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Oct. 5, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:06
2229 Depressed in College? Here's Why!
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Hello, Stefan Wollin, you from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
This is a show about college students.
Oh my goodness.
The sympathy that I feel towards these poor, benighted souls.
Listen, the statistics are pretty horrifying.
The statistics are horrifying.
Mental health.
Half of college students have considered suicide.
It sort of goes downhill from there.
20-25% of college students are on...
Psychotropic, mind-shattering, body chemistry-altering, addictive psychotropics.
It is just horrendous what is going on with college students in Canada.
It's just as bad.
There's an article in McLean's recently about this, and the guilty conscience of the aged is the secret physics of the world.
Someone wrote in.
I'm sort of curious.
You see these articles that come out just about how bad The mental health is of college students.
And depression, anxiety, and so on.
And people say, well, you see, it's the pressure to succeed.
Like, that's new.
Or one doofus-a-rama was writing that.
Well, you see, the problem is that they have these online identities that are fabulous and exciting, and their real lives just can't keep pace, you see, with their online personas, and so they get them.
It's like, oh my god, are you people fucking retarded?
Excuse me.
There's so much that simply is impossible to say in society.
I can tell you why college students are depressed.
Because they're smarter than your average bear.
And as a result, they are at some level aware that their society has just fucking died on them.
The society is dead.
There's no future...
I mean, youth has a tendency towards nihilism.
It's what substitutes for the fear of mortality.
When you feel invincible, you end up with nihilism.
But their society has died.
The society, I mean, it's been in its death throes, of course, for a long, long time.
But society just up and died in 2007-2008 with the bank bailouts.
And that's it.
That was done.
That's it.
Totally done.
Hundreds of billions of dollars shot in the water cannon of statist, gooey-ass, tentacle-necked rhetoric at the bankers who had screwed up, been greedy, made massive profits.
The government, which takes, like, months to process an unemployment insurance claim and, what, people have been waiting two years for mortgage adjustments under the Obama let's keep you locked in the sinking ship of your house and not let you out?
They've been waiting up to two years to get a mortgage adjustment.
These bankers get hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of bailouts and loan guarantees in three days.
In three days.
I mean, of course, you can't talk about any of this stuff in the presidential campaign because both candidates are deep in the pockets of the bankers.
They got their finance industry knee pads and are busy giving...
They took their teeth out to give even better blowjobs to the bankers.
I mean, that's the day the music died, my friends.
That was it.
And there's so little that's being processed about this in society.
The degree to which the rich and powerful get what they want.
The degree to which we have a completely fascist society where big corporations are using the power of big government.
I mean, at every level, right?
The law is enforced by a monopoly.
I mean, if there was ever a recipe for disaster, it's that.
I mean, if you ever want to keep a free society, the last people you should give a goddamn monopoly to is the lawyers, for heaven's sakes.
For heaven's sakes.
Because then they have an investment in the expansion of state power, and then only those who benefit from monopoly usually get to run government.
I mean, they're all lawyers in Congress, right?
And lawyers, of course, I mean, lawyers are the fiat currency of the state, right?
It's a monopoly on power, and you have to use them the same way you have to use fiat currency to pay off your tax debt and all that sort of stuff.
And it's just horrendous.
And the young have to bear the burden of all the lies of the old.
And the burden, of course, occurs in their education, in their indoctrination.
Of course, when you have a society based on lies, indoctrination based on the fear of children is inevitable.
I mean, that's what you have to do.
If you have a society based on lies, children are your enemies, and you have to brutalize them with indoctrination.
But the bank bailouts are such a fundamental cratering of any kind of moral authority that the aged might conceivably have in Western societies.
The bank bailouts...
We're it.
That was the final nail through the eyeball, straight down at the back of the coffin, vampire, full sunlight, dust in the wind, end of Western civilization as we know it.
Sound dramatic?
Maybe.
Let me make the case, and then you can tell me if I'm full of shite or not.
