by Gabriele Vogt
College is the place where people are supposed to learn to think, but instead join mass social movements with barren intellectual foundations to strut their terminal insecurity across the public spectrum.
I put this statement to paper not as some curmudgeonly Republican lamenting modern times as the few remaining years of my life tick away. Nor am I an individual pledged to the ultimate narcissism of Objectivist thought, ready to vilify all those who decline to accept the permeating vanity and cultureless basis of my beliefs.
Instead, the aforementioned claim is birthed in the mind of one very normal student directly integrated with the academic community of an institution lauded both nationally and around the planet for the quality of its education, while simultaneously being a beacon for the American Nation’s sprint towards debauched social oblivion: the University of Virginia.
For fairness’ sake, UVA is well-regarded, but unfortunately accolades are not enough to save its grounds from becoming the prime rookery for this generation’s finest collection of useful idiots, never hesitant to jump on a one-shot bandwagon toward society’s implosion so long as they get a seat at the “in” table. A table, as I like to describe it, of Brilliant Automatons, wound and pumping to get out into the nation and turn the fullest expressions of their sinewy political imaginations into reality.
Perhaps the finest rendition of Brilliant Automaton behavior comes in the reaction to last year’s sordid Helen Dragas Affair. Instead of responding to the removal of University President Teresa Sullivan by Board of Visitors rector Helen Dragas with the candor and free thinking which Thomas Jefferson would have admired, most of the student body morphed into a droning collective of anti-Dragas sentiment and launched a campus-wide campaign to have their heroine president divinized and the Banal Rector fired from her position.
Rallies assembled, insults flew in one direction, petitions were signed, and the vibrant groupthink guard seemed unstoppable in its mission to deflect attempts at what it imagined was a corporate coup. Ancient alumni and the local tabloid paper also got their share of visibility, trumpeting a steady note of condemnation and Occupy-esque rhetoric. So vehemently coalesced was anti-Dragas outrage that even the once-sacred memorial to slain student Morgan Harrington in Charlottesville found itself defaced with imposing “DUMP DRAGAS” graffiti months for after the scandal had subsided.
Never mind that Sullivan was once levied with a serious accusation of academic fraud along with her collaborator at the time, the Scott Brown-trouncing Senator Elizabeth Warren. Or the fact of her help in stymying advances in the University’s higher education program by delaying the advent of online course options. The only matters at stake to Dragas’ detractors were evil corporations, their encirclement of UVA’s first female president with patriarchal malevolence, and a general feeling of insecurity amongst the student body.
Of course, this latter issue of insecurity is precisely what creates the Brilliant Automaton. Despite having much credence in the realms of academic achievement, these students still require the fleeting comfort of a social groupthink team and thus submit to whichever is most readily available (and popular), regardless of its foundational principles. Facts fade away before their eyes and transform into the scintillating aroma of big-tent social groups. Barely thinking once, they seize up, lock step, and become the Brilliant Automatons, both well-educated and more than able to latch on to trends which threaten the very basis of traditionalist America.
If the students participating in “Dump Dragas” had been a lot of booze-addled pretenders at Arizona State University, they might have been dismissed as the harmless lemmings of modern society, not one of them holding the potential for anything beyond playful mischief. But this is not the case; UVA is highly respected, and thus many of its graduates are likely to enjoy positions of significant public authority in the future.
Diplomas from the school will line the neatly-kept walls of courthouses, teacher offices, business headquarters, and possibly the White House itself. Their holders stand to be on the frontline of countless public issues, at times enjoying the power to swing political and social histories in irrevocable directions. The notion of such personalities and their mob-like conformity possessing significant power in public affairs is both disheartening and grievous to the soul.
As traditionalist and nationalist culture faces continual assault, its guardians shall be replaced by the Brilliant Automatons, who can joyfully assist as contributors to the multiculturalist, feminist, anti-white, and pro-liberalism onslaught. And what is more, they will do so with the full honor of a university degree emblazoned upon their psyches.
