When I got my Master's in history, our professors ran the political gamut. The professor I primarily studied under was a union worker and an old socialist (a dying breed these days), pretty awesome dude. But we had monarchists, conservatives, liberals, etc. They also kept their politics to themselves and evaluated us based on our ideas, evidence, sources, etc.
The thing with history is that there are many critiques to it and a leftist critique is a valid way of analyzing the influences of disparity and inequality which influenced a certain event. All critiques, be they leftist, conservative, economic, feminist, gender, etc (except post modernist, fuck them) have their place. The problem is when you view everything through one specific critique, as certain events like the Rwandan genocide or the wars of the Congo which were ethnically motivated conflicts, don't have much to do with their areas of analysis.
We had a week of heavy postmodernist reading and it was hell. Foucault was annoying to read but Derrida was abysmal. I swear our professor gave us them to torture us.
Things to never do: click on a warhammer lore video, eat chipotle before running a race, ask Foucault what he did in Tunisia.
He and others signed petitions to remove age of consent laws.
That I really don't like post-modernists and advocating deconstructivism puts them out of a job and is ridiculous without offering something to replace it with.
Nah, you're thinking of an experiment by physicist Léon Foucault. We're talking about postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault.
I used his writings on panopticons in an essay about facial recognition, and found out about the paedo shit later, God I fucking hate this man.
How amazing is it that Foucault spent his entire career writing about the relationship between power and knowledge, and power dynamics, and how they get used to exercise social control, and *still* tried to justify fucking kids?
Postmodernism is so fucking stupid. "Two unemployed pricks didn't like life during the beginning of the industrial revolution, so you know that part of history, the only one where human technological and livelihood exploded at a rate of like x1000%? Yeah, we're gonna hafta artificially end that early. Things will be better after we do. Pinky promise."
> When I got my Master's in history, our professors ran the political gambit. The professor I primarily studied under was a union worker and an old socialist (a dying breed these days), pretty awesome dude. But we had monarchists, conservatives, liberals, etc. They also kept their politics to themselves and evaluated us based on our ideas, evidence, sources, etc.
I had the same experience getting my Bachelor of Science in history (before deciding to quit while I was head and now I work blue collar). Most of my professors were even able to slap their own side when the situation warranted, with my favorite example from that being my professor from when I took my class dedicated to WW1 history. The professor in question was an expert on the French military of the time (and had lived for years in France and knew enough French to read first-hand documents), and he spent the entire class extoling the French and then slapping the Americans when they got involved as being incompetent blowhards.
Then when the end came and he is giving his breakdown of post WW1 winners and losers, he says the biggest winner was America and the biggest loser was France. But not just in the typical ways that you would expect (as in, France was invaded and had land destroyed, US was flush with money from everyone buying weapons), but even including and especially on the Military front. Where the US generals were some of the only ones to see beyond Trench warfare and think of new tactics and strategies, and that much of their "incompetence" was them attempting to use these tactics too far ahead of what the technology could do. Meanwhile, the French and British became locked in their trenches so long they forgot how to do anything other than fight in a trench. And so he ultimately concluded that, especially in terms of doctrine and theory, the US was one of the best prepared armies for WW2. "I bet you didnt expect that after this semester", which got some laughs out of the class.
The other one I liked (on the opposite end of the scale) was when it came time for graduation, the Dean for the college came and met with those of us graduating. And while talking with us about other things, he added in "Now remember, when you are down there you are going to be surrounded by a bunch of godless Communist who probably forgot how to even do the national anthem. So you are going to have to hold their hands and guide them along."
It, along with good experiences in high school, was part of why I didnt buy into the idea that schools had been taken over by radical Leftist. Before realizing (in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that I had just gotten lucky and really started to be thankful for the fact that both my high school and university had mandatory in-class debate as graded aspects that had to be done.
I am jealous of your WWI class, that sounds amazing. My MA program had a rotating The Great War/WWII class and I was fortunate enough to take the second class. The professor was peerless and him and his Polish wife (also a history professor) were tour guides at Birkenau over the summers.
I think the radical left professors depend on where you are and the departments. I think a lot of it is hysteria, but I did have to take a few classes in the English department since I was teaching English 101/102 and holllly shit they were fucking insane. That's a sample size of 1 though.
My read of the whole "How radical are colleges" debate is that while some of my fellow Right-wingers overblow the situation, it is still enough to be a problem worth addressing. I do agree it is very much a matter of location and department though rather than a case of the colleges themselves being the issue. Even within the same state that can be that case.
For instance, my alma mater of Kansas State University was, like I said, pretty moderate and had a good run of professors from across the spectrum as well as debate being strongly encouraged in every class and the student code (again, so much so debate was a graded aspect of your final score). This was further helped by our biggest colleges being College of Agriculture and College of Engineering, which I am sure you can guess draws a very different kind of college student from the stereotypes.
But just down the highway in Lawrence, University of Kansas is so hardcore it leads to local jokes about how it should be known as "Portland on the Plains" (a riff on Kansas City's nickname as "Paris on the Plains") or "The Peoples Republic of Lawrence." But even with that, it doesnt stop the KU Medical Center from being one of the most advanced and cutting edge medical programs in the country.
I think the worst of it right now though is the Ivy League schools, as demonstrated at the moment with the goings on at Columbia, but I would just as much attribute that to them being rich schools where luxury beliefs are encouraged as anything else.
lol
I agree with your comment, though. You can’t be a well-informed person if you’re unwilling to consider the merits of opposing arguments. The modern academic environment of hyper-leftism that refuses to acknowledge anything but strawman caricatures of right-wing thought is the reason Ben Shapiro and his contemporaries were able to make careers out of videos where they dunk on clueless undergrads.
This is something I've observed in my personal life. More often than not, I find myself agreeing with my leftist friends about the problems facing our society.
More often than not, I find myself *staunchly* opposed to their proposed solutions.
Harrison Bergeron yet again.
Equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcomes.
George W. Bush's "Soft bigotry of low expectations" shaping is long in the rearview mirror....
Now it's about not letting kids take algebra in 8th grade so they won't have calculus down by graduation, in the name of equity.
Your comment reminds me of the excellent podcast series [Sold A Story](https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/). The series focuses on childhood literacy, a subject which GWB had personal interest in and potentially good policy on. However, (minor spoiler): >! many educators rejected his initiatives to help children read simply because those initiatives came from the GWB administration they despised, resulting in poorer outcomes for their students. !<
While ignoring 2016 election to the 2020 election where dems said it was stolen
Or the 2000 election to present day where dems say that election was stolen.
It's almost painful seeing how close they are to being based sometimes. Then, the solution is proposed, and the facepalm follows.
If government caused the problem, the answer is *not* more government.
I never understand this either. Leftist are always the most pro and simultaneously anti government people I've ever seen. For example, they bring up the fact that the government horribly mismanages our healthcare system then proposes that we use that same government to manage it another way. If you own a restaurant and your manager is ass at his job you don't suggest he try a different way to manage, you fire him.
The government can’t get mail delivered at breakeven how the hell are they going to provide healthcare to all citizens and illegals? Ask these questions and gear up for madness
The leftist response to how poorly the post office is run is typically that it's a public service and public services shouldn't need to make a profit because they help people.
I can understand and even somewhat respect where they're coming from, but I disagree that the government has any right to [use a gun to build a library](https://youtu.be/BUjzrS6jwiw?t=73) (or to deliver mail).
Leftist is just really funny to me, I agree with my socialist girlfriend and my leftist friends about how corrupt and evil the government and corporations are, but their solution is always to give the government or organizations more power like that'll fix the issue
Some of them yes. But many are super wealthy and have no idea how the 99% actually lives.
There’s actually a guy who wants to create a communist society in the US and he’s the son of the late Ann Cox Chambers. The Cox family has been very rich and powerful for decades. This guy has no idea what or how the rest of the world truly lives because he’s never had to experience it
Yeah, it's a very bizarre dynamic. I find myself just keeping my mouth shut most of the time, because I'm exhausted by constantly being the sole dissenting voice. But like you, I find that I'm not so frequently opposed to the idea that X, Y, and Z are problems. It's just that 99% of the time someone points these things out, they proceed to say some incredibly stupid shit about how to fix it. So I've gotten to the point where I groan internally when I hear someone point these things out as problems, even though I generally agree.
There are a many more bad ideas out in the world than good ones. A system that rewards new ideas is guaranteed to generate mostly bad ideas. This is even worse for theories. A lot of theories sound great in the abstract, but fall apart once put into practice.
There needs to be a built in way to weed out bad ideas. There also needs to be a way to weed out bad theories by testing them out on a small scale.
Good luck getting any academic to admit their ideas are bad and their theories would never work. Academics is a field that advances one funeral at a time, as bad ideas only die off with those who believe them.
Given that people are apparently responding to "leftist lines of thinking" with reformism I would also hazard a guess that OOP is a revolutionary leftist, which probably gives people good reason to steer clear
Ding Ding Ding
I have an old acquaintance whose solution to anything was global revolution.
She is part of MLPD and was very focused on climate change.
We would be discussing ways to address that (me being a proponent of nuclear power) and she would simply reject anything that wasn’t “global system change”.
I realized it was the cart pulling the horse here.
No solution that didn’t involve system change was interesting, because system change was apparently the more powerful motivator.
Of course you don’t like a solution that could involve private industry that requires a lot of accumulated capital.
My favorite are the 'what will your job be after the revolution?' people who say that they'll just chill out in a commune somewhere... Totally detached from the overwhelming amount of work that has to be done after the revolution.
An outsider who visited a real life commune bailed when they saw the commune people canning cucumbers. No focus on having enough grain and calorific tubers to actually last the winter.
> No solution that didn’t involve system change was interesting, because system change was apparently the more powerful motivator.
Ah yes. And when you point out how in 99.99999% of all of history, this has always been a massive disaster resulting in massive casualties and then a WORSE system, I'm guessing the reply was something along the lines of "this time it will work"?
If they’re deeply devoted to theory they’ll go “that’s why Marx describes a perpetual revolution”, and if they’re really spicy they’ll pair that with “and perpetual revolutionary terror”.
Which I suppose avoids getting stuck in a new, worse system… by means of staying in the “chaos with massive casualties and no productivity” part indefinitely.
Observing that the world is not perfect *while being a leftist* is valid, but is just as valid as it is trivial for everyone else.
*Leftist analysis* is actually extremely ridiculous, and is not valid as a form of reasoning.
Depends on how you define it.
What the fuck is happening with that big Ukraine war package? A handout to the military industrial complex.
To me, that's actually leftist analysis. It's looking at politics through the lens of "What are the interests of the elites?"
That's not so much leftist analysis as it is elite-motivation-analysis.
Leftist analysis is a very real thing referenced in the original tweet. it refers to critical theory, where everything is an oppressor/oppressed narrative, its a baby of marxist structuralist thinking, very postmodern, etc.
There is no equivalent on the right. Imagine if 90% of university professors were conservative and most all followed this academic school of analysis influenced by Ayn Rand or something where all of history is analyzed by looking at religious people vs non religious people, where non religious people are said to be a danger to society and the problem. You got fish for school lunch? This is actually religious oppression by the atheist elite. You're working at the fast food joint down the road? That's because the atheists have historically Had Power which religious people have not had. That bridge in New Jersey? Its existence is religious oppression, because fewer religious people drive on it.
It's really, really bad. People don't realize how bad it is because it's the norm.
Not so much that, as "Why is America supporting Ukraine? Well, the military industrial complex hasn't had a boost in a very long time. Clearly, involvement in Ukraine is to the benefit of the military industrial complex."