Children, you see, are told to be responsible for their actions.
You've made your bed, you lie in it.
If you don't study for a test, you see, then you get, and you do badly on the test, then you get an F. And you see, if you don't study, then you get an F. You can't go and then get an A by taking everyone else's A. So everyone else ends up with a C and you get an A. It is so unbelievable.
I wish people would understand this.
Maybe they do.
I wish they would understand this.
It's so incredibly, incredibly dangerous and self-destructive for a society to contradict the moral lessons it inflicts upon its children and never acknowledge the discrepancy.
Let me repeat this again.
This is so essential.
It is unbelievably suicidal for a society to contradict the moral lessons it inflicts on children and never acknowledge or fess up to the difference.
If you screw up as a kid, you have to accept the consequences.
You know, when I was a kid, I remember poking my toe around some broken glass on a street and some mom came along.
I think it was a mom.
Mom came along and made me pick up all the broken glass and put it in the garbage.
It wasn't my broken glass, but she just assumed that I was responsible for it.
And so, I mean, I didn't even break it and I had to clean it up.
And if I disobeyed the rules, you see, then I suffered the consequences.
Catings, beatings, I, you know, for speaking out of turn in class, I was assigned lines to do, which I had to struggle through even with a sprained wrist.
And there was detentions and, I mean, you're punished.
You didn't obey the rules.
And you didn't get to steal everyone else's marks if you didn't study for a test.
Because, you see, this is what is inflicted upon children.
And, of course, because children aren't people, right, they have moral rules which nobody else has, right?
Nobody else is really subjected to them.
And so, if you screw up as a kid, you have to accept the consequences.
That is what society valiantly strives, strains, and tells itself it is up to when it is instructing the children in its midst.
Don't study?
Get an F? Maybe you'll study next time.
But nobody dreams of stripping the marks from the people who have studied and giving them to the people who haven't studied.
Oh, and if you cheat, oh my goodness.
Expulsion, F, disgrace, horror.
If you cheat, my goodness.
My goodness.
Well, the bailouts were it.
I mean, the moral authority had been chipped away at massively.
Over decades.
But, you see, the ethics which had been cratering in Western society for a few decades required some study to get.
So the fact that the poverty rate now is higher than it was when the war on poverty began...
The same way that drugs are cheaper and more accessible than when the war on drugs began, when the war on illiteracy began, illiteracy rates were higher.
You have to know a little bit about history.
You know, the now generation, which I consider myself sort of part of.
I mean, it's a struggle to learn about history.
You kind of have to get a little educated to realize just how unbelievably hypocritical and ridiculous government programs are.
But this is one that was just right in everybody's face.
And so astoundingly inexcusable, and such an astounding delineation of where the real power in society is, and how deep in the pockets of the bankers the government is.
You know, to react with just and reasonable contempt to the Securities and Exchange Commission, you have to know a little bit about the Bernie Madoff Scandal and how the SEC was tipped off for years ahead of time.
That these returns were impossible and that they did nothing.
I mean, you have to really know a little bit about the history of all of that.
But the banking thing was just so morally repugnant and such a slime booger shoved up the nose of the general population where people who'd made obscene profits out of Robo-signing and churning through economically illiterate people through all of these various tricksy schemes to get them into houses because
that was a political goal, right?
The Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the various programs under Carter and beyond that were trying to get people into houses because that, I guess, was considered to be A good thing.
And that was politically positive.
Oh, look at all these new people in houses.
Isn't that great?
Canada had no such programs, really, and sailed through the housing bubble.
I mean, we're still in a housing bubble, but it hasn't been quite as catastrophic so far.
Not nearly as catastrophic so far as the American experience.
And so all of these, you know, unbelievable scumbags who, you know, to be fair, were operating in a profit motive that is entirely fascistically driven, for which they would have been fired had they not participated in the shoveling of poor people into the endless, bottomless Mariana for which they would have been fired had they not participated in the shoveling of poor people into the endless, bottomless Mariana Trench pit of houses that could not conceivably be afforded, should there be even a minor correction
And these people were strongly encouraged, if not outright forced, sometimes outright forced to take on all these toxic mortgages, and of course bundled them up and sold them around the world.