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I put this statement to paper not as some curmudgeonly Republican lamenting modern times as the few remaining years of my life tick away. Nor am I an individual pledged to the ultimate narcissism of Objectivist thought, ready to vilify all those who decline to accept the permeating vanity and cultureless basis of my beliefs.
Instead, the aforementioned claim is birthed in the mind of one very normal student directly integrated with the academic community of an institution lauded both nationally and around the planet for the quality of its education, while simultaneously being a beacon for the American Nation’s sprint towards debauched social oblivion: the University of Virginia.
For fairness’ sake, UVA is well-regarded, but unfortunately accolades are not enough to save its grounds from becoming the prime rookery for this generation’s finest collection of useful idiots, never hesitant to jump on a one-shot bandwagon toward society’s implosion so long as they get a seat at the “in” table. A table, as I like to describe it, of Brilliant Automatons, wound and pumping to get out into the nation and turn the fullest expressions of their sinewy political imaginations into reality.
Perhaps the finest rendition of Brilliant Automaton behavior comes in the reaction to last year’s sordid Helen Dragas Affair. Instead of responding to the removal of University President Teresa Sullivan by Board of Visitors rector Helen Dragas with the candor and free thinking which Thomas Jefferson would have admired, most of the student body morphed into a droning collective of anti-Dragas sentiment and launched a campus-wide campaign to have their heroine president divinized and the Banal Rector fired from her position.
Rallies assembled, insults flew in one direction, petitions were signed, and the vibrant groupthink guard seemed unstoppable in its mission to deflect attempts at what it imagined was a corporate coup. Ancient alumni and the local tabloid paper also got their share of visibility, trumpeting a steady note of condemnation and Occupy-esque rhetoric. So vehemently coalesced was anti-Dragas outrage that even the once-sacred memorial to slain student Morgan Harrington in Charlottesville found itself defaced with imposing “DUMP DRAGAS” graffiti months for after the scandal had subsided.
Never mind that Sullivan was once levied with a serious accusation of academic fraud along with her collaborator at the time, the Scott Brown-trouncing Senator Elizabeth Warren. Or the fact of her help in stymying advances in the University’s higher education program by delaying the advent of online course options. The only matters at stake to Dragas’ detractors were evil corporations, their encirclement of UVA’s first female president with patriarchal malevolence, and a general feeling of insecurity amongst the student body.
Of course, this latter issue of insecurity is precisely what creates the Brilliant Automaton. Despite having much credence in the realms of academic achievement, these students still require the fleeting comfort of a social groupthink team and thus submit to whichever is most readily available (and popular), regardless of its foundational principles. Facts fade away before their eyes and transform into the scintillating aroma of big-tent social groups. Barely thinking once, they seize up, lock step, and become the Brilliant Automatons, both well-educated and more than able to latch on to trends which threaten the very basis of traditionalist America.
If the students participating in “Dump Dragas” had been a lot of booze-addled pretenders at Arizona State University, they might have been dismissed as the harmless lemmings of modern society, not one of them holding the potential for anything beyond playful mischief. But this is not the case; UVA is highly respected, and thus many of its graduates are likely to enjoy positions of significant public authority in the future.
Diplomas from the school will line the neatly-kept walls of courthouses, teacher offices, business headquarters, and possibly the White House itself. Their holders stand to be on the frontline of countless public issues, at times enjoying the power to swing political and social histories in irrevocable directions. The notion of such personalities and their mob-like conformity possessing significant power in public affairs is both disheartening and grievous to the soul.
As traditionalist and nationalist culture faces continual assault, its guardians shall be replaced by the Brilliant Automatons, who can joyfully assist as contributors to the multiculturalist, feminist, anti-white, and pro-liberalism onslaught. And what is more, they will do so with the full honor of a university degree emblazoned upon their psyches.
Become a Patron!