So sad

[mqbush]

It’s so sad to hear people criticize Obama for being professorial, not common enough. Heaven forbid that the president of the United States have half a brain! This disdain for intellect is a disdain for technological leadership, progress in medicine, the sights and sounds and words of excellence. Our pursuit of commonness and conformity, our identifying with something called a Joe Sixpack, requires that we cede to other cultures all that we could have been, all we’ve given up.

Who is it who has coerced us into this? Is it a sleeper cell of a terrorist group trying to undermine the US? Surely it can’t be a slow bomb of our own device! We couldn’t have done this to ourselves, could we, Americans bringing down America? We have to find out who the culprits are who infect us with this brain rot, expose them.

[Mojambo]

1. Read Susan Jacoby's "Age of American Unreason"

Wonderfully complete study of anti-intellectualism in America.

This goes back a LONG way.

[Sal Minella]

3. I remember Adlai Stevenson being ridiculed as an "egghead." Way back, yes.

[Adsos Letter]

4. Richard Hofstadter wrote a seminal work on this subject also...

back in the 1950's, I think..."The Anti-intellectual Tradition in America"....something like that...

[salvorhardin]

5. I wasn't enamored of Age of American Unreason

Overall, Jacoby struck me as overall snobbish and at times downright anti-intellectual herself. Far better to read Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism In American Life instead if one wants an understanding of anti-intellectualism.

[guitar man]

2. a lot of it is code speak

for "uppity n****r" :grr:

[SoCalDem]

6. Selective Ignorance

Move over, Intelligent Design.. Meet, Selective Ignorance.

Posted by SoCalDem in General Discussion

Fri Aug 31st 2007, 08:45 PM

Selective Ignorance is the technique invented by, and now practiced widely, by republicans everywhere.

SI is what allows them...no, ENCOURAGES them to simultaneously embrace two opposing philosophies , and to bifurcate their thinking processes.

SI is what causes them to march in parades, carrying woefully misspelled signs, as they protest abortion, while at home, their 14 year old granddaughter recovers from a "D&C" performed by the family doctor...for "female troubles".. Her "troubles" started when Uncle Fred took her camping with his family.


SI is what causes them to repeatedly vote against school levies, and then to complain loudly at school board meetings about the deplorable state of their schools, and the threatened demise of their beloved football program...

The eventual solution has to be to de-fund the public school, fire the union teachers, and start up a voucher program. Of course, the vouchers are probably only worth enough for a storefront-Jesus school or a co-op quasi home-school system. These same people will now demand that their children still be welcomed into the athletic programs , and the extra-curricular programs of the shcools they left behind..

SI is what allows them to send in their hard-earned money to support candidates who promise to close those borders, but when it comes time to vote, they always come up short on delivering. It's a moot point anyway, since SI devotees often have no qualms about "getting themselves a Mexican" from Home Depot, if they need some hard landscaping done....or their car waxed cheaply...or their garage cleaned out..or their roof repaired..


SI makes it possible for them to repeatedly elect gay congressmen and senators, while these same voters feel perfectly okay about getting drunk and bashing a few "gays" when the opportunity arises.

The same SI allows those elected gay officials to portray themselves as NOT GAY..NO WAY , in order to get elected, and then live unhappy, closeted lives..always one "incident" away from being exposed. They spend their time in office pretending to be the "confirmed bachelor", or worse yet, find some desperate woman willing to play the part of devoted wife.

SI is also what causes them to sacrifice their long-held beliefs , and to be willing to support multiply divorced, lifestyle-challenged candidates, when no other republican is available.


SI allows them to praise big business and to pretend to follow the intricacies of the stock market because they have a 401-k, and it will somehow make them rich. It allows them to demonize unions, because they might have to pay those "damned union dues", and lord-knows , they don't want some union boss telling them how to vote. Little do they know that their beloved 401-k's are morphing into 001-k's. SI tells them that as long as Maria & Erin are smiling and flirting with them, everything's gonna be okay.

SI lets them love their guns, and still be worried when they send their young 'uns off to college . Of course the solution they come up with , is to arm the teachers AND students.

SI can turn a campus into a shooting gallery, but at least their son/daughter is locked & loaded.

SI allows them to love their God, while actively hating other people for not loving the same God.

SI allows them to think that, as Christians, they are the favored ones, while at the same time, believing that God created everyone, and everything.

SI allows them to feel free to destroy nature, and still find enough animals to hunt, and fish to catch.

SI allows them to eschew evolution, yet accept the fear of evolving mutations of Bird Flu and other pandemic possibilities. It allows them avoid science, and then run to science to cure what ails them.

SI allows them to fight like maniacs to deprive already-born children of food, shelter & a decent education, while claiming to want to preserve pregnancies of women they don't know, will never meet, and never plan on supporting.

SI makes it possible for them to value huge tax cuts for rich people, and meekly accept pay cuts for themselves. It makes them happy to HAVE a job..any job, even if it means that the profits of the company they work for, are never distributed to them and their families.

SI makes them crave the biggest baddest car/SUV/truck, and gives them license to bad-mouth people who choose smaller, safer, cleaner forms of transportation. SI allows them to feel superior, even if they have to choose between braces for their kids, and gas for the cars.

SI gives them a euphoric lift when they deliver a crushing blow to an opponent, even if the opponent was right. SI is what makes them savor pyrrhic victories, as they watch their own world crumbling around them.

SI is also what creates the illusion that they are the majority, instead of a cacophonous minority, hurling insults and epithets at the rest of civilization.

[Mojambo]

7. Selective Ignorance. That's wonderful.

Well done!

[xxqqqzme]

8. I blame Regis Philban &

Kathi Lee Gifford. They were held up, idolized, covered by the whorporate media ad nauseum. I believe they both, or at least gifford, even recorded albums. They are both examples of unremarkable, no talent mediocrity. That they both floated to the surface to host a banal television show proves how low we have ventured into mediocrity. I rarely saw more than 90 seconds of their program - what was it about anyway? - other than a mutual admiration society.

They were the drum major and head cheerleader for this graceless, mediocre maze trapping everything we touch & see.

[JuniperLea]

9. Idiocracy IRL

Life imitates art and art imitates life.

We had to lower the intellectual bar in schools so Johnny wouldn't be upset because he couldn't keep up.

Now we have Johnny in the White House...

"Now I drive the school bus!"

[Beregond2]

10. De Toqueville was pointing out this part of the American

character long, long ago. It's not new. Americans only like smart people when they are in desperate need of them.