The Plan to Destroy Education

And what it means for the future of America

I am reading Audrey Tang’s fascinating book, Plurality, and look forward to reviewing it here soon. Here is a link to a free, open-source edition that you can read for yourself. A transgendered woman and teenage hacker prodigy, Tang was a leader of the Sunflower student movement in Taiwan. Somehow as a result, she became Digital Minister for the country. From within the government, she helped build and launch a number of tools for responsive, open-source democracy that transformed the political system in Taiwan, which is, today, one of the world’s most advanced and efficient democracies. When we implement these tools in the U.S., we will take America back from Sauron and his Ring Wraiths — I mean, Trump, the Christian Nationalists, and tech broligarchs.

I think it is clear that America confronts a Fascist takeover at this point. Some commentators are fudging by using the term “competitive authoritarianism” to describe this new system. Under competitive authoritarianism, oppositional political parties are allowed to continue to exist, but the ruling regime uses all of the tools at its disposal to maintain control. This includes an assortment of unjust mechanisms for tilting elections. Some of these techniques were already employed in 2024, such as mass voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering. According to investigative journalist Greg Palast, these methods stole over 3.5 million votes from the Democrats, who would have won the election. There is also the possibility / likelihood that more direct forms of hacking were used to engineer Trump’s victory. We may never know.

Now that Trump has refused to accept a court order, we are, officially, no longer a Constitutional Democracy. That means there isn't a rule of law in the U.S. anymore. As of now, we are just another Third World dictatorship ruled by a so-called “strong man” and his goons. Over the last few days, DOGE hackers have shown up at independent agencies not controlled by the Executive branch with armed men. They have forced their way into buildings. Even the milquetoast NY Times admits Musk and DOGE have violated the Constitution. This is what we used to read about from Zimbabwe or other failed states. Now it is happening in our country.

Trump's popularity has dipped, but it still isn't far below 50% from the last polls I saw — if you can trust the polls (which I don’t). Trump is dismantling essential social services like Social Security and Medicare to give bigger tax cuts to the wealthy while amping up the National Debt and the war machine. Even deep red state Republicans and veterans are furious, screaming at their representatives at Town Halls.

Trump wants to attack our long-time allies — Canada, Denmark, Mexico — who have done nothing to thwart us. If America was a country in Europe, there would be massive protests in every city and town at this point. It is eerie that most people in the U.S. don’t seem to care much or react forcefully as their future is stolen from them. Sadly, this is the case even among many friends of mine.

According to my analysis, there is a mix of reasons for this: Many still believe that technological “innovation” is inevitably good (some of Elon Musk’s former savior aura still affects people). We suffer from deep fatalism, cynicism, and irony due to trivializing and disempowering mass media. The “neo-spiritual” culture preaches detachment from political and social issues as being “low vibration.” Spiritual bypassers believe we “create our own reality,” solipsistically, through our thoughts. According to this false ideology, we shouldn’t even focus on things like the destruction of social services because we help create a negative reality by having such bad thoughts.

I mention this in the hopes of making you aware of the various ways your “subjectivity” has been shaped by the media along with other self-serving belief systems, sneaky rhetorical traps, and tools to increase detachment. When one person wakes up to the urgency of the situation and starts talking about it, they will lose a few friends but they will wake up 20 others and find new, better friends along the way. Once we all wake up, fascism fails.

Today I want to focus on the Right’s vicious attack on education, which includes dismantling the Department of Education and plans to defund universities. Trump/Musk cut federal funding from Columbia University ($400 million cut because Columbia hasn’t done enough to protect Jewish students) and Johns Hopkins ($880 million cut, leading to a loss of 2,200 jobs), as a prelude to going after the endowments of the universities in more direct ways. The massive, abrupt cuts to scientific research grants and other initiatives in medicine, public health, and climate seem bizarre and almost incomprehensible (this may be the plan). It is also very shocking that the tech broligarchs — who until very recently seemed to symbolize America’s intellectual and technical acumen as representatives of an open society — are among those leading this self-destructive, ritualized hari-kari.

To be fair, none of the tech bros go quite so far as Heritage President Kevin Roberts (a former history professor and an architect of Project 2025) who wants the US Government to seize the endowments of private universities such as Harvard because they are “woke” infected, as he told UnHerd: