Well - I'm not sure I'm as pessimistic as that... But look - if your default position on a topic is X, and it happens to be the case that there is no rational

Well - I'm not sure I'm as pessimistic as that... But look - if your default position on a topic is X, and it happens to be the case that there is no rational way to explain why you are wrong about X, then you can hardly be blamed for continuing to carry on believing X. So if you're right that there is nothing that can be said on this issue - then the powers that be will just steam-roll academia. How can they even play political? They won't be able to convince anyone to support them! My point is that while my intuition is that academics ARE valuable and should be given large amounts of freedom - still we don't have a choice but to believe that we can find some justification for this. We certainly won't figure it out by being defeatist about it. My position is the only rationale one on this topic - but lordy convincing a single academic of its reason is beyond me. The irony of this is painful.