The moral rot at America’s elite universities and the dogmatic ideologies that hold Americanism in contempt, cheer Hamas killers, crush dissent, destroy intellectual freedom and embrace division have been exposed. It is twisted.
What has been exposed is the fruits of a generation of ideological indoctrination that has poisoned a generation of brittle college graduates, who combine arrogance, dogmatism, ignorance, intolerance and certitude into an absurd concoction of grievance-based performative nothingness. Somehow, the nation has failed them so completely and abandoned them so absolutely that they became prey for digital hustlers pushing algorithms that celebrate mass rape, child murder, human butchery and the firing of automatic weapons at point blank range into the genitals of young girls, mothers and grandmothers.
We have a system of higher education in America that charges parents a hundred thousand dollars a year, vacuums up money from hostile foreign powers, abuses students as part of a predatory loan industry, sits on tens of billions of cash endowments, and can’t teach basic concepts of right and wrong or basic citizenship. It is broken. What has been exposed is a very specific type of corruption, and it is appalling.
Time erases memories, not just in individuals, but within societies. It is astonishing that within the span of a single human lifetime one of the most famous and important voices of an era could fade into relative obscurity within a generation. It would have astonished Americans living in 1885 that the most famous man in the world, Ulysses Grant, a man who saved the Union, would at best ring a vaguely familiar bell for some Americans just two human lifetimes after his death.
The same is true of another American titan, though he died in 1965. His name was Edward Roscoe Murrow. He was a broadcast journalist. He was a truth teller in a world that was consumed by lies. He was a voice that the American people could trust in a moment of enormous consequence.
The collapse of trust in the American media is a result of the business decisions that destroyed Murrow’s ethic. Some say that the following is the greatest news broadcast in history. There were no pictures that accompanied the report. Only Murrow’s words. Close your eyes and listen to them. You will quickly move past the scratchiness of the recording, and be transported back to a relatively recent moment at a profoundly evil place. It was at Buchenwald where the fascist road led.
The man describing the scene had chartered a plane to Vienna seven years earlier, as the Nazi Army rolled into Austria during the Anschluss of 1938. The justification for the Anschluss was a doctrine of racial purity that sought to unify Aryans and the Germanic people around a thousand-year Reich that promised freedom, prosperity and national greatness. His broadcast from Vienna was a historic occasion beyond its being a harbinger of the Second World War. It was Edward R. Murrow’s first live report, a multipoint broadcast of a live event over shortwave radio that reached seamlessly into millions of American homes. Here are the words that began the greatest career in modern American journalism:
This is Edward R. Murrow, speaking from Vienna. It’s now nearly 2:30 in the morning and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived.
Murrow surely could not have predicted the journey that would take him from Vienna to Buchenwald, but the American people could count on him to explain what was happening as the crisis grew into human civilization’s greatest test and catastrophe. Murrow was trusted because he earned trust.
Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. It seems an obvious point about which the majority of America’s media mandarins are oblivious. “This is London” meant something because the man delivering the news could be counted on to explain it, as well as trusted to deliver it. He built the greatest assemblage of broadcast journalists in world history. They illuminated the opaqueness, horror, truth and challenges of World War II. They looked over the edge of the abyss into the pit of tyranny, war, suffering and evil. They shared the experience without contempt, bombast, spin, exaggeration or a political agenda. They were truth tellers.
Listen to Edward R. Murrow describing Buchenwald. Try and imagine hearing them for the first time. Try and visualize what it is that he was describing. Perhaps it is something they should consider teaching at Ivy League schools.
If you are unable to listen to his news report, you can read it here.
“What has been exposed is the fruits of a generation of ideological indoctrination that has poisoned a generation of brittle college graduates, who combine arrogance, dogmatism, ignorance, intolerance and certitude into an absurd concoction of grievance-based performative nothingness.”
Steve, I agree with these words; however, I believe you are applying them incorrectly. It sounds like you’re describing the evangelical churches, white nationalists, “right-wing” media and the MAGA mob.
Universities teach complex issues. History isn’t condensed into a few sentences and bumper stickers or slogans, like they teach in high school. It requires critical reasoning and nuance of complex issues and problems.
