across the campus, reverberating from one brick and stone faced building to another, annoying the cell phone addicts, agonizing the hungover, and rousting the sleep walkers traipsing far below. Another day begins.
Jim heads for the Union, as he does most mornings, to see what can be scrounged in the way of food. Because his restricted budget limits actual cash purchases, he confines himself to the charity and leftovers of others.
Entering the noisy, sprawling, multi-purpose building, he turns towards the cavernous cafeteria. From the entrance walkway he gazes down upon a sea of tables crowded with about a thousand students and a few faculty. The dim roar of early morning chatter ascends. Beyond, in the distance, around the far wall, are the serving areas, a complex of grills, serving lines, boutique specialty food outlets, vending machines, cashiers and two ATMs.
The central cafeteria area is sunken relative to the rest of the building. Around it is an elevated concrete walkway. He heads along this longer path to the coffee shop so as to avoid dodging the maze of tables in the central area.
The walkway is where student zealots set up tables. The lineup of tables today is the predictable collection of leftist student organizations, staffed by a ragged assembly of festively attired special snowflakes, each touting their club, literature, meetings, events, mixers, parties, contests, and assorted loony left, prêt-à-porter, politically correct, hashtag causes.
In an age where there are few real causes to fight for, the left seeks to vanquish microaggressions. They are ever vigilant for offenses only they seem to detect, chasing dog whistles which only they can hear. They recast opinions of those they don't agree with as evil and reject the free exchange of ideas as social treason. They are the inquisitors and witch hunters of the modern campus.
He recalls Churchill's definition that a fanatic is someone who cannot change his mind and will not change the subject.
First he sees a Gender Diversity Office poster presentation to raise awareness about several newly minted gender identification options.
The campus Hate Speech Alliance has a large banner with a quote from Herbert Marcuse: The restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions. They're gathering signatures to ban speakers and remove books from the library by those whose works are contrary to the progressive canon.
The Wiccan Club is passing out tickets to their Black Mass, the LGBTIAQQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered, Intersex, Asexual, Queer, Questioning) Club is selling sex toys. Progressives against Climate Change has a life-sized cardboard Al Gore. The New Marxists have a collection of Soviet era red propaganda posters for sale. NAMBLA isn't allowed to pass out literature but they have a poster presentation and web site. The Alternative Energy and Sustainability Club is demonstrating solar powered trash compactors. Another group wants to ban military recruiters from campus. Technophobes against GMO products in cafeterias are screaming about frankenfoods and showing cartoon pictures of deformed corn cobs. One group is handing out copies of Mao's Little Red Book while another demands body and gender self-determination to be paid for by the university health care plan. The Black Student Union passing out fliers demanding race segregated classes. The Free Thinkers Club is touting their annual All Campus Religious Book Burning Festival. Numerous would-be victim groups demand trigger warnings, and, finally, there's a club passing out candy flavored condoms.
About typical for the campus neo-left. Apparently, no one told them that 1984 wasn't a how-to manual.
Jim is reminded that FDSU, like most of its peers, is a haven of inverted reality, a safe space for progressive looters, an inclusive, sensitive, tolerant, and ambigendered place, opposed to classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, speciesism, and gender norms while maintaining a welcoming and supportive atmosphere for collective, within the context of a rigorously enforced authoritarian social consensus.
Its curriculum is rooted in the generally accepted cannon of leftist orthodoxy with peculiar stress on womynism, recycling, racism, technophobia (special emphasis: GMOs and a gluten free lifestyle), opposition to hegemonic white privilege, climate change, recycling, veganism, sustainability, eco-fundamentalism, trigger warnings, and other advanced forms of thought police paranoia.
At the far end of the tables, away from any traffic, past the gender neutral space and the lactation station, in a dark corner, he spots the campus free speech zone.
He pauses for a moment to see who the victim is today.
The free speech zone is a tiny postage stamp of floor space where students whose opinions the administration dislikes are theoretically allowed to speak as they please, if they can get through the labyrinthine official approval process and five month waiting list. Then, hypothetically, they can, at last, but only briefly, say or advocate what they want.
