Scientism

[pbrower2a]

(07-08-2019, 05:55 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(07-08-2019, 10:43 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-07-2019, 07:14 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Academics have always tended toward socialism, and starting with boomer academics, have had no problem with using their professorships to brainwash their students.

But Bill's question is whether Democrats are believers in scientism.

To clarify, academics like to couch things in terms of science, whether or not they are truly scientifically valid.  Also believers in socialism, boomer academics brainwashed their students into being Democrats, and into couching things in terms of science.  That's how the Democratic party became "believers in scientism".

Generation X, which was more exposed to Boom college professors than even Millennial college students, started out much more Republican-leaning than Boom liberals. The Reagan landslides surprised mainstream media who failed to recognize how conservative X voters were in the 1980s. Maybe such right-wing voting reflected Generation X rejecting the liberal teaching of Boom, Silent, and maybe some GI professors.

If Generation X has trended liberal, then such is because they found that they got the shaft instead of the little bit of wealth trickling down. They had seen American capitalism at its harshest since the 1920s (note that things were better for most Americans in the late 1930s than in the late 1920s) with its low glass ceilings, extreme inequality, and command-and-control management. Maybe the promise that pure plutocracy would create so much wealth that the inequality of a fascist regime or a plantation would be irrelevant.

The Millennial generation may have attended college and experienced their share of Boom professors who chose academia because even with the lesser pay it requires fewer ethical compromises than does work in a profit-and-loss environment. The ethos of Big Business has become that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such turns a profit, supports sybaritic lifestyles of economic elites, or enforces the command-and-control economy. Millennial adults have seen capitalism at its harshest in nearly a century; they have heard their parents (often X) show disillusion with capitalism through griping; they can read between the lines of right-wing propaganda. They are legitimately scared of becoming cannon fodder in a war for profit. They recognize the calculus of militarism -- fifty million dead, a few trillion in profits for warmongers...

Millennials are the first generation of post-Marxist radicals. They have no aversion to markets that they see necessary for making business decisions responsive to reality. They may be irreligious as a group, but they are not militant atheists. Without question they recognize Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot as villains for much the same reason that they recognize Hitler and Satan Hussein as villains. They do not need Marx, who is obsolete. But they no longer accept the idea that elite gain, indulgence, and power create a paradise for any but the elite.