Guest Post
In the fall of the year, as leaves turned red and gold on the campus of U.PE, an aging professor stood on the podium to give the welcoming address to the new class of freshmen. His hair was white, his mien one of resignation and cynicism. He looked as though he would rather be almost anywhere else. He spoke as follows:
“Welcome to this…place. I trust, or fear, that you have settled in.
You are now officially in college. You need to know several things about this condition. You will not like knowing them, which is part of why they are important. I will elucidate.
To begin, you do not belong here. You are spoiled, self-important, narcissistic, infantile brats, unprepared for college work, in which you likely have little interest. In the past, students of your age were almost adult and trying to learn how to be adults. You are different, alas. Your chief interest for four years will be in avoiding adulthood. This will be easy because you are less mature than earlier students, less prepared academically, and less ready for university.
In all likelihood you will waste these four years of your time and mine in this institution, which once was a university—during which you will take absurd courses of your own devising, courses having nothing to do with the purposes of education, of which you know nothing. You may already have discovered English 205, Batman and the Legacy of Patriarchy, and Sociology 202, Subliminal Oppression and the Frontiers of Resistance. You will study such nonsense in a spirit of tiresome self-adulation. I will have to babysit you during this sorry process. I do not know who is getting the worse of the deal.
This state of affairs is not entirely your fault. Here is something else you need to know: This university is interested only in collecting your tuition and, having no spine, will accede to whatever your little hearts may desire. You will find that nothing is too silly, imbecilic, or pointless to engage your attention, and nothing too absurd for the faculty to permit. You will make fools of yourselves protesting about the rights of transgendered endangered hermaphrodites of color with AIDS and, like three-year-olds, you will throw fits over imaginary racism, rape, microaggressions, and all the other embarrassing gewgaws, glass beads, and shiny objects of the undeveloped mind.
Your time here will be wasted because you do not know what you need to learn to enjoy a cultivated existence. In the past professors acted in loco parentis. They would have guided your progress toward civilized maturity. This goal has been forgotten. Today the younger faculty do not themselves know why they or you are here. You are the leading edge of a dark age. You will not notice because you will be pecking at smart phones.
You have been sold a bill of goods. In exchange for going into lifelong debt, or draining your father’s bank account, you will pass time in a university-shaped place. It is not a university. You have been had.
When you graduate, a terrible shock awaits you. You will find that employers have no interest in your wearisome righteousness. They will not pay you for Victims’ Studies or contemplation of grievances. They will not care about the high GPAs you got through grade inflation or sleeping with the professor. They will expect you to do your job, if there is a job for you to do.
Which is by no means certain. You are going to debouch from this institution onto a world that is already grim and becoming more so. Jobs are scarce and the scarcity intensifies. The qualified struggle. You are unlikely to be among them. It is a sorry age to be setting out into life, to be half-schooled and unaccustomed to the shocks the flesh is heir to.
The world will not treat well your fragilities and sensitivities. In real life you don’t have “safe spaces” in which a subservient institution does everything possible to protect your alert sensitivities from the slightest offense. I wonder whether you have any idea how risible your safe spaces are, how comic are the boiling little concerns that will occupy you? In the world that awaits, you will not be able to run to mount a protest march every time someone says a word that you do not like.
A few of you—a very few—will perhaps discover the pleasures of knowledge and even of the attempt to understand life and the world to the extent that they can be understood. These unusual students will concern themselves with literature, the sciences, the arts, music, history, and languages ancient and modern. The university will not encourage you. It will instead tell you that such studies are elitist, that they deal too much with Dead White Men. Except for a few aging professors such as I, your instructors are no better than you. Those who do remember the purpose of a university will not subject themselves to attack to try to rescue you from the zeitgeist. They will quietly despise you.
Any interest you might show in, say, philosophy or classical antiquity will be ferociously condemned as elitism. So will almost anything of substance outside of the school of engineering. If you want an education, you will have to acquire it on your own.
