November 3, 2004
THE GIFTS OF THE SELF-ANOINTED
Outraged intellectuals (James Bowman, The New Criterion, November, 2004)
Intellectuals probably believe that every election will be decided by the moron vote. That’s why they are intellectuals, after all: because, knowing as they do (or think they do) all about the way the world works, their minds are already made up. This in turn means that elections are for them a matter of watching to see what the morons, who imagine that there could still be a reason to vote for the other party, will do. Moreover, in analyzing the moron psychology, like the hidden motivations of the opposition, they affirm their own status as intellectuals. This came home to me recently at a dinner party where I sat next to one of the OUTRAGED persuasion, a man who actually identified himself as an “intellectual”—no false modesty for him!—and who spent the entire meal trying to decide whether it was the mendacity or the incompetence of Bush’’s prosecution of the Iraq war which was the more egregious. “But why,” I finally asked him, “is George Bush lying and deceiving us, as you say he is, in order to wage war in Iraq when there is no obvious electoral advantage in it—when, in fact, it may well cost him the election?”He looked at me in a pitying sort of way, as if he thought I had just blundered into admitting my membership in the stupid party, and replied: “Because he’s in the pocket of the Israelis!”
As the man was Jewish, perhaps I should have seen this coming, but he might have said any number of other things—that Bush was doing it for the oil or to increase the profits of his buddies at Halliburton and the Carlyle group or out of Oedipal rivalry with his father or any of a host of more exotic reasons—with the same basic meaning. For I suspect that it scarcely matters to a political intellectual what are the real motivations of those in power for doing what they do, so long as those motivations are hidden from the sight of the base vulgar and only accessible to advanced powers of analysis like his own. It occurred to me then that, like the conspiratorial omnivore Michael Moore, this man would probably have been just as willing to accept any or all of the alternative explanations discreditable to Bush so long as he wasn’t asked to believe the one thing that has always seemed to me obvious—namely that the president is an ordinarily decent guy doing what he thinks is best for his country.
An intellectual can’t believe that, of course, because it is what the stupid people believe. It would threaten his very identity as an intellectual, so much prized in this case, for him to believe only what the lumpen mass of the cognitively challenged believe.
Such beliefs necessarily lead directly to the undermining of democracy. This can take the form of a disenfranchisement through demonizing, as with the perennial railing against the “religious right”, or wistful and patronizing efforts to help ordinary folks drop their blinders and understand what is really good for them. Democracy was originally conceived to protect against tyranny and hereditary aristocracy, but its modern importance is more a protection against the chilling menace of intellectuals.
The problem with the contemporary left -- the Mooresque left that got a reality check last night -- is that it's made up of intellectuals who aren't smart enough to understand America, or history.
Posted by: Semolina Pilchard at November 3, 2004 9:39 AMThe turkey had it backwards: the Israelis are in our pocket. Their existence as a nation is hostage to American geopolitical interests. The American relationship with Israel is what commits us to persevere to a final victory against militant Islam.
Posted by: Lou Gots at November 3, 2004 10:14 AMReality check?
P'raps. But it could also reinforce their already firmly held obsessions.
And I'll bet that the latter will be the more prevalent reaction. (After the grief and shock wear off, they're gonna want to find out why they lost this thing; and the last place they're gonna look is at themselves.)
Waiting for Moore's next masterpiece with bated breath....
Posted by: Barry Meislin at November 3, 2004 10:33 AMYou'd think that the intellectual knuckleheads would understand that once in awhile, there would be a correspondence between the 'morons' viewpoints and reality, even if just by chance. Thus the 'morons' cannot always be wrong, and assuming they are is sheer prejudice.
Not that I believe the 'morons' are right just by chance mind you, merely stepping into the sandbox of the left and arguing in terms they might understand.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at November 3, 2004 10:34 AMDudes, I fit the profile of an "intellectual" on the surface -- 160+ IQ and the type who'd be much happier kicking back researching something obscure in a university library than banging my head against Windows API & SQL Server for $70k a year.
Given that, I would not trust myself in any management or political position. Part of the intellectual package is that everyone's been treating you as a disembodied IQ and the rest of your personality has atrophied. You're not wrapped too tight to begin with. That and you've been praised (including praising yourself) for your "superior intellect". Result: You're constantly in need of a reality check, BAD.
Another is what JFK2 (who by the way Served In Vietnam) always referred to as "nuance". "Seeing all sides of an argument" is not an advantage, it's a liability. You're in a constant state of Information Overload and Analysis Paralysis, too busy running down "on the other hand...", "on the other other hand...", and "on the other other other other other other hand..." to ever get anything done.
And "I have A Plan"? BS! You'll be so busy planning out your plan in every detail (then re-planning, then re-re-planning, then re-re-re-planning) that once you do get The Perfect Plan, the time for it is long gone and you've just been wanking off all this time.
