In U.C.L.A. Debate Over Jewish Student, Echoes on Campus of Old Biases – NYTimes.com.*

I don’t have time for a well-thought-out blog post, so I’m going to express my views, even more than usual, though profanity.

What the fuck?  How did we get to the place where a bunch of entitled little shits at a prominent university, ostensibly full of smart people, could question a student’s fairness based on her religion.

I blame:

1. The students.  Grow up, get your heads out of your asses, and think like decent human beings, not self-important Judgers of the Universe.  You’re 20ish.  Know, now, that you don’t know shit.  Think before you talk.  Maybe even consult a grown-up before you talk.
2. A sound-byte culture in which it’s always less than a step from reasoned disagreement to ad hominem vilification.  Disagree with American policy?   You’re unpatriotic, a “fifth column.”  Disagree on middle-east policy?  You’re a suspected Mossad agent and/or ISIS sympathizer.**  Believe that women should control their own bodies?  You’re a baby-killer.  Think that we should perhaps consider the growing life inside the woman’s body?  You’re “fighting a war on women.”***  I’m sure there has always been plenty of invective to go around — since the invention of the swear word in prehistoric times — but it seems now that this the culture kids are steeped in.  They grow up on the internet perhaps thinking that the self-righteous, self-centered and generally nasty world of internet comments is normal or OK.
3. Whatever passes for history teaching these days.  How the fuck could these smart kids get to their early 20s and not get — viscerally — that what they were doing was deeply, deeply wrong.  Any sort of reasonable instruction in the holocaust and the civil rights movement should have made this assaholic move impossible.

I’m concerned that these — and likely other — factors caused these kids’ brains to turn off and their sound byte/talking head/internet troll training to take over.   I sentence them to a intensive course in 20th Century History and a serious time out.

**********

* I truncated the headline in my blog title because once you get to “debate over Jewish student,” you’re in “what the fucking hell” territory.

** I guess the “and” side of the “/” is fairly unlikely.

*** I’m not suggesting false balance (“and now over to Dr. Schmuck, for the flat-earther position”), but merely that when discussing even those views we personally think are utter horseshit, we stop and think about the substance and keep the discussion on that level.  I’m just fucking tired of media talking shrieking heads and what it’s doing to the culture in which we hope to raise a rational next generation.