That so many college age students have taken up the sword of antisemitism is a good argument for the reality of social contagion and the need for mental vaccines to protect against epidemic social infections like the recent insidious viral socialism.
The Mind like the Body Needs Immunity
As we know, physical immunity requires the body to “learn” how to protect itself.
Thus, isolating ourselves from ordinary sicknesses does us no good when we encounter them. To simplify: Kids exposed to other kids in school develop immunities. I suspect a number of kids, after a year of homeschooling during COVID, upon their return to classrooms had lost their herd immunity to the sniffles. The simplification is, of course, a generalization, but it also seems to be applicable to the general population. With so many people infected with COVID, I believe that saying most of the population was exposed to the pandemic is a legitimate claim. Did such exposure engender immunity? No way to prove that qualitatively because of the arguable effect of vaccinations, but I could entertain the hypothesis that most of us have some herd immunity protection.
Are 21st Century people Immune to the Plague or the Spanish Flu of 1918?
Like the underground part of a 3,000-year-old Mediterranean olive tree, the roots of antisemitism don’t die. If the above ground trunk dies, the roots grow a new one. The surface expression comes and goes, but it appears to resurface indefinitely. So, what’s with college students going on antisemitic rampages? How did antisemitism resurface?
On occasion, a fright runs through the population that some old disease like smallpox, the Black Death, or the Spanish flu will resurface. We fear our long isolation from the disease will make us vulnerable. Look for example, at spring 2024’s return of the Bird Flu.
Are today’s college-age antisemites vulnerable because of their intellectual isolationism? I wonder how many of them have been exposed to William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Granted, at 1,049 pages it can be a bit of a slog for Cliff Notes-readers, but for YouTube-savvy young people, numerous videos about the atrocities committed by Nazis are available with a click. And then there’s that relatively short Anne Frank story…
Isolation
Isolation. They just haven’t been exposed to the realities of the Holocaust or the Alhambra Decree of March, 1492, the Spanish Expulsion. And they have similarly not been exposed to antisemites’ unreasoned hate that has resurfaced in groups like the KKK and Neo Nazis. When such “germs” are released into their communities, they have no immunity. The sickness of antisemitism spread rapidly.
And like bacteria and viruses, that sickness mutated into anti-Americanism. Now that campuses have closed, effectively quarantining those with the disease, the sickness once spread through on-campus “carriers” has largely vanished. But there are still carriers, some purposefully infected and lying in wait for a chance to reinfect, probably at political gatherings. No one can count out the potential for flareups in the fall as students return to school, ready to waste more of their parents’ money as their disease returns (or, given the $162 billion Biden “loan forgiveness,” waste YOUR money).
Act Preemptively
Summer affords college administrators the opportunity to quash the sickness before it returns to campuses. But I believe few administrations will act because many believe that acting will only incite more students to return to campus “on a mission.” Unable to infuse the campuses with the anti-antisemitism prophylactics of cosmopolitanism and history, the feckless administrators will probably do little to protect the herd. The isolated will continue their parochial lives while claiming a social justice Anschauung that is irrelevant to those they support from a safe distance, that is, the Hamas terrorists of murderous intent. The American youth will be re-infected. The disease will resurface.
The Mind like the Body Needs Immunity
As we know, physical immunity requires the body to “learn” how to protect itself.
Thus, isolating ourselves from ordinary sicknesses does us no good when we encounter them. To simplify: Kids exposed to other kids in school develop immunities. I suspect a number of kids, after a year of homeschooling during COVID, upon their return to classrooms had lost their herd immunity to the sniffles. The simplification is, of course, a generalization, but it also seems to be applicable to the general population. With so many people infected with COVID, I believe that saying most of the population was exposed to the pandemic is a legitimate claim. Did such exposure engender immunity? No way to prove that qualitatively because of the arguable effect of vaccinations, but I could entertain the hypothesis that most of us have some herd immunity protection.
Are 21st Century people Immune to the Plague or the Spanish Flu of 1918?
Like the underground part of a 3,000-year-old Mediterranean olive tree, the roots of antisemitism don’t die. If the above ground trunk dies, the roots grow a new one. The surface expression comes and goes, but it appears to resurface indefinitely. So, what’s with college students going on antisemitic rampages? How did antisemitism resurface?
On occasion, a fright runs through the population that some old disease like smallpox, the Black Death, or the Spanish flu will resurface. We fear our long isolation from the disease will make us vulnerable. Look for example, at spring 2024’s return of the Bird Flu.
Are today’s college-age antisemites vulnerable because of their intellectual isolationism? I wonder how many of them have been exposed to William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Granted, at 1,049 pages it can be a bit of a slog for Cliff Notes-readers, but for YouTube-savvy young people, numerous videos about the atrocities committed by Nazis are available with a click. And then there’s that relatively short Anne Frank story…
Isolation
Isolation. They just haven’t been exposed to the realities of the Holocaust or the Alhambra Decree of March, 1492, the Spanish Expulsion. And they have similarly not been exposed to antisemites’ unreasoned hate that has resurfaced in groups like the KKK and Neo Nazis. When such “germs” are released into their communities, they have no immunity. The sickness of antisemitism spread rapidly.
And like bacteria and viruses, that sickness mutated into anti-Americanism. Now that campuses have closed, effectively quarantining those with the disease, the sickness once spread through on-campus “carriers” has largely vanished. But there are still carriers, some purposefully infected and lying in wait for a chance to reinfect, probably at political gatherings. No one can count out the potential for flareups in the fall as students return to school, ready to waste more of their parents’ money as their disease returns (or, given the $162 billion Biden “loan forgiveness,” waste YOUR money).
Act Preemptively
Summer affords college administrators the opportunity to quash the sickness before it returns to campuses. But I believe few administrations will act because many believe that acting will only incite more students to return to campus “on a mission.” Unable to infuse the campuses with the anti-antisemitism prophylactics of cosmopolitanism and history, the feckless administrators will probably do little to protect the herd. The isolated will continue their parochial lives while claiming a social justice Anschauung that is irrelevant to those they support from a safe distance, that is, the Hamas terrorists of murderous intent. The American youth will be re-infected. The disease will resurface.
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