Fidel Castro uses the Beloit College Mind List as Evidence that America is Evil

Fidel Castro has a blog.  (That's strange enough for an entry here, but it gets better.)

Castro cites a "study published by Beloit College" as evidence that U.S. and British intelligence agencies have been distorting American children's minds via drugs and propaganda. He bemoans, "It is terrible to think that the intelligence and the feelings of children and youth in the United States could be mutilated in such a way."

Fidel was reading the Beloit College Mindset List, recently featured here. The Mindset List is an annual ritual that gives us a peak into the minds of college freshmen, mostly for the sake of making their professors feel old. For example, this year's college freshmen were born after Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. So the Mindset List says that, for these freshmen, Czechoslovakia never existed.

Fidel (mis)quotes these horrifying facts about American college students from the Mindset List:

• "They believe Czechoslovakia never existed."
• "They believe Beethoven is a dog they saw in a film."
• 
  
  "They think Michael Angelo is a computer virus."
• 
  
  "They think that American companies have always done business in Vietnam."
• 
  
  "They think that Korean cars have always been running in their country."
• 
  
  "They believe that the United States, Canada and Mexico have always been linked to each other by a Free Trade Agreement."

Clearly, this is evidence of a U.S. plot to start a nuclear war. Fidel concludes, "I was stunned to realize to what extent education could be distorted and prostituted in a country with more than 8,000 nuclear weapons and the most powerful means of war in the whole world. To think that there are still people in their right mind capable of believing that my warnings are exaggerated!"

Kids these days

Do you want to feel old? Yes, you say? Okay, read the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014. This list describes the world of today's college freshmen. For example,

• John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
• DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
• Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
• Czechoslovakia has never existed.
• Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
• Potato has always ended in an 'e' in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.
• They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.