That sort of thing. The interests of the powerful elite driving policy.
It's probably a bad example, though, exactly because leftists/progressives aren't using that argument right now. Biden is too complicit.
To me that's precisely an example of the kind of thinking that so often makes leftist analysis *bad*.
Ascribing a "real", morally loaded motive to every unfavorable position, one that fits a predefined narrative, rather than addressing a more complex or less "exciting" reality.
"Why do people oppose minimum wage? Because they want to maintain a permanent underclass."
"Why do people oppose abortion? To control women."
"Why don't politicians vote for universal healthcare? Because they're bought out by insurance lobbyists."
Parts of the right obviously do this too, but it's fundamental to so much leftist thought - looking at issues through X "lens". Surprise, when you intentionally look at everything through a red lens, everything looks red.
Simply *conceiving* of a "negative" motivation for a position or state of affairs seems sufficient to demand opposition to it. In practice it's just adding morally loaded post hoc rationale for an already-held belief. I already want X thing, let me think of all the evil reasons anyone wouldn't want that. Strange, I suddenly feel like such a morally better person that anyone who doesn't want X.
It's good for the MIC, but on a global strategic level, it's taking down a major opponent without having to shed American blood. Us vs Russia will result in massive weapons we don't want launched flying back and forth. Ukraine as a proxy? We get to bleed out enemy and keep our hands clean, it's like having our cake and eating it too.
The money isn't going to destroy Russia (or it's military). The point of the package is to bind Russia in the war without ending it. It's not obvious whether tying Russia in Ukraine is the goal or a bonus to the other goal (supporting MIC).
For example, The Bradley and Abrams would make huge impact in summer 2022. After liberating Kharkiv, Ukrainians had open fields in front of them with demoralized Russian troops waiting to give up or run away. US refused to give them the tools to finish the job, because "Biden didn't want to humiliate Russia, which would be bad for peace negotiations". The offensive stalled and gave the Russians time to build trenches, lay mines, and mobilize new waves of recruits.
Tanks and IFVs started arriving in Ukraine in 2023 when it was too late to use them effectively. They aren't designed to attack fortified positions through minefields. Ukrainians need proper field engineers to clear mines, but to do that safely they also need overwhelming artillery power or full airspace control. So now they are waiting for some 20 year old jets. By the time they get those, Russians will saturate the frontlines with AA batteries.
US is spending a lot of money on not solving the problems. It's money well spent, if you ask MIC.
Ironically, analyzing stakeholder incentives hews closer to orthodox economic analysis, and is not (and should not be) confined to analyzing the incentives of rich people.
Leftist analysis is much more rigid and seeks to fit events to strong prior assumptions about the world, which are very crude and often require you to torturously rationalize away what is obvious rather than admit that your prior assumptions have serious limitations.
This is in part why leftists texts are *so fucking long and confusing,* because they are often stuck trying to work around pretty basic disconfirming facts instead of admitting that the premise is fatally falwed.
In your example, for instance, how does the leftist account for elites who oppose those aid packages? How can two diametrically opposed positions both serve the interests of a group that is treated as a monolith? They really can't, because you're stuck viewing everything through a worker/oppressor dichotomy. So you would have to concoct reasons that dissenting elites are still working to preserve the power of their *class*, even though the supposed members of that class are not behaving remotely as such.
Similarly, how does the leftist handle dissenting opinions among the supposed monolithic worker class? Opinions which do not align with socialist revolution are merely discarded as the product of phenomena like "false consciousness" (as opposed to critical consciousness or class consciousness). Which is basically a fancy way of saying "Everyone who doesn't agree with me is just stupid or too brainwashed to know what they're saying. I can't be wrong and nobody can possibly disagree in good faith."
Class should definitely one of the many tools in the toolbox used to analyze society. When you let it be the only perspective though, you end up with some pretty braindead takes.
Anyways, society is largely divided between the working class and the professional managerial class at this point. Marx's dichotomy is less relevant at this point.
Which is why they switched from class to race and sex.
None of those are really the tools in the toolbox though. Oppressed/oppressor is the tool. Class/race/sex is the paint on the wall. It's never been about any of those three things. Even when class was a bigger deal, it was that way because it was the most convenient aspect to rally around. Women weren't part of the official workforce. There were a lot more white people in western countries. So those were less focused on. Then once the middle class became a thing, now there's at least 3 classes, all of which have different interests than the other. Add more variables to the equation, and it gets more complicated to figure out.
Speaking of which; intersectionality...
I have always found that it's the leftists who do the best job at announcing that there's a problem. Us on the right trend to be more willing to accept the status quo.
But the leftist solutions are usually insane. And once the right wakes up to the problem, their solution is what works.
Take Karl Marx, the big cheese himself. In the Communist Manifesto, he correctly identified several very real problems with European life. The class struggle was real. Europe was making the slow transition from Feudalism to Capitalism and the power wasn't changing hands from the monarchs before. It was just going from birthright to the giant piles of money. They were very good reasons to hate capitalism in Europe at that time.
Karl Marx's proposed solution, however, was batshit insanity. What worked was the American version of the rapid transition to capitalism. And it completely diffused the Communist argument.
The left sees inequality and devises a short-sighted, irrational solution (either based on greed or misplaced empathy) that exacerbates the problem. A progressive's sworn duty is to change the natural order of things.
The right sees inequality and says 'this is the natural order of things'.
This is part of it. In a healthy society the left accurately points out the injustices and who is getting left behind. They aggregate the new ideas as well.
Who does anyone want actually administering a new institution? Who do we want enacting solutions? People who are business trained, fiscally responsible and probably alot more hard nosed. In a healthy society thats a conservative.
I disagree, unfortunately Marx is a person who seems to make a good point until you look closer and see that he is making a completely different point that is in actuality batshit insane.
Whenever he is right, he is right for the completely wrong reasons, and that causes him to interpret his criticisms in a completely batshit insane manner. His class warfare idea is kind of like that, you would think that Marx is saying that rich people in power are using their power to fuck over others, but that isn't really the claim he is making. The actual claim is a weird semi-religious belief of something akin to historical destiny through the process of Hegelian dialectics. Communism is not so much a solution to capitalism, but a historic destiny of humanity, the end of history, the last system we will make and a system that will be completely perfect. Marx sees Capitalism not as an enemy, but just a stepping stone on the way to perfection that has overstayed it's welcome.
>unfortunately Marx is a person who seems to make a good point until you look closer and
.....realize it's all built on the Labor Theory of Value.
Top notch rant tho, upvoted.
Nah, calling it LTV is doing a disservice to how bizarre Marx's ideas of value are. Yes it is similar, but it isn't the same. His idea is that value comes not from your labour, but the labour of an entire group seen as one. To him labour of an individual isn't what's valuable, but the labour of a factory is. He does this with this bizarre abstraction where he can be seen as technically correct, but his idea of value is just useless for any serious economical analysis, and talks about it in the first couple of pages of Das Capital, which is insane as I've never seen a man fuck his own point so badly immediately after starting writing.
>His idea is that value comes not from your labour, but the labour of an entire group seen as one.
Fair. And that clearly that infects leftist/progressive thinking.
One of my big things is this: Yeah, I actually get "intersectionality" but....thinking it through, when enough intersections are taken, *we end up back with the individua*l.
It's a tool in my kit, though, and it has been useful in the past.
My girlfriend grew up poor. Dirt poor. Kentucky hill people poor.
She was at a dinner with a classy and educated black woman who went to literal finishing school, who was being lectured at by some basic white chick about white privilege.
Some things just can't be made up.
Although I did end up watching Lindsay, that's not where I got that idea from. I got it from reading Nietzsche and other existentialists, basically going "Oh, so if we assume that our issues come from people clinging to religious ideas and a lack of meaning in their lives/seeking perfection where there is none, then wouldn't it make sense that political ideologies are like the new religions?"
Then I read a bit of Marx, a bit of Hitler, came across Lindsay and that kind of confirmed my suspicions on that. It might be confirmation bias, but so far I've seen pretty good arguments and proof that authoritarian movements should in general be seen through the lens of religion. Hell, even collectivism itself with the idea of "Humans are part of a greater organism" could be constructed as a religious belief where the collective takes place of God.
> Hell, even collectivism itself with the idea of "Humans are part of a greater organism" could be constructed as a religious belief where the collective takes place of God.
Spot on.
And the traditional leftist communists holds collectivevism over and above all individuals to such level, that they are willing to sacrifice and kill the individual - but totally forgetting (or purposely forgetting, to gain more power) that all collectives are made up of individuals.
Which will always result in the total destruction of the collective, as they kill off all the individuals in their quest for more power.
There's a practical reason religion and civilization are pretty intertwined. Even the Earth being 6,000 years old thing, that's generally the age of civilized life, give or take a few years here or there.
If you're trying to get people to do stuff, you have to give them a reason. Since capitalism wasn't around yet, we can use God's glory, or promises in the afterlife.
Unfortunately for Marxist lefties, humans started in small tribes, and we survived that way for a long time. Mass society is only possible with cheap energy, in one form or another. Had humans started in a global society, communism might be easier to implement. We were molded by the tight-knit smaller groups in a battle of wits against whatever nature throws at us though. While that's a scale that communism could work at, the problem for communism is competition. If the next tribe over is going to maximize whatever advantage they can, and then expand, they're going to come into contact with you eventually. Could be good, could be bad.
I think the fact that Marx is anti-bourgeoisie instead of anti-nobility is proof that he and everyone after him fell for some basic upper class propaganda. The bourgeoisie was originally just the richer more educated section of the French 3rd estate. Doctors and lawyers and shit. People who could actually competently defend the 3rd estates demands. So the upper class changes the system from nobility, then clergy, then everyone else to a system based on income thereby separating the estate in 2. The 1st and 2nd estates are now together in the upper class but now the factory workers and the doctors are in separate classes so the factory workers instead begin to hate the middle class basically just because the upper class told them to
Yep, people forget that the actual driving forces of the French Revolution were the bourgeois class. Wealthy and educated but without the social standing and capacity of the nobility. The average peasant could never fight his own revolution, because after the bloodshed you need leaders who can actually read, write and think. That's why it has always been a fight between the upper class and the middle class with the lower class as pawns. The middle class becomes the new upper class but the lower class never changes. This is, in fact, literally 1984.
The best thing liberal capitalism ever did was giving a shot and becoming wealthy to everyone, because before that, if you ain't born to the right family, no matter your skill, you'll always stay a peasant.
Nice take and well worded. He seems like he knows what he's on about until you start to deconstruct what he's actually saying. His idea of classes is weird. Like you say one would think he'd say that rich people use their power and influence to fuck others. But he for some reason doesn't equate wealth with class, rather its the weirdly arbitrary means of production that is the definer. If you were a global mining tycoon with thousands of employees and millions in your bank account and I ran a hotdog stand with one employee and a few hundred in my bank account you and I would be in the same class while our employees would be in another. Despite the fact that I would have more in common with your employees than you. And if my employee saved his salary and bought himself his own hotdog stand through his own labor he would become a bourgeoisie as well. The small time homesteader would be just as bourgeoisie as the mega farmers.
So yea he is right, there is a class issue. But since his definition of classes are weird his criticism become as you say batshit insane. Right for the wrong reasons. And this type of deconstruction can be applied to pretty much all of his ideas and concepts.
