I still think most people are normal, and we badly need better incentives for people to go into policy (right now the incentives are for all our best people to go into private sector)
I agree. I also think much of this is driven by an online culture focused on driving clicks rather than discussion. It's easier to get noticed with socialist or nationalist hot takes than boring discussions about improving public services.
Why are we tolerating foreign Marxists who hate our nation? Revoke their naturalization, and deport them all. The time for niceties is over. We either fight them now or fight them later. Later will be more costly.
It’s very troublesome that liberals and conservatives do not apparently fully understand the risk presented by the ultra liberals/socialists. What would it take for the younger generation to realize the potential dangers of socialism. Can’t they see what is happening to NYC?
I used to describe my beliefs as "democratic socialist" (the Nordic model), but the DSA has ruined that. I need a new term for it.
The DSA movement is no different than what fuels MAGA on the right. The K-shaped economy is keeping a lot of people down. Right leaning people bought what Trump was selling because it was something different than the same politics that has led to GDP growth with wage stagnation and high inflation. Affordability is the issue driving all of this extremism because mainstream politicians weren't doing anything about it. The housing bill, assuming it becomes law, is the first thing Congress has done to address the issue in recent memory.
I see how apathy begins. A couple blows, and ppl become tired. It's extremely silent. It occurs like we've collectively just missed a coffee. The other side gets energized, fanatical. And that's how you lose a game.
I'm sad that you took an otherwise great piece and spoiled it with your conspiracy theory about colleges indoctrinating students.
Still with no evidence you provided links to the Washington Times (known misinformation source) and a substack known for the same.
Universities are non-profits and have long raised funds from a wide variety of donors. Most professors never even meet the donors, or if they do it's a very small amount of time. Waving donor rolls around like a smoking gun is both misleading and inaccurate.
Meanwhile, you still promote Twitter which has proven data on misinformation and influence strategies that are active right now. Perhaps it's not the universities you should be worried about, but those same campaigns that would cause you to reference the Washington Times as an authoritative source.
Thanks that you liked (sounds like most) of the story I appreciate that. I'll reply to your other points which might help a bit.
The foreign funding data isn't from a Substack, it's from the Department of Education's own disclosure portal, the Network Contagion Research Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. You can disagree with the implications but calling it a conspiracy theory when it's federally reported data is just inaccurate.
The "professors never meet donors" framing isn't persuasive to me, influence doesn't require a professor to shake a donor's hand. It works through grants, research priorities, campus organizations, speaker series, and the slow institutional drift that follows money.
On Twitter, I've never argued everything on any platform is true. My whole point is that you have to actively carve out a reliable signal from the noise, on every platform. And to add I don't think the misinformation on Twitter or TikTok is anodyne, agree with you there, but at least Twitter does have an occasional community note.
But here's what I find most interesting about your reply: even setting aside the funding data entirely, if a foreign adversary WERE successfully running an influence operation against American institutions, what would it look like? It would produce elected officials who openly disdain the country they're seeking to govern. Doesn't feel like a hypothetical this week, we just watched it win primaries. I feel like debating these points isn't the part we should be focused on anyway, we should be focused on getting better people into politics (bi-partisan for sure)
It's absolutely a conspiracy theory! You're taking one piece of data (donation rolls) and claiming it has unproven implications elsewhere. That's how conspiracy theories work!
And your response is textbook conspiracy theory defense. "But the data is correct". It is! It just doesn't say what you are claiming it says. It's like the folks talking about COVID vaccinated mothers having babies with birth defects at 2.3% (which is true) while the overall rate of birth defects for all mothers is... 2.3%.
Meanwhile, you think you can accurately filter through the misinformation on Twitter but college students are helpless victims of professors. That's another part of conspiracy theories: "Everyone else is a victim except for me".
I'm not debating the overall post, just the part about the universities. The issue of foreign influence in our elections is a big problem, and DSA isn't even the biggest example - MAGA is.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying a donor list proves a professor was bought or that every student is being indoctrinated. That would be an absurd claim.
I’m saying institutions have incentives, and influence can happen through funding, priorities, networks, and culture without anyone needing to hand out instructions. Universities are not uniquely immune from that, neither is our media.
I also agree with you that foreign influence and misinformation are problems across the political spectrum, including the right. My point is simply that we should be willing to examine influence wherever it appears, including institutions we generally trust.
No, your point was that universities are indoctrinating students and they are the cause of radicalism like the DSA. From the article: "The people driving this don't emerge from nowhere. They come from schools where anti-American professors, many funded by Qatar and China, have correctly identified the American university as the highest-leverage point for capturing the next productive class."
Incentives exist everywhere, that is not proof of anything. We all have incentives to lie on our taxes, but very few people actually do. You need actual evidence or else it's just a conspiracy theory.
"The Democrats would win in a walk if they simply acted like a normal party. Instead the machinery keeps selecting for whoever most aggressively signals opposition to American civilization, and the centrists keep complying rather than fighting."
The centrists tried fighting -- most notably in '16 and '24 -- and got dogwalked by Trump. If it wasn't for a one-in-a-lifetime global pandemic they most likely would have been annihilated in that cycle as well.
Specifically in NYC the DSA wouldn't be rising if the "centrists" had bothered to put up a better candidate for mayor than fucking Andrew Cuomo, who as governor of NY seemed to despise the city, has never lived there, and had previously been seen resigning his office in disgrace.
Fortunately the GOP has never claimed "centrists" like Barack Hussein Obama, Kamala Harris, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi etc etc are communists so I'm sure them calling out the DSA as communists will definitely work and not just be more boy-who-cried-wolf nonsense.
Thank you for this. I feel like we, as a civilization, have taken a bunch of crazy pills. Hopefully, the effect wears off one of these days.
