HURTFUL THOUGHTS ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: Howie Carr: Brace for waterworks as student loans come due.

Stand by for the next round of sob stories — what’s about to happen next, you will be told, is definitely a hate crime, maybe even genocide.

Here’s the scoop: Millions of deadbeats who have had a two-year vacation from having to pay down their student loans will now have to … start repaying the money they borrowed to get their absurd, worthless college degrees.

Being required to pay off debt you willingly accrued and signed binding legal contracts to repay — how un-American is that?

The feds’ not-so-dunning letters started going out late last week, and the story broke when Chasten Buttigieg, the spouse of the U.S. Transportation Security, posted the notice on social media with his response:

“LOL no thank you Merry Christmas next.”

Remember that Chasten’s, uh, better half makes $221,400 a year, and has a big Democrat (meaning, seven figures, like Andrew Cuomo’s) book contract. Pete just took a few months off with full pay. They own property on Lake Michigan, but have complained about having to spend $4,500 a month to rent an apartment in D.C. that, gulp, doesn’t have a den.

And now this latest indignity! Chasten, along with millions of others, is actually being asked to … pay back money he borrowed.

AOC, for one, feels his pain — she owes $17,000 in student loans and thus has only been able to afford one Tesla and a French bulldog designer puppy on her $174,000-a-year Congressional salary.

This latest round of sky-is-falling stories will all feature the usual “advocates” and “experts” predicting the end of civilization if the tattooed slackers have to pay down their loans at the rate of some $400 a month.

Whenever any of these multibillion-dollar Panic-related handouts is stopped, Armageddon is always predicted. Remember the end of the eviction moratorium last summer? The “advocates” predicted mass homelessness. Nothing happened.

Are you old enough to recall when the media used to cover real news? They had, you know, beats — City Hall, the State House, police, etc.

Now the only beat that matters is the Apocalypse Beat. Omicron! Delta! Global warming! Global cooling! Tornadoes! Evictions! Student loans! The same low-IQ “reporters” careen from one faux catastrophe to the next, citing “experts” who dolefully predict doom that never occurs.

They’re 27 year olds who literally know nothing, as Ben Rhodes famously observed.