Well that’s not quite right. You’d be in the same class as the global mining tycoon if you owned the factory farms and processing plants where the hot dogs and buns were made. Just a small nitpick but otherwise what you’re saying is right. And his weird arbitrary classifications are extra hilarious when you consider how bad his fans are at understanding or interpreting them. I always get a kick out of people saying “Eat the rich” about doctors or lawyers lol. Like, you know those people will become homeless just as fast as you if they stop working, right?
Is that where the hypothesis originated that negative rights are but a stepping stone to creating advanced societies, and the measure of advanced societies is their belief in positive rights?
>One also could argue that while leftist critiques and analysis are valid, that doesn't necessarily mean that leftist solutions are.
Came here to say this.
It's an "is" vs. "ought" thing.....or in academic speak, analytical vs. normative.
And let's be clear about things, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street weren't exactly at loggerheads.
Didn't you know that Tomb Raiding is problematic now? Fucking colonizers doing their archaeology and shit.
https://www.tombraiderchronicles.com/headlines4855.html
Sounds like they are trying to get girls to play tomb raider. The game is no longer about finding 'things' but about how Lara feels about her self. That's a pretty sharp pivot and I don't think it will work.
Women already play the Tomb Raider games. What they are doing is catering to their investment masters to get that sweet, sweet ESG money. Short term gains are going to cause long term problems with their actual fan base that made it what it is today.
I'm looking at you, GW!
Lara Croft is an *inherently* based character. White, Anglo, actual nobility, archeologist/explorer who saves third worlders in their own countries. Honestly, I liked the attempts to shoehorn woke into tombraider games--it was funny to see them *try*.
Or a stargate byried in Egypt (or Antartica) that allows humanity to travel to new worlds instantly! Hopefully they dont encounter any unsavory characters along the way.
It’s not about sending a message, it’s about injecting that message into your brain and silencing any possible opposition to that message.
You will learn to be obedient to the .01% that way you can be easily ruled by a different.01%
Close to 0. It would have been useful when I started because my dad is rather afluent and could have got me a job in the financial sector (my brother's becoming a stock broker with a philosophy degree, ahha) but I've cut things off with my dad and would rather work remotely so I can be lazy.
I do really enjoy the Ancient History part though.
Since nobody here seems to have given you a real answer, as the son of an archeologist/anthropologist, let me fill you in:
Generally speaking when you go in for that kind of degree you either:
- Continue on into academia. Get a P.H.D. and become a professor (that's what my dad did). Being a professor is a life of _genteel poverty_ as my dad always used to say (and his too, who was also a professor); as in, it's not a particularly lucrative career, but it still brings your family into the social-stratum of the intelligentsia and often endows the family with some sense of cosmopolitanism. People who are genuinely interested in ancient cultures or the study of society in general often go this path, as it allows them to conduct actual research into those topics in exchange for a profession as an educator.
- Go into contract archeology. At least where I live, when someone buys some land or a property (or the government wants to utilize land they own), and intend to alter that property, it's sometimes necessary from a legal perspective to ascertain whether or not there's any archeologically relevant material on the site first. That can mean digging up and surveying an area to ensure that you're not damaging some important land that has valuable insights into our past (not to mention the touchy subject of building/farming/mining on land that indigenous peoples of the past buried their ancestors on). This can also extend to architecture, where certain buildings may actually be worth trying to preserve to the extent that we can; ascertaining whether or not this is the case involves professionals who can accurately determine what's worth preserving. This path is also more lucrative financially; being a contract archeologist, depending on the niche you specialize in can pay pretty well...
Hope this satisfies your curiosity, feel free to ask any other questions about this profession if you have em'...
Thanks! Not completely satisfied, as illustrated by your examples the motivations and priorities of the one seeking that degree are quite important, but very informative nonetheless.
And you're relatively insulated from the worst of it in the Classics. I was a classical archaeology major as well, and when I did my field school with a bunch of anthropology majors, I realized how comparatively moderate the Classics guys were.
That sort of thing was very common back when I was studying history and literature in university circa 2011
In the class on historiography, they'd teach you about different schools of thought in historiography, for example Marxist / Marxian school of thought
In literature, you'd have a class on literary theory where they'd teach you different schools of thought or 'lenses' for analysing literature, for example Marxist/Marxian, Feminist, Postcolonial, 'Queer', Post-modernist, Ecofeminist, etc. Basically all of them rooted pretty firmly in left-wing thought
Everyone important in history was actually gay, trans, black, or some combination of those. Or it was actually a woman’s work all along and the white man stole it.
Also any institution that could be considered “white” is always bad and oppressive etc.
Another guy asked the same thing too, here's my answer. I'm kind of sad of how many there actually are just off the op of my head
"The university I'm at publishes its own workbook to give you a good enough insight into the module before you read external sources. Particuarly in the archaeology side, very often they include sections on Feminist and Marxist theory, and any sort of old school theory is generally strongly discouraged. Also they just go on about silly shit. I remember one workbook providing a paragraph on why they use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD because it has something like "heavily Western connontations". I'm in an English univeristy, studying primarily Western ancient cultures, and BCE and AD cover the exact same time period. It literally still runs on the Anno Domini and Before Christ calender to the day; if they want to waste time looking up a new system to say the exact same thing then fine, but I'm not going to, and you get the distinct impression they are pushing you to do so.
Also they tell you not to refer to Rome as she or something. Like, you can't do it for lingustic flair "Rome truly died with a whimper, her old days of pride were gone." These are all just from my course as well. The worst one I ever saw was where each candidate for the Student Union wrote a short paragraph on why you should vote for them. One guy said something directly like "I am black and gay so you have two reasons to vote for me." I pissed myself and then regained my composure and was rather sad."
Thanks for the answer!
Wow, it's worse than I thought! It's a shame how people try to impose modern theories on ancient people, while disregarding what those ancient people actually thought...this is why I tend to prefer first hand sources or sources written closer to the time period.
More often than not, my history teachers have been rightists. It's definitely common for English teachers to be libleft straight into hell though. You get an assignment based on an open ended question with no right answer but you get an F if it doesnt have a 99% match with their political beliefs
Honestly, I have a love-hate relationship with lib lit teachers for this reason. While it kinda sucks that you can't write what you really think, I hate writing shit for grades anyways so I can always just put down some subpar drivel and just make sure to include some lib ideas in there, maybe play on my race a little, and let those easy As roll in.
What always confused me was leftist economics professors. Austrian economics just makes sense. But I had professors teaching Keynesian economics with a straight face.
Getting through college in a far-left city was brutal.
Keynesian economics is saddly dominate in general. Its the model the government uses and even right wingers think in terms of it (though they typically have ideas more friendly to classical economics than the left).
I’ve had a solid mix of left and right leaning history teachers but what I loved about all of them is that they only brought politics into it when it was relevant to teach or there was something outside of class they were promoted to discuss. All of them left everything with room for interpretation (tbh didn’t even know one of my teachers leaned right until after his class)
Back in Junior High, me and a buddy did English papers about a president we thought was great - mine was Dubya Bush and his was Obama. I had gotten better grades on my papers in that class than he did. I got a C and he got an A lol.
Nah, I was asked a question in a Cuba history class on a test to the effect of “did Fidel Castro accomplish his goals of modernizing Cuba and providing…” my answer was “well he did, but the second they stopped getting propped up by Argentina and USSR he had to turn back to capitalism, so the system didn’t work and is fundamentally flawed. All “gains” made through Communism were short-lived at best, meaning the only thing he actually accomplished was ousting the Mafia.” I got an A
My regard for the educated class collapsed when I figured out that higher ed is really just one big exercise in people-pleasing and not skills, knowledge, merit.
>Damn, this comment made me question that higher ed might actually be preparing students for the workforce.
Hiring for engineers:
* No degree or bachelors degree from community college: invite for standard interview with skills test
* Bachelors from fancy or ivy league college: intense phone screen to make sure they are not total waste of time before considering to invite for interview
* Masters Degree: Red Flag. phone screen, check references, ask about details of past work experience and double check prior employment history, more intense skills testing, lower starting salary offer
* PHD: dont return their call, already know they are useless and have no hope of passing a basic skills test
It was better when I went to college, '08 to '12.
It was a bigger state school. There was some leftism, to be sure, and one of my favorite professors was a leftist. She loved my writing, though, not least because I pulled no punches.
What's going on these days....I just don't know. I'd like to think that it's mostly the "elite" colleges, but I just don't know.
I went to a college in a small red state. Weirdly, the teachers political leanings were all over the place. Go to one class where the teacher is a preachy leftist, than I go to the next class where the teacher is talking about the overreach of the federal government and the history of it.
My political science 101 class was with Michael Garcia. He said, at one point, "I will never vote for another tax increase, ever."
At the end of our time together, he said, "OK, class, I am supposed to be non-partisan when I teach this. How many of you think I'm a Democrat? A Republican? An independent"
It was about 1/3 each.......he shook his head in disappointment.
"I told you people I'll never vote in another tax increase. Just because I'm Hispanic, it doesn't mean I'm a Democrat! Pay attention!!!"
I was just one year behind you and a business major at an SEC school. I can only remember one instance of hearing anything leftist (or political at all really) and that was from my intro to anthropology professor when he talked shit about libertarianism.
Different times though. Politics didn't rule anyone's life back then and it was never the cool thing to talk about. Hell, I don't think I even knew any of my friend's political leanings until the height of the 2012 election, and I didn't even vote lol.
I just wanna say, I went to college in my late 30's, so I had a different experience.
The combination of "feeds" driven by "AIs" smart enough to serve up individualized content along with a certain orange man changed ***everything***.
So, you abolish the system, what happens after skilled labour drops in value and education drops even worse since it doesn't serve purpose of social elevator anymore, professionals leave to seek their fortune somewhere else and business relocate thier capital somewhere else to avoid government control?
"The only way we can make this work is by ensuring you have literally nowhere to escape!"
"We are good people and this definitely isnt an evil ideology!"
In my history masters program if you weren't at least a little bit Marxist you wouldn't have a seat at the table. Behind closed doors, when they assume everyone agrees with them, they do actually hate white people, men, and Western civilization.
One of my favorite projects ever was applying their own methods to call them racist for the way modern academia treats a guy named Elaudah Equiano, an 18th century former slave who became a well known Christian evangelist, author, and royal governor, and a woman named Phyllis Wheatley, an early American poet who was also a former slave.
I can understand where they are coming from, you can't retort Leftism or Marxism rationally, it's not a rational theory, it's a religious faith.
Literally, nothing Marx or his followers have put into their "theory" is novel or useful. What useful concepts they abuse is from better ideological frameworks (labor alienation is honestly the only thing I can really think of atm) and the rest is just garbage observation with a whole host of bias and fallacies.
>labor alienation
Is based on the Labor Theory of Value. The canonical example: an apple on a tree has no value. If you pick the apple, you have added value because now you can give it to others to eat.
If someone buys the tree, hires you to pick the apple, and sells the apple for more than they paid you, you have been "alienated" from your labor, as measured by the delta of what you were paid for picking and the sale price of the apple.
The Marginalist Revolution blew all that out of the water. What a thing is worth is a combination of objective scarcity and subjective desirability.
That's why it's important to reject those particular old white men who wrote books.
Marx used the Hegelian idea the dialectic to describe stages of history. To Marx, Communism is an inevitable future stage of history, much in the same way feudalism and capitalism was. I will not go into Hegel's full theory because it is convoluted as heck.
So basically, Marx sees Communism as an inevitable stage of history. A natural outgrowth of capitalistic societies which will eventually break out into revolution.
Marx is essentially describing himself as a prophet who foresaw the inevitable utopian state of the world brought about by the messianic workers in the proletariat. This is similar to how Christians see the return of Jesus to be inevitable.
