Graphic by Henry Barraclough
Do you attend a T40 institution in the United States? Did your application say you wanted to use your degree to make the world a better place? Do you go to sleep at night dreaming of dismantling unjust institutions, punishing billionaires, pedophiles, and billionaire pedophiles, and reuniting the American public?
If so, corporate America wants YOU! Like generations of hippies, hipsters, and hopefuls before you, your dreams of grandeur of changing the system are probably falling to the wayside as you look at a crumbling job market, teetering economy, and utterly morally bankrupt political landscape. That insidious anxiety starts to creep over you, and suddenly all those nebulously-named job offerings in the safety and security of a Wall Street office don’t sound so bad after all. Or maybe the Boston-based Raytheon flagship starts whispering to you like the Tony Stark of Christmas Future, while Big Law waits patiently for you to postpone your choice by getting another degree…
If your inner Gordon Gecko screams “Greed Is Good” as you realize whatever the fuck “consulting” is makes a pretty penny, Yuppie America is calling! Jordan Belfort had it right: “Deal with your problems by becoming rich!”
Join your brethren in the concrete jungle of the Seaport: a magical land with less trees than the Lorax and as much personality as a piece of white printer paper. Don your black backpacks, dressy sneakers, and business suits while you walk aggressively to your Lockheed Martin internship. The ’80s are back, baby (Thanks, Trump!) but with way less coke (Thanks, Trump…) and equipped with your shiny new degree and burgeoning neoliberalism, you are ready to follow in the footsteps of your predecessors: bang an ideological U-ey and make things worse for future generations!
We’re going to change the world alright, profit over people and planet! Why be Batman when you could be Bateman? Tell yourself you’re dismantling systems from inside while really just participating in them!* Who cares, we only have a few decades left, right? And most importantly, baby, Buy Buy Buy!
*You can still keep telling people you’re a leftist, though. For the liberal arts clout, of course.
