The Sad Truth

[LOki]

Link = Ship of fools

JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party” now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.

SNIP

One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

 

[editec]

Americans have always eschewed the intelligensia.

Polticially, it's often the kiss of death to be seen as someone who is too smart.

Part of the reason that we are so easily lead like sheep is because people want simple answers to complex questions.

Sadly the devil is always in the details.

 

[Agnapostate]

There's a vast difference between the legitimately intelligent and the intellectual class of "experts" that holds such sway over American society, merely by virtue of possessing a piece of paper that declares that they are entitled to do so. Noam Chomsky has made the insightful observation that in the realm of sports, the ordinary public is entirely willing to challenge the so-called "experts" on the validity of whatever analysis of whatever game they have offered, whereas they're all too willing to be docile and subservient to perceived intellectual authority in other realms.

 

[editec]

There's a vast difference between the legitimately intelligent and the intellectual class of "experts" that holds such sway over American society, merely by virtue of possessing a piece of paper that declares that they are entitled to do so. Noam Chomsky has made the insightful observation that in the realm of sports, the ordinary public is entirely willing to challenge the so-called "experts" on the validity of whatever analysis of whatever game they have offered, whereas they're all too willing to be docile and subservient to perceived intellectual authority in other realms.

We often have very little choice since many arguments are coming at us in areas well beyond our ken. I'll cite my reluctance to even enter the whole 9-11 debates as an example of that.

Noam Chomsky's insightful observations and analysis in the realm of international politics are rather brilliant in my seldom adoring of others' intellect kind of way.

I've sat in a room and spoken to that man one on one with perhaps ten other people in the room.

He's not just a genius, he's a super genius.

Now since I also studied with Boston's other most famous political science critique, Howard Zinn, let me tell you in terms of raw intellect, Howie (probably isn't) and I certainly am not even in the same intellectual universe with the likes of Noam.

Chomsky's ability to read, and then quote verbatum, and then tell you exactly where he got that data (citing source, date and page. sometimes decades old!) is so extrordinary you simply can't believe it, until you see him do it (and then rush off check just to see if he's gotten his souces right, too!).

Add to that his pentrating ability to find and then analyse the inconsistencies in media coverage is rather intellectually humbling, too.

There are some really bafflingly smart people out there folks.

Holy hell! You wouldn't believe how smart some of these people are.

Few of them, as far as I can tell, ever become leaders of anything except movements which they do not involve themselves with, too much, and schools of thought which they spawn but do not waste their time running.