Article
The Reader Forum: “Privilege Meets Delusion”
Editor's Note
Each week, we share observations on X about the issues shaping our nation and society. These exchanges have become an ongoing civic dialogue, shaped by readers willing to wrestle openly with difficult questions. Follow Tom’s account to take part in the discussion as it unfolds.
In response to Diodotus’s article “Playing ‘War’ at Sarah Lawrence,” on X we wrote: “Elite students want a revolution without consequences. They fantasize about violent resistance to ICE and then act shocked when federal agents defend themselves. This is what happens when privilege meets delusion.” Our readers didn’t hold back.
The big picture:
Tom’s observation struck a nerve with readers who see the campus resistance to ICE not as youthful idealism, but as the predictable output of an educational system that has replaced moral seriousness with ideological fantasy. The frustration is not with young people per se — it’s with the institutions that taught them to confuse lawlessness with courage.
The dominant sentiment:
Readers see privileged delusion as the core of the problem — students cosplaying revolution from positions of extraordinary comfort.
Big Red Truck: “These kids families pay close to $100k a year to go to a school with no majors or grades, just concentrations. They say they’re in Bronxville but they’re actually in Yonkers. They think they’re revolting but they’re more privileged than 99% of the country. It’s always been that way there.”
Dr. Kelli Ward: “Great read. The young lefties want revolution without spilling their lattes. Brilliant.”
Dr. Wallace Wilson: “Spot on. They are shocked when their fantasies have real life consequences.”
Understanding the enemy:
Several readers went deeper, identifying the institutional machinery — media, academia, culture — that produces this kind of thinking, and the moral blindness it creates.
MakewiEatsSpam: “They have been lied to their entire lives about the nature of the world in which they live, about the nature of humans that live in that world and about the relative importance of their own part in it. Those that attempt to tell them the truth are cast as villains to be ignored.”
Christopher Butler: “Right and the legacy media says their killing citizens bc Trumps a Nazi. No, I’ve never been a huge Trump fan, but these people are enforcing immigration laws that EVERY ADMINISTRATION has enforced without this violent resistance. Of course something is gonna happen.”
Libertas: “And you’ll never hear them supporting the families of victims of brutal violence by criminal illegals.”
The moral test:
One reader proposed a bracing corrective — forcing the protestors to confront the human cost of what they are defending.
Momofabearkat: “I think every high school every person who wants to go out and protest ICE they’re old enough to do that then they’re old enough to sit and listen to a video of Rachel Morin’s mother describe how her daughter was raped in murdered by a criminal illegal alien the very people they’re trying to protect. They should have to listen to what she said it’s on video and every one of them should be required to watch it and then ask them is what you want to protect by opposing ICE. You still oppose ICE because if you do you’re special kind of stupid.”
Yes, but — what about consequences?
Some readers moved beyond diagnosis and toward remedy, arguing that the real failure is the absence of consequences — both for the students and for the parents funding their revolution.
RDSubVet: “If they get their revolution and nobody is working, tax dollars dry up and they become owned by what the government will allow them.”
JannieLee: “The parents need to be hit where it hurts! First offense, $5k, and second offense, $10k. This will get the hoodlums off the streets.”
BonnieSoFla: “My husband tells the story of when he got arrested for a minor infraction when he was a teen. When he called his father for help he told the arresting officer to keep in for the one night to teach him a lesson. He didn’t bail him out.”
Notable:
Senator Ted Cruz weighed in with a single word: “Indeed.”
The bottom line:
We wrote that this is what happens when privilege meets delusion. Our readers answered with a sharper formulation: this is what happens when an entire civilization manufactures delusion and then acts surprised when the privileged young believe it. The gap between the students who fantasize about revolution and the Americans who live with the consequences of lawlessness is the gap between ideology and reality — the central fault line of the cold civil war.