Academentia in excelsis

It is fitting that a demented man should 'preside' over the decline and fall of our republic and in particular over the decline and fall of its once-great universities.  No one other than Joey B among American pols could better represent a nation in steep decline by every measure, a nation that has lost the will to defend its borders both on the ground and above it -- I allude to the Chinese spy balloons -- and to maintain domestic order within its borders. 

Here:

The Ohio State University is currently seeking a professor of “Philosophy of Race,” an area of expertise that includes “the epistemological significance of race or racism” and “race in the philosophy of science.” Its Department of Physics seeks a professor whose main focus is “issues relevant to educational equity.” And its Department of Anthropology recently sought an archaeologist whose work emphasizes “decolonization, feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and/or Indigenous ontologies.”

The sheer destructive lunacy of the DEI agenda reaches its apogee in the Physics Department's quest for a professor whose main focus (!) is on educational equity.  'Equity' is Wokespeak for equality of outcome or result. So the search is on for a candidate who will dumb down physics to the extent necessary to insure that each student, regardless of race or ethnicity gets the same grade, presumably an 'A.' For of course any other result would be -- wait for it -- racist! We are all equal in every respect, hence any inequality of outcome as between, say, Asians as a group and blacks as a group, can only be explained by the Original Sin of systemic, institutional racism visited upon us by the Founders.  (This is why the monuments to them must of course be destroyed.) 

And so physics, the least ideological of the natural sciences, must be ideologized, politicized, and racialized.

The insanity of this is evident. But what explains it?  We like to think of university faculty and administrators as intelligent and sane people.  So what's the explanation? Perhaps it is like this.

There is a hard-core of committed, strong-willed leftists who are positively evil and bent on destroying the USA and the West in general.  They enlist and manipulate a huge cadre of useful idiots and fellow-travelers who are not evil but are moral mediocrities who go along with the revolutionary vanguard for one or a combination of the following reasons: fear of losing their jobs and perquisites; laziness and inattention; a strong need to be liked and accepted; conformism; inability to think critically; misplaced white guilt; absorption in private life. 

Essential to my explanation is the conservative conviction that evil is a reality with deep metaphysical roots, and that some of our fellow mortals are, in the main, agents of evil.  They are few in number but very powerful due to their ability to manipulate half-way decent, timorous and ovine, moral mediocrities. The latter are the useful idiots and fellow-travelers, latter-day 'pinkos' if you will. 

Do you have a better explanation?  If so, I'd like to hear it.

Comments

[Joe Odegaard]

The Chi Com balloon might be carrying nasty things: bio weapons, EMP devices or who knows what else. That is why we should have taken it out over the Pacific. Balloons like these typically travel eastward at about 60 miles per hour. We therefore had about 3 days to intercept it before it crossed the west coast. The DoD and the CIC are derelict in their duty, if they are not actually internal enemies. The ballon is now over the continental USA. I think we should shoot it down now anyway, nasty things or not, because if China gets away with this, they will launch 1,000 of the things at one time and saturate our defenses. The only way to defend ourselves from these cheap weapons is to make the ChiComs fear us. But nobody fears Biden. Thus he is a threat to us. He should be removed ASAP.

[BV]

I agree entirely, Joe.

>> The DoD and the CIC are derelict in their duty, if they are not actually internal enemies.<<

We are in deep trouble. The Republican response is feeble (because hobbled by internal dissension) and comes too late in any case.

[Vito B. Caiati]

You are quite right about this, Bill. But let me just add one small point with regard to the followers of the evil ones who relentlessly seek to destroy the foundations of our nation and, indeed, of civilized life itself: They include, thanks to the elevation of subjective “truth” and “identity” to untouchable status, a goodly number of the mentally deranged. One sees this type of political, cultural, sexual wokester all over social media, where they spew out endless insanities and invectives of the kind that would have in the past justified psychiatric intervention. Speaking now with impunity, they make up an noticeable part of the vicious vanguard of the Left that debases rational public discourse. What is worse, these pazzi, have infiltrated entire professions (teachers, librarians, social workers, etc.), where they freely inflict endless harms on their respective clienteles, especially children.

[BV]

Vito,

Thanks for the valuable additions to what I wrote. Your use of pazzi, I take it, alludes to the Pazzi Conspiracy against the Medici. https://www.britannica.com/event/Pazzi-conspiracy

'Infiltration' is the right word. All of our institutions and all of our professions have been infiltrated by the wokesters with the DEI/DIE nonsense.

[Vito B. Caiati]

I will leave the Pazzi in peace and stick with pazzi as in crazy people.

[Joe Odegaard]

Pazzo: Etymology uncertain, but: • • • • • •  "Uncertain. Perhaps a Lombardic or Carolingian era borrowing from Old High German barrezzen (“to hate”) or maybe from French page (“page, serving boy”), probably via Neapolitan pazzë (compare French adage “être effronté comme un page”).Alternatively from Latin patiēns (“suffering”). Compare Sicilian pacciu."

Interesting that pazzo might derive from hating.

(from en.wiktionary.org)

[BV]

Would you gentlemen call pazzo, pazzi slang? I gather that it is not in the clinical psychologists preferred lexicon . . . .

[BV]

Bill Maher is great in this short video in which he lays bare the commie roots of wokery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysKhJ1U-vM&t=2s

[Joe Odegaard]

"Pazzo" is just a regular word in Italian, not even slang. I have an Italian friend who thinks that the English slang word, "nuts," meaning crazy, is very funny, & so sometimes she will say, in Italian, that someone is "noccioline." ( Noce means nut in Italian). It's hilarious.

[BV]

Joe,

I was going to ask you whether 'nuts' which is slang in English when used to mean crazy is the counterpart of 'pazzo' in Italian. You answered my question.

Now click on the Maher link!

[Joe Odegaard]

I put the Maher link up over at "FB." I'll tell you what reaction it gets.

[Joe Odegaard]

Well Maher's link has been up on my "FB" page, visible to 281 friends, for one whole day, and not a peep. That is funny, because some of my friends are lefties, and Maher is a darling of the left.

[BV]

Joe,

FB is a vanity site, which is why no decent discussion is likely to occur there. Are you still in touch with the Powell woman? Or did she block you?

I take it you are at odds with your immediate family in respect of political matters. Too bad, if true.

[Joe Odegaard]

Oh yes, I am still in touch with her. She's a dear person, a horse lady and an animal lover. FB is a good way for people to mutually support each other.