Wow, check out this specimen's post history.
EDIT: account is suspended, but they posted in subs themed around "Black New World Order" or BNWO. *Best* case scenario, they're an edgy teenager who's obsessed with "irony".
yeah unfortunately if you learn the art of dick sucking and riding it can be real easy to get good grades in the interpretive studies.
unfortunately I hate interpretive studies for precisely that reason and am terribly weak to bait.
fortunately I was actually pretty bright and smart so could logically hold my ground on most things, didn't stop lectures and shit from downgrading me for no justifiable reason. all you need to do is continuously report them for mis-grading you, cite concrete reasons but without speculation unless you wanna drop some buzz words they fucking love that. it's important to correctly document every instance individually rather than try to collate it into one thing, try not to speculate on personal reasons either.
I had a disagreement with a English lecture back in collage because she noticed that whenever I was asked to analyse shit I would perfectly write something evidently contrary to what was asked (as in the paper would steer or lead the analysis in one direction and I would specifically choose to go another), it would still be written perfectly so would always meet the requirement it would just fuck off whoever was grading it.
Interpretive fields of study are just straight up indoctrination at this point. It isn't about interpreting stuff yourself and defending it, it is about learning to see things the way the PROFESSORS want you to see them, and learning to regurgitate their talking points.
I would have not had the patience you did. I went into engineering.
I didn't have the patience for it either and went into cyber sec, but it turns out a world ending apocalypse make it really hard to study so now I do sec.
When I took the SAT it was one of the first years they were trying out adding an essay portion. I assumed that whoever was grading it would be a lefty, so I wrote the laziest, most stereotypical (at the time) essay basically about how terrible George Bush was. It was utter dogshit in terms of quality or logic.
I got 1 point short of the maximum possible grade.
Depends on the type of leftism. Progressivism is more of a privileged ideas but you can find labour unions, socialists and communists even in the poorest part of the world.
It's clear that there's a divide between what Leftism *is* and what it *claims* to be.
Take Marx and Engels, for instance. One was a spoiled and lazy rich dude who mooched off family and friends his entire life, and the other was a rich dude who ran his father's factories and didn't let his workers own their means of production.
I see what you’re saying and I can agree to a point. But not all left wing people are part of academia or upper middle class champagne socialists.
There are left wing folk who are part of the class leftism claims to represent and they are not in an ivory tower reading theory.
I think there are definitely useful idiots, to be sure. Hasan's fanbase of teens and young adults funding the lifestyle of a sycophantic nepobaby, for example.
But, at the same time, if you asked those same people to describe themselves - I guarantee many of them would use terms like "educated" and/or "intelligent". So in that sense they *are* in a proverbial ivory tower...*in their own minds, anyway*, lol.
Yeah, if you go over to liberalgunowners, you'll probably get someone throwing the "under no pretext" quote at you at some point.
Of course, they conveniently forget the part where said workers are disarmed after the new government is installed.
Well it has more to do with the fact that they sat to the left of the king in the first French parliament during the revolutionary times.
If they had sat on the right side we’d be calling them rightists.
But those who advocated for it ran the gamut from the poorest of society to the extremely well off and highly educated.
Ask 10 random blue collar workers what political issues are most important to them and then ask the same question to 10 random liberal arts professors.
Then tell me which group's opinions fall into Leftist beliefs, lol.
Seeing how unions get co-opted rather quickly in order to focus on minority/luxury issues I think there is an argument there.
For example, the largest teachers union in the UK has been co-opted by a radical race Marxist who wants to use his position to indoctrinate children into leftism and reorganise society into his image. Everything is racist, everything is oppression. He’s using strikes for his own little games.
Because most of the problems they talk about are the real problems. The only problem with them, is that their solutions are completely wrong, and lead to even more problems.
Probably the best example here:
-Is the problem of formation of monopolies real?
-Yes.
-How you deal with it?
-We create governmental monopolies
(Instead of liberalizing the market, so it is more difficult for monopolies to form + also leaving government some power to act against monopoly formation)
Leftist analysis boils down to study of the elites.
Why did Donald Trump get elected? He was supported by business groups who wanted tax cuts, and those groups realized that Trump would be able to win the support of the little people who would be harmed by tax cuts.
Shit like that. In academic jargon, leftist analysis can be analytically fruitful, but normatively abhorrent (the leftist crusade against teaching algebra in 8th grade is a fine example)
Agree with whatever bullshit interpretation the professor spouts.
Thats all.
I’m taking a political philosophy class right now, and the professor is a caricature of a Redditor who comes into class to bitch about his divorce (the second since I took my first intro to philosophy class with him), how his dad and ex wives didn’t recognize his genius, and how the system is keeping him as an adjunct and denying him tenure. He also seems out of his depth when it comes to discussing classical philosophy, as his interpretations are all shoved through some idiotic lens that induces him to say shit like “Aristotle was sexist because he thought that men and women have roles to play in society based on gender norms”.
So if you want to be successful in the class, you need to approach everything you write from the perspective of “what is the weirdest bad faith interpretation I can infer from any political philosophy that is even somewhat right of Marxism?” and go from there.
Tbh I found most of my history teachers and profs to be pretty unbiased. Same with my poly Sci ones. Though there were some pretty blatant exceptions, namely the prof for my mandatory gender studies class to complete my history degree. I found the most biased profs in English, philosophy, and other social sciences.
Yeah, my first history teacher in college constructed her entire class based on the idea that the founding fathers were early socialists and their intent was for our country to evolve into a socialist society. It was the weirdest thing. Would straight up tell us our textbook was wrong and that all information would be done via lectures and from her perspective.
I didn't know much, as I was 19 at the time, but it immediately felt so wrong. I respectfully argued with her every class. I aced all of her tests by studying the textbook and providing the correct answers, but she would give me an F every test and tell me that it wasn't the information that was provided during her lectures.
I complained to the Dean and she begrudgingly passed me with a C. He said that she had tenure so she could essentially teach what she wanted. It was one of the most infuriating and weirdest situations I had in college. Luckily, I never experienced anything so negative (to that degree) again. One of the most concerning aspects of the entire thing was the fact that I was the only person in class who pushed back on her. Every other student just sat there quietly and absorbed it all.
Honestly I am very blessed that my college seems to be full of people who genuinely enjoy the things they teach, and as such meet my enthusiasm with their own rather than being full on ideological. I've done papers ragging on enlightenment ideals of democracy, portraying Mussolini in a far more positive light than usual (so, only slightly negative), and a few others. So far the only major issues I've encountered with revolutionary leftists is some other students.
It depends on which type of leftism you're advocating for. New Deal, pre-civil rights Leftism? Very good. Post-civil rights 'leftism' that focuses on identity politics and political division? Very, very bad.
I remember in college a history professor chastising our class for having the audacity to think any of us were paying for our education without the help of subsidies.
Mind you, this was a lecture. No one said anything to the contrary. Just a five minute screed on how important Daddy government is.
To be fair too the handful of teachers I've known as adult as well as being taught by a few , I think most are just naturally classic libertarians. But airing on the side of caution could also be a reason for what's going on. It's slippery times for the education system
Who would’ve thought that the people who literally work for the government and have an incentive for the government to throw around money like it’s candy would also be leftists? So weird.
>It’s tumblr and they have a Hollow Knight profile pic.
Alright alright, let’s see how this goes.
>”…when I apply leftist ways of analysis and thinking in history class I get good grades and am told I have a good understanding of history and the world.”
Perhaps the instructor is biased?
Could it be that people who live in silo'd off environments like academia don't need to think about compromise and have a systemic bias that is anticipated and accounted for by the rest of the world?
No, it is indoctrination and there is no way to react to discourse that is impractical other than have it be a boogeyman.
Nobody is surprised academics don't know the reality of running a business. That doesn't point to a grand conspiracy. People who profit from you being ignorant want you to scoff at education despite the reality that people do become more moderate in the real world so you are good little serfs when you don't encourage study. This is one of the most room temperature takes.
A lot of teacher have been in schools most of their life. All of my favorite teachers went out and worked and had varying views and leanings before they ended up teaching. They always had more nuanced takes, and they could usually apply what they were teaching to the real world.
I would wager that anyone who actually studied history, should naturally, if they're not despicable power hungry fucks, cater towards An-Cap or at least libertarian-light.
The state and its lap dogs are the cause of massacres and death.
I mean yeah. You become somewhat libertarian pretty quickly, be it left or right when it comes to economics.
States start to look really bad real quick.
And I haven't even studied history properly (got top grades in history/sociology class all throughout school though).
when i graduated our History department was mostly white men who range from center Libertarians through Regan Republicans and conservatives to An-Caps.
Definitely Libertarian light for me.
Anarchism is basically just asking for the guy with the biggest army to take over, and you have no control over whether it'll be a Mr Rogers or an Adolf Hitler. It can't exist because there are always those who will not allow it to exist. And unless you think warlord era China sounds cool as hell I'm not sure that's what you should want.
Some government good. Too much government bad.
Didn’t even study history.
Just want to be left alone. The government does hardly anything but piss people off after they build the roads and utilities.
When I got my Master's in history, our professors ran the political gamut. The professor I primarily studied under was a union worker and an old socialist (a dying breed these days), pretty awesome dude. But we had monarchists, conservatives, liberals, etc. They also kept their politics to themselves and evaluated us based on our ideas, evidence, sources, etc. The thing with history is that there are many critiques to it and a leftist critique is a valid way of analyzing the influences of disparity and inequality which influenced a certain event. All critiques, be they leftist, conservative, economic, feminist, gender, etc (except post modernist, fuck them) have their place. The problem is when you view everything through one specific critique, as certain events like the Rwandan genocide or the wars of the Congo which were ethnically motivated conflicts, don't have much to do with their areas of analysis.
A fellow postmodernism hater I see. Based más is based
We had a week of heavy postmodernist reading and it was hell. Foucault was annoying to read but Derrida was abysmal. I swear our professor gave us them to torture us.
Foucault was an acoustic rich kid. He's the epitome of champagne socialist.
He was also an omega pedophile
I didn't know that. That guy was a jerk!
Things to never do: click on a warhammer lore video, eat chipotle before running a race, ask Foucault what he did in Tunisia. He and others signed petitions to remove age of consent laws.
I'm a feminist and Simone de Beauvoir signed that list too. Throw the whole woman out with the rest of them. I can't stand her or her work.
And what did you learn that was worth all that trouble?
That I really don't like post-modernists and advocating deconstructivism puts them out of a job and is ridiculous without offering something to replace it with.
Based
The Victorians were a bunch of Karens who fucked up sex for the rest of us.
Foucalt??? Like the guy that made the pendulum??
Nah, you're thinking of an experiment by physicist Léon Foucault. We're talking about postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault. I used his writings on panopticons in an essay about facial recognition, and found out about the paedo shit later, God I fucking hate this man. How amazing is it that Foucault spent his entire career writing about the relationship between power and knowledge, and power dynamics, and how they get used to exercise social control, and *still* tried to justify fucking kids?
Postmodernism is so fucking stupid. "Two unemployed pricks didn't like life during the beginning of the industrial revolution, so you know that part of history, the only one where human technological and livelihood exploded at a rate of like x1000%? Yeah, we're gonna hafta artificially end that early. Things will be better after we do. Pinky promise."
What will replace it? Neotraditionalism?