And nobody talked about this, of course.
I mean, if you talk about the evils of your society, then you're kicked out of positions of power.
I mean, nobody strives for years to become the head of a bank or high up in the political world to then talk about the evils of the society or of the situation.
But the bankers, with no due process, with no consultation of the people, With almost...
Well, with no chance it was done in three days.
With no chance of a review.
With no oversight.
And with letters stating that the government was never going to track the money handed over to the banks and no lawsuits could arise from any misuse or mishandling.
A literal counterfeit-based blank check was handed to these astounding scumbags who even by the standards of the state We're, in general, outright criminals.
You know, defrauding investors, defrauding homeowners.
And for this incredible evil, they were astoundingly rewarded.
Not prosecuted, not punished, astoundingly rewarded.
It's like the Libor scandal.
I mean, this stuff's been going on, some arguments are, fairly credible arguments, I would say.
It's been going on for decades, this manipulation of the Libor rate for the advantage of the banks.
Because, you see, a six- or seven-year-old is responsible for studying for a test.
But a banker can screw people over, defraud millions to the tune of hundreds of billions or trillions, and gets rewarded, gets free money.
I mean, this is the consequences of not treating children as people.
It's that, to the state, we are children, and therefore we have no rights.
We're just resources.
We're a livestock.
We're resources that they can steal from to support their own lifestyle, to reward their friends, and to punish their enemies.
And that's it.
That's the whole deal.
That's the entirety of the situation.
And that's just the beginning of what the college students are processing, and because it can't be talked about in any conscious or clear or literal way, because that leads straight back to the non-aggression principle, to a violation of property, and to the astounding scumbaggery-based control and humiliation and moral dictatorship that is only inflicted on children, and for which adults who...
Our irresponsible in factors that can't even be calculated in the same universe as a child not studying for a test are rewarded whereas the child is punished.
Well, if we keep treating our children as objects, as things to be used to maintain our own shaky grasp on pseudo-reality, then we will forever suffer the same fate at the hands of the state that the children suffer at the hands of us.
And there are two things that come out of that for college students.
The first is that the society is completely unsustainable, not because of these horrible hypocritical crimes, but because they're not admitted or discussed.
Now, of course, I fully understand that in the left-wing press there's quite a lot of anger and upset about the Bank bailouts and they're considered to be corrupt and reprehensible and so on.
But the problem, of course, is that the bailouts were followed by Barack Obama, who's the most leftist president probably ever was, who has not remedied the problem, who has not dealt with this situation.
Who was, of course, even who took the highest rate of donations from Wall Street, has prosecuted zero bankers, and this problem obviously cannot solve itself.
Oh, well, we need somebody more left-wing than Barack Obama.
Well, that's just ex post facto excuses, right?
So, the bailouts...
Followed by Barack Obama and nothing changing.
Really, that's it.
I mean, it's done.
It's done.
The lefties are not bringing Barack Obama to task because he's on their team, right?
They just pick teams and you cheer for your team even if they suck.
So that has shown to college students that their futures are incredibly...
The future of their society is incredibly unsustainable.
So, once you know that the Titanic has hit the iceberg, what you do is you really want to start making your way to the lifeboats.
You don't sort of want to stay down on the Lido deck and play another game of goddamn shuffleboard.
But there's no place to go, right?
America was the last port.
Of people seeking to escape the storm of statism, and now America has become, of course, this status nightmare, and so there's no place to go.
There is no port in these storms.
Where do you go?
I guess you could maybe go to Hong Kong or China or something like that, but that's not the easiest thing in the world, and China is still an ex-communist kleptocracy, And I guess Singapore is better, but that's quite a long way to go.
Anyway, there's no particular place to go.
