Pill Pod 206 - Trump vs. Higher Education
Added 2025-05-03 01:49:14 +0000 UTCYea we missed a lot of news, but we wanted to cover the Trump regime's war on higher education. As a group with a lot of university affiliations, we hate universities too, but here we try to diagnose the reasons for the recent clashes.
Comments
Careful! A despaired comment follows :(. I think one should ignore all the non-sense written and spoken communication and analyze what this US administration does. Why do they attack protesters? Because this is a weak point of the libs; because they can market it as punishing morally corrupted people. Why they deport those people claiming being in a gang? Because they want to send a message that you can be a US citizen and you can be deported forever and on the spot without seeing your family again. There is a re-definition of the inside/outside distinction. The "bad" people a no longer only immigrants, Muslim, Blacks of the suburbs, veiled women, the disabled, junkies and marginal men but feminists, LGBTQ, antiracists, ecologists, most elites of the humanities and any defenders of immigrant or minority rights. The "good" are the nationalists, antifeminists, homophobes, xenophobes and anyone who is connected to ecology, modern arts and intellectualism. The goal is clear: destroy the government and the state as a whole expect its military and policing capability and the ability to enrich oligarchs. They want the Russian model. To justify this to themselves and others they imagine an invasion of criminal immigrants forcing the US into war with itself. This makes the attack on (liberal) academia very understandable. The US has its Weimar moment but in its own style. The scary part for the world is its military capabilities---capabilities that the Nazi Germany would have dreamed of. When we then factor in Climate Change (which I believe many deniers only deny to take the money and run) and a believe in the End Times I feel like we are completely fucked especially because we (maybe it is a me-problem) can only imagine dystopias. How can this lead to something where live in all its different forms can flourish?
Dalia
2025-05-11 15:27:49 +0000 UTCI disagree. I don't know much about his politics/content outside of the podcast so maybe he's inciting the youth to communist violence or something haha, but I don't think political consensus or a praxis-focus have ever been strong priorities of the podcast. I enjoy these political episodes interspersed through the theoretical episodes because they feel like a light/interesting break from the theory here and there. Diego tends to have theoretically exaggerated takes but I think he knows it and I think it gives a good foil for the other 3 to respond to. I agree it can be a bit much sometimes. I personally don't think the accessible spirit of the podcast has been diminished at all. But Diego better be careful, Kim Jung Pills may turn his countenance away ⚔️
Nicholas Leach
2025-05-06 19:13:54 +0000 UTCI am sad that the Pills podcast has taken on Diego as a regular member. It's been a sad thing to watch the pod let this guy with very scary politics be so influential. I know most of the pod members would disagree with his politics if you were approaching his statements with integrity. Maybe it would be easier for you to see if you all had real ant-capitalist praxis rather than only a theory angle on politics. I really loved the episodes on critical theory and philosophy, I've learned so much and been so inspired by them, but politics is really not your wheelhouse and it's disappointing to see this trend in content. It feels like y’all give no push back on his ideas because they are vaguely some form of leftism you don’t understand and coming from the global south. But they are far more fraught and mired in forms of nationalism, post deng Maoism, and a mishmash of pseudo intellectualism that isn’t even worth attempting to refute. Diego is an arrogant buffoon who detracts from the conversation and brings down the quality with his pretentious jargon use and virtue signaling using convoluted concepts. It seems there has been a real slip into a phase where the original ideas of being approachable and not pretentious (and not name dropping, jargon use, etc) has been lost. Maybe he improves your reach but at what cost for platforming such a person. I am considering removing my (modest) donation as a patron if this keeps on going.
Well Written Agenda
2025-05-06 17:55:06 +0000 UTC