You will not realize how degraded your schooling is here because you have no standard of comparison. The chain of civilization has been broken and, once broken, is not easily repaired. It is not even remembered. When the children are in charge of the kindergarten, no good comes of it.
You will write dismally in ungrammatical English, but regard correction as elitist and oppressive or perhaps having something to do with White Privilege. Your professors will agree. Your essays will be badly organized and poorly thought out, not worthy of an eighth-grader in years gone by, but you will reject criticism as elitist and an encroachment on your freedom of expression. Your professors will agree with you. They too need jobs.
Enough. Go forth, roll in ignorance, and God be with you. You will need him.”
The professor concluded amid a roar of displeasure from the assembled young. That afternoon, under the leadership of older students, they formed a committee to oppose racism and hurtful speech. In the social media they launched a campaign to have the professor fired. The administration apologized to the students, promised to behave better in future, and began proceedings to end the professor’s tenure. For his part, he went home, poured himself a double Scotch, and settled into a chair with the Anabasis. Xenophon was at least grammatical.
While fictional, sort of, Fred’s professors’s speech to these students is like pearls before swine.
There are none that are so blind as those that will not see and none so deaf as those that will not hear.
I deal with these morons on a daily basis. Their arrogance and sense of entitlement is only eclipsed by their ignorance and incompetence.
Meanwhile……… Organizing for America (OFA), Obama’s political organizing wing (which he has kept completely out of the hands of the DNC), has 10,000 “advisors” training 100,000 “activitsts”.
A new Dark Age is coming, cheered on by the mush-brain clapping zeal zombies who are cannot even fathom in their Special Snowflake Universe that they are enabling their own destruction.
These are not the barbarians you are looking for.
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Fred writes stuff that is scarier than Stephen King. It is more based in reality,too.
Brilliant as always. It should be satire; I fear it is not.
at least this throng will be more easily made irrelevant – some day.
Summarized.
Dear Freshmen,
Today you’re nothing but a bunch of fucking dumb-asses who don’t know shit. In four years you will graduate and you’ll think you know shit but, you’ll still be dumb-asses, only poorer. Please make sure you take my most popular class “How to say ‘Would you like fries with that order’ in ten languages.” as it will enable you to pay back your student loan in just 43 years. Thank you.
@Hope, Love the barbarians!
… it’s free on Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1170
Fred is right. Academia is full of it. That’s why I resigned voluntarily from a tenured position.
I have a very few select ex-students that I even contract occasionally for professional work. The rest is just bell curve material.
The bell curve applies even more to professors and much more to administrators. They can all go and eat cake.
The other night I ran into a familiar-looking fellow. It took us several minutes to establish that he was a former professor at the local university, when I was a graduate student in a nearby department (not his, both engineering). He now runs a startup company making LEDs that work for gas sensing; I am a consultant, having decided from watching my adviser’s struggles that I wanted no part of it.
The tenure process “didn’t work out for him” he said, and then, “I’ve never been so free since I left academic freedom!” I told him I understood, then he added,”And that was in engineering! The humanities are so much worse!” I told him he had my sympathy, and that he had made the right choice.
Once the “special snowflakes” are out in the world, they will be furious at all the lies, ignorance and ideology they have been fed. I hope my kids escape the brunt of it, but time will only tell; either you learn from your mistakes (believing lies like diversity, mindless charges of racism, socialism, third-wave feminism, etc.) or you don’t; I think my kids have seen enough reality to recognize it when it nibbles on them.
Amazing – Fred has gathered and condensed all that I’ve not been able to verbalize.
@Ghost: That is how the current college weenies and our government views our mortal enemies.
How do I get a cool avatar like yours?
Greetings,
This was painful to read. It was painful to read because the truth can hit harder than any amount of fiction.
First, a university degree, other than for government employment, will soon be less than worthless. The other thing that we will see is Social Darwinism on steroids and our special little snowflakes are going to melt under the blistering sun of reality.
As far as I see it, we get a ticket to ride this blue marble and have one and only one chance to make the best of it. Consequently, if an entire generation wishes to remove itself from the competition then I’m okay with it. I have nothing to fear from these ass klowns. As long as there is meaningful work to be done then it will be done by guys like me.