Otherwise, throughout the other 300 acres of campus, the university speech and thought police enforce the rigid and uncompromising campus speech code which is intolerant of dissent from established fundamentalist progressive orthodoxy.
Once, he thinks to himself, the whole country was a free speech zone, but not now.
Within the tiny box, he sees a lone figure vainly trying to pass out little tiny green covered booklets He is surrounded by a chanting, angry, jackbooted, neo-McCarthyite mob of mixed feminists, neo-Marxists, Free Thinkers and two drag queens. The usual Orwellian thuggery.
A pajama boy from the FDSUSG, the Ft. Dodge University Student Government, monitors and records the speaker's every word and, when possible, taking the names of people brave enough to seen accepting the clearly subversive and dangerous literature being distributed.
At the end of the day, FDSUSG observer usually files charges in the student court, a marsupial group of administration approved Christophobic rent-boys, suckups and vigilantes that will obediently declare the free speecher guilty of the usual package of thought and hate crimes that are, at the same time, deviationist, reactionary, offensive, harassing, marginalizing, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, bullying, misogynist, racist, hurtful, emotionally distressful, victimizing, intolerant, libertarian, inconsiderate, and contrary to established neo-fascist fundamentalism.
The university speech code has many traps, so everyone is probably guilty of something. The person convicted will be officially declared outcast, required to publicly and humiliatingly recant, ordered to undergo mandatory sensitivity training including a reintroduction to the university's established viewpoint on issues pertaining race, gender and ethnic quotas, environmentalism, recycling, sustainability, political choice, and sexual orientation. He (the victim is rarely non-male) will probably also be diagnosed with an anti-social psychiatric disorder, given meds and placed under observation.
Once you get a taste for shutting people up, it’s hard to stop. Why bother winning the debate when it’s easier to shut it down and punish dissenters? The authoritarian left ascendant: "We have already decided what we think. Do not challenge us with any foreign and dangerous ideas." The faculty and administration are only too happy to help keep student minds tightly closed.
Like its peers, FDSU is refuge to a dappled collection of tenured, beemer and hybrid driving aging 70s flower children, a motley troupe with pulled-back frizzy, gray pony tails wearing shabby, retro 60s clothing and sensible shoes. The vending machines sell kale chips, wheat grass, and organic goat's milk. FDSU, and its peers, are destinations where a culture goes to suffocate. Dissent is frowned upon.
Today's sin? OMG, the poor little bastard is passing out small green Bibles! Certainly one of the worst crimes anyone can commit on this or any other progressive campus. Religious advocacy, Satanism and Wicca excepted, are not acceptable!
Shaking his head and musing about the Torquemada-like torture to come, he moves on to the vending area.
Avoiding the elaborate but expensive flavored specialty coffees, he invests in a low grade blend with unlimited refills. He picks up a large donut on a plate wrapped in tightly s
tretched plastic and heads for the checkout counter.
The signs says that the coffee and donut should be US$52.45 but, after some haggling over the exchange rate, he pays Nebraska$2.25 instead. While U.S. dollars are rarely used anymore, price tags still refer to them. Every transaction becomes an exercise in exchange rates. Nebraska and Kansas dollars are the most popular.
After his morning bout with high finance, he strolls out into the mottled sea of tabled students.
Scanning for someone familiar, he spots several groups of friends scattered around the floor. He heads towards one group where about eight guys and five gals are seated at a great round table covered with backpacks, tablets, laptops, stacks of serving trays, and paper wrappings.
One of the guys sees him and does and exaggerated grimace while the others notice and laugh.
"Hey Ben," says Jim. "Glad to see me?"
"Hide your food guys, the human vacuum cleaner is here," replies Ben.
"I thought you'd be happy to see me," answers Jim. "So I'll just sit next to you then."
Jim puts his coffee and plate next to Ben, grabs an empty chair from the next table, and squirms in next to Ben.
"So, what are we having for breakfast?" asks Jim.
"I'm having eggs, bacon and toast," says Ben.
"Hey, works for