5
0

Why the insane levels of hate for Trump in academia?


 invite response                
2020 Nov 18, 8:48am   1,051 views  39 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

https://spectator.us/academics-hold-thatcher-trump-such-contempt/

The academics themselves would claim, and no doubt believe, that their animus derives from their superior humanity. But I have an alternative theory, and it’s a simple one: insecurity.

Trump, the great deal-maker (in his own mind at least) measured success in terms of bottom lines and negotiating outcomes, a philosophy inimical to most academics.

His very presence in the White House was living proof of how far you can go without paper qualifications, or even reading books. Suspicious of the academy and its leftward lurch, he justified withholding funding from institutions that practiced affirmative action and had diversity programs.

Similarly, Thatcher, despite her own academic success, was at heart the grocer’s daughter who weighed the produce in her father’s shops and took fair payment in pounds, shillings and pence.

Thatcher took this thinking with her into No. 10. Building on her relatively unproductive spell as education minister she introduced measures to gauge teaching and research ‘quality’ — replacing the university grants committee with a funding council shorn of most of its academics — and removed the security of tenure for many. As with the grocers, there was to be nothing on tick.

Trump had the disturbing habit of asking uncomfortable questions about the worth of institutions with no tangible end product: ‘What’s the point of Nato?’ he has effectively asked. Thatcher might have wondered the same about the NUT.

Basically, Thatcher and Trump lacked the automatic respect many academics feel is their due. They gave the impression that they could see right through us — an uncomfortable feeling.

But if the sentiments of the majority of educators of 2020 and 1990 are similar, what has changed is the level of censoriousness, and the fear among the few dissenters of speaking out against the consensus. Pro-Thatcher academics were perhaps not too popular in the staff room, but didn’t live in fear of losing their jobs. I’m not sure that is true about Trump.

Now and again I gently take on my Trump-hating colleagues. I point out that, however disagreeable his personality, being the first president in 40 years to not engage or escalate a war means an awful lot of people have avoided being killed. And an improved American economy meant better living conditions for those at the bottom of the heap. And then there was Trump’s potentially huge breakthrough in the Middle East peace process.

Is it not worth at least thinking about these things before we start declaring the Trump era an unmitigated disaster and start popping the champagne corks? ‘You can’t possibility defend Trump’, said a Canadian professor friend when I raised these points.

And what worried me was that I’m not entirely sure in what sense the word ‘can’t’ was being used.

« First        Comments 15 - 39 of 39        Search these comments

15   Bd6r   2020 Dec 8, 12:27pm  

theoakman says
Yes, but one the downfalls with engineers is this. They believe they can model anything and therefore gravitate to the technocrat side of things. I regularly ate lunch in college with a group of 10 engineers. All psycho liberals with very high IQs.

I don't see that here, it's a rather (un)healthy mix of political views. From people praying to a shrine of Trump in their homes all the way to shrieking anti-Trumpers.
16   Ceffer   2020 Dec 8, 12:34pm  

Dbr6 says
All psycho liberals with very high IQs.


It's the standard liberal Shockley conceit that 'high IQ' means you can central plan the revolution down to its itsy bitsy street level consequences from an armchair because you are so smurf smart.

They have no concept of the puzzle pieces that make up the human species and the way they fit together, neither the variability nor the stochastics.
17   zzyzzx   2020 Dec 8, 2:51pm  

Because they got tenure.
Trump is keeping them from being able to buy more cheap shit from China.
18   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2020 Dec 8, 3:19pm  

A lot of them hate Republicans. Big education industrial complex has its side and ideologies of the left.
19   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Dec 8, 3:44pm  

Liberals hired far Leftists.
Liberals retired.
Far Leftists only hire other far leftists.
Only Far Leftists get tenure; tenure committees, including at State U., ask political questions of any Liberal Arts tenure candidate.
20   BoomAndBustCycle   2020 Dec 8, 4:02pm  

Patrick says
Now and again I gently take on my Trump-hating colleagues. I point out that, however disagreeable his personality, being the first president in 40 years to not engage or escalate a war means an awful lot of people have avoided being killed. And an improved American economy meant better living conditions for those at the bottom of the heap. And then there was Trump’s potentially huge breakthrough in the Middle East peace process


Easily explained... you know when there’s a car accident and everyone mouth agape rubbernecks and slows down causing a traffic jam in disbelief. That’s been the collective world reaction for the last four years.