Stucky says: Summarized. Dear Freshmen,
Today you’re nothing but a bunch of fucking dumb-asses who don’t know shit. In four years you will graduate and you’ll think you know shit but, you’ll still be dumb-asses, only poorer. Please make sure you take my most popular class “How to say ‘Would you like fries with that order’ in ten languages.” as it will enable you to pay back your student loan in just 43 years. Thank you.
Hey! I’m the chief summarizer here. I guess scabbing on QOTD wasn’t enough.
About right. Sad but true.
Nickelthrower, while a University degree may be useless in actually providing knowledge that is actually useful, it will still be a minimum requirement for any professional job where you are not an entrepreneur until the day TSHTF and everyone will forcibly be a sole proprietor because the economy is in shambles.
I’m trying to think of something to add to the conversation that’s both relevant and meaningful.
Everything that I needed to know about relating to people and how authority works, I learned in kindergarten. College for me was basically a waste. I didn’t go to parties and I didn’t even get laid that much. (that was a time women were still holding out for marriage) All the really important learning came after college. Learning to me was like a snow ball rolling down a mountain, slowly at first, then an avalanche. I’m a type 5 Enneagram and at my age if I’m not learning something new everyday, I feel deprived.
I told my daughter, who has a masters degree in Biomedical Engineering from a well accredited University, that her degree was just a ‘howdy do’, just something to get her foot in the door, an introduction, and that her learning was just beginning and was life long. Her degree wasn’t an ending, but a beginning. I told her from the beginning that she had to develop a skill that she could sell in the marketplace and I made sure she was led in that direction. I never had that guidance and direction and it took me a long time to find my place in the world.
I wonder how many of the college protesters have had that kind of guidance? I know they hunger for it. They may be getting it from the progressive professors feeding them unrealistic bullshit. I know what the procedure is, from Hitler to Isis it’s the same, they fill this need and guide the young to their own destructive agenda. “Useful idiots.”
Who do the young have as leaders and roll models, today? Obama??? The Democratic party??? The Republican party??? Trump??? Ben Carson??? Ya! Ben Carson stands alone in a group of wanta be’s. Tell us how you did it, Ben, what to do, mentor us. …But you have to want it. The messiah comes only when everyone is crying for him and your mind is opened to the idea that you can’t do it by yourself.
The young are young, alas! …But, the young without boundaries is a mob. The sixties ‘hippie’ movement destroyed the boundaries and we are reaping the results of that errant generation today.
What happened to the good ole day of college pantie raids? Now that was a useful academic pursuit.
As recently as a year or so ago, I still had hope for the millennial generation. I was waiting for them to wake up and put the pieces of the puzzle together; I thought that the longer they took meant the more of a Hero Generation they would be. I no longer believe this pipe dream.
I thought the Paris attacks would be enough to shut these people up, at least for a while. But only a few days later every cigarette borrowing, plaid wearing, “freelance artist” is up in arms over “refugees” not being allowed to settle in the U.S. None of them are willing to take in a “refugee” of their own, but want “someone else to do something.” They don’t want to pay for it either, that should be for “the rich.” They don’t care that immigrant was halted for 40 years in the 20th century, all the know is that one stanza of the poem on the Statue of Liberty says something about “huddled masses.”
The Millennials are now closer to middle age than adolescence. They haven’t grown up. They refuse to grow up. They aren’t going to grow up. They are doubling down on the little game they are playing, which is a game of how each individual can use their creativity to concoct more and more convoluted bullshit to be shoved down the societal throat. They are aided by professional enablers, community organizer types who make six or seven figures as they whine for a $15 minimum wage. Everyone who “goes along to get along” like the academic figures who yield to increasingly ridiculous demands are also complicit.