I don't know, literally anything is better
> When I got my Master's in history, our professors ran the political gambit. The professor I primarily studied under was a union worker and an old socialist (a dying breed these days), pretty awesome dude. But we had monarchists, conservatives, liberals, etc. They also kept their politics to themselves and evaluated us based on our ideas, evidence, sources, etc. I had the same experience getting my Bachelor of Science in history (before deciding to quit while I was head and now I work blue collar). Most of my professors were even able to slap their own side when the situation warranted, with my favorite example from that being my professor from when I took my class dedicated to WW1 history. The professor in question was an expert on the French military of the time (and had lived for years in France and knew enough French to read first-hand documents), and he spent the entire class extoling the French and then slapping the Americans when they got involved as being incompetent blowhards. Then when the end came and he is giving his breakdown of post WW1 winners and losers, he says the biggest winner was America and the biggest loser was France. But not just in the typical ways that you would expect (as in, France was invaded and had land destroyed, US was flush with money from everyone buying weapons), but even including and especially on the Military front. Where the US generals were some of the only ones to see beyond Trench warfare and think of new tactics and strategies, and that much of their "incompetence" was them attempting to use these tactics too far ahead of what the technology could do. Meanwhile, the French and British became locked in their trenches so long they forgot how to do anything other than fight in a trench. And so he ultimately concluded that, especially in terms of doctrine and theory, the US was one of the best prepared armies for WW2. "I bet you didnt expect that after this semester", which got some laughs out of the class. The other one I liked (on the opposite end of the scale) was when it came time for graduation, the Dean for the college came and met with those of us graduating. And while talking with us about other things, he added in "Now remember, when you are down there you are going to be surrounded by a bunch of godless Communist who probably forgot how to even do the national anthem. So you are going to have to hold their hands and guide them along." It, along with good experiences in high school, was part of why I didnt buy into the idea that schools had been taken over by radical Leftist. Before realizing (in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that I had just gotten lucky and really started to be thankful for the fact that both my high school and university had mandatory in-class debate as graded aspects that had to be done.
I am jealous of your WWI class, that sounds amazing. My MA program had a rotating The Great War/WWII class and I was fortunate enough to take the second class. The professor was peerless and him and his Polish wife (also a history professor) were tour guides at Birkenau over the summers. I think the radical left professors depend on where you are and the departments. I think a lot of it is hysteria, but I did have to take a few classes in the English department since I was teaching English 101/102 and holllly shit they were fucking insane. That's a sample size of 1 though.
My read of the whole "How radical are colleges" debate is that while some of my fellow Right-wingers overblow the situation, it is still enough to be a problem worth addressing. I do agree it is very much a matter of location and department though rather than a case of the colleges themselves being the issue. Even within the same state that can be that case. For instance, my alma mater of Kansas State University was, like I said, pretty moderate and had a good run of professors from across the spectrum as well as debate being strongly encouraged in every class and the student code (again, so much so debate was a graded aspect of your final score). This was further helped by our biggest colleges being College of Agriculture and College of Engineering, which I am sure you can guess draws a very different kind of college student from the stereotypes. But just down the highway in Lawrence, University of Kansas is so hardcore it leads to local jokes about how it should be known as "Portland on the Plains" (a riff on Kansas City's nickname as "Paris on the Plains") or "The Peoples Republic of Lawrence." But even with that, it doesnt stop the KU Medical Center from being one of the most advanced and cutting edge medical programs in the country. I think the worst of it right now though is the Ivy League schools, as demonstrated at the moment with the goings on at Columbia, but I would just as much attribute that to them being rich schools where luxury beliefs are encouraged as anything else.
They ran the gamut, not gambit. A gamut is a range or spectrum. A gambit is a risky action.
Sorry dad, edit made.
lol I agree with your comment, though. You can’t be a well-informed person if you’re unwilling to consider the merits of opposing arguments. The modern academic environment of hyper-leftism that refuses to acknowledge anything but strawman caricatures of right-wing thought is the reason Ben Shapiro and his contemporaries were able to make careers out of videos where they dunk on clueless undergrads.
Masters in history
One also could argue that while leftist critiques and analysis are valid, that doesn't necessarily mean that leftist solutions are.
This is something I've observed in my personal life. More often than not, I find myself agreeing with my leftist friends about the problems facing our society. More often than not, I find myself *staunchly* opposed to their proposed solutions.
Harrison Bergeron yet again. Equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcomes. George W. Bush's "Soft bigotry of low expectations" shaping is long in the rearview mirror.... Now it's about not letting kids take algebra in 8th grade so they won't have calculus down by graduation, in the name of equity.
Your comment reminds me of the excellent podcast series [Sold A Story](https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/). The series focuses on childhood literacy, a subject which GWB had personal interest in and potentially good policy on. However, (minor spoiler): >! many educators rejected his initiatives to help children read simply because those initiatives came from the GWB administration they despised, resulting in poorer outcomes for their students. !<
Yet we treat "not accepting the outcome of a democratic election" as a right-wing phenomenon these days. It's the same shit.
While ignoring 2016 election to the 2020 election where dems said it was stolen Or the 2000 election to present day where dems say that election was stolen.
I want to emphasize this. STAUNCHLY. The proposed solutions are berserk.
It's almost painful seeing how close they are to being based sometimes. Then, the solution is proposed, and the facepalm follows. If government caused the problem, the answer is *not* more government.
I never understand this either. Leftist are always the most pro and simultaneously anti government people I've ever seen. For example, they bring up the fact that the government horribly mismanages our healthcare system then proposes that we use that same government to manage it another way. If you own a restaurant and your manager is ass at his job you don't suggest he try a different way to manage, you fire him.
Government subsidizing XYZ caused prices to rise before I entered the market. "We need government to subsidize XYZ even more for me"
The government can’t get mail delivered at breakeven how the hell are they going to provide healthcare to all citizens and illegals? Ask these questions and gear up for madness
The leftist response to how poorly the post office is run is typically that it's a public service and public services shouldn't need to make a profit because they help people. I can understand and even somewhat respect where they're coming from, but I disagree that the government has any right to [use a gun to build a library](https://youtu.be/BUjzrS6jwiw?t=73) (or to deliver mail).
Leftist is just really funny to me, I agree with my socialist girlfriend and my leftist friends about how corrupt and evil the government and corporations are, but their solution is always to give the government or organizations more power like that'll fix the issue
These people just don't understand people are inherently greedy and more power you'll give them the worse it will get
They are very aware of a lot of the problems and what caused them because they hang with poor people.
Some of them yes. But many are super wealthy and have no idea how the 99% actually lives. There’s actually a guy who wants to create a communist society in the US and he’s the son of the late Ann Cox Chambers. The Cox family has been very rich and powerful for decades. This guy has no idea what or how the rest of the world truly lives because he’s never had to experience it
Yeah, it's a very bizarre dynamic. I find myself just keeping my mouth shut most of the time, because I'm exhausted by constantly being the sole dissenting voice. But like you, I find that I'm not so frequently opposed to the idea that X, Y, and Z are problems. It's just that 99% of the time someone points these things out, they proceed to say some incredibly stupid shit about how to fix it. So I've gotten to the point where I groan internally when I hear someone point these things out as problems, even though I generally agree.
There are a many more bad ideas out in the world than good ones. A system that rewards new ideas is guaranteed to generate mostly bad ideas. This is even worse for theories. A lot of theories sound great in the abstract, but fall apart once put into practice. There needs to be a built in way to weed out bad ideas. There also needs to be a way to weed out bad theories by testing them out on a small scale. Good luck getting any academic to admit their ideas are bad and their theories would never work. Academics is a field that advances one funeral at a time, as bad ideas only die off with those who believe them.
Given that people are apparently responding to "leftist lines of thinking" with reformism I would also hazard a guess that OOP is a revolutionary leftist, which probably gives people good reason to steer clear
Ding Ding Ding I have an old acquaintance whose solution to anything was global revolution. She is part of MLPD and was very focused on climate change. We would be discussing ways to address that (me being a proponent of nuclear power) and she would simply reject anything that wasn’t “global system change”. I realized it was the cart pulling the horse here. No solution that didn’t involve system change was interesting, because system change was apparently the more powerful motivator. Of course you don’t like a solution that could involve private industry that requires a lot of accumulated capital.
When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails.
They’ve also got a sickle!
Until they realize the hammer and sickle represent physical labor.
My favorite are the 'what will your job be after the revolution?' people who say that they'll just chill out in a commune somewhere... Totally detached from the overwhelming amount of work that has to be done after the revolution.
In their defense they probably won’t survive the first few initial purges so they really needn’t concern themselves.
An outsider who visited a real life commune bailed when they saw the commune people canning cucumbers. No focus on having enough grain and calorific tubers to actually last the winter.
And then your mother ends up with a contusion because you tried to fix her headache.
> No solution that didn’t involve system change was interesting, because system change was apparently the more powerful motivator. Ah yes. And when you point out how in 99.99999% of all of history, this has always been a massive disaster resulting in massive casualties and then a WORSE system, I'm guessing the reply was something along the lines of "this time it will work"?
https://preview.redd.it/4brzjnokftwc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4022ab1740138c6e87e6dd60f0205c7304a1ea6
Based and a nu start pilled
Well if the system you change to doesn't work, you just do another system change.
If they’re deeply devoted to theory they’ll go “that’s why Marx describes a perpetual revolution”, and if they’re really spicy they’ll pair that with “and perpetual revolutionary terror”. Which I suppose avoids getting stuck in a new, worse system… by means of staying in the “chaos with massive casualties and no productivity” part indefinitely.
The dead have a fairly small carbon footprint.
This soup needs a little salt. WE NEED A REVOLUTION!
"SALT IN SOUP IS A HUMAN RIGHT!"
Occupy Soup 2024
>The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.
> solution to anything was global revolution But comrade, planet already in orbit!
Leftist problems do not require lefties solutions. It makes them worse
Wise words, gospodin Vrangel
Observing that the world is not perfect *while being a leftist* is valid, but is just as valid as it is trivial for everyone else. *Leftist analysis* is actually extremely ridiculous, and is not valid as a form of reasoning.
Depends on how you define it. What the fuck is happening with that big Ukraine war package? A handout to the military industrial complex. To me, that's actually leftist analysis. It's looking at politics through the lens of "What are the interests of the elites?"
That's not so much leftist analysis as it is elite-motivation-analysis. Leftist analysis is a very real thing referenced in the original tweet. it refers to critical theory, where everything is an oppressor/oppressed narrative, its a baby of marxist structuralist thinking, very postmodern, etc. There is no equivalent on the right. Imagine if 90% of university professors were conservative and most all followed this academic school of analysis influenced by Ayn Rand or something where all of history is analyzed by looking at religious people vs non religious people, where non religious people are said to be a danger to society and the problem. You got fish for school lunch? This is actually religious oppression by the atheist elite. You're working at the fast food joint down the road? That's because the atheists have historically Had Power which religious people have not had. That bridge in New Jersey? Its existence is religious oppression, because fewer religious people drive on it. It's really, really bad. People don't realize how bad it is because it's the norm.
Wait, paying a tenth of your military budget to destroy one of the 2 near peer threats is leftist? I'm not saying you're wrong. I am just confused.
Not so much that, as "Why is America supporting Ukraine? Well, the military industrial complex hasn't had a boost in a very long time. Clearly, involvement in Ukraine is to the benefit of the military industrial complex." That sort of thing. The interests of the powerful elite driving policy. It's probably a bad example, though, exactly because leftists/progressives aren't using that argument right now. Biden is too complicit.
