COLLECTIVISM. INCLUSION. EXCEPTIONALISM.

Bad education, as my grandfather (b.1883-d.1961) once said to me, is worse than no education at all.

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Today's college grads in their early 20's have been taught by Leftist academics with a fondness for post-modern deconstruction of the cultural heritage of America, the stuff that created the international model for freedom of speech, freedom of choice and freedom from totalitarian oppression.

What has always been great about the U.S.A. has been torn down by professors with an interest in developing tribal fan bases. The trough at which these professors feed is getting thinner as the overweight administrations of universities gobble up more than their share of budgets.

Students are encouraged to become tribal, each picking a minority identification, whether it is racial, ethnic or sexual. Campus groups are constructed around identities with the blessing of faculty and administration alike. Dividing and conquering always works. How better to distract students? After all, if they were encouraged to unite, they might protest against high tuition, student loan debt and administrative salaries.

This push toward tribalism directs students to old ideas about collectivism within their tribes. "Workers unite!" was one way that unions bridged the ethnic and racial divide in America during the Great Depression era. Many of today's college grads are impoverished by student loans taken out to fund impractical education. The economic bond among economic outcasts has always led to tribes who agitate for their collective good.

Tribalism offers inclusion to those who are socially dysfunctional in larger society, where their behaviors would be considered inappropriate when judged against cultural norms. Tribes then agitate to force the greater society to change its norms.

From hip-hop to drag to jihad, this process can corrode the greater social fabric through mass media in order to impose a niche behavior on society. Rather than promoting more inclusion, this threatening tribalism fractures the whole society by inducing fear and isolation. In other words, all the wild-eyed cries for inclusion by people who have no compassion for anyone outside their own group are succeeding in fracturing the greater society and diminishing the greater good. 

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Human narcissism has persisted long after its usefulness in surviving predatory and environmental threats to the species' survival. In politics, this narcissism is considered exceptionalism. Most human beings see themselves as an exception to the natural order of the planet. Benign human narcissism sees our species as planetary stewards. Malignant human narcissism, the rape-and-pillage kind, has gotten us to the environmental mess we are now in.

American exceptionalism, rooted in human exceptionalism and religious exceptionalism, is the magic ingredient which has turned our politics toxic. The U.S.A. has always posed as a one-off nation, the pinnacle of political and ethical human evolution. The country's vast resources, including its generally temperate climate and relatively low population, have created superior national wealth. And money rules.

America has stood in world politics as the good bully. On a smaller social scale, good bullies take many forms. The factory owner in a small mill town. The coal mine owner in a rural village. The godfather of the local syndicate in an immigrant enclave. The Bible-thumping minister. The jihad-promoting imam.

The fact that these models of good bullying have been predominantly male has conflated the bully concept with the concept of masculinity. Hence the summoning up of the dastardly Male Patriarchy. The simple fact is that good bullies have also been women who have seized the opportunity, such as Cleopatra, Boudica, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Margaret Thatcher, etc..

American exceptionalism has permeated the U.S. group psyche. One glaring example of the merging of collective identity with exceptionalism occurred during the early stages of the HIV epidemic in the U.S.. It was perhaps the first modern epidemic which was not treated by public health professionals with standard protocols due to early collective activism by the gay male minority. Whether this was for better or worse is another question. 

Quarantine in the early epidemic was suggested and dismissed. Mandatory testing was suggested and dismissed. Mandatory medical disclosure to exposed consenting adults was suggested and dismissed. Legal accountability for intentional spread of the epidemic was legislated but contested and largely dismissed.

Another current example is the exceptionalism granted to certain forms of chemical self-abuse. Alcohol, a major addictive substance and killer, and marijuana, a brain-altering chemical at the very least,  are deemed exceptions. Prescription drugs which are widely abused with off-label usage are exceptions. The motives for these exceptions are the same: Economic and political.

I see a direct link in group process between the exceptionalism of the HIV epidemic and the current victim-based cries for exceptional treatment and deference by minority groups of all kinds in the U.S.. 

An immature millennial population would be drawn to the option to be tribal, have collective power with which to get things from those perceived to be more powerful (adults) and be treated with exceptional deference. Unfortunately, since they are badly educated, they do not have the philosophical and historical perspective to realize that getting what they want in the near term can destroy their lives in the long term by negatively influencing their social environment.

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Time heals all wounds and wounds all heels ... another of my grandfather's sayings. The current wave of collectivism and tribal vitriol will eventually crash upon the rocks of time. Those who ride that wave at present will have a rude awakening from being "woke" to being broke soon enough. While the energy of our youth is wasted on whining protests over baseless grievances, the rest of the planet is roiling with the ingredients of mass lawlessness and tremendous violence.