Nemo wrote: ↑Wed Jan 08, 2020 6:30 pm
This narrative that those without proper education are grunting animals.
I didn't say anyone was an animal. But, please, tell me what the grunts, "TRUMP!", "MAGA!", "BREXIT!" actually mean, because that's what a large segment of former union members are grunting these days. If I take their explanations at face value, "Mexicans are f'in everything up." "Leave those animals in the ghettos to shoot each other", that is no path forward, for them or anyone else. And I can't believe that they really want to live in the prison of that kind of misanthropic malevolence. I know they have dreams, want their kids to have a better life, etc. etc. "Beings want to be happy. They don't want to suffer." If only the Democrats had adapted to the changing economic circumstances to address the tsunami that was hitting labor back in the 70s and 80s instead of embracing the technocrats with their Third Way bull shit. Maybe we could have steered policy in a direction that would not have left blue collar to languish in dying cities and towns. But that whole culture war thing drove a wedge, and we haven't been able to get over that since. To find a constructive meaning to grunts of discontent, we need to articulate it in a way that connects to a constructive policy, especially when we're aiming at addressing something relatively intangible like the greed of the 1%. HEY, WAIT, THAT "1%" rhetoric has been working! Where did that come from? ("OWS")
How is that working out for you? Academia betrayed labour to save their cushy positions in what became neutered academia. It was those technical and professional trained middle managers that downsized the working class for efficiency. They clearly chose the side of the billionaires.
You didn't catch that part where I pointed out the Academy has different segments, huh? There are indeed those parts of the academy nurtured by the 1%ers. I was talking recently with a fund raiser who used to work in an art history department, and now works for the neuroscience department. Give an art historian $100K in funding, and they are thrilled that they can now digitize their database and fund a grad student on an archeological dig. For the neuroscience department, $100K is the budget to decorate the office of the rock star professor they just hired. We're not even talking about outfitting their lab. I take it, you don't hang out with libaeral arts faculty and grad students much. They're not your enemy.
Many are just regular guys now with tons of student debt. The life boat seats to escape precarious economic circumstances become fewer every year. It wasn't the workers that needed academia.
Again, in your rush to generalize, you don't see what's happening.
Get a STEM degree, or a professional degree - you'll do just fine in this system. Even academic jobs are there, and the pay is upper middle class, and unless you were a complete idiot about it, the education was well funded and student debt is manageable.
If you are in the humanities, then yes, the squeeze is on, precisely because that education is devalued. And contrary to what you're insisting, those faculties are hardly bastions of neo-liberal thought. They're the same bunch of well meaning egg heads they've always been, trying to educate their students and advance their fields. They consistently vote left, supporting liberal candidates.
You're just disappointed that they don't drop everything and become vocal critics of the system?
Agenda driven research and writing has its place, but that's simply not what most academics do. Its not their job.
Well, Nemo, certainly not going to build a coalition with your approach. And where does that leave us?
Bitching into the ether on Dharma Wheel.