Anti-Intellectualism Jumps the Shark?
I want everyone to pay very specific attention to this story. Rep. John Duncan (R-TN, natch) said, regarding the mountains and mountains of evidence that Abstinence-Only sex ed is useless, that such facts are "elitist." He thinks that people gathering facts and evaluating them in an academic, impartial fashion, is elitist and would rather empower individual families with all education decisions (from Yahoo! via Pharyngula)
So most of you have probably noticed how anti-intellectual Americans can be. The message here is little different than the message of the "bitter" news cycle Obama was caught in recently, the idea that he was elitist because of the blunt and correct observation he made about the American populace. Of course, the problem here is that by his own definition of elitism, Duncan must himself be elitist; he is an elected lawmaker, named by his constituency to be an authority, an elite, who is empowered to make decisions for the greater community, rather than individual family units making those decisions themselves. If Rep. Duncan feels so strongly, perhaps he should step down as a Representative of his people?
The greater point here: this is the logical end of anti-intellectualism as it stands now (well, barring a great holocaust wherein all academics are lynched for thinking too much anyway). The anti-intellectual sentiment grows so strong that any intellectual statement on anything ever is taken as elitist, some sort of dangerous oligarchy (as opposed to the safe one that exists in the hands of plutocrats, but that's really a story for another day). Maybe in seeing this logical end, a few people will take a step back and say, "Wait a minute, that's moronic. Ought I to reconsider my stance vis-a-vis these poor maligned intellectuals? Oh dear, I'm even talking like one. This is rather problematic." I hope so anyway.
So most of you have probably noticed how anti-intellectual Americans can be. The message here is little different than the message of the "bitter" news cycle Obama was caught in recently, the idea that he was elitist because of the blunt and correct observation he made about the American populace. Of course, the problem here is that by his own definition of elitism, Duncan must himself be elitist; he is an elected lawmaker, named by his constituency to be an authority, an elite, who is empowered to make decisions for the greater community, rather than individual family units making those decisions themselves. If Rep. Duncan feels so strongly, perhaps he should step down as a Representative of his people?
The greater point here: this is the logical end of anti-intellectualism as it stands now (well, barring a great holocaust wherein all academics are lynched for thinking too much anyway). The anti-intellectual sentiment grows so strong that any intellectual statement on anything ever is taken as elitist, some sort of dangerous oligarchy (as opposed to the safe one that exists in the hands of plutocrats, but that's really a story for another day). Maybe in seeing this logical end, a few people will take a step back and say, "Wait a minute, that's moronic. Ought I to reconsider my stance vis-a-vis these poor maligned intellectuals? Oh dear, I'm even talking like one. This is rather problematic." I hope so anyway.
posted by Mephisto at 9:54 AM
1 Comments:
A lot of people wonder why our nation has such an aversion to smart people. I remember during the last presidential election, people of my liberal ilk were exclaiming "Why aren't people voting for Kerry? He's clearly much, much smarter than Bush!"
My response to such a claim is, by that logic Dick Cheney should be president, since he's probably the smartest man with serious power in Washington (which is exactly why he is such a dangerous man).
That being said, I think Bill Maher summed it up better than either of us could.
It takes a minute to get good, so be patient.
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