I don’t know what exactly caused them to be the weakest generation in recent history. The cliches of “everyone is special” and “participation trophies” certainly ring true. Helicopter parents raised in the post-war land of plenty who have coddled them have not helped. Perhaps playing the social justice game is a psychological reaction to the pain of knowing they will not succeed in a post-recession era. Whatever. It’s time to give up on these losers and mock them relentlessly for what they are. Complete and utter losers.
The only good thing to say about Millennials is that they are likely not as bad as the generation that follows them will be, the ones born with an Iphone in their hand.
It’s easy to blame the Millennials or even the Gen-Xers for the fucked up state of the country.
But we shouldn’t forget that it was my Baby Boomer that squandered the promise that used to be America.
It was sociopathic snot-nosed Harvard MBA Boomers from the 1980s who infested Wall Street and convinced government and corporations to de-industrialize the USA.
As we dismantled industry, starting in the 80s, we dismantled the greatness of America.
Unfortunately, it’s far too late to put it back together. At this point all we can do is brace for impact and hope a few honest and ethical people survive the coming economic collapse.
Vegas, Welch, Milken and Boesky were hardly boomers, ok, maybe Milken. Back when Wall Street was buying up companies and loading them with debt after stripping off their balance sheets, we were kids.
Boomers got fucked and will still be fucked when they try to collect on Social Security. They are an inconvenient generation, a huge turd in the national intestinal tract.
Vegas, great post. Right on the money. Exept your last paragraph. Stay tuned. It ain’t too late
Me to, Dutch.
I think Fred mostly nails it with this one, as he typically does, especially with a satirical article like this one. My only point of contention, and it’s a small one, is his stating that ‘serious’ students (some of them)will focus on art, music, literature, etc. while I firmly believe a well rounded, intelligent person should be well read, majoring in any of those things isn’t going to set you up to do much other than teach art, music, or literature. Meaning they will end up at a school like the one he satirically describes as one of those worthless profs. Obviously, those things are better than gender studies or some other such bullshit, but not by a large margin.
One thing that seems to be lost in the blaming of millennials for being such pussies is who exactly raised them??? (For the record, I am 30, so I suppose I’m on the fringe of the millennials). I have two small kids, and if they grew up to be like these entitled, self centered little shits, my wife and I would be spending the rest of our lives wondering where we went wrong. It’s easy to sit back and look at these 18-25 year olds and marvel at how stupid and spoiled they are, but this didn’t happen in a vacuum, folks. At least in the case of the white ones, they were mostly raised in a two parent household. They actually had a father figure. We should be blaming the 40-50 year olds that raised these kids as much or more than the kids themselves.
Raising kids isn’t easy. My oldest is only two, and I have a 5 month old, and doing that while also having a fuckin JOB can be a lot, but there is literally nothing more important , IMO, than raising the next generation of smart, thinking, and competent generation of Americans if this country is ever going to resemble it’s former self. Studies have shown, time and again, that the presence of the father is the single most important factor in developing moral character in children, especially young males. So, with that in mind, where the fuck was the generation of American males who was supposed to be teaching these kids? My father worked full time, and still does, and still made sure I was raised right.
The purpose of this post was not to absolve this generation of their shortcomings, but to point out that they didn’t just spring up out of no where with these attitudes. Someone raised them(or more than likely, didn’t bother) to be this way. A large part of the blame for why some many college age students behave like this lies with their parents. Sure, the government schools we are all but forced to put our children into don’t help, and neither does much of the rest of society, but that’s not an excuse for not doing your job as a parent. It is the most important thing you will ever do.
Sorry for the long post, I had a few beers and kinda started rambling. Have a good weekend.
Gator says: “One thing that seems to be lost in the blaming of millennials for being such pussies is who exactly raised them?”
Television, movies, social media, Hollywood producers, social engineers. I’ve been wondering how all this was going to play out.
starfcker,
If we survive the last 14 months of Obummer’s term, I’ll concede that the country MIGHT survive if Trump is elected. But if that lying termagant Hitlery is elected, it will be GAME OVER for the USA. Electing that tired old harridan to the Presidency would be an unimaginable disaster and I don’t believe the country would survive even 4 years of the Hildebeest in the Oval Office, not to mention the prospect of 8 years of that evil old harpy in the White House.
