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The elite are caving (or being co-opted) [1]

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Date: 2025-03-22

It is amusing (and tragic) to watch the elite in the US cave to Trump in almost predictable fashion. Consider the following examples

Columbia Univ will ban the use of masks (Pro-Palestinian Protestors use masks to reduce the likelihood of doxxing/violence by Zionist groups), and setup an oversight board to rein in a controversial department.

The law firm Paul Weiss is offering $40MM in legal services to Trump, in exchange for being removed from his target list. Brad Karp, the Chairman of Paul Weiss, was one of those Kamala Harris’s fundraisers. Another partner at the firm even helped Harris with debate prep. This law firm is as “elite" as can be.

Back in December, ABC News agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit from Trump for $ 15 MM. ABC News also expressed regret for some comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos. Here is the thing: the speech in question is almost certainly protected, and ABC News would have likely prevailed, had they fought this in court. But they elected to settle, and (in effect) offer up a $15 MM bribe to Trump.

In January, Meta settled a similar lawsuit for $ 25 MM

And more recently, you had Chuck Schumer offer up the votes to Trump for the budget bill in a shamelessly choreographed surrender. (Mr. “he does not have the votes for cloture” had his “we had to vote for cloture” OpEd ready to go even as he was declaring “he does not have the votes for cloture”).

These sequence of choreographed surrenders leads to the suspicion… are they surrendering, or are they acquiescing with something that they agree with.

As David Klion tweets

x The thing to understand here is that while yes Columbia is capitulating to Trump, the trustees who actually run the university wanted these same outcomes and pursued them aggressively under Biden. To them, this is willing cooperation, not surrender. — David Klion (@DavidKlion) March 21, 2025

Here is the thing… these are not surprising developments.

The University system in the USA, and the elite it produces.. is broken. There is no polite way of dancing around this fact. What a good university should produce are outstanding citizens, with a good sense of morality, and a sense of purpose that they are to use their God-given skills for the benefit of all of humanity.

What our elite Universities produce is something else: graduates who can read and write (for the most part), but who are also taught to use those skills to weaponize their grievances.

And it is not hard to see why. Universities are led by administrators who are grossly overpaid for the work they do, and who then foster a broken culture. The actual teaching is left to underpaid junior faculty (or Post Docs). As David Austin Walsh (one of these Post Docs) notes:

x Part of the problem is that it’s basically impossible to defend the structure of academia.



Overpriced tuition, cowardly administrators, the replication crisis in STEM, the hypocrisy and self-righteous moralism of the humanists, all reliant on cheap adjunct labor. — David Austin Walsh (@DavidAstinWalsh) March 21, 2025

Bernie (bless his soul) seems to be the only one organizing a resistance.

If you want to save this Republic, then it is time for us (Democrats) to clean house, starting with our own. You think the Republicans are cowards for producing (and surrendering to) Trump. How about a New York Democratic Party that produces Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo. Or a New Jersey Democratic Party that produces Bob Menendez. Or Pennsylvania and John Fetterman. Or Arizona and Kyrsten Sinema.

Let us vote out the bums who are inclined to be coopted. Let us vote in people who actually believe what they are saying.

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