I was looking at the numbers coming out of Wisconsin recently, and for a fleeting moment, I almost felt something akin to pity. But then I remembered where I was—planet Earth, the asylum of the galaxy—and the pity curdled back into my standard setting of nauseated boredom. The news is simple, bleak, and entirely predictable: the number of new international undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin system plummeted by 25 percent last fall. A quarter of the incoming global talent pool, wiped off the ledger in a single year.

If you listen to the screeching harpies on the Left, this is a humanitarian tragedy, a loss of the vibrant tapestry of diversity that makes a campus a 'safe space' for holding hands and singing Kumbaya. If you listen to the knuckle-dragging troglodytes on the Right, this is a glorious victory for 'America First,' a successful purging of potential job-stealers and foreign agents. Both sides, as usual, are missing the point with the precision of a stormtrooper aiming a blaster. This isn't about diversity, and it certainly isn't about national security. It is about money, stupidity, and the hilarious irony of a state voting to slit its own economic throat.

Let’s dissect this corpse properly. The decline didn't happen in a vacuum. It is the direct, festering result of the previous administration’s rhetoric and policy. When Donald Trump spent four years treating the concept of a visa like a golden ticket to a chocolate factory run by a xenophobe, the world took notice. The constant threat of deportation, the tightening of H-1B regulations, and the general vibe that America views foreigners as biological weapons rather than human beings had a cumulative effect. Who could have possibly predicted that telling the world to 'go to hell' would result in the world actually going elsewhere? Canada, Australia, and the UK are currently laughing all the way to the bank, absorbing the tuition dollars and the brainpower that the United States decided it was too good for.

And let’s be clear about what those tuition dollars actually represent. This is where the academic grift comes into play. The modern American university is not a temple of learning; it is a hedge fund with a football team. For decades, bloated academic administrations have relied on international students as their cash cows. These students pay full freight—often double or triple the tuition of in-state residents—subsidizing the six-figure salaries of Vice Deans of Student Experience and financing the construction of climbing walls in the dormitories. The University of Wisconsin didn’t lose 'cultural vibrancy'; they lost their profit margin. That 25 percent drop represents a massive hole in the budget, a financial hemorrhage that will inevitably lead to cuts. But don't worry, they won't cut the administration. They'll cut the adjunct professors, the library hours, and the actual quality of education for the local Wisconsin kids who are stuck there.

This is the delicious, bitter irony of the situation. Wisconsin, a state that has frequently flirted with the populist nativism that Trump peddled, is now suffering the economic consequences of that very ideology. By supporting a platform that demonizes the 'other,' they have effectively sanctioned the defunding of their own institutions. It is a snake eating its own tail, but the snake is too stupid to realize that the tail tastes like bankruptcy. The 'competitive challenges' mentioned in the report are a polite euphemism for irrelevance. In a globalized economy—which exists whether the isolationists like it or not—innovation drives growth. When you shut the door on the smartest kids from Mumbai, Seoul, and Lagos, you aren't saving jobs for Jimmy from Sheboygan. You are simply moving the innovation hub to Toronto.

So, here we are. The Right gets to thump their chests about secure borders while their local economies wither on the vine. The Left gets to wring their hands and perform mournful soliloquies about inclusion while their administrative bloat finally faces a reckoning. And the international students? They’re fine. They’re getting degrees in countries that don’t treat them like pariahs, taking their intellect and their future tax revenue with them. The only loser here is Wisconsin, and by extension, the United States, which continues its slow, agonizing slide into mediocrity. We are actively choosing to be poorer and dumber, all to satisfy the ego of a reality TV star and the prejudices of a electorate that can't see past the end of its own nose. It would be tragic if it weren't so perfectly, consistently stupid.