The dumbest kid in my class in the USSR, who was so dumb we literally thought he was retarded, became a history professor in the US, and I’m not even kidding.
The Dumbest Kid
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
The dumbest kid in my class in the USSR, who was so dumb we literally thought he was retarded, became a history professor in the US, and I’m not even kidding.
Clarissa's Blog 
How I wish you could give us his name! [I know you can’t.]
That X post drips with social contempt to the point that it looks like a manifestation of social hatred and class-based envy. It makes me think of the way Bolsheviks expressed themselves.
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Exhibit A in “How the Democrats lost the working class”
-ethyl
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—The dumbest kid in my class in the USSR, who was so dumb we literally thought he was retarded, became a history professor in the US, and I’m not even kidding.
You refer to him as “he”, and he grew up in Ukraine, so with 99% probability he is a white male. So he must have gotten his US position on merit. It is quite possible that the rest of you just shat on some poor autistic kid that was too different. Or with poor social skills. I get it, you did not know any better. But using it as an argument now is very weird… looks to me like trying to bend reality to your model of reality.
In resoponse to Avi – hatered – yes. But it is not about class, it is about people capable of violence, especially while advancing the agenda the author of the post disagrees with. I am not him, so I do not know if he is enviuous or not, but for me there is zero envy. I would not take this kind of job for any money.
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I think there’s a class element in there. Leftists love public sector unions and have an immense capacity to tolerate dumbness and incompetence within their ranks, but hate police unions with a passion. Because in 2026 that’s the one public sector well-paying union job that doesn’t require going into debt for a master’s degree in basket weaving.
Agree with the rest of your post.
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I know several people who have seriously contemplated taking that job: because they are ex-military, they are patriots, and it pays better than anything else offering to someone without a master’s degree right now. Downside: travel. Not family-friendly.
All working-class white men.
I certainly read it as “you peons don’t deserve to make a living wage”.
Median household income is 84k now. In most places that’s not enough to buy a house on, if you already have a family. 100k is enough to boost a lot of families just over that particular hurdle. The left these days seems to have a huge animus toward productive non-degree-holders making enough money to support a family or own a house. Is it because so many of them cannot find jobs that will pay of their student loans?
-ethyl
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I do not know, ethyl. It is indeed possible that I have limited ability to properly put myself into the shoes of the American left, and therefore am projecting my own state of mind on them incorrectly.
I am in STEM, so my degree is not in basketweaving. I am educated in Eastern Europe so I do not have student loans. I am educated in Eastern Europe at the time of the economic crisis, and I have done a lot of blue-collar stuff while I was a student, so I do not have aversion or prejustice against it. I sometimes joke that if our university goes to shit, I can work as a truckdriver…
I think the left is not a homogeneous soup, and different people within the left have different reasons to believe what they believe.
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