Years ago, there was a terribly underrated movie called PCU. It was about a college that was so politically correct, it was insane. There was a scene near the end where the heroes start a counter-protest—the premise was “We’re not going to protest,” ironically enough—and a group of hippies had their own placards and magic markers handy just in case there was an opportunity to protest.
We had no idea just how prescient that movie was going to turn out to be.
This century has been filled with protests, particularly for the last decade, but the 2020s seem to be especially bad.
People see protests and figure everyone there has a grievance to air, that they’re all there in support of whatever cause the protest is about.
Yeah, we shouldn’t be so sure.
Two Columbia University students who rushed to join NYU’s violent anti-Israel rally are going viral after admitting they had no idea what the protest was about — and wished they were “more educated.”
…
“I think the main goal is just showing our support for Palestine and demanding that NYU stop … I honestly don’t know all of what NYU is doing,” one admitted when asked about the protest’s purpose.
Asked if there was “something NYU is doing,” the student meekly replied: “I really don’t know, I’m pretty sure they are…”
She then turned to her friend and asked, “Do you know what NYU is doing here?”
The friend, who was wearing a face mask, then bluntly asked: “About what?”
One of them literally said that she didn’t know why they were protesting and that she wished she were more educated.
Honest, we all wish you were more educated.
Now, most of us are pointing and laughing, for good reason, but this actually highlights some important points about all of these protests we keep seeing.
One of the first of those is how few of these people are true believers. Many are simply followers who are doing what someone tells them. These girls rushed over to NYU because someone they deemed as in authority told them to.
It might even have been a professor or someone they’d been conditioned to listen to.
See, young, impressionable minds get told that something is a positional good, that all decent people hold this position and aggitate for this position and that those who don’t are bad people.
Well, no one wants to be a bad person, so they listen to this person in authority—and it may be a professor or just a very opinionated fellow student with leadership qualities or just some charisma—and they protest for this position even if they don’t really understand it.
Then, when they’re told they need to go to this other place, they go. They go because they’re lemmings. They’re followers who don’t know how to think for themselves.
And understand that Columbia, while a difficult school to get into, isn’t interested in teaching them how to think. The entire admissions process is predicated on the regurgitation of facts, be they history or math or something else entirely. They throw in some diversity efforts here and there, but even those students are still there because they regurgitated facts almost well enough to get in anyway.
Thinking, however, isn’t part of the process. Critical thinking is discouraged. You either repeat what your professor says or risk failing the class. You repeat what your friends say or you may find outself not just ostracized by your friend group but possibly hounded off campus.
While many college students aren’t that bad, a lot of them are. They’re easily led because they don’t know how to decide things for themselves.
Then they tell you to educate yourself. That’s partly because they don’t understand the topic well enough to educate you on it.
And that’s not even touching on the dudes that show up hoping their advocacy will get them laid. (Seriously, my mom dated a guy after divorcing my dad who was an anti-Vietnam protestor while in the National Guard. His reason? He hoped to score with hippy chicks.)
Now, I’m not saying none of them are true believers. Some of them have to be. The system can’t work if absolutely no one buys into it.
But we often overestimate just how many are in that camp versus how many are just doing what they’re told because they believe they’re bad people if they don’t.
In 2020, we have every reason to believe that not everyone who took part in the riots were remotely interested in social justice. Some just wanted to burn and loot and the crowd gave them a chance to get away with it.
Yet others were there because they felt like they had to be, that their failure to show would illustrate a lack of revolutionary enthusiasm that would be detrimental to their social status.
The media didn’t try to do a lot of interviews with rioters. Those that did knew enough of what was going on to at least regurgigate the right talking points.
But these two girls have kind of shown us a glimpse of what’s behind the curtain. We can see the Wizard for who he really is, someone just directing young, stupid kids to bolster numbers but who have no understanding of what’s going on.
Tilting at Windmills is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for 15% off the first year or making a one-time donation here. Your support is greatly appreciated.
1970. Kent State. Like many other schools there were protests - peaceful, thankfully - on the campus of our small Catholic college. Of course this quickly devolved into unrelated demands from the more progressive elements, most especially for "relevant courses." I even remember the instigators burying a copy of Aquinas' Summa Theologica so as to rid the curriculum of outdated thought.
Well, this led to a gathering in the Campus Club (a bar, as 18 year olds could still drink); lots of students had their say about changing the college's requirements. That is, until one of the Physics professors, known to be a tad eccentric, arose and said "I believe every student should be required to take Physics 311, Celestial Mechanics, because nobody can consider themselves educated if they don't understand the 3-body problem." Immediate end of the bitch session - though not of the drinking.
Have to say, expecting college professors to teach critical thinking when they show such little evidence of that in their public statements is foolish.