To me that's precisely an example of the kind of thinking that so often makes leftist analysis *bad*. Ascribing a "real", morally loaded motive to every unfavorable position, one that fits a predefined narrative, rather than addressing a more complex or less "exciting" reality. "Why do people oppose minimum wage? Because they want to maintain a permanent underclass." "Why do people oppose abortion? To control women." "Why don't politicians vote for universal healthcare? Because they're bought out by insurance lobbyists." Parts of the right obviously do this too, but it's fundamental to so much leftist thought - looking at issues through X "lens". Surprise, when you intentionally look at everything through a red lens, everything looks red. Simply *conceiving* of a "negative" motivation for a position or state of affairs seems sufficient to demand opposition to it. In practice it's just adding morally loaded post hoc rationale for an already-held belief. I already want X thing, let me think of all the evil reasons anyone wouldn't want that. Strange, I suddenly feel like such a morally better person that anyone who doesn't want X.
It's good for the MIC, but on a global strategic level, it's taking down a major opponent without having to shed American blood. Us vs Russia will result in massive weapons we don't want launched flying back and forth. Ukraine as a proxy? We get to bleed out enemy and keep our hands clean, it's like having our cake and eating it too.
The money isn't going to destroy Russia (or it's military). The point of the package is to bind Russia in the war without ending it. It's not obvious whether tying Russia in Ukraine is the goal or a bonus to the other goal (supporting MIC). For example, The Bradley and Abrams would make huge impact in summer 2022. After liberating Kharkiv, Ukrainians had open fields in front of them with demoralized Russian troops waiting to give up or run away. US refused to give them the tools to finish the job, because "Biden didn't want to humiliate Russia, which would be bad for peace negotiations". The offensive stalled and gave the Russians time to build trenches, lay mines, and mobilize new waves of recruits. Tanks and IFVs started arriving in Ukraine in 2023 when it was too late to use them effectively. They aren't designed to attack fortified positions through minefields. Ukrainians need proper field engineers to clear mines, but to do that safely they also need overwhelming artillery power or full airspace control. So now they are waiting for some 20 year old jets. By the time they get those, Russians will saturate the frontlines with AA batteries. US is spending a lot of money on not solving the problems. It's money well spent, if you ask MIC.
Ironically, analyzing stakeholder incentives hews closer to orthodox economic analysis, and is not (and should not be) confined to analyzing the incentives of rich people. Leftist analysis is much more rigid and seeks to fit events to strong prior assumptions about the world, which are very crude and often require you to torturously rationalize away what is obvious rather than admit that your prior assumptions have serious limitations. This is in part why leftists texts are *so fucking long and confusing,* because they are often stuck trying to work around pretty basic disconfirming facts instead of admitting that the premise is fatally falwed. In your example, for instance, how does the leftist account for elites who oppose those aid packages? How can two diametrically opposed positions both serve the interests of a group that is treated as a monolith? They really can't, because you're stuck viewing everything through a worker/oppressor dichotomy. So you would have to concoct reasons that dissenting elites are still working to preserve the power of their *class*, even though the supposed members of that class are not behaving remotely as such. Similarly, how does the leftist handle dissenting opinions among the supposed monolithic worker class? Opinions which do not align with socialist revolution are merely discarded as the product of phenomena like "false consciousness" (as opposed to critical consciousness or class consciousness). Which is basically a fancy way of saying "Everyone who doesn't agree with me is just stupid or too brainwashed to know what they're saying. I can't be wrong and nobody can possibly disagree in good faith."
Baste and gymnastics judge-pilled.
Class should definitely one of the many tools in the toolbox used to analyze society. When you let it be the only perspective though, you end up with some pretty braindead takes. Anyways, society is largely divided between the working class and the professional managerial class at this point. Marx's dichotomy is less relevant at this point.
Which is why they switched from class to race and sex. None of those are really the tools in the toolbox though. Oppressed/oppressor is the tool. Class/race/sex is the paint on the wall. It's never been about any of those three things. Even when class was a bigger deal, it was that way because it was the most convenient aspect to rally around. Women weren't part of the official workforce. There were a lot more white people in western countries. So those were less focused on. Then once the middle class became a thing, now there's at least 3 classes, all of which have different interests than the other. Add more variables to the equation, and it gets more complicated to figure out. Speaking of which; intersectionality...
I have always found that it's the leftists who do the best job at announcing that there's a problem. Us on the right trend to be more willing to accept the status quo. But the leftist solutions are usually insane. And once the right wakes up to the problem, their solution is what works. Take Karl Marx, the big cheese himself. In the Communist Manifesto, he correctly identified several very real problems with European life. The class struggle was real. Europe was making the slow transition from Feudalism to Capitalism and the power wasn't changing hands from the monarchs before. It was just going from birthright to the giant piles of money. They were very good reasons to hate capitalism in Europe at that time. Karl Marx's proposed solution, however, was batshit insanity. What worked was the American version of the rapid transition to capitalism. And it completely diffused the Communist argument.
The left sees inequality and devises a short-sighted, irrational solution (either based on greed or misplaced empathy) that exacerbates the problem. A progressive's sworn duty is to change the natural order of things. The right sees inequality and says 'this is the natural order of things'.
The old saying: Democracy sucks, but everything else is worse
This is part of it. In a healthy society the left accurately points out the injustices and who is getting left behind. They aggregate the new ideas as well. Who does anyone want actually administering a new institution? Who do we want enacting solutions? People who are business trained, fiscally responsible and probably alot more hard nosed. In a healthy society thats a conservative.
Marx had good criticisms of capitalism, his solutions to fix them were dog shit though
I disagree, unfortunately Marx is a person who seems to make a good point until you look closer and see that he is making a completely different point that is in actuality batshit insane. Whenever he is right, he is right for the completely wrong reasons, and that causes him to interpret his criticisms in a completely batshit insane manner. His class warfare idea is kind of like that, you would think that Marx is saying that rich people in power are using their power to fuck over others, but that isn't really the claim he is making. The actual claim is a weird semi-religious belief of something akin to historical destiny through the process of Hegelian dialectics. Communism is not so much a solution to capitalism, but a historic destiny of humanity, the end of history, the last system we will make and a system that will be completely perfect. Marx sees Capitalism not as an enemy, but just a stepping stone on the way to perfection that has overstayed it's welcome.
>unfortunately Marx is a person who seems to make a good point until you look closer and .....realize it's all built on the Labor Theory of Value. Top notch rant tho, upvoted.
Nah, calling it LTV is doing a disservice to how bizarre Marx's ideas of value are. Yes it is similar, but it isn't the same. His idea is that value comes not from your labour, but the labour of an entire group seen as one. To him labour of an individual isn't what's valuable, but the labour of a factory is. He does this with this bizarre abstraction where he can be seen as technically correct, but his idea of value is just useless for any serious economical analysis, and talks about it in the first couple of pages of Das Capital, which is insane as I've never seen a man fuck his own point so badly immediately after starting writing.
>His idea is that value comes not from your labour, but the labour of an entire group seen as one. Fair. And that clearly that infects leftist/progressive thinking. One of my big things is this: Yeah, I actually get "intersectionality" but....thinking it through, when enough intersections are taken, *we end up back with the individua*l.
The problem with intersectionality is that modern progressives don't take it to its logical conclusion, which is once more, a return to individualism.
It's a tool in my kit, though, and it has been useful in the past. My girlfriend grew up poor. Dirt poor. Kentucky hill people poor. She was at a dinner with a classy and educated black woman who went to literal finishing school, who was being lectured at by some basic white chick about white privilege. Some things just can't be made up.
Have you been listening to James Lindsay's podcast?
Although I did end up watching Lindsay, that's not where I got that idea from. I got it from reading Nietzsche and other existentialists, basically going "Oh, so if we assume that our issues come from people clinging to religious ideas and a lack of meaning in their lives/seeking perfection where there is none, then wouldn't it make sense that political ideologies are like the new religions?" Then I read a bit of Marx, a bit of Hitler, came across Lindsay and that kind of confirmed my suspicions on that. It might be confirmation bias, but so far I've seen pretty good arguments and proof that authoritarian movements should in general be seen through the lens of religion. Hell, even collectivism itself with the idea of "Humans are part of a greater organism" could be constructed as a religious belief where the collective takes place of God.
> Hell, even collectivism itself with the idea of "Humans are part of a greater organism" could be constructed as a religious belief where the collective takes place of God. Spot on. And the traditional leftist communists holds collectivevism over and above all individuals to such level, that they are willing to sacrifice and kill the individual - but totally forgetting (or purposely forgetting, to gain more power) that all collectives are made up of individuals. Which will always result in the total destruction of the collective, as they kill off all the individuals in their quest for more power.
There's a practical reason religion and civilization are pretty intertwined. Even the Earth being 6,000 years old thing, that's generally the age of civilized life, give or take a few years here or there. If you're trying to get people to do stuff, you have to give them a reason. Since capitalism wasn't around yet, we can use God's glory, or promises in the afterlife. Unfortunately for Marxist lefties, humans started in small tribes, and we survived that way for a long time. Mass society is only possible with cheap energy, in one form or another. Had humans started in a global society, communism might be easier to implement. We were molded by the tight-knit smaller groups in a battle of wits against whatever nature throws at us though. While that's a scale that communism could work at, the problem for communism is competition. If the next tribe over is going to maximize whatever advantage they can, and then expand, they're going to come into contact with you eventually. Could be good, could be bad.
I don't trust people with two first names
I think the fact that Marx is anti-bourgeoisie instead of anti-nobility is proof that he and everyone after him fell for some basic upper class propaganda. The bourgeoisie was originally just the richer more educated section of the French 3rd estate. Doctors and lawyers and shit. People who could actually competently defend the 3rd estates demands. So the upper class changes the system from nobility, then clergy, then everyone else to a system based on income thereby separating the estate in 2. The 1st and 2nd estates are now together in the upper class but now the factory workers and the doctors are in separate classes so the factory workers instead begin to hate the middle class basically just because the upper class told them to
Yep, people forget that the actual driving forces of the French Revolution were the bourgeois class. Wealthy and educated but without the social standing and capacity of the nobility. The average peasant could never fight his own revolution, because after the bloodshed you need leaders who can actually read, write and think. That's why it has always been a fight between the upper class and the middle class with the lower class as pawns. The middle class becomes the new upper class but the lower class never changes. This is, in fact, literally 1984. The best thing liberal capitalism ever did was giving a shot and becoming wealthy to everyone, because before that, if you ain't born to the right family, no matter your skill, you'll always stay a peasant.
Nice take and well worded. He seems like he knows what he's on about until you start to deconstruct what he's actually saying. His idea of classes is weird. Like you say one would think he'd say that rich people use their power and influence to fuck others. But he for some reason doesn't equate wealth with class, rather its the weirdly arbitrary means of production that is the definer. If you were a global mining tycoon with thousands of employees and millions in your bank account and I ran a hotdog stand with one employee and a few hundred in my bank account you and I would be in the same class while our employees would be in another. Despite the fact that I would have more in common with your employees than you. And if my employee saved his salary and bought himself his own hotdog stand through his own labor he would become a bourgeoisie as well. The small time homesteader would be just as bourgeoisie as the mega farmers. So yea he is right, there is a class issue. But since his definition of classes are weird his criticism become as you say batshit insane. Right for the wrong reasons. And this type of deconstruction can be applied to pretty much all of his ideas and concepts.
Well that’s not quite right. You’d be in the same class as the global mining tycoon if you owned the factory farms and processing plants where the hot dogs and buns were made. Just a small nitpick but otherwise what you’re saying is right. And his weird arbitrary classifications are extra hilarious when you consider how bad his fans are at understanding or interpreting them. I always get a kick out of people saying “Eat the rich” about doctors or lawyers lol. Like, you know those people will become homeless just as fast as you if they stop working, right?
