The WSWS is really drawing in the line in the sand between real socialism and fake-left "progressives". Between this and the essay by David Walsh about #MeToo, we are sharpening our pens and minds as the class war deepens. This is perfect!
I was such a Chinese high school student a decade ago. Perfect grades, applied for Harvard, got in but only because my mom read enough horror stories to instill in me the need to apply for summer camps and "leadership" and "volunteer" activities in school, in state, and around the city. I can tell you right now that 80%+ of the students who entered Harvard as a non-legacy student with similar activities did not continue such activities once they arrived. In other words, it was a careerist game and everyone knew it! I hated my high school years despite my good grades and general love of my teachers, classmates, and learning because of how fake the application process for elite schools was. I was told that "you aren't good enough because you are Chinese and from a public school and a poor area" so "you need to excel at a state level just to compete with the best prep school student from a rich state". My parents were even falsified my accomplishments on more than one occasion to get me into such summer camps! Once I got in and realized how fake most students there were and also how badly the overall culture (including many teachers who came out of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) promoted both cliquishness and a culture of "cool kids" (top 20%) + "mass fanboy/girl" (next 60-70%) that resembled the worst stereotypes of the very American high schools I just left, it really shattered my illusions as "an esteemed place of learning filled with above-average people". However, the politics made such a place impossible to stay. I found it disturbing that even the idea of volunteer work promoted to the students usually would serve the interests of the upper-middle or upper class, often causing more damage than it would actually help. I found it disgusting that certain professors were so loyal to one of the two bourgeois parties that they would knowingly vote for mob-affiliated candidates just to prevent the other party from taking power. I found it bizarre that criminals like Geitner were considered esteemed alumni or that the most popular course for freshman was indoctrination in free-market capitalism, taught by an ideologue. It was scary for me when professors were trying to make a case that fascism was an intellectual movement in the 1920s but socialism never. Even our research material for that class pointed out that a Harvard alum (Lamont) funded Nazis and donated to Harvard; his name today is now remembered as that of the undergrad research library and hangout spot. Most of the students thought that was a funny coincidence, I thought it was creepy.
Today I am a blue collar worker by choice. I make less money, my parents feel like I failed them, but I am far happier with my life.
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