Modern Intellectuals' Affinity for Nonsense

American Thinker ^ | 1 Dec, 2018 | Anthony J. DeBlasi

[MtnClimber]

It’s a truism that things are not always what they appear to be, often making it difficult to acquire needed information and knowledge. Why then do many who could help us – such as academics, intellectuals, even artists – frequently encumber their messages with nonsense? Wonderland may have been a mind-expanding experience for Alice but when she returned from her adventures she didn’t start calling a spade a club. Analysts, journalists, artists and other professionals, who don’t look at things as they are but pursue a “message” that isn’t there, are apt to invent curious substitutes for reality and engage in curious symbols and interpretations that in fact interfere with communication.

[MtnClimber]

The left seems lost in their alternative reality.

[IWontSubmit]

Tim Cook to give keynote address at anti-Semitism and anti-hate summit in New York.
Soooo, there is that.

[TBP]

The more completely nonsensical something is, the more the left believes it.

[TBP]

The left’s rules for determining “truth”:

1. Truth is whatever serves the Party.
2. If you repeat something enough, it becomes true.
3. If the facts contradict the narrative, then the facts lie.

For more, see my sig.

[TalBlack]

It’s not so much that it’s an alternate reality, rather it’s THEIR reality and they want you to mouth it, salute it and respect it. If you do then they own your mind. “A man is a woman” is no different than 1 is 2.

[PapaBear3625]

As academia has become increasingly dependent upon grants, it has turned into the propaganda arm of the Deep State. They will spew whatever nonsense serves the interests of their true masters.

[loveliberty2]

So-called "progressives" portray themselves as the "intellectual" elite, although they are totally bereft of any real knowledge or understanding of the great ideas which were the seedbed of Ameria's successful 200-year experiment in liberty.

Today's liberals, especially these so-called "progressives," with all of their domination of academia and Far Left politics, seem to fit into a category described in an essay by T.S. Eliot on Virgil:

"In our time, when men seem more than ever to confuse wisdom with knowledge and knowledge with information and to try to solve the problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism not of space but of time--one for which history is merely a chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and have been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no share."(Bold added for emphasis)

Without intellectual anchoring in the enduring ideas which provided the philosophical foundation of America's Declaration of Independence and Constitution, their vain imaginations of superiority only expose their arrogant, limited world view.

Yet, the America which rose from obscurity to greatness, from the use of crude hoes and axes to clear a wilderness to putting a man on the moon, and from escaping oppression by King George to becoming a symbol of liberty for millions all over the world--that America provides shelter for them, even as they attempt to "change" her into something unimagined by the Founders.

If such self-described "Progressives" are allowed to succeed in their own little provincial experiment, their own posterity, likely, never will know the "blessings of Liberty" proclaimed by the Preamble to America's Constitution.

Now would be a good time for conservatives to read Dr. Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind, which can be read online, by the way.

In Kirk's last chapter he reviews the works of poets and writers, quoting lines which now seem to bear a striking resemblance to the Progressive players on the stage in American politics today.

For instance, in Robert Frost's "A Case for Jefferson," Frost writes of the character Harrison:

"Harrison loves my country too
But wants it all made over new.
. . . .
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens.
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it made over new."

Yes, the pseudointellectuals who occupy power positions in Congress and the media, and those from recent Administrations, fancy themselves to be "intellectuals."

By their words and actions, however, they display that provinciality Dr. Kirk recalls as having been described by T. S. Eliot (see above) as being one of time and place, having no intellectual grounding in ideas older than their own little experience in dabbling and discussing Mao, Marx, and other theoreticians.

America's written Constitution deserves protectors whose minds are out of their "teens" in terms of their understanding of civilization's long struggle for liberty.

It certainly deserves protectors who do not consider it a "flawed" document because that Constitution does not permit the government it structures to run rough shod over the rights of its "only KEEPERS, the People" (Justice Story).

Blasting it "all to smithereens" seems to be the goal of the Far Left, who rely on what they must believe to be the ignorance of the American people. They have been outwitted, however, by an increasingly knowledgeable citizenry who are using the miracles of technology to study for themselves ancient and modern writings on the ideas of liberty versus those of tyranny. As Jefferson wisely observed:

"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

[BEJ]

They are never checked or called on it and they have to keep inventing more insanity to create a name for themselves for pushing the boundaries, for being “creative”, for being “original”, for being an “artist.” Yes, academics want to be loaded down with praise from their peers, from critical reviews, from prestigious newspapers, actually, from from anywhere they can get it. It’s all self serving. For underneath that mountain of praise is a lowly self hating self that wants to be crushed by the mountain of gushing reviews so that the ego swells up the size of the universe... the size of God. And if the universe is all ego then there is no room for anything else. The lowly self goes “Ah...” sighing in relief, and he is happy as a singularity of one.

[Wuli]

I get the author’s intent, but I think they narrowed down the audience of likely readers. The work itself is too intellectual and provides more intellectual examples than current contemporary examples of which they are many the sheeple could be pointed to.

[motor_racer]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

[NoCmpromiz]

PFL