Your Professors Are Lying To You (I-Iv) Poem by David Welch

I.
You hear the most vile garbage
come from young people's mouths these days,
that America is evil,
it does not deserve to be saved.
The fact they're not shot in the streets
means at least we do free speech right,
but to see them hating their freedom
is a reprehensible sight.
There are many theories out there
as to why they do what they do,
but I'll say simply to the kids:
Your professors are lying to you.

First let's take up the master lie,
the evil of postmodernism,
the idea that there is no truth,
and all is seen through a prism,
that everything is interpreted,
and nothing can be seen as ‘real, '
that reason is social construct,
and what matters is what you feel.
Go tell a rocket scientist
that there's no objectivity,
that science is nothing more than
'western cultural supremacy.'
Go tell a busy surgeon that
truth and fact are easily changed,
I guarantee that medicine
will never again be the same.
Even in the humanities,
those squishy, non-technical fields,
it's nonsense to say there is no truth,
No substance on which to appeal.
Look back on what Shakespeare once did
the formulas and the techniques,
then look at postmodern fiction,
tell me what kind do most minds seek?
It's not the plotless, indulgent trash
that postmodernists write these days,
it's narratives and timeless truth
that enter our minds for a long stay.
As if Shakespeare and the great writers
had stumbled upon something true,
mankind looks for the substantive,
Your professors are lying to you.

II.
Then there are all the attitudes
you see taken up against men,
how the professors always seem
to do nothing but demonize them,
that we've done nothing for centuries
but scheme to ‘keep the women down! '
The great boogeyman ‘patriarchy'
must always be put in the ground.
But a simple look at history
renders all these notions absurd,
there was no plan to ‘oppress' women,
it was just division of labor.
Seriously, before machines
it was all hard work, done best by guys,
brute physical labor that women
would not be long able to survive.
And since there was no birth control
women were pregnant all the time,
not in a space for crushing work
unless you want children to die,
And given how many of them did
before our modern medicine,
you had to shelter the females
or we'd be lost before life begins.
Women did depend on the men
for their protection and their cash,
but men depended on women
for a home and a future, in fact.
This simple truth gets forgotten
by the presence of the modern world,
it's easy to scream conspiracy,
the way of the feminist churl.
But are men the monsters that
these damn professors all proclaim?
We built this world that coddles them,
that gives shelter to the insane.
We're the lion's share of geniuses
who move technology along,
we're the ones called to be soldiers
to protect you all from the wrong.
And we are half of the parents,
and half the children dear to you,
yet academics call us ‘toxic? '
Your professors are lying to you.

III.
Then there is their favorite target,
the faceless foe they call ‘the rich, '
who they claim keep everyone down,
the academics so love to bitch.
They sat they get rich off our backs,
but they're not talking subsidies,
they seem to think those people's wealth
was stolen…it seems strange to me.
What did Elon Musk take from me
to be able to fly the stars?
What did Henry Ford steal from me
that let him manufacture cars?
If anything I most likely
would go impose myself on them,
to try and get myself a job
at the companies built by these men.
Do professors think that labor
is something that rich people steal?
It's not, in fact it's a contract,
both sides must agree to the deal.
The millions that some folk possess
certainly aren't coming off my back,
to get paid we must create wealth,
salary is a portion of that.
If a man can create millions,
which is certainly more than me,
why does that mean I must hate him?
That sounds like simple jealousy.
But then again, these professors
all like to proclaim they're socialist,
with tenured jobs safe from markets…
The only place such thoughts can exist.
Ideology can blind a soul
to simple facts all folks once knew,
you are not poor because they're rich,
your professors are lying to you.

IV.
And when they speak of America
it's a sputtering wall of hate,
the great country that shelters them
they can never appreciate.
They point to all its past mistakes,
taken out of context of time,
ignore others who did much, much worse,
try to make us ‘uniquely' malign.
Forgetting that we fought those ills,
and ran them all done, one by one,
That we've brought people more liberty
that ever before has been done.
They can't look to our history
without finding reasons to hurt,
but then cuddle up to China,
who's orders of magnitude worse.
They look at free people's errors
as an unforgivable sin,
then excuse radical Islam,
and the horrors they do to women.
They hate the freedom and free trade,
and say that it hurts all the poor,
yet it's lifted standards of life
for tens of millions and more.
The ideas that we have built here,
all the freedom and the success,
seem to annoy professors more
then genocidal socialists!
Perhaps they think, being so ‘smart, '
that they should be running the show,
that the rest of us aren't fit to lead,
they're ‘above' us, and ‘in the know.'
Self-proclaim aristocracy
in a nation with no time for that,
so the ideas that we value
they decry as selfish and bad.
All our liberties mean less to them
then their egos and points of view,
they'd kill the goose and the golden egg,
your professors are lying to you.