Bumped into a high school friend for the first time in 30 years.

[Genki Hikari]

127. College isn't it.

Lots of people I know who are now r fascists went to demanding universities.

What most of them have in common:

They got "vocational" degrees, for the most part: business, engineering, nursing. Or they pursued a degree in an academic field like biology or poli-sci solely to get a "good job" in medicine or law. The future cons also scorned book-learning for the sake of learning as stupid or "sissy" stuff. Their polar opposites who majored in academic subjects because they loved, say, astronomy or history or music--they tended to become liberal.

The thugs were more likely to belong to social frats or sororities. I'm sure the networking paid off in its own disgusting but lucrative way, but the Greek life made their social circle incredibly narrow. They were less likely to socialize with other races, religions or nationalities--just like when they were in high school. If they didn't belong to a frat/sorority, they still hung out with like people, and rarely stepped outside that circle. So zero expansion of horizons there.

Despite whatever social lives they had at college, they were more likely to go back home to visit family, attend social celebrations for family and old friends (birthdays, weddings, etc), or to attend events associated with their high school (homecoming or sports events). I knew one frat rat who would stay up late on Saturday partying with the other rats, but somehow dragged himself out of bed early enough to drive the 90 miles back home every Sunday morning to attend his old church. So they were more tied to their old lives than other students are.

Most of them wound up dating and (eventually) marrying people just like them. Same race, same religion, same background (types of schools, small town/burb, same family structure, and etc.). They never stepped out of their comfort zone or what their family expected of them that way.

At some point, usually within 10 years of leaving college, they moved right back home, or as close to it as they could get and still "succeed." Some of them moved to where their spouse lived, but it wasn't much of a leap to do that, because the spouse's hometown was pretty much a carbon copy of their own--and it wasn't too far away from their own town. Some of them never liked living far from the childhood home. A good portion of them moved back (or to a spouse's similar town) when their kids were old enough for school. My mother has heard a lot of "I didn't want my kids going to school with 'those' people." Or, "I didn't want them learning 'useless' stuff." Doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what was meant by either remark.

Wherever they lived, once they married and started a family, they became their parents, all over again, doing the same things, going the same places, believing the same things, raising their kids the same way, buying the same stuff, living in the same type of neighborhood and even the same type of house. They thought (and still think) that's the way things were always supposed to be, and they revile those who left without looking back. To them, we're disloyal to How Things Should Be, or however it works in their world.