pampering to colleges was a liberal lie to indoctrinate your generation through the educational system.
You are completely correct here. Specifically, the move was made around the 70's where leftist professors began to accuse the prior generation of more conservative academics of limiting their academic freedom. Nowadays, we see the complete leftist cycle of going from accusing the opposition of doing one thing, only to do it themselves to a much greater extent.
I went to trade school, studied Collision Repair/Auto Body and can get a job for far cheaper a cost in education then you get in college, unless you're going to be a doctor or lawyer... I was taught to think critically and I found away to avoid the mistakes you're making. I have a different values system then you, I favor results, planning and, being goal focused.
I'm glad you brought this point up, because I believe it highlights the crux of the matter. I am currently applying to medical schools. Becoming a physician has been my goal since my freshman year of high school, and as far back as then I was aware of the massive risk associated with taking out student loans. But I had a dream and I was willing to gamble on my academic abilities to reach it. The problem is that both of these fields, medicine and law (to a lesser extent), are downstream from academia. That is, they subscribe heavily to the same politics. So, if you bet $100,000 that you would get a 520 MCAT, a 4.0 GPA, and enough patient care experience to make the cut, but didn't factor in that you would have to conform to leftist ideology to a religious extent, you may very well be out that money if you can't pivot and keep up the act. When it comes to admissions to professional schools, it's even worse. They all but openly discriminate against Asians and Whites. So, simply being the wrong race or sex reduces your chances of admission even further from the ~35% that get in.
If it's this bad for the professional fields, where saying the wrong political opinion can ruin 4+ years of work, how do you think it is for other career paths stemming from academia? They have the same issue, but coupled with lower wages and even fewer translational skills.
My only point with this line of reasoning is that many students, even those on the top tier, cannot affect change within the current academic system - they can only out themselves, ruin their career, just to be replaced by one of the thousands of other Zoomers lined up to take their spot. Believe me, you'd be hard pressed to find a larger critic of my generation than me. I am frustrated with myself and my peers for falling for our parents' and high school's lies of college being necessary for a good job and societal acceptance. I'm simply trying to outline why students have no incentive to oppose the system once they're locked in, even if the academic culture is stacked against them and degrades them. In any case, I have the experience, skills, and academic capability to make a six-figure salary even if I don't get in to medical school. But I stand absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose from
publicly stating my politics, whereas I can simply vote in private.
Real change with have to be realized from the outside, and I do see that coming in the future since the culture is shifting rightward. A lot of my generation is very vocal (and very extreme) online, they just don't get associated with those posts since they try their best to stay anonymous. I would bet around 50% of /pol/ are Zoomers.
only difference is someone else is pushing the BS and, the puppeteers pulling strings (who been in the Senate and Congress for 30+ years) are even older then me. The difference is you've been so comfortable and, so handicapped by the ease of life in America that your generation is distracted by all the Digital BS. You've grown up with the internet, I did to but I gave less focus to it.
I disagree with regards to propaganda. I would encourage you to read Jacques Ellul's work
Propaganda, and given your willingness to engage in long-form debate, I think you'd enjoy it. The best way to view propaganda is as a
sociological phenomenon rather than just a purely psychological one. That is, a piece of propaganda is not immediately focused on convincing
you of something, but rather seeks to alter social structures in specific ways. Perhaps the most overt example is that of democratic anti-gun propaganda. The goal is clear: disarming the population as a means of further centralizing power. They do this with scare tactics, not targeted at the individual, but at a person's social group. For example, democrats don't say "we need to abolish the second amendment because
you may be shot," they say "we need to abolish the second amendment because
your child may be shot." Furthermore, how a person responds to this is not independent of others' opinions. When you hear this message, you either consciously or subconsciously consider how those around you would react to you disagreeing. This is why anti-gun propaganda is so effective in liberal areas: to disagree
appears or feels to be in favor of gun violence to people unfamiliar with firearms or crime statistics. This pushes someone who would normally be pro-gun to appear (or vote, which
is the ultimate goal of such propaganda) anti-gun for fear of social rejection.
What I mean by propaganda being "complete" is that there has been a fundamental change in its dissemination. Technology pervades every aspect of life. No matter what you are doing, there is a method for someone to influence you to do or think something, and you can be certain they are. TikTok is a great example. Nearly everyone in my generation has it (I do not), and it is almost explicitly a method of spreading Chinese propaganda. The difference is that China sets the terms for what becomes popular (sociological) while their enemies (the US) make and consume that content. There's a reason mental illness and general degeneracy are boosted on US servers, but engineering projects and nationalist themes are booted on Chinese servers. Keep in mind this is one of the
less subtle means of modern propaganda; now contextualize that in terms of the entire modern system, and you'll see just how deep the manipulation can be.
Certainly, the people in charge have been in congress for decades. But their campaigners haven't, and you can be certain every corporation or politician has a full staff of propagandists (likely going by a better sounding name) fervently researching how to best agitate the population to do things that benefit them using very complex means.
And Russia has tried it in the US, Japan tried it during WWII, look it will happen because everyone uses it. We are feeling it now but, if you remain silent... its your fault. Your freedom of speech is your right (duty) to speak up. If you don't speak up, don't blame me because I see the silence as acceptance of suicidal and self-defeating political agenda.
My discussion of Chinese foreign propaganda translates nicely here. I certainly agree with your sentiment - there is a duty in free speech, but that duty entails responsibility in our approach to using it. While I am not accusing you of trying to manipulate anyone, the statement "if you remain silent, it's your fault" is one of the oldest forms of agitation propaganda known to man. The left uses it too, see the "silence is violence" trend from 2020. It's a false dichotomy - I can be silent in real life, but very vocal anonymously online, as many people are. The goal of such statements is
only to draw everything out in the open, to divide people (artificially, mind you) into different camps, and to facilitate further manipulation once individuals have become a mass.
The duty of free speech is to use it to find the optimum solutions to problems, but that can't be done by agitating people to join an unthinking crowd. That is poor strategy that will ultimately allow power-seeking individuals to prey upon your ideals to get what they want. Do it if you desire, it is your right, but it's not going to get you what you think it will.
Free speech is also for leisurely shitposting
