Opening your eyes

A follow-up to the previous piece

In Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, it is Teiresias, the blind prophet, who tells Oedipus early on: “Alas, alas! How dreadful it can be to have wisdom when it brings no benefit to the man possessing it.”

Only a few days into the Hamas-Israel conflict, academia and the mainstream media have been brutally exposed for the sick and pathetic institutions they are. In no time at all, anti-Israel demonstrations erupted on dozens of college campuses. In some cases, the participants were vocally in favor of Hamas’ tactics. This, against a backdrop of free speech—if contrary to the Leftist woke narrative—being all but banned.

Surprisingly, though, there was fairly quick reaction. Mega law firm Davis Polk announced in an internal email that it had rescinded letters of employment for three law students at Harvard and Columbia, who were signers of open letters in support of Hamas.

“These statements are simply contrary to our firm’s values and we thus concluded that rescinding these offers was appropriate in upholding our responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive work environment for all Davis Polk employees,” said the email, signed by Neil Barr. 

Interestingly, the notion of consequences for their actions was questioned by some pundits, including Candace Owens, who wanted to explain it away as the exuberance of youth. Considering that a third-year law student would likely be around 25 years old, this excuse is pretty thin gruel. At what point does the infantilization of these students end? How stupid and self-possessed must these students be to think that the outside world is anything like rarified academia?

Related to this is one of my favorite trigger questions: Is real life more like high school or college? God help you if you think the correct answer is “college.”

As to the “safe and inclusive work environment,” the irony here is palpable, since these are rubrics of the woke Left. Besides, I’m sure that Davis Polk cares a lot more about not offending clients than providing a wholesome work environment. Ask any first year at a major firm how kind and understanding the atmosphere is, as they put in 70 hours per week.

And don’t forget the legions of student debt-laden recent grads who are striking out in the job market—concluding that college for them was a big fat hoax.

Meanwhile, the utter failure of the media is a wonder to behold. To no one’s surprise, virtually every mainstream outlet breathlessly regurgitated the Hamas story that the Israelis had bombed a Gaza hospital, resulting in the deaths of 500 people. About 48 hours later, proof emerged that the damage was caused by an errant rocket fired by Islamic Jihad, the hospital was not hit, and possibly there were ten deaths.

But it gets worse. Breitbart columnist John Nolte asserts, and I am sympathetic to his point of view, that…

The corporate media did not believe Hamas — let me assure you of that. The truth is much, much more troubling than gullible, and the truth is this…

The corporate media are in the business of violence against Western Civilization, and right now, business is good. Violence equals ratings, which equals profits. Better still, violence furthers the far-left Cause. The Gaza Hospital Hoax was what the media call a two-fer.

Whatever you think of CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Google, Apple, the BBC… It is so much worse.

Remember the good ole’ days when we lived in a country where no one had the answer to this baffling question: How could something like the Holocaust happen?

Taking a hard look around the world, you might also ask yourself if we are now experiencing some sort of Divine Retribution.