Claremont McKenna

"Protesters disrupt talk by pro-police author, sparking free-speech debate at Claremont McKenna College": http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-macdonald-claremont-speech-disrupted-20170408-story.html?utm_source=phplist5805&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Claremont+McKenna

This is not about free expression, this is about self-expression, the protesters taking a stand, making a statement in a world where the politicians are out of touch and the media salivates over ad dollars and fame and the truth is irrelevant.

Come on, what are you gonna do in a country where half believe Susan Rice should be incarcerated and the rest wonder what in the world the crazies are talking about?

"The mainstream and conservative media are living in different worlds. So are those who read them: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-us-two-worlds-20170410-story.html?utm_source=phplist5805&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=Claremont+McKenna

So you've got an old guard, inured to the old ways, who believe in law and order. Sound like Napster to you?

That's what the establishment never understands, that everything's up for grabs. And when nothing makes sense, you throw it out the window. The only thing missing is the anthem to fan the flames of the fire.

For those out of the loop, last week at Claremont McKenna College, one of our finest institutions of higher learning, the students wouldn't let Heather MacDonald speak, a right winger who just published a book that takes the side of the police over the underclass.

That's a gross oversimplification, but the truth is law and order is what the present regime ran on, and the media doesn't stop excoriating the gender politics of the student class, and when you're this misunderstood you're supposed to keep following the rules?

I don't think so.

Come on, look at the Middlebury fracas. The President and the faculty have been positively up in arms ever since, embarrassed for the institution. But could it be that the students are right and the administration is wrong?

I'm a believer in free speech, I think everyone should have his or her say. But the truth is our nation is going to hell in a handbasket and if you're in college you're facing mounting debt with little opportunity while your elders try to jet back to the past, polluting and exacerbating climate change while the oligarchs are given power and a right wing justice is installed in the Supreme Court while the Democrats kick and scream that Merrick Garland, a centrist, wasn't even given a hearing. As for the rules, the Republicans eviscerated them, eradicating the filibuster, and you expect college students to play nice?

Ain't gonna happen.

As for the Napster reference...

Artists and labels were rolling in dough from overpriced CDs with one good track. Given an option the public flocked to it. Then we had to endure endless screeds telling us that without remuneration no one would make music when the truth is the problem today is there's TOO MUCH MUSIC! The barriers to entry, creation and distribution, have been torn down, and everybody's flowing through the gates. And successful artists are making more money in adjusted dollars than ever before, albeit mostly from live work, but the truth is recorded revenue just jumped as a result of excoriated streaming and yet the public is wrong, once again.

Come on. Did you live through the sixties?

The truth is many did not. And those on the losing end of that decade, and those who've raped and pillaged their way to success in the new economy, want to forget them too, as they show up in their thousand dollar leather jackets at the Rolling Stones show. "Street Fighting Man"? Can I shoot from my BMW from behind the wall of my gated community, or from the back of my NetJet?

The story of the past few years is change. What I mean by that is we thought we were at the end of the line. The wall fell, communism died, and CDs were raining down revenue. But then Putin took over and hip-hop eviscerated rock and those left behind are kicking and screaming like the Greatest Generation when their progeny, the baby boomers, started smoking dope, having sex whenever they wanted, and dropping out after they tuned in.

And have you noticed that dope, i.e. marijuana, is essentially legal in most of the country? We call that change, we call that progress.

We killed the questioners. We bred a cadre of me-too corps. Young Alex Keatons who only chased the buck, who'd do whatever you said, as long as there was money in the pot at the end of the rainbow. But then you couldn't see the rainbow and the Kochs stole the pot and nobody wanted to listen to you as you drove your Uber just to afford to pay your roommates for rent as you looked for a job in your chosen field.

We've denigrated the English majors, the computer science majors can't even get work, and yet we keep extolling the wanker winners like Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Spiegel, as if everybody could win if they just buckled down and worked harder. Isn't that the Republican creed? I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, why can't you?

And this isn't really about left or right at all. It's about a generation gap. A group of people who grew up with the internet, who need no tech help, who weren't even conscious when the Twin Towers fell, who are wondering about their future. And the overlords who keep not listening to them.

You can't not listen to a whole swath of people, can't denigrate and dismiss them and expect them to take it.

Of course I believe in free speech.

But something is happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear. And you can't find the truth in the newspaper and you certainly can't find it on TV and meanwhile there's a man with a gun over there who'll shoot you, the policeman going scot-free, George Zimmerman getting off too, and yet you're supposed to stand by and take it.

I don't think so. As in I don't think today's college students are gonna stand for it.

They've got the most to lose and nothing to lose at the same time.

Don't expect someone with car payments and a mortgage to shake the tree. Don't expect someone with assets to put them at risk. But when you're just at Go and you haven't even got $200 and Community Chest is bankrupt and there's no way you can make it to Boardwalk, where the hotels are dark anyway, you start to wonder what's going on, you decide to flip the table.

That's right, it's not only the ignorant right, the deplorables, who can put a spoke in the wheel, a spanner in the works, but the educated left too. I mean who are they gonna believe in? Duplicitous Hillary who was propped up by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a Democratic National Committee that didn't get the memo and didn't realize Bernie wasn't a sideshow, but the main show, or yourself?

That's what the rock music of yore taught us. To abhor groupthink and forger our own path.

But now the old creators are in it for the bucks and the young ones are uneducated nitwits, is it any wonder that those who go to school are thinking for themselves?

It's not happening at the community college, but at America's finest institutions. Where else would you expect dissent to foment?

It's gonna happen in your neighborhood next.

While you sit at home and watch the latest school shooting on TV as you rally for less gun control and more open carry rules.

Do you expect no pushback?

YOU'RE DREAMING!


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