Yes, I am aware of how pretentious and elitist this sounds (although, elitism kind of gets a bad rap, but I'll have to save that for another entry), but it's actually the opposite, if you use Lawrence O'Donnell's definition of an intellectual. Penn Jillette said O'Donnell's definition on his podcast, but I can't source it online, so I'm probably butchering it massively, but the spirit of what O'Donnell allegedly said is "An intellectual is somebody who is willing to change their thinking if the situation warrants it." Along these same lines John Maynard Keynes famously (and perhaps apocryphally) said to one of his detractors who accused him of being inconsistent, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
[Political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell. Oh, wait, that's former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback NEIL O'Donnell, my bad.]Fact-based thinking and objective reasoning are things that pretty much everybody can partake in, regardless of your background, which is why I said that O'Donnell's definition of an intellectual is an unpretentious, nonelitist one. It affords the opportunity for everybody to be an intellectual. But, of course not everybody is one, and that's a problem. More and more people are practicing what I call the religion of ideology. They just become absolutely imbedded in their likely wrongheaded positions, and the more others try to pry them out with facts, the more they dig in. I find it really bizarre.
[Economist John Maynard Keynes. Now this dude looks like an intellectual.]Anti-intellectualism happens across the political spectrum, but particularly among conservatives (see this link). To be a "conservative" today you have to adhere to many positions -- such as, smaller government equals better government; the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector; and low taxes, even for the super rich, are always good -- even when facts and objectivity should lead you to the contrary. (On the anti-science side of things, you can throw in denials of climate change and evolution.) Such positions are simply accepted as matters of faith and are unarguable.
As an example, I heard a piece on "This American Life" about the conservative city of Colorado Springs. It, like almost every other city in the US, is having budget problems, so the leadership responded by slashing spending and adopting an extremely businesslike, pro-private sector approach to their affairs. In some ways, so far it has been a success. They were able to put a stop to things like automatic raises to poor-performing government employees, and bloated pensions. But, at the end of the day, the implementers of the plan are hard pressed to actually point out any savings. Their response is that they believed that down the road it will save. They believe in their ideology, but it isn't so clear that it's right. Sure, in turning services over to the private sector, you can cut some inefficiencies (namely, unwarranted salaries and benefits), but you introduce new inefficiencies in needing to maximize profits (instead of simply being sustainable), and in having a bunch of separate entities serving their own self-interests instead of one entity trying to serve the greater good. Also, although getting burdensome salaries off the books might be a good thing, you have to be careful in treating a government like a business, as the salaries you're cutting are ones that would be spending in the local economy.
["This American Life" host Ira Glass. He's recently stepped into a bit of controversy regarding a different story about working conditions in Apple factories in China.]In the same story, a woman in the Colorado Springs government suggested a property tax to pay for vital services that would otherwise be cut, such as streetlights. It would amount to around $200 a year for the average homeowner. It failed. So, they actually turned off the streetlights in many neighborhoods. People could pay the city $300 to turn them back on for a year. One guy did this for his neighborhood, and then thanked the woman in government for this program. When she asked him, if he supported her tax, and he said no, she pointed out that for $100 cheaper he could have had the streetlights and a bunch of other services. His response was still adamantly against the tax, because he doesn't support increased taxes and big government. Even when presented with a clear-cut example of how public ventures can be much more efficient, he rejected it.
[Colorado Springs.]It just doesn't make much sense to me. I don't get why average citizens that just want to go along and get along (almost everybody) care so much about these ideological battles. People shouldn't want big government or small government, they should just want better government. Wherever that takes us, it takes us. What good does it do the average Joe or Josephina to dig in on either side of any issue and refuse to ever come out?
In other news, I just wanted to quickly comment on the conclusion of the case against Dhuran Ravi, the Rutgers student who used a webcam to spy on his gay roommate who committed suicide a few days later. He was found guilty on all charges including the most damning, bias intimidation (bullying). I was somewhat surprised by the verdict. I'm not sure I completely agree, but being pretty well-versed in the facts of the case (I become super interested in this case, for some reason ), I'm OK with it. It was a judgement call and the jury judged against him. He has only himself to blame. His defense tried unsuccessfully to play the immature-jerk-but-not-a-criminal card. As the NY Times puts it
His lawyers said he simply did not believe he had committed a hate crime. They argued that he was “a kid” with little experience of homosexuality who had stumbled into a situation that scared him.
Which I believe is absolutely true, but if your response to this scary situation is to invade somebody's privacy and humiliate them in an illegal manner, well, then you might have to pay the price, and it looks like Ravi probably will, perhaps with prison time, perhaps through deportation. Although, his lawyers will certainly appeal.
Well, that's it for this entry. I have to go to stupid Home Depot now. Until next time...
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