers too.
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