There's this idea that's been stirring around in my head for quite a while, and I've found that the only way to get this kind of thing out of my head is to write it down and post it. So you get to suffer along with me.

This is major league aluminum-foil-hat territory, and I don't know if there's anything real about it.

It's inspired by a couple of things. First, there's this comment and then this comment at Metafilter from last year, which are about the fact that Marxist revolution doesn't really start with the Proletariat. "Revolution is a sport of the Bourgeois", who rise up because they're comfortable and fear losing the things they already have.

Second is this at Instapundit today, though it's typical of something that's been going on for a long time:

And don't forget the self-described "bacon-eating vegan” who was left shocked and tearful upon discovering that her degrees in "social justice studies” and "gender studies” have zero value in the job market. "My degrees mean NOTHING,” tweeted she. "I don't even know how to process the reality that is my life now.”

To those of us who studied engineering in college, the first reaction is, "Well DUH!"

But I think there's deeper meaning here. So put on your aluminum foil hat, and let's plumb the depths. Suppose you are a dedicated Socialist Progressive and have finally realized that you're not going to get the American Proletariat to rise in revolution (in part because there isn't one any more) and realized that your true fodder for revolution must be disaffected bourgeois, particularly the young.

You're in a university (of course; only those with sinecures can really take Marxism Progressivism seriously). You're playing a long march game and trying to lay the ground work for an eventual revolution in order to establish the Utopia that the sainted Marx predicted. One way you prepare is to use the educational system, especially at the college level, to teach your students to hate America and everything it stands for. (Actually, to hate Western Civilization and everything it stands for.)

But that doesn't tend to stick. Students graduate suitably indoctrinated but as they move out into the real world, get real jobs, and work for a living, and get exposed to other ideas, the indoctrination tends to wear off. (Which is why most Progressives are young.)

The solution: Grievance Studies. This is a special body of students who spend their college years learning how to find something to hate in everything they see, to look for the dark lining in every silver cloud, and learning how to make a stink about it. And... you saddle them with mountainous debts that they cannot discharge through bankruptcy and have no hope of ever repaying, especially since they graduate with no marketable skills and thus cannot find any kind of reasonable job.

These people are already indoctrinated to hate the system, and once out in the real world they have no stake in the system and no hope of getting the better life they were always told they would get with a college degree. Their future is one of grinding poverty with no escape, little better than slaves. They don't have a specific owner, but they're effectively owned by the system as a whole.

They feel like victims, and they are victims, but they've been taught to blame the wrong things and to look for solutions in the wrong places.

As you produce an entire generation of young people like this who have sold themselves into bondage because they didn't know any better, you now have a substantial population of people who might well truly be willing to engage in Marxist revolution, because the existing system has nothing for them and never will have.

Workers NEETs of the world, rise up! You have nothing to lose but your chains college loans!

I've been worried about the titanic levels of debt that young people are taking on in order to go to college, because in a lot of ways it represents a long term threat to the entire system. It's an economic bubble, for one thing, just like the housing bubble. You can pass laws that say that college debt cannot be discharged through bankruptcy (and they have) but that doesn't mean those loans will invariably be repaid. Some will; some will not. If a person cannot pay off their debt, then the debt will default when they die even if not sooner.

But it also worries me because it creates an entire generation of people in this country who feel (rightly) that they've been completely fucked over. That grievance, especially in people who have been taught what to do about it in a Grievance Studies department, could actually boil over into revolution -- and that scares the hell out of me.

UPDATE: Following this idea further down the rabbit hole, there's this thought:

It's no accident that the most important thing American students study in grade school and high school about American history is slavery.

One place I worked, my group secretary was a young black woman who was born in Jamaica. Her family moved to Los Angeles before she was school age, and she went to grade school in LA. I was talking to her one time and the subject of slavery came up, and it eventually became apparent that she didn't realize that she was descended from freed slaves. She thought that slavery only happened in the US. She never thought about why people of African ancestry were so common in Jamaica, and Brazil, and Puerto Rico, and so on.

The most important thing that American grade school students learn these days about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is that they owned slaves.

Slave owners are all irredeemable scum. No redeeming features whatever. So since such a large percentage of the Founding Fathers were slave owners, obviously the nation is not worthy of respect. (Especially after what it did to all the natives who already lived here when the Europeans arrived.)

They're also taught that slaves are innocent victims and the descendants of slaves are innocent victims, and that victims (all victims) are entitled to recompense. Their problems (which are often manifold) are always someone else's fault, never their own, and any solutions must come from someone else. They are not responsible for their plight and cannot do anything about it except scream and yell and demand reparations.

Which sets up their mindset perfectly for their own descent, eventually, into effective slavery. "Perfectly", that is, to make them desperate, sullen, and helpless to do anything practical about it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 12:36 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment

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