"Actually, I'm quite serious. Interesting and sometimes useful conversation goes on in some humanitiesd classrooms, but to see the (possible) "destruction" of those classrooms as a major tragedy, at the level of the everyday horror of capitalism is so much bullshit."
The destruction of the humanities is part of the every day horror of capitalism.
"As of 55 years ago I ossessed the highest security clearance the U.S. has, for NSA, and I even did some fairly brilliant work in my discovery that Czech Border Guard traffic was not one-time pad but rather used isomorphic key. My "humanist" beliefs were wholly compatible with my 'deserving' that security clearance."
Well, of course. They will always need intellectuals to provide a reasoned and credible defense of whatever shit they're pulling. That's why they will continue to teach humanities at the elite schools. The places where they're axing departments is at the state school level, where the non-elites are educated. Those are the places where ordinary students might get the dangerous idea that there is such a thing as truth and that justice matters.
"Might makes right is the central principle of the struggle for human freedom."
No, it's not. It's just a debased and despairing thought.
Joanna