And it’s not indoctrination that is at issue. It’s that governments act contrary to their own belief system. We speak of equality, and morality, when our own government has hoodwinked us into morally bankrupt wars. We have supported brutal dictatorships, illiberal regimes and even provoked coups when it serves our interests.
Don’t blame colleges for teaching the truth. It’s society that lets us down. It’s our feckless leaders and media who regurgitate lies, and misinformation for their own nefarious purposes.
Do students react the same way many Americans do, when they recognize injustices? Of course! How is what has been happening on college campuses even in the same category as the J6th insurrection?
Who taught these people (MAGA) to hate America and democrats with such disdain that they were willing to overthrow a democratically elected government and install an authoritarian kleptocrat? Are colleges calling for the overthrow of our government? I don’t think so!
I believe your vitriol is directed at the wrong people. Yes, the anti-semitism on campus’s is horrendous. That said, the college students anger may be misplaced, but it’s because of years of neglect by the western world to protect Palestinians; allowing Netanyahu and his right-wing government to commit atrocity after atrocity, and for what? Their policies aren’t t making Israel safer. It’s because Israel wants to expand its territory and expel Palestinians from their land? The religious Jews and Netanyahu don’t even try to hide this fact. And America has been culpable and an enabler for Netanyahu’s draconian agenda. If you want to have an honest discussion of the facts, then let’s have at it. Yet, you make no distinctions between Hamas and the Palestinian people, as though they are a monolith group. You show no concern for the average Palestinian. Where is your moral compass?
You’d have to be blind not to even consider what has been happening to the Palestinians for decades. This is the college students emotional response to tyranny. We all succumb to this distortion of truth from time to time. 9/11 comes to mind, and it didn’t end well for anyone, including America.
So please stop making this about Israel and Hamas; that is a simplistic understanding of a complex issue. In the end, Palestinians are human beings and have the same right to self-determination as everyone else. And as an American Jew, we have a responsibility to uphold a higher moral standard for the most marginalized in society. Otherwise, our claim as a victim of hate and racism is nothing more than a lie.
And as H.L. Mencken once said, “complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers!”
Bottom line: it’s not indoctrination. Their emotional response is decades in the making, and while I disagree with their behavior, they aren’t completely wrong in wanting justice for Palestinians. Even a majority of Israeli’s want peace.
It would be more beneficial for all of us if you would at least touch on the issues, instead of immediately backing Israel with impunity. No country operates with anything other than their own interests at heart; and until there is a paradigm shift in thinking, these conflicts are inevitable; as are the outcomes.
Very well written. Thank you. I watched the hearing; from the heads of these Elite Universities . And the back and forth between them and Elise Stefanik . 1) I felt that those testifying needed to elaborate on their answers, they failed to do that. I also thought that this was little Miss Revenge Stefanik , taking this opportunity to get back at her Al ma mater, Harvard, for removing her from the Advisory seat . They did so, when she lied and continues to lie for trump, on the 2020 election being stolen. She was active behind the scenes in assisting Trump to overturn / and stay in power.
Elise is a Power hungry, aggressive witch. That being said..The Heads of MIT, PENN, And Harvard gave crappy crappy weak answers. WHY? (another good source on why we are here today, is Rachel Maddows book Prequel ..she goes into this in depth.) But, what Hurts my brain..is Elise Stefanik badgering those testifying - while at the same time - supporting Trump who's dad was KKK / Who called the Charlottesville tiki torch protestors - Chanting "jews will not replace us" VERY FINE PEOPLE - A trump who was endorsed by David Duke after that event. SO...if its not good for our SCHOOLS...why is it OKAY in our White House? its like this about everything "in politics" Why is Politics different than REAL LIFE? ..
Sadly as I watched the hearing / and I listened to their answers ..I found myself yelling at the TV saying ...AND,....AND...Yes, we must protect Free speech. But??? Threatening cannot continue ..whether its in schools / or its from a candidate eying another run for the White House. Calling Leticia james PEEK A BOO??? when he's dying to say JIG A .. COME ON !!