Is that where the hypothesis originated that negative rights are but a stepping stone to creating advanced societies, and the measure of advanced societies is their belief in positive rights?
>One also could argue that while leftist critiques and analysis are valid, that doesn't necessarily mean that leftist solutions are. Came here to say this. It's an "is" vs. "ought" thing.....or in academic speak, analytical vs. normative. And let's be clear about things, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street weren't exactly at loggerheads.
Doing classical archaeology and ancient history degree myself; this hits home more than I would like to say.
> classical archaeology and ancient history degree Honest question: where do you see the ROI on the financial layout for that degree?
They'll be laughing at you for asking this question when they find an ancient sacred relic in a temple filled with booby traps.
Didn't you know that Tomb Raiding is problematic now? Fucking colonizers doing their archaeology and shit. https://www.tombraiderchronicles.com/headlines4855.html
Sounds like they are trying to get girls to play tomb raider. The game is no longer about finding 'things' but about how Lara feels about her self. That's a pretty sharp pivot and I don't think it will work.
Women already play the Tomb Raider games. What they are doing is catering to their investment masters to get that sweet, sweet ESG money. Short term gains are going to cause long term problems with their actual fan base that made it what it is today. I'm looking at you, GW!
Me on capitalism normally: Me on capitalism when shareholders ruin beloved properties for their own gain (game needed another 3 months):
Lara Croft is an *inherently* based character. White, Anglo, actual nobility, archeologist/explorer who saves third worlders in their own countries. Honestly, I liked the attempts to shoehorn woke into tombraider games--it was funny to see them *try*.
I mean to be honest if we're gonna consider shit problematic ancient resting places of the dead are pretty spooky
And gold
Or a stargate byried in Egypt (or Antartica) that allows humanity to travel to new worlds instantly! Hopefully they dont encounter any unsavory characters along the way.
Nothing a taciturn bald man with two automatic shotguns can't sort out.
It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message.
It’s not about sending a message, it’s about injecting that message into your brain and silencing any possible opposition to that message. You will learn to be obedient to the .01% that way you can be easily ruled by a different.01%
If you sleep at your desk every night, you don't need a house! Saves a ton of money.
Close to 0. It would have been useful when I started because my dad is rather afluent and could have got me a job in the financial sector (my brother's becoming a stock broker with a philosophy degree, ahha) but I've cut things off with my dad and would rather work remotely so I can be lazy. I do really enjoy the Ancient History part though.
Since nobody here seems to have given you a real answer, as the son of an archeologist/anthropologist, let me fill you in: Generally speaking when you go in for that kind of degree you either: - Continue on into academia. Get a P.H.D. and become a professor (that's what my dad did). Being a professor is a life of _genteel poverty_ as my dad always used to say (and his too, who was also a professor); as in, it's not a particularly lucrative career, but it still brings your family into the social-stratum of the intelligentsia and often endows the family with some sense of cosmopolitanism. People who are genuinely interested in ancient cultures or the study of society in general often go this path, as it allows them to conduct actual research into those topics in exchange for a profession as an educator. - Go into contract archeology. At least where I live, when someone buys some land or a property (or the government wants to utilize land they own), and intend to alter that property, it's sometimes necessary from a legal perspective to ascertain whether or not there's any archeologically relevant material on the site first. That can mean digging up and surveying an area to ensure that you're not damaging some important land that has valuable insights into our past (not to mention the touchy subject of building/farming/mining on land that indigenous peoples of the past buried their ancestors on). This can also extend to architecture, where certain buildings may actually be worth trying to preserve to the extent that we can; ascertaining whether or not this is the case involves professionals who can accurately determine what's worth preserving. This path is also more lucrative financially; being a contract archeologist, depending on the niche you specialize in can pay pretty well... Hope this satisfies your curiosity, feel free to ask any other questions about this profession if you have em'...
Thanks! Not completely satisfied, as illustrated by your examples the motivations and priorities of the one seeking that degree are quite important, but very informative nonetheless.
And you're relatively insulated from the worst of it in the Classics. I was a classical archaeology major as well, and when I did my field school with a bunch of anthropology majors, I realized how comparatively moderate the Classics guys were.
I bloody love my classics faculty. They're mostly too based to strike when the other lecturers do (apart from some of the younger ones)
can i ask for an example of those "leftist ways of analysis"?
That sort of thing was very common back when I was studying history and literature in university circa 2011 In the class on historiography, they'd teach you about different schools of thought in historiography, for example Marxist / Marxian school of thought In literature, you'd have a class on literary theory where they'd teach you different schools of thought or 'lenses' for analysing literature, for example Marxist/Marxian, Feminist, Postcolonial, 'Queer', Post-modernist, Ecofeminist, etc. Basically all of them rooted pretty firmly in left-wing thought
Everyone important in history was actually gay, trans, black, or some combination of those. Or it was actually a woman’s work all along and the white man stole it. Also any institution that could be considered “white” is always bad and oppressive etc.
Abolishing slavery and women's rights are bad and oppressive
As is building modern civilization with high-trust environments.
How? I'm curious.
Another guy asked the same thing too, here's my answer. I'm kind of sad of how many there actually are just off the op of my head "The university I'm at publishes its own workbook to give you a good enough insight into the module before you read external sources. Particuarly in the archaeology side, very often they include sections on Feminist and Marxist theory, and any sort of old school theory is generally strongly discouraged. Also they just go on about silly shit. I remember one workbook providing a paragraph on why they use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD because it has something like "heavily Western connontations". I'm in an English univeristy, studying primarily Western ancient cultures, and BCE and AD cover the exact same time period. It literally still runs on the Anno Domini and Before Christ calender to the day; if they want to waste time looking up a new system to say the exact same thing then fine, but I'm not going to, and you get the distinct impression they are pushing you to do so. Also they tell you not to refer to Rome as she or something. Like, you can't do it for lingustic flair "Rome truly died with a whimper, her old days of pride were gone." These are all just from my course as well. The worst one I ever saw was where each candidate for the Student Union wrote a short paragraph on why you should vote for them. One guy said something directly like "I am black and gay so you have two reasons to vote for me." I pissed myself and then regained my composure and was rather sad."
Thanks for the answer! Wow, it's worse than I thought! It's a shame how people try to impose modern theories on ancient people, while disregarding what those ancient people actually thought...this is why I tend to prefer first hand sources or sources written closer to the time period.
Yes, I agree with you completely; the ancient sources can't be tampered with if you look at them alone.
More often than not, my history teachers have been rightists. It's definitely common for English teachers to be libleft straight into hell though. You get an assignment based on an open ended question with no right answer but you get an F if it doesnt have a 99% match with their political beliefs
I started writing papers that I didn't really agree with, and didn't think were good, and got an A on every one.
Honestly, I have a love-hate relationship with lib lit teachers for this reason. While it kinda sucks that you can't write what you really think, I hate writing shit for grades anyways so I can always just put down some subpar drivel and just make sure to include some lib ideas in there, maybe play on my race a little, and let those easy As roll in.
What always confused me was leftist economics professors. Austrian economics just makes sense. But I had professors teaching Keynesian economics with a straight face. Getting through college in a far-left city was brutal.
Keynesian economics is saddly dominate in general. Its the model the government uses and even right wingers think in terms of it (though they typically have ideas more friendly to classical economics than the left).
It's because it allows the government to basically spend what they want and point "Look, it works with this economics"
I’ve had a solid mix of left and right leaning history teachers but what I loved about all of them is that they only brought politics into it when it was relevant to teach or there was something outside of class they were promoted to discuss. All of them left everything with room for interpretation (tbh didn’t even know one of my teachers leaned right until after his class)
Back in Junior High, me and a buddy did English papers about a president we thought was great - mine was Dubya Bush and his was Obama. I had gotten better grades on my papers in that class than he did. I got a C and he got an A lol.
Nah, I was asked a question in a Cuba history class on a test to the effect of “did Fidel Castro accomplish his goals of modernizing Cuba and providing…” my answer was “well he did, but the second they stopped getting propped up by Argentina and USSR he had to turn back to capitalism, so the system didn’t work and is fundamentally flawed. All “gains” made through Communism were short-lived at best, meaning the only thing he actually accomplished was ousting the Mafia.” I got an A
My regard for the educated class collapsed when I figured out that higher ed is really just one big exercise in people-pleasing and not skills, knowledge, merit.
Damn, this comment made me question that higher ed might actually be preparing students for the workforce.
>Damn, this comment made me question that higher ed might actually be preparing students for the workforce. Hiring for engineers: * No degree or bachelors degree from community college: invite for standard interview with skills test * Bachelors from fancy or ivy league college: intense phone screen to make sure they are not total waste of time before considering to invite for interview * Masters Degree: Red Flag. phone screen, check references, ask about details of past work experience and double check prior employment history, more intense skills testing, lower starting salary offer * PHD: dont return their call, already know they are useless and have no hope of passing a basic skills test
The company I work for (which is a massive corporation) recently has removed the bachelors degree requirement for hiring engineers.
It was better when I went to college, '08 to '12. It was a bigger state school. There was some leftism, to be sure, and one of my favorite professors was a leftist. She loved my writing, though, not least because I pulled no punches. What's going on these days....I just don't know. I'd like to think that it's mostly the "elite" colleges, but I just don't know.
I went to a college in a small red state. Weirdly, the teachers political leanings were all over the place. Go to one class where the teacher is a preachy leftist, than I go to the next class where the teacher is talking about the overreach of the federal government and the history of it.
My political science 101 class was with Michael Garcia. He said, at one point, "I will never vote for another tax increase, ever." At the end of our time together, he said, "OK, class, I am supposed to be non-partisan when I teach this. How many of you think I'm a Democrat? A Republican? An independent" It was about 1/3 each.......he shook his head in disappointment. "I told you people I'll never vote in another tax increase. Just because I'm Hispanic, it doesn't mean I'm a Democrat! Pay attention!!!"
I was just one year behind you and a business major at an SEC school. I can only remember one instance of hearing anything leftist (or political at all really) and that was from my intro to anthropology professor when he talked shit about libertarianism. Different times though. Politics didn't rule anyone's life back then and it was never the cool thing to talk about. Hell, I don't think I even knew any of my friend's political leanings until the height of the 2012 election, and I didn't even vote lol.
I just wanna say, I went to college in my late 30's, so I had a different experience. The combination of "feeds" driven by "AIs" smart enough to serve up individualized content along with a certain orange man changed ***everything***.
So, you abolish the system, what happens after skilled labour drops in value and education drops even worse since it doesn't serve purpose of social elevator anymore, professionals leave to seek their fortune somewhere else and business relocate thier capital somewhere else to avoid government control?
.. so basically exactly what happened to south and east Africa in the 1950s-1990s. Witness their utopia!
That's why the communist revolution always has to be global.
"The only way we can make this work is by ensuring you have literally nowhere to escape!" "We are good people and this definitely isnt an evil ideology!"
You fix it the soviet style. Kill everyone who tries to leave.
Somehow, slavery returned.
In my history masters program if you weren't at least a little bit Marxist you wouldn't have a seat at the table. Behind closed doors, when they assume everyone agrees with them, they do actually hate white people, men, and Western civilization. One of my favorite projects ever was applying their own methods to call them racist for the way modern academia treats a guy named Elaudah Equiano, an 18th century former slave who became a well known Christian evangelist, author, and royal governor, and a woman named Phyllis Wheatley, an early American poet who was also a former slave.