I still think most people are normal, and we badly need better incentives for people to go into policy (right now the incentives are for all our best people to go into private sector)
I agree. I also think much of this is driven by an online culture focused on driving clicks rather than discussion. It's easier to get noticed with socialist or nationalist hot takes than boring discussions about improving public services.
Why are we tolerating foreign Marxists who hate our nation? Revoke their naturalization, and deport them all. The time for niceties is over. We either fight them now or fight them later. Later will be more costly.
It’s very troublesome that liberals and conservatives do not apparently fully understand the risk presented by the ultra liberals/socialists. What would it take for the younger generation to realize the potential dangers of socialism. Can’t they see what is happening to NYC?
I used to describe my beliefs as "democratic socialist" (the Nordic model), but the DSA has ruined that. I need a new term for it.
The DSA movement is no different than what fuels MAGA on the right. The K-shaped economy is keeping a lot of people down. Right leaning people bought what Trump was selling because it was something different than the same politics that has led to GDP growth with wage stagnation and high inflation. Affordability is the issue driving all of this extremism because mainstream politicians weren't doing anything about it. The housing bill, assuming it becomes law, is the first thing Congress has done to address the issue in recent memory.
I see how apathy begins. A couple blows, and ppl become tired. It's extremely silent. It occurs like we've collectively just missed a coffee. The other side gets energized, fanatical. And that's how you lose a game.
🎯
I'm sad that you took an otherwise great piece and spoiled it with your conspiracy theory about colleges indoctrinating students.
Still with no evidence you provided links to the Washington Times (known misinformation source) and a substack known for the same.
Universities are non-profits and have long raised funds from a wide variety of donors. Most professors never even meet the donors, or if they do it's a very small amount of time. Waving donor rolls around like a smoking gun is both misleading and inaccurate.
Meanwhile, you still promote Twitter which has proven data on misinformation and influence strategies that are active right now. Perhaps it's not the universities you should be worried about, but those same campaigns that would cause you to reference the Washington Times as an authoritative source.
Thanks that you liked (sounds like most) of the story I appreciate that. I'll reply to your other points which might help a bit.
The foreign funding data isn't from a Substack, it's from the Department of Education's own disclosure portal, the Network Contagion Research Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. You can disagree with the implications but calling it a conspiracy theory when it's federally reported data is just inaccurate.
The "professors never meet donors" framing isn't persuasive to me, influence doesn't require a professor to shake a donor's hand. It works through grants, research priorities, campus organizations, speaker series, and the slow institutional drift that follows money.
On Twitter, I've never argued everything on any platform is true. My whole point is that you have to actively carve out a reliable signal from the noise, on every platform. And to add I don't think the misinformation on Twitter or TikTok is anodyne, agree with you there, but at least Twitter does have an occasional community note.
But here's what I find most interesting about your reply: even setting aside the funding data entirely, if a foreign adversary WERE successfully running an influence operation against American institutions, what would it look like? It would produce elected officials who openly disdain the country they're seeking to govern. Doesn't feel like a hypothetical this week, we just watched it win primaries. I feel like debating these points isn't the part we should be focused on anyway, we should be focused on getting better people into politics (bi-partisan for sure)
It's absolutely a conspiracy theory! You're taking one piece of data (donation rolls) and claiming it has unproven implications elsewhere. That's how conspiracy theories work!
And your response is textbook conspiracy theory defense. "But the data is correct". It is! It just doesn't say what you are claiming it says. It's like the folks talking about COVID vaccinated mothers having babies with birth defects at 2.3% (which is true) while the overall rate of birth defects for all mothers is... 2.3%.
Meanwhile, you think you can accurately filter through the misinformation on Twitter but college students are helpless victims of professors. That's another part of conspiracy theories: "Everyone else is a victim except for me".
I'm not debating the overall post, just the part about the universities. The issue of foreign influence in our elections is a big problem, and DSA isn't even the biggest example - MAGA is.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying a donor list proves a professor was bought or that every student is being indoctrinated. That would be an absurd claim.
I’m saying institutions have incentives, and influence can happen through funding, priorities, networks, and culture without anyone needing to hand out instructions. Universities are not uniquely immune from that, neither is our media.
I also agree with you that foreign influence and misinformation are problems across the political spectrum, including the right. My point is simply that we should be willing to examine influence wherever it appears, including institutions we generally trust.
No, your point was that universities are indoctrinating students and they are the cause of radicalism like the DSA. From the article: "The people driving this don't emerge from nowhere. They come from schools where anti-American professors, many funded by Qatar and China, have correctly identified the American university as the highest-leverage point for capturing the next productive class."
Incentives exist everywhere, that is not proof of anything. We all have incentives to lie on our taxes, but very few people actually do. You need actual evidence or else it's just a conspiracy theory.
"The Democrats would win in a walk if they simply acted like a normal party. Instead the machinery keeps selecting for whoever most aggressively signals opposition to American civilization, and the centrists keep complying rather than fighting."
The centrists tried fighting -- most notably in '16 and '24 -- and got dogwalked by Trump. If it wasn't for a one-in-a-lifetime global pandemic they most likely would have been annihilated in that cycle as well.
Specifically in NYC the DSA wouldn't be rising if the "centrists" had bothered to put up a better candidate for mayor than fucking Andrew Cuomo, who as governor of NY seemed to despise the city, has never lived there, and had previously been seen resigning his office in disgrace.
Fortunately the GOP has never claimed "centrists" like Barack Hussein Obama, Kamala Harris, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi etc etc are communists so I'm sure them calling out the DSA as communists will definitely work and not just be more boy-who-cried-wolf nonsense.