The Best Thing You'll Read on the Internet Today
Mike Solana's Take on Biden's Student Loan Debt Cancellation BS
Friends, family members and co-workers have asked me what I think about Biden’s student debt forgiveness.
I really haven’t been able to craft a good response; I just haven’t been able to find the right words.
And then I realized why.
It’s because Jesus Christ - in all his glory - decided that Mike Solana should be given all the best words today.
Jesus was like, “Frank seems a bit fatigued. He did a lot of writing at work. I want Frank to be on the receiving end of all the best words today. I don’t want him to struggle to put them out there. He often does that, and he deserves a rest.”
And luckily, Jesus must’ve known that I subscribe to Mike Solana’s “Pirate Wires” newsletter - because it’s the best, and because Mike Solana is the best at what he does.
Today, Mr. Solana offered the world “Debt Babies,” the most beautifully-crafted response to Biden’s bullshit that I could have ever imagined reading.
I read it over a Chipotle burrito, the type of food usually makes my stomach turn. But, tonight, my almost constantly-knotted stomach was at peace as I ate my chain-restaurant burrito.
In fact, most of my body was at peace. Because I was reading the words that Jesus gave Mike Solana, and the world made sense for about the 8 minutes it took me to read the following article.
And so I present to you: “Debt Babies”, by Mike Solana.
Thank you, Mike. I really needed that.
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If you think I’m going to be grateful that some literally fucking brain dead career politician boomer tried to bribe me with $10k in exchange for midterm votes for his failure of a political party, you can go fuck right off.
College is one of the greatest scams on planet Earth today. (Kind of like the Democrats, it fronts as an institution/party that does good, but is really just in it for the money and power.) I should know. I taught at many universities for many years. Plus, I have an undergraduate degree, a master’s degree and parts of two other master’s degrees.
When students at private colleges used to ask me if it was worth it to go there, I would respond with one word: no. They always seemed a bit surprised and confused.
And why wouldn’t they? I, of course, am/was to blame for teaching at these institutions, but they pay/paid so little that I used to have to teach at 3-4 at a time just to pay rent for my shitty apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Though I was simply doing what I needed to do to survive, it didn’t make my teaching at these places any less wrong.
What I realized in my years of teaching in higher ed though was that not only are colleges putting kids in debt, but they are drastically underpaying the talent - who put themselves into debt so that they could get a job at a college. Pretty fantastic little system, isn’t it?
Now, I used to work in the MUSIC BUSINESS and I currently work in CRYPTOCURRENCY INDUSTRY - two of the most fertile landscapes in the world for terribleness and shitbaggery - and still I’ve never seen the type of manipulation, backstabbing and overall spinelessness in either of those fields that I saw in academia.
Academia gets its power from creating artificial scarcity. (I’m going to write much more about this concept at some point.)
A college degree and what it takes to earn one isn’t a naturally scarce phenomena. Sociopathic college administrators - as Mike Solana so aptly termed them - have made it seem as though we need these degrees. And the Federal government, especially under Obama, has had their back. This will stop one day, though. People will wake up. Maybe… I hope. Probably not.
The truth is that we are learning all the time. There’s a great book on this concept called The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith. There are all sorts of people and experiences in our lives that teach us amazing things.
Learning doesn’t only happen in a classroom. Most of the time, the people standing in the front of classrooms make the “learning experience” terrible. I know because my students would often complain to me about them. (I, on the other hand, was the motherfucking man in front of a whiteboard.)
(I actually made myself laugh out loud when I wrote that.)
I could go on about this nonsense for hours, but I’m going to cut my rant here. I had a nice afternoon and I don’t want ruin it thinking about Joe Biden or university bureaucrats.
For now, I guess I’ll just daydream about the day when all the lazy bureaucrats (and teachers) at colleges and in government get fired and have to go out into the world and get jobs where they actually provide some sort of value to someone - anyone.
Best,
Frank
Twitter: @frankcorva
Get em! I’d also like to call out our corporate overlords who insist it takes a 4 yr college degree and 5 years experience to type numbers into excel.