One of the scariest moments of my life... I don't tell this story very often because I don't think I can convey it accurately if you don't already understand how bad the problem is:
A long time ago I was self-described "very liberal" to the point where I was a PhD student in Sociology. Yes, that was me.
But right from the rip it didn't sit well. Why the fuck were we reading Marx on day 1? Why the fuck are these idiots celebrating Freud? I stumbled through two years while always reading stuff on the periphery, as well.
The summer I was supposed to be writing my thesis I was reading. It started with The Myth of Male Power (which is nearly impossible to find now, on purpose) and went into Who Stole Feminism? and went through about 50 other books and dozens of papers.
I came out the other side with a worldview that made sense. I had to believe that my colleagues would be as thrilled as I was to learn something new. We had all talked about the inconsistencies in the coursework and theoretical background, and I thought I had found a missing piece of some value.
I have never in my life seen people so resistant to ideas that weren't in the pre-packaged box. There was no curiosity, there was an immediate "wait, take men's issues seriously? BURN THE HERETIC" backlash. It was immediately obvious these people were so far down the hole there was no coming back. Cognitive Dissonance had long been murdered. And the entire department of professors was united on this.
Classes for my third year started in a week or two. I wrote a very long email telling the powers that be exactly what they could do with a lifetime supply of chocolate and was back home 5 states away within 36 hours.
I ended up moving to Asia for 5 years... that was the depth of my despair. I definitely haven't done that sense justice in this post, either.
When I talk about why I left grad school these days, I usually just refer to it as "staring into an abyss that shook me to my soul."
It is why, more than anything else, I am MAGA to the core. I will stand with people who haven't bludgeoned their common sense to death with postmodernist bullshit every day.
I don't know who else could have broken me from that miasma if not for Trump and his unabashedly pro-America rhetoric. This is the fight worth having.
One of the scariest moments of my life... I don't tell this story very often because I don't think I can convey it accurately if you don't already understand how bad the problem is:
A long time ago I was self-described "very liberal" to the point where I was a PhD student in Sociology. Yes, that was me.
But right from the rip it didn't sit well. Why the fuck were we reading Marx on day 1? Why the fuck are these idiots celebrating Freud? I stumbled through two years while always reading stuff on the periphery, as well.
The summer I was supposed to be writing my thesis I was reading. It started with The Myth of Male Power (which is nearly impossible to find now, on purpose) and went into Who Stole Feminism? and went through about 50 other books and dozens of papers.
I came out the other side with a worldview that made sense. I had to believe that my colleagues would be as thrilled as I was to learn something new. We had all talked about the inconsistencies in the coursework and theoretical background, and I thought I had found a missing piece of some value.
I have never in my life seen people so resistant to ideas that weren't in the pre-packaged box. There was no curiosity, there was an immediate "wait, take men's issues seriously? BURN THE HERETIC" backlash. It was immediately obvious these people were so far down the hole there was no coming back. Cognitive Dissonance had long been murdered. And the entire department of professors was united on this.
Classes for my third year started in a week or two. I wrote a very long email telling the powers that be exactly what they could do with a lifetime supply of chocolate and was back home 5 states away within 36 hours.
I ended up moving to Asia for 5 years... that was the depth of my despair. I definitely haven't done that sense justice in this post, either.
When I talk about why I left grad school these days, I usually just refer to it as "staring into an abyss that shook me to my soul."
It is why, more than anything else, I am MAGA to the core. I will stand with people who haven't bludgeoned their common sense to death with postmodernist bullshit every day.
I don't know who else could have broken me from that miasma if not for Trump and his unabashedly pro-America rhetoric. This is the fight worth having.
I dunno moving to Asia for 5 years as a young man sounds pretty cool to me.
I will be remiss if I spend every year of my life in the US because then I'll never know what it really means to miss it.