The Long March of Astounding Stupidity Through the Institutions

Postcolonialism is suddenly in the news, as it is one of the most prominent contemporary pretexts for neo-medieval Jew hatred. This poisonous ideology focuses "on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands," and pretends to show how

Western cultural knowledge was applied to subjugate a non-European people into a colony of the European mother country, which, after initial invasion, was effected by means of the cultural identities of "colonizer" and "colonized."

So, these victims of oppression didn't only lose their lands, they lost their minds to the colonizers.

Except postcolonialism itself is an alien ideology that first colonized the minds of the (white) privileged before spreading to the so-called "oppressed." In other words, it is an ideology by and for overeducated White Folks, and its reason for being certainly isn't to help Oppressed Subaltern Peoples. 

Postcolonial theory thus establishes intellectual spaces for subaltern peoples to speak for themselves, in their own voices, 

No it doesn't. Rather, it establishes pseudo-intellectual spaces for sub-mediocre minds to participate in their own subjugation, once they've been colonized by this parasitic ideology. We used to call it "brainwashing." Now it's called "higher education." 

Everyone already knows this, Bob. Do you have a novel take on this dreary subject, or just more red meat for the base?

You're right about the dreary part. I started to skim the Wiki article, but even that is too much to bear. How does a *bright* young student deal with this invasive colonization of his mind? What has to happen to the mind before it passively endures the brainwashing? It reminds me of those spiders whose venom first paralyzes their prey before they suck out and devour the substance.

Is there some kind of analogous cognitive venom that shuts off the mind's natural defenses against bullshit? Where's the skepticism, the rebelliousness, the BS detector? How does one go from this healthy specimen:

 

To this cognitive oompa loompa:

Among other things, postcolonialism is also post-commonsense, post-reality, and post-civilization. 

Nevertheless, here we are.

Let's get back to the possibly fruitful analogy of a neurocognitive venom that first puts the mind to sleep before killing it altogether. Who are the spiders? They are the "critical faculty," who need fresh minds the way a vampire needs fresh blood.

These arachnoid People of Tenure put the bite on undergraduates and "colonize the student mind." And "this colonization and co-optation of university departments has proceeded uninterrupted for years," mainly by softheads "on the soft side of campus, in the liberal arts and humanities" (Ridgley).

This might furnish a clue, for a softhead is "a silly or stupid person" who is "lacking intelligence or sense," i..e., a "fool, featherbrain, goose, rattlebrain, silly, cuckoo, scatterbrain, flibbertigibbet."

True, these are all ad hominem, but what if the hominem in question is indeed the problem?

What if the problem isn't mere stupidity but truly astounding stupidity? That's how Landes characterizes it in his astoundingly timely Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad. 

At the end of each chapter Landes furnishes a list of Astoundingly Stupid Statements uttered therein by various media, academic, and political figures. We won't bother repeating them here. For our purposes, it's enough to know that our Cognitive Elites are Astoundingly Stupid.

But again, how did this come about?

Well, let's think this through. At the time of our country's founding, 90% of the population worked in agriculture, which means that 100% of that 90% possessed highly useful and adaptive knowledge -- adapted to what we call reality, the reality of the seasons, the soil, seeds, tools, etc. (And roughly 100% of women were occupied with the equally important reality of raising children and keeping the home.) 

By 1900, that percentage was down to about 40%, still more than enough to protect us from the deluge of over-educated soft minds. But now? Oof: 

Clearly we have a situation in which people who are perfectly suited for honest labor are creating mischief everywhere, from college campuses to newsrooms to the White House. Astoundingly Stupid people have completed their Long March Through the Institutions.

Just getting started, but we're out of time...