No Respect for the Living - Propaganda and the Politics of Right and Left

[Woodsman]

Re: No Respect for the Living - Propaganda and the Politics of Right and Left

There is hope, only not for us.

[vinoveri]

Re: No Respect for the Living - Propaganda and the Politics of Right and Left

But the intellectual is not without fault and deserves the scorn sometimes heaped upon her. She allowed herself to become irrelevant to the larger mass of society precisely because she separated her interests from the larger interests of the mass of men. This is the same reason liberalism and the liberal class as it manifests in late America is so rightfully scorned. They are irrelevant because they turned their backs on the people and left a vacuum for the right to fill.

Precisely. And if I may add the liberal class tends toward divisiveness b/c its positions on a whole host of issues tend to be rather narrow and intolerant of any views that are even slightly variant. These attitudes are not consistent with intellectual truth seeking and good will (yes, the right behave similarly on some issues, but the right does not have the mantle of academies and the privileged position of writing the textbooks.)

The problem that you incisively identified is not getting any better imo; there is very little self-scorn w/I the liberal class; but quite a bit of arrogance and a lot more stupidity. Human nature again, yes, not surprising, but the idea that these folks in the ivory towers are truth seekers who consider that they are privileged servants of the common good and are doing anything other than feathering their own nests/careers is sorely mistaken. Power seeks to maintain and expand, and power doesn't achieve that through telling the truth and opening the debate to dissenting views.

There is hope b/c ignorance and stupidity is much more wide spread than venality and bad will - but addressing this is hard b/c the liberal class controls higher education, and they have supplanted common sense understanding with goobledygook in many cases and have a stranglehold on what "truth" gets past down to the next generation. this is one of the reasons we have homeschooled our children through middle school, which appears to have been a good choice.

Good will makes the world go-round, but we seem to be in short supply of it in the political realm.

[jmdpet]

Re: No Respect for the Living - Propaganda and the Politics of Right and Left

I'm not going to weigh in on this discussion, mostly because I have nothing to add. I do want to mention a book I recently finished, which gave me some new insights into what the sources of the divisions between right and left are: The Righteous Mind — Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Righteous-.../dp/0307455777

[Raz]

Re: No Respect for the Living - Propaganda and the Politics of Right and Left

...

So I'd be wary of calling out people concerned about the attitudes and behavior of Southerners as idiotic. Here's a thought experiment you might try. Find a map of the old Confederacy and compare it to the presidential election results from 2012, 2008, etc. Tell me if anything stands out. Notice where is the GOP strongest. Yes, in the states of the old Confederacy. Where do people self-identify as "conservative" or "very conservative?" Uh huh.

And since we're talking so much about the cognitive power of some Americans, recall that the American South lags in every criteria that would be considered a marker of smart.

Are blue states smarter than red states?

January 20, 2012

Dear Cecil:

Is there a difference between red (Republican heartland conservative) states and blue (Democratic coastal liberal) states in terms of IQ? The Republicans certainly seem dumber than a bag of doorknobs — for example, any of the current batch running for president. The Democrats seem smarter, if just as crooked. For the record, I'm a registered independent.

— Arthur Weissman

Cecil replies:

We need to talk about this.

Your columnist lives in a reliably blue state, Illinois, widely acknowledged as the closest approximation yet to paradise on earth. He happily subscribes to the notion that blue-state illuminati are superior to red-state Neanderthals in almost every way. Urban theorist Richard Florida nicely summarized this attitude last year in the Atlantic. I quote: “Conservatism, more and more, is the ideology of the economically left behind …. Liberalism … is stronger in richer, better-educated, more-diverse, and, especially, more prosperous places.”

I’m confident it could also be shown that blue-staters are funnier, better looking, and have more frequent and satisfying sex.
However — and here I must be frank — I’m compelled to say that when we stray into questions of intelligence, the more enthusiastic proponents of blue-state supremacy are taking the argument over a cliff. ...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...han-red-states

[vt]

Re: No Respect for the Living - Propaganda and the Politics of Right and Left

“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

― Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859).

This is what I fear if the far left or far right takes control, and control is what they want.