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Great piece!

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Well said!

But. Careful not to slip into the same "Manichean" (black & white thinking) mindset as the people you are critiquing.

In order to effectively counter the opposition we have to be able to understand them, and be able to see how their human frailties (which we mostly share) led them to this state; rather than just constantly rhetorically othering them.

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Absolutely! I've met very few ideologues who are intentionally malevolent, more just unshakably devoted to their particular abstract worldviews to the point of becoming unreasonable. Some of my other posts delve more specifically into how intelligent, well-meaning people have seamlessly eased into technocratic dogmatism that in their epistemic bubbles just looks like being a conscientious global citizen. People certainly deserve some respect and credit for doing what their social milieu has instilled as the right things, even as those things need to be questioned.

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Wow. I am certain that one thing we can all do is stop supporting this kind of madness by being very careful not to send ourselves, our children or our money to these folks. Once they have to face reality and try to get real jobs, things might just improve.

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As much money comes sloshing through these institutions, they are very good at finding ways to spend every last cent, and extremely sensitive to a drop off even of small dollar donations. If even 10% of habitual donors to universities' annual funds stopped giving, and explained why, things would get a lot less bad.

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