There used to be, and now not so much.
So, these are huge issues.
When you are in a society which is completely unsustainable, well, it's kind of tough.
It's really, really kind of tough to get yourself all kinds of motivated.
The other thing, of course, is that...
Like all collapsing civilizations, which are collapsing because the middle class is being squeezed by the bread and circuses being given to the poor and the counterfeit money being handed over to the rich, the counterfeiting that's for the benefit of the rich, there is this populist anti-rich rhetoric which is pretty significant and a huge demotivator for ambition.
And this, right, this means that those who aspire to middle class or upper middle class goals, which really is sort of the college, the college dream is, you know, become a lawyer, doctor, accountant, dentist, whatever it is, and a professor or something.
So it gets to the upper middle class, gets up five or 10% of the population, but the increasing screw the rich stuff is That goes on in society really makes that less appealing and less attractive.
And, of course, as regulations increase in society, the upper middle class option becomes much less attractive.
Like, more than half of doctors now say that they wouldn't be doctors.
At least in the US, they wouldn't be doctors.
They wouldn't try to be doctors now, and if they knew now, right?
If they knew back then what they know now, they would never become doctors.
They spend like 15% of their time filling out paperwork.
One doctor had to hire a staff of four just to deal with government bureaucracy and paperwork.
That's the ever-looming threat of lawsuits and all this sort of nonsense.
And obviously, with accountants and lawyers, you just exploit it and then get to exploit others.
And particularly in the legal profession, it's brutal.
You know, 80 hours, 100 hours a week when you're articling and so on.
And so the middle class lifestyle is becoming progressively less possible.
I mean, even engineers are having a tough time finding work.
The massive amount of outsourcing that has occurred as a result of increased union activity, higher taxes and regulation is not about to be reversed.
And even if it were, it would take decades to resuscitate this dying crop of American manufacturing.
And so it's really not that possible anymore to aspire to and to expect to achieve the upper middle class lifestyle.
College debt, of course, has become a huge problem.
The average American student graduating with mid- $20,000 in college debt with little to no opportunity to find a job that's going to make all of that debt worthwhile.
That's all a huge mess.
And that is the result, of course, of the government promoting...
College, because, you know, if you've got a home and you've got a college degree, that's great.
Because, you know, all of the executives who screwed everyone through the banking system and the financial system, they all had homes and college degrees, most of them.
And all the people who started the unjust wars, they were all highly educated, had lots of homes.
So, you see, it's really great for society, because that's, you know, what it means to be.
Right.
I mean, of course, the reason why the government wants to get you into a home is so that you are in debt.
And so if you go into a home, the government can create a lot more money through this mortgage fiat currency magic mayhem of farting money into existence.
So if you just rent, then it's not as profitable for the government.
And of course, if you buy a house, or if you basically take out a mortgage for a house, then you're much more controllable because you're more afraid of You're involved in long-term commitment, and so you're more nervous.
Employers are all like...
I mean, everybody likes you to be in a house because it makes you easier to control economically and allows the government to profit more.
And of course, for the idiots, it sounds like there's economic progress if more people are buying houses.
It's all just...
I mean, house ownership is the same as getting a college degree.
It's actually propaganda.
And so all of this stuff is combined so that college is not that great.
It's not the ticket to the middle class that it used to be.
And the professors...
Oh, yeah.
Well, this is another big problem, right?
I mean, this is the second of the big problems.
The professors.
I mean, it's pretty repulsive what goes on in professordom.
I mean, first of all...
The leftist crap was pretty much a cliche even when I was in college like 20 years ago.
God, more than 20 years ago.
I guess 20 years ago I was doing my master's.
The leftist trash that the college professors have been spewing since the post-war period has to a large degree become hard to believe.
Very hard to believe.
For a number of reasons.
First of all, I mean...
They got what they wanted.
The leftists got what they wanted, and it's still not working, and they still want more.
This is a classic sign of abusive, dysfunctional, and addictive behavior.
