Among The Intellectualoids
First, let me confess to a bit of intellectual property theft. The American Spectator, a lively journal of opinion, used to run a monthly column with the title Among The Intellectualoids, and I have stolen that title for the title of this post. (I haven’t seen The American Spectator in awhile, so it may still run that column.)
The summer of 2020 was interesting, to say the least. The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off a series of protests nationwide. Some have been quite violent and costly. Apparently, the only way to atone for the death of George Floyd, caused by one human in Minneapolis, is to commit looting and pillaging on a national scale. How many 72-inch flat screen televisions does it take to atone for Floyd’s death?
We have been lectured for some time now by the intellectuals who attribute all our woes to systemic racism. What, exactly, does this mean? I once had a cat, a stray that we adopted, and at its initial vet visit, the vet informed us that the cat had ringworm, a fungal infection. We had two options for treatment: topical or systemic. What, pray tell, do those terms mean? The topical treatment was applying an ointment to the infected spot of the cat’s skin, while the systemic treatment involved a pill that entered the bloodstream, permeated the cat’s entire body, and killed the fungus wherever it was. We opted for the systemic treatment, as it would also take care of any ringworm we could not see.
So systemic racism is like that systemic ringworm treatment: it permeates the entire body. It is there whether you know it or not. You commit acts of racism daily, whether you know it or not, and your victims are maligned daily, whether they know it or not. It is in the bloodstream of our society.
This is what the intellectuals tell me. Let’s break that down a bit further: I am racist because I am a person of pallor. It does not matter that I treat everyone equally. It does not matter that acts of racism make me sick. I am not a person of color, hence I am a person of privilege, and that very fact makes me racist. I am, in short, irredeemable.
Hmm. I am defined by the color of my skin, not by my character. That sounds vaguely familiar. Wasn’t that the basis for the Jim Crow laws in the South? That sounds, well, racist.
Another area in which the intellectuals tend to get it wrong has to do with the sins of capitalism and the virtues of socialism. The intellectuals, who occupy positions of privilege in our colleges and universities, made possible by the fruits of capitalism, worship the virtues of socialism. Equality, you see, is the desired outcome.
Well, we have a perfectly socialist institution in this country, an institution that pays people the same amount of money for the jobs they do, provides the same clothing and meals to everyone, provides free health and dental care to everyone, and grants the same living accommodations to everyone. We call it prison.
The intellectuals never will understand that there is a tradeoff between freedom and equality. We are not born under equal circumstances. My parents weren’t Vanderbilts. Yet I have been free to pursue the occupations that I have enjoyed, and have no regrets that my talents and abilities did not lend themselves toward making me a wealthy man. I have done what I wanted to do. I prefer freedom to equality.
The fact that most of our intellectuals are closet, or even out-of-the-closet, Marxists, means that our college students are indoctrinated, steeped in the Marxist broth. Those students who become primary or secondary school teachers pass on what they were taught. We are all Marxists now, with apologies to Richard Nixon and John Maynard Keynes.
According to data from the Open Syllabus Project, which has reviewed something on the order of 1.1 million syllabi (over the course of a decade) from colleges and universities in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx, “ranks among the top three most frequently assigned texts”. This is from Dr. Susan Berry, and it was published in a 2016 Breitbart article. In departments of economics, Marx is the most assigned economist. And why not? Marxist societies are generally recognized as utopias. We can all learn from them. (Pulled trigger warning: that was sarcasm.)
It has been my experience that Marxist writers generally use such turgid and unintelligible prose, perhaps in an attempt to hide the contorted logic behind their ideas, that they are virtually unreadable. Currently I am working on Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by the Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire. I am told it will help me understand something about systemic racism, although it is ostensibly about pedagogy. I have read only the first few pages of this work, and the only thing I have been able to gather is that the oppressor is also the oppressed. Presumably teachers oppress their students. Or the students oppress the teachers. Or something. The truth is, I have no idea what this 1968 book is about, other than the fact we are all oppressors. And all victims. I think. Compared with Marxist literature, Anna Karenina is a light-hearted comedy.
Another intellectual is Lisa Bender, the president of the Minneapolis City Council. On the Tuesday, November 10, 2020 episode of the Tucker Carlson Tonight show, a video clip aired that showed a CNN interview with Lisa Bender. It was an old clip, I think, from earlier in the summer, and the topic was the “defund” or “dismantle” the police movement. Here is the question the interviewer posed, and the answer by Lisa Bender:
Q: “Do you understand that the word ‘dismantle’ or ‘police free’ also makes some people nervous. For instance, what if, in the middle of the night, my house is broken into. Who do I call?”
A: “Yes, I mean, I, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and I know that myself, too, I know that comes from a place of privilege because for those of us for whom the system is working I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.”
Minneapolis now lives in a different reality, one that the intellectuals didn’t see coming, but one that was predictable. However, according to Lisa Bender, intellectual, if you expect police protection as a result of the taxes you pay, you are privileged, and, of course, don’t deserve it.
Pop quiz: here are three quotations. Tell me if the author is an intellectual.
“Donald Trump is not an Adolf Hitler. At least Hitler improved the daily life of his followers, had discipline, and required more of himself to gain the respect of his followers. . . . A refusal to make comparisons has been a problem, when they have such similarities. Donald Trump’s death count is higher than Hitler’s at the same period.”
“Donald Trump is actively trying to kill our children.”
“I can only imagine the envy with which [Donald Trump] watched Derek Chauvin’s casual cruelty and monstrous indifference as he murdered George Floyd. I can only imagine that Donald wishes it had been his knee on Floyd’s neck.”
The first quote is by Bandy X. Lee, a professor at Yale University. Yale, an Ivy League school, tuition $55,500. What parent in his or her (or their) right mind(s) would pay that kind of money for this kind of drivel?
The second and third quotes are from Rob Reiner and Bette Midler, respectively. They are not intellectuals. They are intellectualoids. See how difficult it can be to separate the wheat from the chaff, when they all tend toward chaff?
My favorite George Orwell quotation is “Some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” Based on the absurd nonsense sent our way daily, it is safe to say that our world is run by intellectuals.