It's also the pinnacle university, at least in optics.

It is like getting Zuck to kneel and donate $1M. Once he did that, everyone else donated a $1M and peaced out.

Harvard is not an old money university anymore, none of those schools really are. Old money in the sense you are thinking of it is a liability for Harvard especially since the SFFA lawsuit. There isn't a record that tracks that sort of thing so I would point to admissions statistics generally. You may find old money there but there is no backdoor to let them in easily and that's not the vast majority of students so I would not refer to those schools that way.

Or, perhaps more simply, the days of the "Good Ol' Boys" who all went to the same power school and use that as a way to influence politics are over?

I'm reminded of the infamous George Carlin bit "It's a big club, and you ain’t in it"[1]. Maybe not anymore... and that's a most likely a good thing.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason...

Going by Occam's razor, grandparent's hypothesis is more likely to be correct than yours.

Trump is a billionaire. A billionaire who got into an ivy based on connections. Who is asking for bribes and handing out favors to other rich people.

Can multiple things not be true at the same time? Or is it one of those "our" billionaires type of thing?

No it's the fact that it's the exact same phenomenon of a rich club getting their way it just happens to be another rich club. There's nothing to celebrate here as you did in your previous comment.

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

But they aren't, in this case. Trump and his ilk are attacking academia because they think that universities are all woke. There's no other reasoning required. Leaders within his community have said this in public very clearly. The goal is to destroy academia.

And attacking Harvard, specifically, because they won't bend the knee. There's not really anything more to it than that. Trump is a petty, small man who cares only about enriching himself and punishing his perceived enemies.

Sure, in writing anything can be true.

Superman fought Lex Luthor in Action Comics #NN and on and on

Most people just default to faith in their native political and religious traditions. So yeah “our guy is better than their guy” and fuck your individual self, you’re on the one true team normalization, becomes the default by sure lack of will of enough people to rock the boat even gently through public debate and discussion.

I mean this crowd can circumlocute an endless set of rhetorical perspectives. Ground truth is this group is outnumbered by Trump #1 and all kinds of other tribal group thinks.