It’s one huge Mulligan for the US... woulda been business as usual had he gotten a second term. His presidency was a worldwide “time out”, maybe out of fear of unbridled retaliation? Maybe since Obama administration killed Osama... the terrorists are left an unfunded, disorganized mess for the time being. Maybe the US’s enemies are sitting back watching us foment a civil war and are binding their time!

Trump isn’t anti-war... he’s not a pacifist. His Twitter rhetoric and combative nature of defending his ego at all costs proves that. He loves making big threats and has done so numerous times. If North Korea hasn’t backed down that country would be a black hole right now and possibly one major US city would be nuked too if they actually had the capability. He inherited the military might of the US and swung that big military dick around the last 4 years as best he could.

He’s failed upwards his whole life... some people have extraordinary luck. It’s actually easy to win in negotiations with him... and I’ve said for years Democrats should have just kissed his ass and they could have gotten everything they wanted passed. He’s neither Republican or Democrat he’s a narcissist seeking ego boosting energy. It’s why he will shrivel up and die as soon as he’s out of the spotlight.
21   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Dec 8, 4:15pm  

And the only President in history to get 11M more votes for his second term - with the massive indisputable fraud. In contrast, Obama lost 4M votes from 2008 in 2012.

Every day more unassailable proof of Chinese bribery and spying to/on politicians.

Screenshotting comments here and on twitter for posterity.
22   Patrick   2020 Dec 8, 5:17pm  

theoakman says
Yes, but one the downfalls with engineers is this. They believe they can model anything and therefore gravitate to the technocrat side of things. I regularly ate lunch in college with a group of 10 engineers. All psycho liberals with very high IQs.


I found that engineering majors at U. Michigan were rather apolitical.

Mostly they just wanted good problems to work on, and to make a lot of money upon graduation.
23   NDrLoR   2020 Dec 8, 6:32pm  

TrumpingTits says
proposing a program of total conscription
Hubba hubba! Get on the bus!
24   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2020 Dec 9, 5:13am  

BoomAndBustCycle says

Trump isn’t anti-war... he’s not a pacifist. His Twitter rhetoric and combative nature of defending his ego at all costs proves that. He loves making big threats and has done so numerous times. If North Korea hasn’t backed down that country would be a black hole right now and possibly one major US city would be nuked too if they actually had the capability. He inherited the military might of the US and swung that big military dick around the last 4 years as best he could.


I don’t understand why you ask for physical evidence of voter fraud, yet spout of pure fairy tales like this.
25   georgeliberte   2020 Dec 9, 6:52am  

"[T]he Trump era an unmitigated disaster"
No, the US system absorbs and mitigates, good and bad, by design, and will do the same with the upcoming Biden mitigated disaster.
26   HeadSet   2020 Dec 9, 6:59am  

TrumpingTits says
The technocracy movement proposed replacing politicians and businesspeople with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy.

This sounds so much like the "Scientific Socialism" the Soviets were always going on about.
27   Onvacation   2020 Dec 9, 8:19am  

BoomAndBustCycle says
He’s neither Republican or Democrat he’s a narcissist seeking ego boosting energy. It’s why he will shrivel up and die as soon as he’s out of the spotlight.

So who did you vote for and why?

Not expecting a cogent answer.
28   BoomAndBustCycle   2020 Dec 9, 10:10am  

FuckTheMainstreamMedia says
don’t understand why you ask for physical evidence of voter fraud, yet spout of pure fairy tales like this.


So Trump never threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea back in 2017 in his UN speech?

I shouldn’t have taken him at his word he would nuke North Korea?
29   Shaman   2020 Dec 9, 11:55am  

BoomAndBustCycle says
Trump isn’t anti-war... he’s not a pacifist. His Twitter rhetoric and combative nature of defending his ego at all costs proves that. He loves making big threats and has done so numerous times.


