Have you ever wondered why the most educated and scholarly people in the country are left leaning?
I suppose you think they were indoctrinated. But finding and teaching the truth is essentially their job. Learning how to evaluate sources and approach research logically is like academia 101.
So doesn’t it seem strange that so few of them ever manage to see that they’re being indoctrinated?
Or do you think a person’s political beliefs are assigned at birth and lefties just like academia for some reason?
I have never wondered that because it is caused by many obvious factors.
>So doesn’t it seem strange that so few of them ever manage to see that they’re being indoctrinated?
I don't think most people care. They are primarily interested in career progression, social status, protecting the feelings of their peers.
They are willing to accept whatever ideology that occupies the water that they swim in. If the status quo was right wing, they would adopt the views of the right wing.
Beyond academia 101, you use that fundamental understanding of the scientific process to break the system, work backwards to justify your conclusion, p-hack, ensure grants and scholarships go to the correct people and whatever else it takes to succeed in that environment. I went to college, I've seen it happen in front of me.
It's the academic's job to find and teach the truth in the same way that it's the mechanic's job to fix your car. But the mechanic's incentives drive him to upsell you, charge you for work you don't need, and hell if he breaks something in the process you'll be coming back a lot sooner. So too it is the job of the knowlege worker to create more knowlege work.
>Or do you think a person’s political beliefs are assigned at birth and lefties just like academia for some reason?
I think that when a "normie" is told to imagine their future, they literally imagine themselves. That is to say, they don't imagine the mechanics of what their daily routine would be or imagine what values and strengths they would have; they imagine their future in the same way that they look at themselves in a mirror. There is a literal self-image involved.
They subscribe to a certain aesthetic (say, an upper-class aesthetic, or an artistic aesthetic, or a blue collar aesthetic or a military aesthetic) based on if they think it looks cool and then they work backwards to figure out what beliefs, values, strengths, etc. they need to fit in with society and play a certain designated character which is probably inspired by something they saw on TV. I am not joking.
So if you adopt, say, a punk rock style you would need to act rebellious to fit in, even if you do not feel the innate urge to do so based on your life experiences. When you enter the mosh pit it is like a safe, culturally designated, controlled aggression. Like sports. Because this style is associated with a certain type of rebellion you would get roped into leftist stuff. And because you become leftist, you naturally want to go to college to fraternize with more leftist types. The whole admission process is designed to filter out students based on their personality, not their tenacity for learning.
You can imagine what the reverse of this would look like for someone adopting right-wing associated aesthetics and culture. There are even right wing academic groups, controlled by a narrower overton window due to their weakness in the academic and bureaucratic domain.
None of this has to do with evaluating sources and approach research logically. Do you believe that people come out of the womb with a lifelong desire to pursue the truth?
This whole system of acculturation just seems too fake, orderly, and planned for me. Furthermore, I think it will ruin the country because it is too individualistic. In an ideal world, your political beliefs would stem from a combination of your life experiences and a practical analysis of the demands of your time.
It's treating politics like some sort of sports team rather than something strategic and decisive.
That’s quite a cynical way of looking at the world. That political belief is driven by conformance into social groups rather than an individual’s desire to seek the truth.
If that’s truly what you believe, then I guess I’ve got no argument that could sway you. In fact, using your view of the world, all political debate is worthless because nobody really seeks an objective truth anyway.
Are you suggesting that academia and all of the other actual places people who learn and know stuff for a living being full of leftists is some conspiracy against you and the right wing?
Touch grass, my dude. These are the thoughts of someone who spends too much time on X.
The fact that the elite and knowledge workers in this country are generally more left-leaning is pretty evident. The right wingers in these ranks make up a distinctive subgroup. These are the thoughts of pretty much everyone everywhere in the country and this becomes apparent if you ask randoms on the street, or you have attended college lectures, or have used a dictionary, or have read wikipedia talk pages, or have compared news sources.
Being a welder or a farmer or a carpenter requires "learning and knowing stuff". These right-wing associated jobs just don't produce knowledge for other people as an end product. That is what makes knowledge work an elite position; not everyone has the luxury of doing knowledge work.
I take issue with your implication that we should all bow down to knowledge workers because they know better. The knowledge workers are the issue here. They are the subject of discussion. This is like when the police investigate themselves and find no wrongdoing.
If we found that the population of professional athletes became dominated by a certain cultural ingroup, and eventually we failed to bring home gold medals at the olympics, we might be correct to question the state of our meritocracy wrt athleticism. Regardless of what people who "improve and use their bodies for a living" think.
The US is losing intellectually and technologically to countries like China. I call into question the general legitimacy of our academic and journalistic institutions.
> The US is losing intellectually and technologically to countries like China. I call into question the general legitimacy of our academic and journalistic institutions.
China has tons of green energy, high speed rail and frequently extols the virtues of socialism.
Bro, I sympathize a little bit but looking to illiterates who hate green energy is not the solution. We could probably agree that in China, engineers and scientists are more listened to but the solution for America is not "less reading".