So, if you have an abusive husband, it doesn't matter how much you comply, your punishments are always going to get worse.
That's just the nature of the beast.
If you have somebody who needs you to self-erase in order to maintain his sense of identity, then you are never going to be able to self-erase enough.
Never.
Never going to be enough.
An abusive relationship is like the Buddhist concept of the hunger that starves itself, right?
The food that starves you.
That's the nature of addictive behavior.
The more you have of it, the more you want.
Like sexual addiction or whatever it is.
So, all of this stuff is...
Fundamental to the leftist addictions have been revealed, which is that it doesn't matter how much money the government has, it doesn't matter how many programs the government has, it doesn't matter how much power the government has, it's still going to get screwed up, and they're still going to want more.
It's classic addiction, right?
And I don't mean to pick on the lefties in particular.
I mean, the right-wing fantasies have also been proven false.
I mean, it doesn't matter how much of a military budget you have.
Guess what?
You're never going to feel safe.
It doesn't matter how many aircraft carriers, how many nuclear weapons, how many bunker-busting bombs and drones you have, you are never going to feel safe.
In fact, the more of these things you have, the more dangerous, the more in danger you feel.
So, I mean, the right-wing fantasy of peace through superior firepower has been revealed, of course, as a fantasy.
But, I mean, there's less of that in academia.
I mean, Right-wingers are primitive enough to believe that the real value is in weapons, that the real power is in weapons, which is nonsense.
The real power is in ethics, and the left-wing has had the monopoly on the ethical discussion for the past three generations at least, and so far it appears to be...
Well, pretty much unstoppable, as far as that goes.
Because, you see, the left, they care about the poor, and the right don't.
But it's distinctions without difference.
You know, the right is all about, you know, the stern Old Testament dad, that if you don't do the crime, if you can't do the time, and we're for tough, right, spanking, and Authoritarianism and accepting the responsibility for your actions and so on.
The right has been bought out in the electoral process by exactly the same cluster of vampires of incredibly Hulk-based financial catastrophism as the left has.
Goldman Sachs contributes massively to both political parties and The right is the party of the military-industrial complex, which is the rich parasites, just as the left is the Democrats of the party of the public sector workers or the middle-class parasites.
And, I mean, both are two sides of the jaws that are crushing the middle class out.
And when you crush out the middle class, as they found under the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s, extremism creeps in inevitably.
The middle class is the great buffer.
It's the great inertia.
to extremism because the middle class is not ideological.
The middle class is what they used to call the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie.
They're interested in comfort and stability and they have families and they care and they don't have so little money that they have nothing to lose and they don't have so much money that they're insulated from loss and so they are concerned with stability and predictability and so on and they are the ballast to keep society stable And that, of course, is all being toasted.
When you eat away at the middle class, there's no center to the pendulum.
It just swings more wildly.
The center cannot hold.
Things fall apart, as the poet said.
So, that, I think, is a really important thing to understand.
The college students are of damn right to be depressed.
Their society is unsustainable, and the intellectual leaders of that society are liars and hypocrites, for the most part.
Not exclusively, but for the most part.
Because nobody's asking the fundamental questions about why the society is the way it is, why things are so bad.
And the futures of the young, of course, are being ground up into a fine, sinister, statist pate to be fed to the ancient, creaky, croaky goose of the boomers as they retire.
I mean, of course, the health of the boomers is catastrophic.
They have, like, 800% of them have three or more ailments than the same age boomers, or the same age older people of just a generation ago.
Their health is catastrophic.
Now, I mean, part of that, of course, is just the relativism and secularism of bad health habits and that they've grown up in a situation where other people will take care of their problems through Medicare and Medicaid and subsidies and all that.
But, I mean, also partly it's because I imagine that people with that many ailments a generation ago probably died, and so they're sort of struggling on into an old age that was kind of unguessable in the past.
But...
