jeez louise this comment is beyond silly. I'm in stem and I sort of think a lot of scholarship in the humanities is just fashionable noise (see sokal hoax) but your comment is very troubling. I worry for the state of western civilization if people like you have power over other humans.

"This essay seems like it was largely written to make the author feel smart while doing very little to illuminate or clarify their ideas and insights (which seem to boil down to basically calling Donald Trump Hitler and suggesting his voters are uneducated imbeciles who must be stopped by academia, which is among the least original thoughts possible to express)."

This is just not at all what the author said. It lacks all the nuance of this essay. I think the call to action is very clear-look at yourself for these ominous trends in american politics and try to root them out stem and branch..I think it is quite well written and not at all self referential. (Do you know what self referential means?)

"It is a singularly academic trait to believe that bullying one’s readers into submission by attempting to cudgel them with their lack of knowledge in your particular domain is an effective persuasive strategy.

The audience is academics in the humanities!! not someone who thinks scholarship in the humanities can be replaced by youtube. (seriously not even vimeo?)

"Likewise, here we have a piece of writing which is a network of references to authors few have read, unnecessary deployment of $10 vocabulary words which would best be replaced by shorter words which are more generally known. Orson Wells, Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway perfected writing. This guy and his kind ruined it for the rest of us for their own benefit."

Sometimes to say complicated things one must be complicated. I don't think this prose was particularly abstruse. The author was trying to make a point about long term academic trends in the humanities..it is hard to make arguments about that without references the authors who make up those trends...some of whom are obscure to the relative public. How did this scholar ruin writing for you? You haven't even heard of most of the people he references!

Richard Feynman can't explain quantum physics to a 3 year old. Moreover-
"Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize."-Richard Feynman.

Not everything can be turned into a pithy analogy without losing all meaning.

source for quote: (not a very good source I'll admit)
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/dec/02/magazine/tm-10496/4

"this writer can call Trump Hitler and suggest his voters are uneducated morons"

I would like to introduce you to a word you clearly have never heard. This word is `nuance'.
From wiktionary the word `nuance' means "Subtlety or fine detail. " Here is the word in an example sentence:
`Understanding the basics is easy, but appreciating the nuances takes years.'

Clearly you have no idea what nuance is if your impression from this essay is solely that trump voters are all uneducated morons and trump is Hitler.

(Sidenote:Hitler was evil and all but he clearly was an effective and skilled leader. Trump is anything but. Trump's sheer incompetence has been a blessing. ).

"They are effectively employed via tax dollars by the state to disseminate fundamentally political ideas to their students while feigning impartiality." I think this a KEY part of the criticism of this essay.....

"They never read outside of their own domains, resulting in a permanent state of educated ignorance."

The pot is surely calling the kettle black here...

"
Being obligated to pay 1/4th of our already overly expensive college funds to sustain the employment of people like this makes little sense anymore, Fire them and get your education from YouTube."

I have no words. Fire them and get your education from Youtube..Speechless I am. No one forced you to go to college by the way. Maybe you could find and instead an institute with no english professors? IIT? University of Phoenix?

I think you should turn off your internet connection and take a deep hard look at yourself.
Are you a contented, happy, person? Are you at peace? Do you get more than eight hours of sleep a night? Do you ever look at yourself introspectively?

I think you are clearly a roiling cauldron of insecurity, self-loathing, and resentment of people who can use poly-syllabic words. YOU ARE HATEFUL. Please go home and rethink your life for your own benefit and the benefit of whatever other humans that are forced to intersect with you on your very finite time on Earth.