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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| I Didn't Have to Die on This Hill, But I Did |
| 2019-11-17 |
| [AmGreatness] Call me Mr. Unicorn. I have degrees in political science, English, and classics‐and I have done extensive work both in ethnic studies and classics. In Los Angeles I found myself teaching at an uber-liberal California college that loved my multicultural work though it viewed my work in classics with suspicion. They suspected at first, then confirmed that my love of the classics might encourage an unstylish conservatism. On October 3, 2014, I brought students to a conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Because of that, some women and gays charged me with discrimination. The Title IX investigation felt absurd. The greatest irony surrounding the spectacle stemmed from what the event at the Reagan Library actually was. It was called "Bonds that Matter" and it was about the importance of family relationships across time. I had tasked my students to identify examples of family relationships in great literature and create exhibits for them. Between October 3, 2014, and August 1, 2016 (and then for another year beyond), I endured a Kafka-esque investigation too convoluted to summarize here. "Experts" were called in to make gross generalizations about the field of literature, deciding that "Bonds that Matter" held no merit. One anthropologist, for example, concluded that these family subjects were not persistent themes in antiquity or the Romantic Era. The anthropologist seemed somewhat clumsy in his discussion about the role of texts like Oedipus Rex or The House of the Seven Gables. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 The West is gripped by self-hatred Don't know about "the West", but academia (IMO) is gripped by second-rate people who - though normally lazy - would work their asses off to destroy anybody whom they suspect of being their better. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-11-17 12:52 |
| #3 Sad but all too common. The West is gripped by self-hatred. We worship the greedy and vulgar, and trash our forefathers and their great achievements. We have replaced our heritage of great art and thought with a culture of meretricious junk and absurd shows of virtue. Trump is a vulgarian, but let's hope that he can play John the Baptist to a future savior-- i.e. by exposing the lies and nonsense of our elite to such an extent that his successors can attempt to restore respect and love for our western civilization's cultural heritage. If not, then we need to look outside the US. Look east, to Hungary or Poland or maybe even Russia. |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-11-17 08:48 |
| #2 As Dr. Kissinger said, faculty politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so low. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-11-17 04:41 |
| #1 You're right, it's not just the arts. There's also the perpetual volatility in academics altogether. Allow your passion to get in the way of your job, display an inability to 'play the game', and you'll be set upon by sharks. The few non-idiots that have the temerity to pursue practicable approaches in sciences or even distinctive ideas in the arts in an institution are always sidelined and leave, like Mr. Unicorn. I worked with the Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR) or the dipper for a year. It's not the humanities or any academic institution, and does not allow for much ideation. But it has become a bunch of professional naysayers and remf brain nannies trying to mollycoddle soldiers with western liberal solutions. Things like 'indefinite' rules of engagement, humanist approaches to interrogation, 'post-encounter counseling' and that faggot group talk thing where you bare your soul to who-knows-what. I came to jest that they were foreign agents or receiving some sort of payment from our enemies ☺! Actually I learnt they just imbibe what little they can understand of evolving western psychiatric mores, which are worth jack shit if you ask me. Some 'original' thinkers did try to merge Jungian with Yoga (!) trying to please the new hindoo masters and deliver an ambiguity the likes of which would confound even Mengele. Sycophants all, to one or the other. No real originality anywhere. I received such opprobrium for my research, and they tried to behave like academics all the time; writing effete complaints, keeping people from assisting me, trying to find out just what we did in our sealed off wing, 'whistleblowing'... I still have hate letters blaming me with besmirching the medical sciences and using 'a force meant for good' to further political evils. ☺ |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-11-17 03:33 |