I can understand where they are coming from, you can't retort Leftism or Marxism rationally, it's not a rational theory, it's a religious faith. Literally, nothing Marx or his followers have put into their "theory" is novel or useful. What useful concepts they abuse is from better ideological frameworks (labor alienation is honestly the only thing I can really think of atm) and the rest is just garbage observation with a whole host of bias and fallacies.
>labor alienation Is based on the Labor Theory of Value. The canonical example: an apple on a tree has no value. If you pick the apple, you have added value because now you can give it to others to eat. If someone buys the tree, hires you to pick the apple, and sells the apple for more than they paid you, you have been "alienated" from your labor, as measured by the delta of what you were paid for picking and the sale price of the apple. The Marginalist Revolution blew all that out of the water. What a thing is worth is a combination of objective scarcity and subjective desirability. That's why it's important to reject those particular old white men who wrote books.
Marx used the Hegelian idea the dialectic to describe stages of history. To Marx, Communism is an inevitable future stage of history, much in the same way feudalism and capitalism was. I will not go into Hegel's full theory because it is convoluted as heck. So basically, Marx sees Communism as an inevitable stage of history. A natural outgrowth of capitalistic societies which will eventually break out into revolution. Marx is essentially describing himself as a prophet who foresaw the inevitable utopian state of the world brought about by the messianic workers in the proletariat. This is similar to how Christians see the return of Jesus to be inevitable.
Wow, check out this specimen's post history. EDIT: account is suspended, but they posted in subs themed around "Black New World Order" or BNWO. *Best* case scenario, they're an edgy teenager who's obsessed with "irony".
yeah unfortunately if you learn the art of dick sucking and riding it can be real easy to get good grades in the interpretive studies. unfortunately I hate interpretive studies for precisely that reason and am terribly weak to bait. fortunately I was actually pretty bright and smart so could logically hold my ground on most things, didn't stop lectures and shit from downgrading me for no justifiable reason. all you need to do is continuously report them for mis-grading you, cite concrete reasons but without speculation unless you wanna drop some buzz words they fucking love that. it's important to correctly document every instance individually rather than try to collate it into one thing, try not to speculate on personal reasons either. I had a disagreement with a English lecture back in collage because she noticed that whenever I was asked to analyse shit I would perfectly write something evidently contrary to what was asked (as in the paper would steer or lead the analysis in one direction and I would specifically choose to go another), it would still be written perfectly so would always meet the requirement it would just fuck off whoever was grading it.
Interpretive fields of study are just straight up indoctrination at this point. It isn't about interpreting stuff yourself and defending it, it is about learning to see things the way the PROFESSORS want you to see them, and learning to regurgitate their talking points. I would have not had the patience you did. I went into engineering.
I didn't have the patience for it either and went into cyber sec, but it turns out a world ending apocalypse make it really hard to study so now I do sec.
When I took the SAT it was one of the first years they were trying out adding an essay portion. I assumed that whoever was grading it would be a lefty, so I wrote the laziest, most stereotypical (at the time) essay basically about how terrible George Bush was. It was utter dogshit in terms of quality or logic. I got 1 point short of the maximum possible grade.
Leftism is, as it's been from the start, a luxury belief system that has only ever taken root in the most privileged sectors of society, lol.
Is it? The Labour movement and trade unionism is/was quite popular among the most under privileged sectors of society. Atleast in the western world.
Depends on the type of leftism. Progressivism is more of a privileged ideas but you can find labour unions, socialists and communists even in the poorest part of the world.
It's clear that there's a divide between what Leftism *is* and what it *claims* to be. Take Marx and Engels, for instance. One was a spoiled and lazy rich dude who mooched off family and friends his entire life, and the other was a rich dude who ran his father's factories and didn't let his workers own their means of production.
I don’t see your point. Marx and Engels weren’t the first ‘leftists’ nor do they represent the whole movement in its totality.
I think you underestimate how much of a stranglehold Marxism and its offshoots have on left-wing politics; particularly in the West.
I see what you’re saying and I can agree to a point. But not all left wing people are part of academia or upper middle class champagne socialists. There are left wing folk who are part of the class leftism claims to represent and they are not in an ivory tower reading theory.
I think there are definitely useful idiots, to be sure. Hasan's fanbase of teens and young adults funding the lifestyle of a sycophantic nepobaby, for example. But, at the same time, if you asked those same people to describe themselves - I guarantee many of them would use terms like "educated" and/or "intelligent". So in that sense they *are* in a proverbial ivory tower...*in their own minds, anyway*, lol.
Yeah, if you go over to liberalgunowners, you'll probably get someone throwing the "under no pretext" quote at you at some point. Of course, they conveniently forget the part where said workers are disarmed after the new government is installed.
No, it will be okay, you see...they'll be on the "good" side of the new government, so there wont be any need for guns!
The term leftism comes from the French Revolution where it was literally the poorest estates that advocated it
Well it has more to do with the fact that they sat to the left of the king in the first French parliament during the revolutionary times. If they had sat on the right side we’d be calling them rightists. But those who advocated for it ran the gamut from the poorest of society to the extremely well off and highly educated.
You think unions were/are only for the most privileged sectors of society? No blue collar worker unions?
Ask 10 random blue collar workers what political issues are most important to them and then ask the same question to 10 random liberal arts professors. Then tell me which group's opinions fall into Leftist beliefs, lol.
Seeing how unions get co-opted rather quickly in order to focus on minority/luxury issues I think there is an argument there. For example, the largest teachers union in the UK has been co-opted by a radical race Marxist who wants to use his position to indoctrinate children into leftism and reorganise society into his image. Everything is racist, everything is oppression. He’s using strikes for his own little games.
lefts: > we have to destroy the current system it is wrong and misleading the masses also lefts: > the current system validates me so i must be right
It also could be made up.
Because most of the problems they talk about are the real problems. The only problem with them, is that their solutions are completely wrong, and lead to even more problems. Probably the best example here: -Is the problem of formation of monopolies real? -Yes. -How you deal with it? -We create governmental monopolies (Instead of liberalizing the market, so it is more difficult for monopolies to form + also leaving government some power to act against monopoly formation)
So, what are those leftist way of analysis? Asking so I can use them to get better grades when a professor is a leftie.
Leftist analysis boils down to study of the elites. Why did Donald Trump get elected? He was supported by business groups who wanted tax cuts, and those groups realized that Trump would be able to win the support of the little people who would be harmed by tax cuts. Shit like that. In academic jargon, leftist analysis can be analytically fruitful, but normatively abhorrent (the leftist crusade against teaching algebra in 8th grade is a fine example)
Agree with whatever bullshit interpretation the professor spouts. Thats all. I’m taking a political philosophy class right now, and the professor is a caricature of a Redditor who comes into class to bitch about his divorce (the second since I took my first intro to philosophy class with him), how his dad and ex wives didn’t recognize his genius, and how the system is keeping him as an adjunct and denying him tenure. He also seems out of his depth when it comes to discussing classical philosophy, as his interpretations are all shoved through some idiotic lens that induces him to say shit like “Aristotle was sexist because he thought that men and women have roles to play in society based on gender norms”. So if you want to be successful in the class, you need to approach everything you write from the perspective of “what is the weirdest bad faith interpretation I can infer from any political philosophy that is even somewhat right of Marxism?” and go from there.
Conservative history professor checking in. We exist but it’s exhausting.
Tbh I found most of my history teachers and profs to be pretty unbiased. Same with my poly Sci ones. Though there were some pretty blatant exceptions, namely the prof for my mandatory gender studies class to complete my history degree. I found the most biased profs in English, philosophy, and other social sciences.
Yeah, my first history teacher in college constructed her entire class based on the idea that the founding fathers were early socialists and their intent was for our country to evolve into a socialist society. It was the weirdest thing. Would straight up tell us our textbook was wrong and that all information would be done via lectures and from her perspective. I didn't know much, as I was 19 at the time, but it immediately felt so wrong. I respectfully argued with her every class. I aced all of her tests by studying the textbook and providing the correct answers, but she would give me an F every test and tell me that it wasn't the information that was provided during her lectures. I complained to the Dean and she begrudgingly passed me with a C. He said that she had tenure so she could essentially teach what she wanted. It was one of the most infuriating and weirdest situations I had in college. Luckily, I never experienced anything so negative (to that degree) again. One of the most concerning aspects of the entire thing was the fact that I was the only person in class who pushed back on her. Every other student just sat there quietly and absorbed it all.
Honestly I am very blessed that my college seems to be full of people who genuinely enjoy the things they teach, and as such meet my enthusiasm with their own rather than being full on ideological. I've done papers ragging on enlightenment ideals of democracy, portraying Mussolini in a far more positive light than usual (so, only slightly negative), and a few others. So far the only major issues I've encountered with revolutionary leftists is some other students.
It depends on which type of leftism you're advocating for. New Deal, pre-civil rights Leftism? Very good. Post-civil rights 'leftism' that focuses on identity politics and political division? Very, very bad.
What?! Colleges teaching you what to think rather than how to think? No way!
I remember in college a history professor chastising our class for having the audacity to think any of us were paying for our education without the help of subsidies. Mind you, this was a lecture. No one said anything to the contrary. Just a five minute screed on how important Daddy government is.
To be fair too the handful of teachers I've known as adult as well as being taught by a few , I think most are just naturally classic libertarians. But airing on the side of caution could also be a reason for what's going on. It's slippery times for the education system
Who would’ve thought that the people who literally work for the government and have an incentive for the government to throw around money like it’s candy would also be leftists? So weird.
>It’s tumblr and they have a Hollow Knight profile pic. Alright alright, let’s see how this goes. >”…when I apply leftist ways of analysis and thinking in history class I get good grades and am told I have a good understanding of history and the world.” Perhaps the instructor is biased?
Could it be that people who live in silo'd off environments like academia don't need to think about compromise and have a systemic bias that is anticipated and accounted for by the rest of the world? No, it is indoctrination and there is no way to react to discourse that is impractical other than have it be a boogeyman. Nobody is surprised academics don't know the reality of running a business. That doesn't point to a grand conspiracy. People who profit from you being ignorant want you to scoff at education despite the reality that people do become more moderate in the real world so you are good little serfs when you don't encourage study. This is one of the most room temperature takes.
A lot of teacher have been in schools most of their life. All of my favorite teachers went out and worked and had varying views and leanings before they ended up teaching. They always had more nuanced takes, and they could usually apply what they were teaching to the real world.
Lol I have my degree in history and unironically it pushed me towards being an An-Cap
I would wager that anyone who actually studied history, should naturally, if they're not despicable power hungry fucks, cater towards An-Cap or at least libertarian-light. The state and its lap dogs are the cause of massacres and death.
I mean yeah. You become somewhat libertarian pretty quickly, be it left or right when it comes to economics. States start to look really bad real quick. And I haven't even studied history properly (got top grades in history/sociology class all throughout school though).
Unfortunately a lot of history majors are either Emily's or they are just straight leftists because history profs hand wave the failures of communism
when i graduated our History department was mostly white men who range from center Libertarians through Regan Republicans and conservatives to An-Caps.
Definitely Libertarian light for me. Anarchism is basically just asking for the guy with the biggest army to take over, and you have no control over whether it'll be a Mr Rogers or an Adolf Hitler. It can't exist because there are always those who will not allow it to exist. And unless you think warlord era China sounds cool as hell I'm not sure that's what you should want. Some government good. Too much government bad.
Didn’t even study history. Just want to be left alone. The government does hardly anything but piss people off after they build the roads and utilities.