El Coyote,
It’s true that Boesky and Milken were big players pulling Wall Street strings in the 80s, so in a sense they were the bosses. But they weren’t the ones generating the spreadsheets to show the bosses how much more $$$ they could get by destroying the country’s economy. The spreadsheet boys who set it all up were the then 25-30 year old Boomers from The Harvard Business School.
Dr Pangloss said that MBA stood for Most Brutal Action. Business schools used the case method because rather than simply teach theory, they taught practical lessons learned from real companies and real businessmen who JFK described as sons of bitches.
VegasBob says: But if that lying termagant Hitlery is elected, it will be GAME OVER for the USA. Electing that tired old harridan to the Presidency would be an unimaginable disaster and I don’t believe the country would survive even 4 years of the Hildebeest in the Oval Office, not to mention the prospect of 8 years of that evil old harpy in the White House.
Vegas, What are you trying to say? don’t sugar-coat it.
Coyote how old are you?
I’m as old as Stucky. We have a lot in common, actually, we both masturbate, we’re both sons of immigrants, both divorced, both former holy-rollers, both introverted types. Not to say I’m even close to his brilliance though.
Hillary won’t win, Trump has it in the bag. My guess is (don’t fucking start with me NSA) ISIS is going to hit the U.S. before six months comes and goes, absolutely propelling Trump to the top!
Hey on a lighter note. I want to go long Oil stocks, I’ve got 50K I’m willing to burn in this pursuit. Going to start research tomorrow, any insights? I’ll figure it out just throwing it out there!
Coyote, Stucky claims he can change hands and gain a stroke. I’ve tried it repeatedly and I always drop at least two strokes, I hate not being able to measure up? I was a Holy Roller as well, I could twist up Paonia purple bud quicker than Westcoaster could say, I’ll suck Obama’s Dick.
By the fucking way Paonia purple Bud would make the big man in the video Lub a Moosulim
Maybe Stuck could post an instructional video doing the hand over hand add-a-stroke method using a banana for the sake of discretion.
Coyote, I certainly hope you’re in better shape than Stucky and Admin, that shits embarrassing. Admin loves to bust on me for my whisky soaked tirades, fair enough, but I workout everyday, which is absolutely irrelevant.
I wish Admin and his beautiful wife all the success this website and their hard work will allow. I pray ( God does give me leeway) their sons never see War and peace follows them all their days, Admins family is the exception not the rule!!! Hat Tip Old Man.
I love TBP and all those that post here! EXCEPT FOR MY NEMESIS Westcoaster, He’s like a fucking Wart hanging on your nut sack. You just don’t know what to do with the fucker, it’s embarrassing, you don’t want to go to the Doctor to get it removed so you just make friends with it, you can’t explain it to anyone. Who would listen? So over time the absolutely bizarre becomes almost acceptable.
El Coyote–Vegas Bob is right. It was the Baby Boomers in wall street in the 80’s and 90’s that forced the corporations into offshoring. The ‘Financialization’ of corporate America by the $900 shoe boys, giving meaning to Gordon Gekko’s famous line about greed.
The Boomers were the ‘gimme’ generation. The ‘hippy generation of the ’60’s’. The ‘gimme’ generation followed the ‘greedy’ generation. Those were the folks that were raised during the ‘great depression’ suffered material want and suffered during WW2 and when the opportunity for material prosperity after the great war they became abject materialists. The infected their progeny with a philosophy of materialism and it’s corollary of relativism.
The whole American culture was wedded to it.
It’s been said that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the next generation.
EL Coyote,
My comments about Hitlery – lying termagant, harridan, Hildebeest, harpy – were actually a bit restrained.
For some unknown reason I was trying to be polite.
I’m sure as the election season heats up someone will goad me into saying what I really think about that despicable old shrew and it might even make a sailor blush.