It’s all negotiation. For the idiots who don’t understand how this process works, it looks chaotic and undisciplined. That’s by design.
Let’s use a chess analogy. Two grandmasters are sitting at a table. They have all the time in the world to plan their next moves, and lots of advisors to help them find alternative strategies. Move and countermove. Nobody loses and nobody wins.
Trump came into that situation, sat down, and moved his knight diagonally to check Kim Jong Un’s king.
“You can’t do that!” exclaimed all the diplomats and spies, journalists and wonks.
But it seems that he did. He broke the rules to get a win. It doesn’t matter that he broke the rules. It seemed that he could do what he did, so he got away with it as a valid move. And NK was forced to respond to it.

Unfortunately, the Democrats have taken that strategy to heart, and broke the rules of the election to get a win. It doesn’t matter that they cheated. It LOOKED like they could do what they did. And appearances are all that matter.
30   BoomAndBustCycle   2020 Dec 9, 4:18pm  

Shaman says
He broke the rules to get a win. It doesn’t matter that he broke the rules. It seemed that he could do what he did, so he got away with it as a valid move. And NK was forced to respond to it.


Yeah, but his actions, tweets and threats have now become beyond predictable after 4 long years. He’s not a brilliant mind... and I doubt he knows the names of chess pieces let alone how to play.... but cute analogy.

Intelligence aside, Trump has become predictable. That’s doesn’t help him in any sort of future negotiations.
31   richwicks   2020 Dec 9, 5:17pm  

Ceffer says
It's the standard liberal Shockley conceit that 'high IQ' means you can central plan the revolution down to its itsy bitsy street level consequences from an armchair because you are so smurf smart.


Oh, that's not true of anybody that's worked with an evolutionary algorithm. You think you understand shit, then you are taught to make an evolutionary algorithm, and it comes up with a solution that is 1000 times better than you ever could have and did it 1000 times faster than you could have even solved the problem, terribly by the way.

The one thing learning about how an evolutionary algorithm worked, is it destroyed my conceit. It gave me a very robust belief in voting and group decision making. Competition is the core of an AI building itself up. I fear technocrats because they have no fucking idea what they are doing, the process is far more complicated than you can wrap your head around.

In the 1980's there were efforts to do optical character recognition and a lot of study into how you determine the letter "a" is indeed the letter "a". What are the properties of the letter? It's got a circle and to the right of it is a bar touching the circle. Sometimes it has a curve over it. And people thought and thought what is the abstract concept of each letter? Entire groups worked on the problem. This went on until evolutionary algorithms were put to the task in the early 1990s. By 1995 anything typed or printed was about 100% perfect with OCR. How does the algorithm work? Who the fuck knows, but it works. The AI recognizes probably 1000 more attributes than a human being could on what makes the letter "a" an "a".

In a free society, you end up with an algorithm as well solving problems. You might have 3 people solving the same problem, if society works properly, you end up with the best solution. When society is corrupted, like the USSR was, you can end up with some bureaucrat nutcase telling farmers when to plant their seeds, 300 miles away. We may go to that.
32   richwicks   2020 Dec 9, 5:48pm  

BoomAndBustCycle says
I shouldn’t have taken him at his word he would nuke North Korea?


No. This is Trump with North Korea:



Now this is Obama with North Korea:



Which one do you think is more likely to start a war? Which one tried most to make good relations and reduce tensions?

What Trump says is irrelevant. What he does is relevant. He's constantly negotiating. When he makes threats it's just part of his negotiation strategy. Trump stepped over the North/South DMZ zone into North Korea. If you did that, you'd most likely be shot. He's got balls. Most presidents are simpering cowards that would have insisted Kim Jong Un come to the United States. Trump just walked over the border and shook hands. Obama is cowering behind bullet proof glass looking though binoculars.

You think Biden is going to do anything like Trump did? How about Kamala Harris? Their job will be to escalate tensions. This allows them to sell more weaponry to Japan and to South Korea. They work for the "defense" industry, not for you.
33   richwicks   2020 Dec 9, 6:01pm  

BoomAndBustCycle says
Yeah, but his actions, tweets and threats have now become beyond predictable after 4 long years. He’s not a brilliant mind... and I doubt he knows the names of chess pieces let alone how to play.... but cute analogy.