I discovered two jobs ago that my best position is not as Commander-in-Chief of a project, it's the #2 position, acting in support of a #1 who can make decisions and stick to them, filter the firehose of information down to where my teacup of time and energy can handle it, and act as a reality check before I go off too far on a tangent. The top kick or chief of staff, NOT the C.O. In that situation, I shine.
Posted by: Ken at November 3, 2004 11:00 AMI agree with Semolina, the main advantage we have over intellectuals is that most of them are unimaginative morons. They tend to cluster where they can band together to reduce their exposure to genuinely talented and competitive people, government service, universities, NGOs etc.
It's never very difficult to kick their asses when they venture out onto level playing fields, such as the hard worlds of business and politics, where reality trumps their pretty theories.
Posted by: Amos at November 3, 2004 11:28 AMIntellegence and common sense are often two seperate functions. Intellectuals often can be sharp on several subjects, but lacking in common sense. The problem comes when those whose egos are too big can't recognize the difference and think because they know A, B and C their positions on issues X, Y and Z are automatically correct, and only the stupid or the evil would oppose them.
Posted by: John at November 3, 2004 12:21 PMIntellectuals often can be sharp on several subjects, but lacking in common sense.
Which is why I'm at my best when teamed with someone who can provide a reality check.
Unfortunately, while growing up my father was completely in the opposite direction, with constant vocal contempt of anything intellectual and praising "Common Horse Sense" that bordered on automatic rejection of anyone or anything with more book-learning than himself. (I understand Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Ray Kroc were similar.) I don't think he ever realized what this was doing to me; all I saw (and still see deep inside) was rejection of everything I am.
Posted by: Ken at November 3, 2004 12:49 PMI love it that part of the time the left says Bush is in the pocket of the Israelis, and the rest of the time they say he's working for the Saudis. How does that work, exactly? The Israelis get him on even-numbered days, and the Saudis on odd-numbered days? It's a miracle of Middle East cooperation!
Another factor not mentioned: political beliefs are to a large extent determined by emotion, not reason.
Posted by: PapayaSF at November 3, 2004 2:24 PMI don't buy most of this stuff about intellectuals. First of all, I'm an intellectual, and proud of it. It is disingenuous for right-of-center intellectuals to bash intellectuals. It also is just as ignorant and prejudiced as the intellectuals that Bowman and some of you bashed.
(But maybe I'm wrong about you guys being intellectuals. Maybe you're really a bunch of hard-working, telephone line repairmen.)
And I don't buy the line about intellectuals being lousy at anything practical. I ran successful businesses for other people (a couple of restaurants and a bookstore). True, I failed with my own business (a political-literary magazine), but that might also have had something to do with having zero start capital.
My beef with most academics today in the social sciences and humanities isn't that they are academics (i.e., intellectuals), but that they are incompetent in their chosen fields. My experience during too many years as a grad student and adjunct lecturer is that tenured profs are usually upper-middle-class, idiot-of-the-family types who attended the right Overpriced, Private University, where they sucked up to their profs, who in turn liked them, because they came from the same social background, and never intellectually threatened them.
Their fondness for big theories is a function not of their intellect but of their cowardice and of the social organization of universities. Submitting to a cadre relieves one of having to think or stand alone, and the humanities and social sciences are comprised of cadres, each of whose members all support the same theory.
I used to present academic papers on all manner of topics (aesthetics, religion, political philosophy, remedial education), and I found that most tenured profs were constitutionally unable to advance arguments for or against a position. They would adopt some dogmatic position they picked up from their grad school "doctor Vater," and if they were lucky, advance through the ranks protected by various academic "rabbis" and cronies. If they encountered lower-level instructors, they would deal with them not through arguments, but caste-based cattiness.
I used to eat these characters alive in debates, people who I'm sure had 20-30 IQ points on me, and then they would exact their revenge on me in non-intellectual fashion.
Posted by: Nicholas Stix at November 4, 2004 2:15 AMWell, a place that reprints Nock essays cannot be generically antiintellectual.
Here at brothersjuddblog, we just like to mock the intellectuals we disagree with.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 4, 2004 4:35 PMA pretty good definition of moron would be someone who insists that George Bush is a liar. I don't believe intellectual and moron are mutually exclusive.
Lately I've been quietly explaining Bush's policies to people here in a few coffee shops where I like to do my writing (in Canada), and it is surprising how many know nothing of his rather 'liberal' agenda, including, amazingly enough, bringing democracy to Afghanistan. My experience has been that 3 out of 4 are willing to take a closer look and not be so prejudiced.
Intellectual hysteria is the classic divide-by-zero computer error that results in a complete meltdown. A genuinely likeable, honest politician is actually accomplishing what the left has always claimed was needed, but to them it is a ZERO and therefore incalculable.
Posted by: Randall Voth at November 5, 2004 1:09 AMAlso called 'THAT man in the White House' syndrome South of the Border.
It wasn't the slobs who answered the Literary Digest poll in 1936.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 5, 2004 4:24 PM