The Insanity of the Academy

PLAYING THE GRIEVANCE-AND-GUILT GAME

The truth is that academy-spawned liberals, white and black, are incapable of changing this society. They’re too busy playing out weird psychodramas.

For instance, read this bizarre piece by Slate assistant editor Katy Waldman, in response to a bullying article by an aggrieved “perpetual grad student.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/07/25/trayvon_martin_verdict_how_should_white_people_talk_about_racism.html?wpisrc=flyouts

The two articles are right out of a Tom Wolfe book about the 1960’s, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. (If Katy Waldman had had a real education, she’d have read it.) The two articles are in fact a fairly faithful reenactment.

There is structural racism (and classism) in America. It’s best reflected, ironically, in the hierarchical nature of the educational system. In their discussion, both women, and other women cited (patriarchical men being obviously beyond hope) are products of that stratified system.

(Katy Waldman is a graduate of Yale University. As every President from Bush I in 1988 on has been a product of Yale or Harvard, which shows an undemocratic monopoly of the position, it’s been my contention that the first step in democratizing the U.S. would be to close both institutions.)

Indeed, Slate magazine, despite its p.c. liberal posturing, is quite undemocratic, in that its hirees are invariably cluelessly privileged snots from elite, mainly Ivy League colleges.

When you play the Grievance Game—I’ve admittedly been a part-time practitioner-- it can eventually become so ridiculous that the only choice left is to throw up one’s hands and admit we’re living in a madhouse. As the articles from the two ladies well prove.

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Here’s the truth of the matter. While the weeks-long focus on the Trayvon/Zimmerman case serves to reinforce both the grievance of the grad student and the guilt of the Salon editor, it has other consequences.

It divides, not unites, the races in this country. If you care to see what this can lead to, come visit Detroit, poster child of white-black division, to NO ONE’s benefit.

Let’s keep in mind as well that George Zimmerman is himself bi-racial, a working class man who was living in a working class neighborhood. That he became poster child for the nation’s ills, and its presumed collective guilt, tells me the media isn’t interested in addressing real issues, or in reality at all, but in playing out psychodramas while distracting the masses.

The other consequence is that larger issues are ignored.