This probably isn't worth writing, given that your perspective is so very different from mine, but I feel the need to rebut some of your claims.

The truths they wish to expose are lies, the perspectives they grant are flawed, and the characters mouthing the prose are repellant.

Well, these are very broad claims. I would start by pointing out that searching for "truth" via novels is usually an ill-fated endeavour. It's even one that Austen herself mocks and cautions against. Rather, novels offer ideas and arguments about those ideas. Reading a novel doesn't mean you have to agree with it. You just have to think about the ideas it presents. And that's what great novels do: they make you think. They absolutely offer flawed perspectives and loathsome characters, but hopefully those flaws and characters are rendered in ways that are at least interesting (and might get readers to see things from a different perspective).

"Great Books" programs and "the canon" certainly have problems. But books do not survive simply because instructors wish to use them to prove a specific point (which really isn't really what instruction in literature aims to do). I think Barbara Herrnstein Smith is quite apt in pointing out that books survive the "test of time" because they are able to offer different readings that are of interest to different generations of readers. Today, we venerate Shakespeare because of the psychological depth of his characters. Restoration audiences liked his complex plots (and would often cut out soliloquies in order to place more emphasis on plot). Early Modernists enjoyed his jokes and his class subversiveness. Tastes change over time. Multi-dimensional works are able to survive because they remain interesting despite changes in taste.

Orientalism is certainly an issue of concern to many academics and readers. Orientalist depictions of 'the East' still being created in all sorts of media. Are you going to "cast aside" newspaper articles about the US invasion of Iraq because they "other" the East, or are you going to accept that the articles have a flawed viewpoint but still treat them as worthwhile texts?

I absolutely agree with you that we bring our baggage to the books we read, just as we do with pretty much anything we consume (from the food on our plate to the music we hear and even the people we meet). Good critics are able to separate their baggage from the text. The rest of us just enjoy what we enjoy and don't enjoy what we don't, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's foolhardy to try to tell someone that they have to like a book, whether it be Pride and Prejudice or Gormenghast.

If anyone has a different view, I'm all ears, but I'm finding it hard to see this as anything other than ridiculous. It's as if Farage and Johnson won an election and now that it's come time to implement their policies, they've decided they would rather step down. I don't think they can honestly believe that winning the referendum was all that they needed to do. If anything, winning the referendum was the easy part, and now the real work is about to start. Hard to see these resignations as anything but cowardly in this context. As I said, though, I'm open to other interpretations.

If you haven't tried it already, I would recommend cutting down on gaming. There's nothing wrong with gaming as a hobby, but, at least personally, I've found that gaming doesn't help me feel productive or self-confident. If you can, try to take a day or two off from gaming completely. Work on an old project, or (even better) start a new one. Go out for a walk or visit a new place nearby, read that book that's been on your shelf for months, or look over your notes and see what you should brush up on for next year. I've always found that doing those sorts of things makes me feel much better about myself than playing games, even if they aren't necessarily things that are productive.

So, I totally thought Father's Day was this Sunday. That's why I spent two hours of my Tuesday afternoon in one of the country's largest shopping malls, trying to strike a balance between a gift so bland that it might as well be a pair of brown socks and a gift so zany it would never leave the back of a closet. It was only when I got home that I realized that Father's Day is on June 19th, not June 12th. At least the mall was fairly quiet, and I've (accidentally) done my shopping somewhat in advance, which is a rare enough feat for me.

http://m.imgur.com/MYeLVhv?r

Do you have some links that aren't out-of-context Imgur graphs? The FBI stats are a good start, but stats rarely tell the whole story, and crime statistics in particular are often skewed by issues such as structural inequality. For instance, here's one recent (2009) study that concludes:

In this Article, we sought to articulate and empirically explore how this dramatic pattern of inequality in one visible aspect of the urban experience is intricately interconnected with the ways in which the structure of U.S. society is broadly racialized. We contend that the privilege of low levels of violence in white communities versus the peril of oppressively high levels of violence in black (and to some degree other) neighborhoods is not a product of individual differences in tendencies toward violence. Rather, these inequalities are outgrowths of structural arrangements that favor whites and subordinate other racial groups, especially blacks.

Here's another study that posits that segregation, rather than race, is the main predictor of violent crime for neighborhoods, particularly for (non-affulent) blacks. And here is a study that concludes that interracial economic inequality "had a strong positive effect on the overall violent crime rate, and more specifically, on the Black-on-Black crime rate."

And let's not even get into the issue of defining 'race'...

EDIT: I was wrong about the Imgur link being unsourced. It actually does list its source, which is The Colour of Crime by Jared Taylor (not to be confused by the book of the same name by Katheryn Russell-Brown). I think it's worth noting that the publication that the Imgur graph is from (as well as its author) has received some pretty heavy criticism. Indeed, the publication's wikipedia page has a criticism section that is longer than the synopsis. Tim Wise has written a sourced and readable rebuttal to this publication, which is available here.

| we've created a system where students are clients, and they're paying for an extravagant 4-year vacation that will do precious little, comparatively speaking, to augment their autonomy, earning potential or place in society.

The "students as clients" issue is becoming increasingly common in higher ed, and it really is up to administrative staff to stand up to requests that interfere with academic integrity on the basis of "I'm paying for it". If you want to spend 40-60 hours a week on activism, all the more power to you. But your essay is still going to be assessed on the same criteria as everyone else's. Or, to put it more bluntly, you pay to take a class, not to pass it (or to get an A in it). Of course, that doesn't always happen.

As for the "extravagant 4-year vacation", that's more debatable. I do think there are significant benefits to receiving an education at a college/university in terms of income, employment options, and cultural capital, as well as in developing certain things like critical thinking (which is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but still means quite a bit).

The Getty is awesome! I really enjoyed the architecture and the design of the place when I went. All the gardens/fountains/cactii were lovely. Hope you have a great time in the city!

As with everything, I think that there is a balance to be struck about how seriously one should take internet drama. On the one hand, dismissing something just because it's on the Internet is obviously not a good approach, and I think this is changing (with laws against cyberbulling becoming more prominent, for instance). On the other hand, I think it is also possible to go too far in getting 'outraged' about things that happen on the Internet, and I think there's been a fair bit of that with Reddit's latest blunder -- lots of anger about subreddits "falling prey" to the "empty promises" of Reddit admins, downvote brigading and nasty comments on said subreddits, the portrayal of Ellen Pao, and so on seem vastly disproportionate to me considering the issues at stake.