Trump DOES have a brilliant mind. Who else could have taken on the intelligence agencies, the leadership of both parties, survive 3 years of attacks of our propaganda media, and get a massively larger number of votes in his 2nd term than his first?

They are resorting to a COUP to remove him. They had to do massive election fraud to remove him. So much election fraud, even 30% of the democratic voter base sees the election fraud.

He's been called a racist and a homophobic bigot for 4 years. Yet he got the largest number of black voters this time around, than any republican since the 1950s.

He has done what I've been trying to do for decades. He woke up 1/2 the country. He made 1/2 the country realize that our "news" is propaganda. He's showing systemic corruption in our government. 4 years ago, I thought our government was very corrupt. It is 100x worse than I realized but now at least 1/2 the country thinks the way I do because Trump was president. Things have to change.

In order to "beat" Trump, they've had to engage in blatant political censorship, deplatform people, promote propaganda ENDLESSLY. They had to show EVERY CARD they've got. Now you can see who the authoritarians are, you don't have to guess anymore. You no longer have to "suspect" the news media lies to you, you no longer have to "suspect" Big Tech works against you..

As of Today, it's NOT ALLOWED to question the validity of this very bizarre election where a senile old man that said this:

www.youtube.com/embed/WGRnhBmHYN0

Got the largest percentage of the population voting for him in all of American history. He's officially the most popular president we've ever had. Do you fucking believe that? 1/2 the country doesn't and it's probably MORE than that because people are afraid the coup may be successful. They are afraid for their job, they're afraid a Biden presidency will target them. They are afraid to stand up.

Do you know why they are doing this? It's their last stand. If Trump wins this, these assholes are going down. If Biden assumes the presidency, they're going to stick around, unfortunately, but having gotten the shit kicked out of them.
34   BoomAndBustCycle   2020 Dec 9, 9:48pm  

richwicks says
He's officially the most popular president we've ever had. Do you fucking believe that?


Yes, because Trump is the most disliked president in history for the far left and moderates just think he’s an asshat clown that should go away. You can’t deny hate for Trump is off the charts for close to 50% of the population. Hate drives out the vote best! Richwicks, you are arguing over a few percentage points in a few Democratic counties that pushed Biden over the top. Biden won the popular vote by 7 million votes. That’s fraud on a scale that’s not mathematically possible.

As far as Trumps meeting with North Korea... it’s right up his alley. He’s a giant narcissist and Kim Kim Jong Un is a sycophant of the highest order. Narcissists and sycophants are a perfect match.
35   Patrick   2022 Mar 14, 7:59pm  

https://markchangizi.substack.com/p/some-of-the-shitty-things-about-academia?s=r&source=patrick.net


Some of the shitty things about academia
…and maybe it’s no wonder academia was so disappointing on Covid

Mark Changizi
11 hr ago
12
3
From 2018, on some of the reasons I left academia years earlier to secure more intellectual freedom. Takes on new implications after two years of failure from academia.

~~

Inspired today to list some of the shitty things about academia.

1/ Teaching a course, yet knowing that same course is available online by some super-teacher who does it better.

2/ Tenure, which, rather than incentivizing novel breakthroughs, tends to instead lead to complacency.

3/ “Grant shoppers”, professors who constantly scour proposal announcements and scheme about how they can cram their hammer into any hole. (Mixed metaphor.)

4/ Team grants, where one professor spins a bullshit story about how we dozen professors together will do groundbreaking work. The other eleven are like, “Sure, put my name on, whatever.”

5/ Giant lab fiefdoms, each determined to grow the largest.

6/ The lack of proper faculty lounges that faculty actual go to and socialize, rather than just go for lunches with the job candidate. (University College Cork actually has a proper one.)

7/ Students hope to do a PhD and come up with a heeyuge big new crazy idea. Instead they are plopped into a lab, asked to do professor’s experiment i+1.

8/ The money. The only way to have it truly rise is to leave for another university, or successfully threaten to do so.

9/ Seeing some great engineering minds incentivized to do stupid bullshit with $5 million grants, delivering a dead fish. Their effect in private enterprise could be explosive.

