Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:31 PM | January 07, 2024

I have had a lot of fun watching the MSM and the academic elite twist themselves into knots trying to defend Claudine Gay and attack Christopher Rufo, who was instrumental in taking her down.

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What all these efforts have in common is that they prove that Rufo was right. Academia is irredeemably corrupt, driven by a tyrannical desire to rule and willing to do or say anything to maintain their power and prestige.

The number of academics saying “everybody commits plagiarism” is now so great that it would take hours to count them. Harvard professors who teach at Harvard’s extension school are now attacking its academic bona fides because Rufo has a Master’s degree from the institution. They are actually insulting their own students to “own” Rufo, who is laughing at them.

“Sure, we charge $40,000 and say it is a real Harvard degree, but everybody knows it is a scam” is quite the flex. “We’ll take your money, pretend to teach you, give you a Harvard degree, and make you an alumni so we can beg you for money, but everybody knows we just cheated you” is now considered a major flex on Rufo.

Ironically, Rufo is proving to be significantly smarter and more capable than those self-satisfied elites who are sneering at him for not being of the right class. Who, exactly, won this round?

The elite’s defense of Gay comes down to this: “Everybody is a cheater, and we are all scamming you anyway. But we can all agree that conservatives are worse.”

I’ll write a longer piece on this issue next week, so watch for it.

The importance of Gay’s resignation has nothing to do with Gay as a person–she is no better or worse than the average academic administrator. But that is the point. Gay was elevated to the highest academic administrator position in the country, not despite her being a fraud, but because she was a fraud. They are all frauds.

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Our key cultural institutions are completely hollow now, which is a problem. I, for one, think that universities are one of the pillars of Western society, and Ibelieve that a healthy society needs a well-educated political and cultural elite. That, too, is something I have been thinking about. Elites are not in and of themselves bad or corrupt–but bad or corrupt elites are corrosive to society.

Lots to think about in the coming weeks.

Now on to the smiles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know what comes next:

 

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