The, you know, the leftist hypocrites largely in charge of academia, well, this has been known, right, that the retirement of the boomers was old news, and the problems it was going to cause in society, in terms of healthcare and pensions and benefits and all of that.
It was old news when I was young.
So, right now...
It's Methuselah news.
It's really old news.
And nothing has been done.
In fact, the pillaging of the pensions and the selling off of the future of the young has only accelerated.
And nobody has a plan.
Romney and Ryan, I mean, oh, let me, I can't tell you about...
It's so funny, you know, I can't give you any specifics.
I can't give you any specifics.
Of course, nobody asks Obama for any specifics.
It's...
All nonsense, but, you know, as in, well, you've spent all these trillions of dollars in stimulus packages.
Why, you know, with promises that this was going to jumpstart the economy, and why is the economy still so anemic?
Well, it would have been worse if we hadn't done that, which, of course, was not the promise, right?
I'm going to cut off your leg to save the gangrene.
The gangrene is spreading even faster.
Well, it would have spread even faster.
If I hadn't cut your leg off, it's like, no, no, no, no.
You cut my leg off because you promised me that was going to end the gangrene.
Stop the spread of it.
Not just it would go twice as fast as 1.5 times as fast that it's going now.
But, of course, we live in this land of perpetual avoidance and justification.
Too many people are dependent on evil now.
Too many people are dependent on corruption now for corruption to be openly questioned in any significant way, other than this and a scattering of other conversations.
Too many people are dependent upon corruption now.
And so, the problem of the boomers retiring, what's at the peak?
There seem like 75,000 boomers a day retiring, going from pseudo-taxpayers in the public sector, real taxpayers in the private sector, to massive net recipients of pensions and benefits.
It's got to be What is it?
Three working people for every retired person?
When at the beginning it was like dozens of working people to every retired person.
This has been known about forever, and of course it has not been planned for.
And nobody is fundamentally questioning all of this.
And the boomers, of course, are claiming that they're owed all of this stuff because they paid into the system.
It's like, no, you didn't pay into a system.
You gave your money to the government of all people.
My God!
My God.
It's like, oh, I'm not going to put my money in the bank.
I'm going to give it to a gambling addict with a cocaine problem and then say, well, I'm shocked, shocked that my money has gone missing and I'm in fact in debt, whereas before I had assets, I'm now in debt.
I mean, people who say that they were keeping their money safe by giving the government is like saying, well, I had a pyromaniac house sit my My treasured mansion, and so I shouldn't have any problems, right?
Why is it on fire?
I mean, there's no language deep or broad enough to express my sort of contempt for people who say, well, I gave my money to a bunch of politicians, and therefore I am owed that money back.
It's like, are you crazy?
You gave your money to politicians, for God's sakes.
I mean, the spendiest, least responsible, war-addicted, bribeocracy fetishists that you could conceivably imagine, who will sell their own grandmother...
For one advantageous gerrymandering, you gave your money to politicians and now you say that you're owed it back because you thought it was safe?
I mean, that's astonishing.
You may have noticed that in the past people gave a lot of their children to politicians and those politicians really had no particular problem having those children get their balls shot off in foreign wars for no purpose whatsoever other than to fatten.
The pockets of the military-industrial complex.
So, pretty much, if you're okay with having kids' balls get shot off, I don't think that that's a very...
I gave my money to the mafia for safekeeping, and now I find that it's not there.
Ah, the idea that you give your money to the government for safekeeping is...
I mean, the fact that people can say this with a straight face shows you nothing more or less than the astounding power of propaganda.
And that is something to be truly astounding.
The power of self-delusion in the service of self-interest is a force of nature that maybe is possibly only exceeded by a thermonuclear reaction.
But give people who were too cowardly To stand against the increasing tsunami of state power, who did not want to upset friends, relatives, family with standing up and speaking out against the ever-encroaching fascism of increasing state power.
Now, having failed that battle, now they claim that they need additional state power To protect them from the consequences of their own cowardice.
And then so, you know, college kids go to university, go to uni or college.