10/ How every professor thinks he’s / she’s the paradigm example of “multidisciplinary”, but nearly all of them are...so...not.

11/ Spending most of one’s energy and time on applying for grants. ...grants that then tie one’s creativity down.

12/ Going to conferences, and seeing the “stars” of the field, and the fawning, and they all really truly believe they are stars. But no one gives a shit outside that room.

13/ At a talk and someone casually jests about how the Republican president is a fascist, as is anyone not sufficiently far left. Everyone giggles. The three libertarians sigh to themselves.

14/ The denouncements and petitions, treating campus as a microcosm of the injustices of the world, or the world they fantasize exists.

15/ The squelching of free speech for anyone not sufficiently far left: stealing conservative newspapers, disrupting talks, forcing professors out.

16/ Professors are always traveling to exotic locations for conferences on their grant’s dime. It’s not because they’re producing anything. It’s a racket, on the government’s dime.

17/ That undergraduates pay absurd tuition for the privilege of having the best professors try their damnedest to stay as far as possible from them.

18/ That graduate students actually believe that there’s a good probability they’ll get a good job.

19/ That the idea of being outside of academia is deemed a horrible failure. (Once outside, the hypnotic appeal dissipates immediately.)

20/ That it’s no place for theorists, yet theorists are needed more than ever. Yardstick of success is largely grants, and grants are almost exclusively experiments.

21/ Seeing entire careers determined by virtue of the research of his/her mentor in grad school he / she happened into. First grant easier if on same topic. Second grant easier if on that too. Etc for 40 years.

22/ How whole swaths of biology and neuroscience professors believe in evolution, but for all practical purposes don’t, because they believe that to actually hypothesize about it amounts to “just so” stories.

23/ And how in the behavioral sciences, if you use evolution to explain anything, you are either deeply confused or fascist, or both.
36   Patrick   2022 Mar 17, 6:23pm  

I thought this was a joke at first, but it's not, and I have to agree (except that Trump should not be promoting the dangerous and ineffective vaxx):

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-was-right-about-everything-opinion-1688325?source=patrick.net
37   Onvacation   2022 Mar 17, 6:45pm  

BoomAndBustCycle says
Biden won the popular vote by 7 million votes.

Irrelevant. We live in a republic. Thank God we don't live in a democracy.
38   richwicks   2022 Mar 17, 7:12pm  

BoomAndBustCycle says
richwicks says
He's officially the most popular president we've ever had. Do you fucking believe that?


Yes, because Trump is the most disliked president in history for the far left and moderates just think he’s an asshat clown that should go away. You can’t deny hate for Trump is off the charts for close to 50% of the population.


Sure I can.

There has been people working on the internet PRECISELY because we realized decades ago that our news media is propaganda and we wanted to destroy it.

Trump did some major heavy lifting. Today, CNN has less viewers at any given time than moderately popular people in a basement just spouting off. They have less than 1 million viewers at any given time, and most of those are geriatrics that don't know how to use the Internet.

Biden wasn't elected. If he was, audits wouldn't be a problem, there wouldn't be people getting involved to block them, there wouldn't have been a MAJOR overhaul of the election system that was illegal at the last second over this "pandemic". He's a CIA installed puppet. We've had puppets for a long time. The trick is two puppets run against another, and it doesn't matter who wins. This is why, for example, Mitt Romney is a RINO - he's not a RINO - he's a CIA asset, just as Obama is, just as John McCain was, just as George W. Bush is, just as John Kerry is, etc.

The American populace HATES these criminals, the midwits, they are too dumb to recognize they are just criminals. They are allowed to be open, blatant, obvious criminals PROVIDED they do the bidding of the CIA. We have a puppet as president, doesn't matter if he's senile, corrupt, or a literal pedophile - and he's all those - our DOJ will do nothing about it, and our CIA is group of criminals.
39   komputodo   2022 Mar 17, 8:11pm  

clambo says
Of course, who knows if she can shoehorn her degree into a real job somewhere.

She could probably get a gig writing Anti-Russia propaganda, some covid scare stories, end of the world climate change narratives, white entitilement tales, etc. for Yahoo!

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions