Over the weekend I had a chance to attend a college graduation and also watch two other college graduations online. It was a hopeful affair for the graduates and the proud parents who watched a payoff of their time, love, and resources. The events were exclusive to schools that specialize in the liberal arts. The waaaay liberal arts.
The three schools were geographically diverse. One was prestigious and two were your average state schools. But in all three, two themes emerged clear as a bell: The overwhelming predominance of women receiving academic recognition and the obsession for change for change’s sake.
The former is a direct product of this society’s ongoing war against men and boys. For decades men have been told they are toxic, rapist, sexist despoilers of the land and people. This while simultaneously females have been encouraged by messages, like the one apparent on a campus I visited, that said “Girls can do anything.”
If the gender roles were reversed in that message the hue and cry would be deafening, such is the hypocrisy of the modern sexist culture that demeans men as a matter of course. The graduation speakers, all women at the event I attended, not only gleefully extolled left wing nostrums, but went out of their way to exclude men, and presumably the male graduates sitting in front of them, from their celebratory remarks.
One young lady repeatedly stressed the future would be directed by female leaders to the exclusion of men. Listening to her was like hearing the ignorance of a Kluxer in 1930 Alabama, just switch the bigotry from race to gender.
However, more than sexism, the message of the various ceremonies was that change is an imperative in of itself. No description of the change per se, no mention of improvement or advancement in any specific area, just change. Well, Hitler made a lot changes. As did Stalin, Castro, and Pol Pot.
You’d think after four years of higher education these kids would get that. You’d think after watching the recent change in the territorial integrity of Ukraine both the kids and assembled speakers would get that. But nahhhh.
The focus on change as opposed to improvement is a folly of youth. The grads feel, not think, that change is the only way they can move up and take their rightful place in the corridors of power. They also feel their ideas, not balanced by real world experience or the wisdom of age and professional expertise, will storm the bastions of the establishment and be accepted as new writ. The poor children, for that is not how the actual world works.
They will get their comeuppance soon enough, as their elders relegate the young geniuses to the world changing duties of coffee making and breakfast pickup and delivery. After that period they made indeed join adulthood and come to the full realization that change can come in many colors, not all of them positive for themselves, their country, or mankind in general.