Hitler Youth

Ah! An old post that I never finished. Let me have at it again.

So a few weeks ago I stumbled into the living room at 6 AM, in a half-hungover, half-arthritic daze, and turned on (what else?) C-SPAN. What to my wondering eyes should appear but an absurdist convention, only slightly disguised as the 27th Annual National Conservative Student Conference. What a way to start the day. Dada isn't dead, it has just become a tool of the right.

Technically, the college kids who assembled for this upside-down hoe-down aren't really in a cult. But it's hard to tell for sure. Why do they all look the same? Why do they all talk the same? Why all the toothy fucking grins?

Truth be told, as someone who spends a good deal (probably way too much, actually) of his time moonlighting in the day-to-day workings of one university in particular, I can tell you that even if there is a liberal bias among humanities professors (which may or may not be true, and may or may not be a bad thing if true), the rest of this environment--the administration, the fraternities / sororities, the trustees, the sports teams, the student body in general--is fairly biased toward the corporate money / power / status nexus. They may not all be pro-Bush, but they tend to love the social status quo--either because they benefit from it already or because they expect to benefit from it soon. So to see this same contingent complaining about "discriminatory treatment"... well, it's just utterly unconvincing to me.

It's also fairly hypocritical.