Idk if any of this will help, but you’re very actively involved in the discussions and I encourage that. So, as a friendly commenter who sides with your disgruntlement of the situation, I thought I would at least point out the things that I understand but don’t 100% agree with.

When it comes to degrees, I agree that it is a “machine” (education as a whole) that produces desired individuals to fulfill the roles it has established as “important/valuable”. Everyone can disagree on the opinion of what a “valuable” society is, but I digress. You have to understand that knowledge comes from experience and research though (just like you’ve probably done, just as an individual and not mandated by a course). The most succulent of critiques can come from someone deeply established in a field, kinda like how Bernie Sanders made comments about the DNC after the election and it forced the media and all of us to discuss it and the message.

The truly dangerous ones are those who can fully understand how flawed a system is, but realize they must play it to their advantage to get what they “want” out of life. I just can’t demonize the whole entire system when the people I’ve learned and read from were birthed from that experience. A lot of people realize after or during pursuing a degree, just how bad it is so it’s some kind of awareness for a certain %. Now if they’ve fully embraced the system, you just have to find the examples they choose to ignore in their flawed beliefs.

I also don’t know how effective the “per quote response” is. I’ve been guilty of it in the past, but honestly I think people just dont really read the “tit-for-tat” style comment replies (I find myself scrolling past if it’s too long). If they see one thing they disagree with then they downvote the entire comment. I try to hit the points I want but change the length and style of response in regards to how effective I can actually communicate to the person.

I’m just happy that a little bit of sanity has returned to Lemmy (obvious from the changes in what got downvoted/upvoted or discussed heavily). It felt like everyone just completely drank the kool-aid so we could “save Democracy^tm!!” Unfortunately, I think people sold all the common-sense realty in their head for the Blue Superhero fallacy that could save us all from all the boogeymen. It will take time for some to let their head critique things effectively, some will never come back to reality. It’s one of the reasons I just asked a simple question instead of critiquing their entire argument (I think his entire premise is flawed, and happily skewed so Biden is still a hero in their eyes). It’s mostly there so other readers can see it and makes them pause for a second instead of just “believing” it’s true. If the OP comes back with a sane comment I’ll engage in a discussion, but we see from the response to me they don’t want to discuss facts so I’m not engaging further.