I wasn't sure whether to begin with "Flying Pigs Alert" or "In this episode of 'The No-Longer-Hallowed Halls of Academia,'" so I decided that both intros were more than appropriate.
Moreover, the timing couldn't be better.
President-elect Donald Trump's blistering beatdown of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election raised red flags galore in the Democrat Party. While the radical-left faction didn't get it -- and never will -- moderate, or should I say "non-radical," Democrats did. Words like "reexamination" and "reflection" began to pop up, suggesting that some in the party now understand that their so-called "progressive" policies are out of touch with a majority of centrist Americans.
But given the smug, holier-than-thou bubble that surrounds academia, it's unlikely that a self-examination is coming any time soon. However, a self-described "liberal" Yale University professor seems to get it -- until he blows it at the end.
In a New York Times guest essay titled "Universities Like Yale Need a Reckoning," David W. Blight, a professor of history at Yale, opined: "The worst thing we university liberals could do right now is to keep wondering why 'they' hate us'" (emphasis, mine) while admitting that he didn't get it, either -- and also taking a semi-veiled shot at Trump.
The worst thing we university liberals could do right now is to keep wondering why “they” hate us, why blue-collar workers seem to vote — as we understand it — against their own interests in sidling up to an authoritarian in a red tie who courts other billionaires, or why human nature itself did not come through for us and make the arc of history bend toward justice as we define it.
Millions of blue-collar workers beg to differ that voting for Trump was against their own interests, particularly after four devastating years of the Biden-Harris administration. But Blight's admission that leftist elites can't understand why "the arc of history" didn't toe the line with their definition of justice is both revealing and arrogantly humorous.
A Comeuppance?
Surprisingly, the professor recognized that academia's out-of-touch arrogance was overdue for a reckoning -- and why.
History has been waiting to explode our hubris; and sometimes, even as we have facts, truth and rule of law on our side, we make ourselves good targets with our jargon, our righteousness and our fragmentation. We are out of touch with working class Americans ...
There were signs a Democratic defeat was coming: high inflation; a stubborn wage gap, especially between women with and without a college degree; and the incumbent president’s low approval ratings. ...
We were reminded that culture wars are won by fueling them, not by seeking harmony. Unity coalitions and kindness and joy don’t win elections in a bitterly divided society where neighbors and family members are not on the same team.
Blight was right in the third paragraph -- but not for the reasons he believes.
The left's class warfare and politics of division, coupled with lashing out at anyone and everyone who dares to disagree -- including moderate Democrats -- and vicious attacks against Trump and his supporters have led to an America more divided than at any other time in decades.
What Lies Ahead for Liberal Intellectuals?
Blight's solution for "liberal intellectuals" is tantamount to killing a horse to save it.
In what lies ahead, liberal intellectuals will have to take the offensive in these wars on the fronts worth fighting for: saving and reviving public schools against the right’s effort to kill them; a genuine, substantive national commemoration of American independence in 2026, lest we allow Trumpists to own and tell our national story; and a coherent economic plan that reaches and convinces working Americans we are on their side and not simply stuffy academic theorists. We — a difficult pronoun in America just now — must look in the mirror to know why we have already lost some battles and social respect and part of our democracy.
Memo to Professor Blight:
"Trumpists" aren't your problem. Neither is "the authoritarian in a red tie." Your problem is your radical leftist ideology.
Moderate Democrats have become terrified to disagree with the barbaric practice of permanently mutilating confused children with mastectomies and castrations. They have become terrified to oppose on-demand abortions of healthy babies, right up until they would have been born -- in the ridiculous name of "women's health." They have become terrified to speak out against larger, stronger men kicking the dickens out of women in female sports events. What will they say when a female athlete is finally killed? Moreover, all of this insanity for a minute percentage of the U.S. population.
