Disillusionment at Amherst: Liberal Hypocrisy

Before beginning, I wish to make one thing clear: I, in no way, would ever vote for Donald Trump. However, recent events in my life and the world have made it all the more difficult to defend the so-called “progressives,” self-ordained as paragons of virtue. Their words — fueled by moral outrage and hyperbole — are unbecoming of one committed to justice. They decry the treatment of their fellow man — whether it be verbal harassment, ostracization, or outright disrespect — while willingly engaging in the very same rhetoric and actions to create the conditions necessary for such treatment in the first place. With that said, let us begin.

No more than a few weeks ago, I published an article in The Student titled “Crises of the Institution: Dialogue On Campus,” reflecting on a dialogue between two students. In response to my piece, I received a no contact order from the college that Friday. Issued by Community Standards Representative Corey Michalos and Director of Civil Rights & Title IX Coordinator Catherine Berryman, and under the Student Code of Conduct, a No-Communication and Restricted Proximity Order (NRCPO) stipulates that “the purpose of this [c]ollege-issued order is to eliminate direct contact and reduce chance encounters between involved persons in a conflict. Simultaneously, this document is intended to provide sufficient structure and strategies for all involved persons to navigate the campus as regularly as possible. The NCRPO may or may not be the result of a [c]ollege adjudication process and, therefore, may or may not be considered a sanction.” It continues, “Please be advised that retaliation by either party toward the other resulting from this report would be considered a violation of the Student Code of Conduct.” In my own mind, I struggled to grasp what exactly had occurred. I found myself in a pit of anger and confusion and immediately rushed to read my piece again, attempting to discern where one would find language worthy of warranting this order.

Was I wrong to proclaim that “Each one of us, regardless of our beliefs, seeks in some way to be and do good. We are not like Satan — who knows and seeks to do evil for evil’s sake.” Or was acknowledging “though we may stumble and fall, the first steps, our first steps towards progress, must begin in recognizing our own fallibility and shared humanity” a sign of incendiary language? Reading through the order, it was as though my very character had come under indictment by a person who I held no relationship with, and that the college pledged its full support to these baseless claims. Though I knew the no contact order would not appear on my record, its existence nonetheless stoked fear of whether the law schools I’m applying to this year would gain notice of this. What would they think? Whose side would they be on? Whose side was the world on? Was I wrong? I found myself reminiscing about George Orwell’s “1984,” where speech and thought came under the purview and restriction of the government and at their sole discretion.

The following Monday, I met with Michalos and Berryman to discuss the nature and consequences of the no contact order. The only word that encapsulates my emotion during the meeting is fury, as though my body swelled with anger from head to toe. I found it unbelievable — if not outright preposterous — that grown adults would willingly silence and punish my free expression of thought. To their credit, they met my anger with kindness and sincerity — though that did little to solve any substantive matters. That Tuesday, without explanation or apology, the college revoked the order.

Though I’m grateful that the institution — admittedly later rather than sooner — protected my First Amendment rights, I am nonetheless filled with anger, resentment, and outrage, which I find nearly impossible to express without descending into a blind fury. How is it that students and the college, which both purport themselves to be “beacons” of inquiry and “open thought,” could — but more importantly would — so quickly silence the voice of a student, even if just for a moment, for expressing their political opinion in an open forum?

The extent of my fury extends far beyond intellectual frustration. Instead, I can only describe it as a moral outage. Students who think of themselves as on the path of “good” so easily descend into authoritarian methods of rule, applying institutional power to limit the range of discourse available to their peers and professors alike. They seek — just as the Republicans for whom they indict for the very same crime — power.  Amherst students and administrators may bemoan attacks on education and free speech by Republican governors such as Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott. Yet, it seems their opposition is only to their ends and not their means — but if the ends justify the means, then the ends themselves are meaningless. Have we no shame in character and conduct so that we ensure our own character stays true? It seems that such students, administrators, and even some professors wish for totalitarian subjugation of the masses. And who are these masses, if not the students who, after graduation, will enter the world, believing themselves the “revolutionary vanguard” of Karl Marx and the antithesis of neoliberalism and capitalism — if they could even define such terms. Students are entering not just America but the world, believing our politics are zero-sum and that “this” election will determine the fate of the world as if Jesus himself will come down and cast divine judgment. Are we so unaware of what such language means? Have we no sense that acting as if Trump’s potential election will result in hell on earth merely invites and incites the very violence for which we indict Republicans? And while there are those who may indict Amherst and institutions like it for propagating liberal elitism, they engage in that very same behavior by instituting speech policies that every person must obey, as though, like Iran, we seek to institute our own “morality police.”

Every day I spend here has become little more than another day in a liberal hell-hole, where Republicans are our “Satan” and progressivism our “god.” To be good is to be “progressive,” and to be wrong is to be anything other than. Is it true that we’ve strayed so far from the acceptance of our own fallibility necessary to maintain liberal democracy? Are we not simply sitting in a pool of hypocrisy, where our radical rejection of 20th-century politics and objectivism now has us hell-bent on merely reversing the order that came before, ridiculing their ends but accepting their means? And note that by “20th-century politics and objectivism,” I merely refer to the totalitarian systems that sought to cast aside all opposing views as “immoral” or “ruinous” to civilized peoples.

It’s as though each “minority” group seems to conceptualize themselves as moral authoritarians, given their historical oppression. Yet, have we still not learned that victims of oppression are more than capable of committing injustice — of acting immorally — that victimhood is merely circumstantial and should never elevate one’s character, and, most pertinently, that one is made good, not by their experiences — defined by the actions of one onto another — but by their own actions? If one finds themselves on the receiving end of an injustice, then they are more than right to seek justice for such transgressions. However, victimhood can not and should not award one immunity from criticism, and they should not receive the support of an institution — such as this college — in censoring their critics. It appears the adage “an eye for an eye, and the world will go blind” is lost on this generation. Neither justice nor truth are your aims; you’d rather see the world burn and decay, leaving it to ruin, than rectify sins of the past and reclaim the present.

Or, perhaps even worse, you seek salvation only for your specific world and the “worlds” of your various groups, while the worlds of those excluded from your selective purview decay into an abysmal putrid hell. Perhaps some of you see it as justice in the form of punishment — one befitting those you hold responsible for your sufferings. But, I caution you all and plea that you heed these words: “Mercy is a form of justice too,” and is it not justice that we are after?

Often, I contemplate the goals of the pieces I publish, and the answer is quite simple: to rekindle hope. Though it seems as if light is fading from the world, a candle still resides on the menorah to light the holy temple of Jerusalem. Alas, I find myself without such hope. The school, peers, and professors from whom a young child sought guidance and uplift have done little more than denigrate the hopes and dreams of a young Aaron. Consequently, I now hold an intimate understanding of the politics of resentment that plagues our great nation, America. And though Martin Luther King Jr. uttered the prophetic words, “I have decided to stick to love; hate is too great a burden to bear,” I find I am no longer capable of either hatred or love. Instead, I find myself in a state of worldlessness, defined by isolation from my peers and myself. And, perhaps most tragically of all, I am without understanding — understanding of myself by myself and understanding of myself by others. There is, perhaps, no worse a feeling or fate than that. And so I apologize, for I would be a hypocrite to inspire hope at a time for which there is none, for that light has since vanished, and, in its absence, I wait, both in desperation and despair, for its return.