And what happens?
Well, they are told that they are responsible for getting their essays in on time or they will fail.
They are told that they are responsible for studying for their tests or they will fail.
Because you see, the professors have such enormously high standards and such integrity that you must be Responsible for the consequences of your own actions.
Of course, the professors are sitting on tenure and all that, and not responsible for pretty much anything.
And also, of course, the professors say, mostly leftists, they say, well, you know, exploiting the workers is really bad.
And then they get Chinese iPad factory wages paid out to their TAs who do the majority of the work.
And anyway, the hypocrisy is just endless and it's bottomless.
But just the mind-bending moral obscenity of most of academia, combined with the fundamental unsustainability of the society that they live in,
with a light dollop and helping of the fact that their futures were sold off to bankers before they were even born— I think is some things that kind of contribute to the ennui and nihilism and suicidality of today's youth.
Now, I don't think that the hypocrisy of our elders is ever cause for despair.
Ever cause for despair.
I quite enjoy the fight myself.
I think it's bracing.
I think it's rousing.
I think it's exciting.
I think it's worthwhile.
I think it's necessary.
I'll tell you this.
It's a hell of a lot easier than fighting Nazis in a trench.
And not equating the boomers with Nazis.
Anyway, you understand.
But the fight that we have for justice and freedom and reason and peace...
And an end to the addiction of using overt or covert violence to achieve one's ends, whether it's criminality or the state.
This fight is about the easiest fight that we've ever had against corruption and evil.
You know, being scientifically minded in the 15th and 16th centuries, yeah, that was pretty much a fight.
Having your gizzards pulled out or your body dismembered by horses charging in directions and having your intestines burned in a big fire, that was pretty much a challenge.
Having the Pope torture you And, you know, to the Catholic Church's credit, it did only take 400 years to apologize for torturing the pathetic and aged Galileo.
Well, that was tough stuff.
That was tough stuff.
The fight that we have, this is, you know, to the credit and advancement of the species, the fight that we have is merely one of slander and ostracism and whatever, right?
And so I think that we should rouse ourselves.
But of course, if you don't know what the fight is, if it's unconscious for you, then a conflict that is unconscious will sap you.
A conflict that is conscious will energize you.
And yeah, you know, you all have some reasons to be pissed.
You have some reasons to be pissed.
You know, why is your university so expensive?
You know, when I went to college, national theater school...
It was $1,200 a year.
And that was pretty cheap.
It was $1,200 to go for the year.
There was no room and board or anything, but that was $1,200.
Why is university so expensive?
Well, for the natural reason that the government has tried to make it cheaper, as it says, and therefore it has become more expensive.
The government recognizes that.
You have to buy the academics to ensure the continuance of corruption.
I mean, art, academics, and the media, all bought and paid for by the government.
The academics are bought by...
Buy subsidies to the universities, which just, you know, you think, oh, well, we'll give lots of money to universities so they can lower tuition.
No, no, no, come on.
They just increase the pay of bureaucrats, get more bureaucrats, build shinier buildings and pass the additional, and use that as, right, use the money you're giving them as collateral to borrow more and pass all the costs and expense and interest and all that onto the students.
And so, you buy the academics with subsidies, you buy the...
Movie industry with subsidies, $1.5 billion worth of subsidies went to the American movie industry, I think, just last year or 2010 or something like that.
Tax breaks for going to film in certain locales.
And, of course, you buy the media with access, right?
For the media, of course, it's a lot cheaper to go and interview a politician than it is to actually do hard-hitting investigative journalism, where You might get sued and all these problems and so on.
Just go to some politician and get talking points and call yourself a journalist when you're really just an empty-headed amplification blerometer for whatever information serves the powers that be, or whatever misinformation, I should say, serves the powers that be.
And so, yeah, you buy them all off with these various tricks and Then you've got yourself a rigidocracy of misinformation.
And the only, of course, problem with all of this is that it eats the young alive.
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