Me:
I think we’ve reached a turning point, and the turning point is this:
Intellectualism has become the readiness, willingness and ability to call dangerous things safe, and safe things dangerous.
If you’re ready, willing and able to call dangerous things dangerous and safe things safe, you are a moron.
Farker BigSteve3000 (2009-11-13 05:12:23 AM):
[C]ould anyone please explain the hate for her [Sarah Palin] thing.
she seems no more dopey than any other politician. one catch please have a logical thought not “I hate her cuz she sux” or “See she is just wrong for the US” or “RU Kiding she is lame”[.]
Farker coco ebert (2009-11-13 05:33:06 AM):
Because Katie farking Couric swept the floor with her.
Because she has quit almost every political office she has ever held.
Because she is not well-educated. That’s fine if she wants to be governor of a state like Alaska but don’t try to be president. We had enough with Dubya.
Farker totally_out_of_ideas (2009-11-13 06:08:05 AM):
I don’t care for Sarah Palin because she seems to have no intellectual curiosity. She’s not well traveled, well read, nor does she speak well. She doesn’t demonstrate a good grasp of current events, and she seems to have acquired her political and life philosophy from reading bumper stickers. And she is oblivious to all of this.
We Americans just had a President with these qualities and I didn’t like it.
Mmm, hmmm…and our current President, who is “sort of God,” referred to her original municipality as “Wasilly.” By this point, persons of all ideological persuasions will concede that without His wonderful teleprompter, He can’t give a speech to save His own ass.
“Intellectual” titan Al Gore won’t even debate his own magical pet humans-destroying-planet theory. There’s some “intellectual curiosity” for you.
We are not talking about raw mental horsepower here. We’re not talking curiosity. We’re talking about something…something…similar to what I was describing. An irony with regard to belief about what’s safe and what’s dangerous.
FrankJ, putting on his “serious writer” hat (I think — it’s always a little tough to tell with him)…nails down what we clueless dorks see as what’s going wrong with the Fort Hood massacre. It’s the “intellectuals” that are the problem here. They’re deciding too many things.
Now, it seems to me that the appropriate response from the military right now should not be to assure us diversity will be preserved; that’s secondary and a concern for another day. What they should be doing is vowing that if anyone else in the military is found to have views similar to Hasan, they will be immediately thrown out of the military and gutted like a pig.
All of which comes back to my original point.
We’re doing a wonderful job of showing proper respect to intellectualism. We’re accomplishing way too much there. We’ve got bagfuls of respect for it. We’re just doing a shitty job of defining what it is.
You have to show some abysmally bad judgment in deciding what’s malevolent and what’s benign — you have to get the two of them mixed up. At least sometimes. And more often is better. Failing that, you’re not an “intellectual”; if you make sensible decisions about these things, consistently, then you’re a great big ol’ dummy.
Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and at Right Wing News.
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[...] consistently, then you're a great big ol' dummy.Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes and at Cassy's [...]
I don’t care for Sarah Palin because she seems to have no intellectual curiosity. She’s not well traveled, well read, nor does she speak well. She doesn’t demonstrate a good grasp of current events, and she seems to have acquired her political and life philosophy from reading bumper stickers. And she is oblivious to all of this.
Well, at least the guy can string two words together into a sentence. That’s more than most left-wingers can do these days.
Sadly, this commenter is unable to provide any specific, concrete examples of this lack of “intellectual curiosity” on the part of either Palin or Bush. Nor does he provide even the names of anyone whom he does consider “well traveled, well read, or well spoken” or what criteria he uses to determine those things.
It’s like you said, Morgan. We’re increasingly at a point where people are apt to label a person “intelligent” or otherwise, based only on how well the person agrees with our own views – and worrying about the incompetence of allies or the genius of enemies, seems to be a thing of the past. (That was an absolutely profound observation and I’m stealing it.) Sadly again, this phenomenon afflicts the Left even more than the Right; I wouldn’t presume to call Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman, or Rahm Emanuel “stupid” or blather on about their lack of “intellectual curiosity.” Rather, I question their values, their priorities, their ethics, their judgment, and their commitment to the betterment of this nation.
But, you know. We backwoods, redneck hillbilly Bible-thumping fundamentalist types are no match for all that Manhattan-elite intellectual firepower anyway, are we?
I’m less concerned about how “smart” someone appears to be (whatever that means) than in the wisdom of the decisions they’ve made up to this point.
While intelligence is always a nice trait, I want a leader that leads. I want a leader that makes decisions. I want a leader with the ability to man up when the time comes. A President is surrounded by smart-guy advisers. He (or she) needs to be only smart enough to listen to those advisers. More importantly, he needs to be able to inspire confidence in ALL the American people not just his slavish, cult followers.
For some reason, the Left mistakes smarts for leadership. I suppose that, to a mental midget, a smart man is God.
I don’t need my President to be the smartest guy in the room (not that the current one is.) I need my President to be a leader.
I’m not trying to be deliberately mean or personal, but for the life of me I cannot understand why Obama consistently gets credit for high intelligence. I’ll be the first to admit that he gives a nice speech with teleprompter in front of him and he has degrees. These days, neither of those things necessarily is an indication of brilliance. I’m still looking for examples of things that he has done whether with regard to the economy or the military situation that are “smart” in the sense that they produced the expected result.
Ditto on Steve L. as far as needing the President to lead. So far, his major method of operation is to either manufacture or exploit a crisis to push a pet cause with little or no debate. Or, as in the case of Afghanistan, to put off a decision until the matter is decided for him. As former military, I find neither case very inspiring.
I believe it’s fair to simply bestow by default the moniker of intellectual on a lifetime academic professor with an international CV.
I was STUNNED as this gentleman was citing the Clinton years of economic financial “guidance” as the primary instigator of current housing based bank failure and “credit” fiascoes.
I tried to needle him into further recognizing “community activist” threats of extortion against the banks that conceded to opening branches in smaller communities in hopes of supporting a realistic business atmosphere, and were simply met with “Show mw the money” by folks that had no concept of remotely complex finances, as well as the trend toward shitting where they eat in their own neighborhoods. (think drugs, riots, and robbery)
He wouldn’t bite, and the subject quickly turned to the number of teaching opportunities at the Catholic University in Afghanistan.
I think the “intellectuals” that, you know…ARE, are abandoning the
sinking ship of protected “popular” opinion.
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