Trump and Academia Have a Lot in Common

DJT shares many traits with today's undergraduates.

What Trump and the miseducatedBy George F. Will

In 2013, a college student assigned to research a deadly substance sought help via Twitter: “I can’t find the chemical and physical properties of sarin gas someone please help me.” An expert at a security consulting firm tried to be helpful, telling her that sarin is not gas. She replied, “yes the [expletive] it is a gas you ignorant [expletive]. sarin is a liquid & can evaporate . . . shut the [expletive] up.”
Tom Nichols, professor at the U.S. Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School, writing in the Chronicle Review, says such a “storm of outraged ego” is an increasingly common phenomenon among students who, having been taught to regard themselves as peers of their teachers, “take correction as an insult.” Nichols relates this to myriad intellectual viruses thriving in academia. Carried by undereducated graduates, these viruses infect the nation’s civic culture.
Soon the results include the presidential megaphone being used to amplify facially preposterous assertions, e.g., that upward of 5 million illegal votes were cast in 2016. A presidential minion thinks this assertion is justified because it is the president’s “long-standing belief.”. . . .
Soon, presidential enablers, when challenged about their employer’s promiscuous use of “alternative facts,” will routinely use last week’s “justification” of the illegal voting factoid: It is the president’s “long-standing belief,” so there. In his intellectual solipsism, he, too, takes correction as an insult. He resembles many of his cultured despisers in the academy more than he or they realize.

Pride.


Not just a deadly sin because of its looks.

Jack Hays said:

DJT shares many traits with today's undergraduates.

What Trump and the miseducatedBy George F. Will

In 2013, a college student assigned to research a deadly substance sought help via Twitter: “I can’t find the chemical and physical properties of sarin gas someone please help me.” An expert at a security consulting firm tried to be helpful, telling her that sarin is not gas. She replied, “yes the [expletive] it is a gas you ignorant [expletive]. sarin is a liquid & can evaporate . . . shut the [expletive] up.”
Tom Nichols, professor at the U.S. Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School, writing in the Chronicle Review, says such a “storm of outraged ego” is an increasingly common phenomenon among students who, having been taught to regard themselves as peers of their teachers, “take correction as an insult.” Nichols relates this to myriad intellectual viruses thriving in academia. Carried by undereducated graduates, these viruses infect the nation’s civic culture.
Soon the results include the presidential megaphone being used to amplify facially preposterous assertions, e.g., that upward of 5 million illegal votes were cast in 2016. A presidential minion thinks this assertion is justified because it is the president’s “long-standing belief.”. . . .
Soon, presidential enablers, when challenged about their employer’s promiscuous use of “alternative facts,” will routinely use last week’s “justification” of the illegal voting factoid: It is the president’s “long-standing belief,” so there. In his intellectual solipsism, he, too, takes correction as an insult. He resembles many of his cultured despisers in the academy more than he or they realize.

Click to expand...

This doesn't refute the opinion that Trump is an overgrown child. In fact, it reinforces the idea.

Jack Hays said:

DJT shares many traits with today's undergraduates.

What Trump and the miseducatedBy George F. Will

In 2013, a college student assigned to research a deadly substance sought help via Twitter: “I can’t find the chemical and physical properties of sarin gas someone please help me.” An expert at a security consulting firm tried to be helpful, telling her that sarin is not gas. She replied, “yes the [expletive] it is a gas you ignorant [expletive]. sarin is a liquid & can evaporate . . . shut the [expletive] up.”
Tom Nichols, professor at the U.S. Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School, writing in the Chronicle Review, says such a “storm of outraged ego” is an increasingly common phenomenon among students who, having been taught to regard themselves as peers of their teachers, “take correction as an insult.” Nichols relates this to myriad intellectual viruses thriving in academia. Carried by undereducated graduates, these viruses infect the nation’s civic culture.
Soon the results include the presidential megaphone being used to amplify facially preposterous assertions, e.g., that upward of 5 million illegal votes were cast in 2016. A presidential minion thinks this assertion is justified because it is the president’s “long-standing belief.”. . . .
Soon, presidential enablers, when challenged about their employer’s promiscuous use of “alternative facts,” will routinely use last week’s “justification” of the illegal voting factoid: It is the president’s “long-standing belief,” so there. In his intellectual solipsism, he, too, takes correction as an insult. He resembles many of his cultured despisers in the academy more than he or they realize.

Click to expand...

Hmmm...

I much prefer this quote from the same article:

Much attention has been given to the non-college-educated voters who rallied to President Trump. Insufficient attention is given to the role of the college miseducated. They, too, are complicit in our current condition because they emerged from their expensive “college experiences” neither disposed nor able to conduct civil, informed arguments. They are thus disarmed when confronted by political people who consider evidence, data and reasoning to be mere conveniences and optional.

Click to expand...

Trump is 70 years old. He has lived a life of experiences and has developed his viewpoints via those experiences, like any one of us.

It should not be considered unusual that a man his age would have some deeply established ideas and ways of expressing them.

However, what is our excuse for how we have raised our last two generations of future and current voters? You know, all those young Americans who demand safe spaces, argue identity and victimhood politics, demand free speech but command silence from those who exercise it in disagreement? People taught to virtue signal, and think anyone who disagrees with them is both evil and a direct threat to their existence?

IMO Trump is an old man who wants things to change back to an ideal he's had about America and it's place in the world. He probably believes all his fellow Americans should think this way as well, which is a bit of a stretch, to say the least since we can't really turn the clock back without a drastic overhaul of the entire world's socio-economic viewpoint.

Of more rational concern is how do we take back our educational system from the Progressive-Left. Turn it from a dumbed-down diploma-mill processing system, and return it to a system encouraging competition, comprehensive study, rational discourse, and merit-based advancement.

That's the best way to prevent the rise of both SJW radicalism, and future populist candidates. :coffeepap:

rocket88 said:

This doesn't refute the opinion that Trump is an overgrown child. In fact, it reinforces the idea.

Click to expand...

Yes, and . . . ?

Jack Hays said:

Yes, and . . . ?

Click to expand...

Just stating the obvious

rocket88 said:

Just stating the obvious

Click to expand...

That was the point of the OP.