God damnit Leah why did you post this because I was having such a productive day. And now I’m just reading comments and my heart keeps exploding through the corpuscles around my eyes and ears.

The article itself makes some reasonable philosophical points. I disagree with it, clearly, but there’s a there there as they say. The commenters, though, that’s why you read these pieces, right? For ones like

My major was not in the Humanities, but in a technical field. As I did take courses in the Humanities, and am a member in a book club that focuses on the classics, I will comment.

and

And, of course, all of the ethnic studies and gender studies departments have to go.

& cf,

the humanities need to be protected from those who try to deconstruct them

[mega-bonus points for using the word ‘deconstruct’ when/if you clearly don’t know what it means], plus

As a current Ph.d. seeking student in the Humanities, I couldn’t agree more […] MeanWhile, Hume, Smith, Locke, Mills et al, are footnotes to their reading of history.

[SIC], which actually was not a terrible comment, but maybe he should read for a PhD in usage, and don’t forget

Why, for example, should a general audience read Aristotle’s Physics anymore? It may be useful for certain specialists, but modern science and technology really does render some old ideas obsolete.

which has a special place of contempt in my heart because, yeah Mr Reads Book Titles, it’s called Physics but it’s not whatever your Reader’s Digest Super-String Theory reader says is physics, plus

More likey of success is to just kill the department (allowing dismissal of the faculty) and then create new humanities departments ex nilo.

because clearly this one has mastered retoric (see what I did there?), and

The ironic thing is that all these Marxist professors are running up against Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”.

you’re an idiot,

Only teach traditional subjects (all courses with names like … studies, or … appreciation are gone) like classical literature (taught with reverence for that literature, not as criticism of it),

and you’re like the supreme, inbred progeny of that idiot, and

Shakespeare is Shakespeare and everything there is to know about the man and his works has already been discovered.

Well, that’s probably true.