Sensetti, I’m not sure if you were being serious about going long oil with 50k, but I think that’s a dumb move right now. Global trade is collapsing. People are poorer, china is contracting. The BDI is near record lows. We have a supply glut right now that has tankers stacking up outside ports because there is no where else to store all the oil coming in and no one is using it. I have no dog in this fight, I’m not on this trade one way or another. But id stay away from oil. I truly believe we will see 25/barrel again before this is through. The only thing that would make me change that prediction is a big military scuffle near the straight of Hormuz. Other than that, sub 30 will be seen before over 50, IMO
‘Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings’: Ben Shapiro Dismantles ‘Microaggression Culture’ at Mizzou:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/19/facts-dont-care-about-your-feelings-ben-shapiro-dismantles-microaggression-culture-at-mizzou/
Good video, maybe a little long but spot on.
Bob.
Homer says: El Coyote–Vegas Bob is right. It was the Baby Boomers in wall street in the 80’s and 90’s that forced the corporations into offshoring.
Wow. A generation born in the span of 15 years has so dominated the country for the last 35 years that you can’t get a word in edgewise? Damn, we will have to live forever to take care of you imbeciles.
Meanwhile…
40% of Millennials OK with limiting speech offensive to minorities
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“To know the truth is the best thing.
To know that you do not is – the econd best.
To pretend to know – when you do not –
Is a disease”.
– Lao Tzu
Wise men speak because they have something to say.
Fools because they have to say something.
The absolute, unvarnished truth hurts those who know it to be so.
Because of this “hurt” its shouted down and denied. While the speaker of such “hurtful truth” is attacked, diminished, dismissed as a radical academic elitist and ostracized from society.
After all, we mustn’t have our “special snowflakes” feelings hurt. Least of all by the truth!!!
@ sensetti oil stocks ? Buy one that’s cheap , well capitalized and offers a quarterly dividend .
Altho it seems all commodity prices are tanking to the greater depression lol good luck .
Good post by Fred , he may be controversial but seems to hit the nail on the head more times than not .
Imbibing on a little wild turkey tonight , Had everything set up to do what I wanted to for a change and wife’s mother fell , broke ankle on both sides and a few ribs to boot .
Currently pondering life , the universe, and everything .
I basically live for others .. Seems the universe slaps me upside the head if I have any desire to get outside that very narrow range and do anything for myself .
OMG I sound narcissistic lol . Altho I only wanted a few hours actually . Whatever.
Two observations ……
1. Fred Reed is a keen observer of the obvious.
2. Thinker’s chart at 1:28 pm is the chart of the month. Take a look. Silents (I am over 70) are the MOST supportive of free speech at 80%. That is still way below what it should be. Every generation should be north of 95%.
along these same lines.As religiosity and tradition goes so must sanity.
The graduate student on hunger strike against oppression is the son of a millionaire railroad executive. The administrators who gave in to the radicals’ demands did so not out of sympathy or solidarity but out of fear of a football strike. The professor who called for “muscle” to help her expel a reporter from a protest held a “courtesy post” in the department of journalism. The details of the saga—including, and I am not making this up, a “poop swastika”—read like a missing chapter of Wolfe’s 2004 novel I Am Charlotte Simmons.
The total eclipse of all values, the great revaluation—hard to deny we are living through them both, with one-fifth of the population, including one-third of adults under 30, affiliating with no religion, with scientism and environmentalism and superstition encroaching on religious ground, with the collapse in the distinction between genders, the marginalization of traditional social roles, and the corresponding proliferation of reactionary movements seeking the authentic pasts of nation, of sect, of race, of tribe.
Here is where Wolfe finds his material. We hold doggie yoga classes while selling fetal brains. We denounce global warming from conferences we arrive at by private jet. We recite the hosannas of diversity while suppressing opposing views. We release prisoners even though the communities most likely to be harmed by such a policy are the majority-minority neighborhoods we profess to care so deeply about. We inhabit a continent of poses and struts and vanity and incompetence. It’s a thick soup of the absurd, the frustrating, and the maddening.
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