Okay, so this may be a cheap shot … wait, no. Strike that. It is a cheap shot, but it’s also awesome.
Okay, seriously, Palin is a joke, and her supporters are laughably ignorant. It hardly needs saying, and isn’t some huge revelation.
That being said, it does point to a larger problem though, that there is great appeal in the modern political climate for oversimplification of issues, and for the idea that there are simple solutions to complicated problems. The appeal of this worldview is twofold.
First, of course, if there are easy solutions, then hey, we’re not that bad off! Drill, baby drill! Ignore the complications and context! Just do it! It’s easy!
Second, if there are easy solutions and your political opponents are not taking them, but are instead insisting on complicated trade-offs between competing values … well, it becomes much easier to believe that they’re not just mistaken but actually malevolent.
I think this POV is poison to democracy. It exists across the political spectrum, and (of course) there have been times historically when it concentrated on the left, but I think modern day it’s fair to say that it’s far more concentrated on the right.
It’s what lay behind tarring Al Gore and John Kerry as ‘eggheads.’ It’s what lead ‘policy wonk’ to become something of a slur, rather than the compliment it ought to be. It’s what lead pundits to wonder if Barack Obama might just be too smart for his own good1. It’s the reason Glen ‘oligarhy’ Beck has a job. This surging anti-intellectualism, as I said, isn’t exactly new, but that doesn’t stop it from being worrisome.
EDIT: Steve Benen makes some great points on this very topic here, while riffing off of Ross Douthat’s recent column.
Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people
- Well, that and racism, I mean. [↩]
I cringe because it is such a cheap shot; I would hate it if someone did this to “my” side. I mean, this isn’t even a political rally, it’s a book signing. Why should someone who buys Palin’s book have to know a damn thing about her? And even if they think they like her, why should they be able to articulate their feelings intelligently, in front of a camera, without notice, with a mike in their face?
Lord knows I hate Palin. But I don’t approve of this.
I don’t really consider it a cheap shot at all. These people are completely allowed and able to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk to you right now” or “I don’t want to be on camera.”
If someone is going around saying “I support her foreign policies” to someone with a camera and microphone, there’s nothing cheap about a follow-up “Why?” or “Which policies exactly do you support?”
The Agent Kay rule strikes again: “Remember, a person is smart. People are dumb panicky animals.”
Try: “Why should someone who supports her politically and wants her to be president have to know a damn thing about her?” It’ll get you a little closer to the point I was making. Not having to know a damn thing about a damn thing is sort of the point.
Sure it is, which is why I tried to offer some context. To be clear, I don’t think the video ‘proves’ anything. I’m not taking it as an argument for the proposition that she’s a joke and her supporters are fools … I’m taking that as granted, and taking the video as funny.
What I want to know is why there is this thing within us that seems to treat ignorance as a virtue, and how we kill it.
—Myca
Actually, I was quite impressed how there were no cheap shots taken. No nasty questions. No adversarialism. Just simple, direct requests for the interviewees to elaborate on their views on Palin.
politically, the common man theme has had a good run. Truman and Reagan both managed to benefit from the reputation of being dumb. Bush did for a while until his presidency failed.
intellectually however, I think it has its roots in the cold war, when great intellectuals could not see what every cabdriver in moscow knew. both the nation (mag) and the nytimes denied the Ukrainian famine. sartre visited the ussr and proclaimed it freer than the usa. entire economics departments were marxist, as even the likes of keynes gobsmacked “how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.”
the mass delusion of communism and to a lesser extent socialism created an intellectual backlash and propelled anti-intellectual politicians to the fore, especially in America where anti-communism was greatest (and probably that one of the reasons America became so great.)
Raymond Aron explained the delusion best i think in “opiate of the intellectuals.” that a system so flawed and brutal could command the respect of men so intelligent and so genuine intheir desire for equality is one of the great mysteries of humanity, in contrast to other systems of oppression, like colonialism or slavery, which appealed to the primitive in man–greed, power, bigotry– and are thus easier to understand.
democrats have long been hurt by their associations with such intellectuals, as Barack Obama starting his political career in the home of two left-wing terrorists demonstrates. Kerry was hurt by the extremism of the ant-vietnam movement. the American people never trusted extreme leftists.
interestingly, with the demise of communism i see the left deploying these guilt-by association arguments more often, as the radical right is now more exposed. this video reminds me of shot after shot displaying the extremism and racism we saw at the teabaggger rallies, which in turn reminded me of what we (the right) did to the antiwar movement…undermining it by exposing the antisemitism, 911conspiracy theories, and totalitarian sympathies. Jeff’s recent piece linking a conservative blog to a nazi rally was an excellent example, which reminds me of the role answer, a Communist sympathizing group, played in the recent anti-war rallies.
so keep up the good work with the vids and expsoe of the radical right. try no to descend into McCarthyism though. good luck.
I am not allowed to post in Myca’s threads, as I well know.
Manju, I think that there’s a serious difference between ‘guilt by association’ attacks and criticizing anti-intellectualism, and that that difference is obvious.
—Myca
i didn’t really mean this vid was a guilt by association. maybe very vaguely, only in the sense there’s an implicit association between palin and her idiotic supporters. what i meant was anti-intellectualism has it roots in anti-communism, which in turn long used “guilt by association” arguments, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not.
i have notied, and i think this is a result of the collapse of communism making right-wing extremism more visible, this type of arguement being deployed by the left more. dave neiwerts eliminationist thesis being probably the most extended arguement of this type, for example.
This seems self-contradictory to me. If Ms. Palin is a joke and her supporters are laughably ignorant, just whose dignity and inherent worth are we supposed to accept?
I believe that they are full and equal humans who deserve the same rights as any other and ought to be treated with all the respect due to them as human beings, including comfort when they are hurting and a recognition of their right to find happiness.
None of that implies not making fun of them when they act dumb.
—Myca
Or, put another way, Ms. Palin is a joke as a candidate, not as a person. I make no judgments about her as a person.
Her supporters are laughably ignorant … they have to be, in order to support her … but that doesn’t make them ‘not people’ or even ‘less people’.
—Myca
It’s more than making it easier to believe that they’re not just mistaken but actually malevolent. It actually requires one to believe that they’re malevolent, because otherwise it is completely inexplicable that they wouldn’t adopt the “simple” and “commonsense” solutions that are guaranteed to work.
Interesting point, Comrade PhysioProf. I think it’s still possible to think of your opponents as deluded, brainwashed, or too dumb to see the truth, but yes, if you assume that your opponent is educated on the issues, intelligent, and acting of their own free will, then yes, I think you’re right.
—Myca
Of course, in the Republican party, malevolence and ignorance run hand in hand. Bush and Cheney are perfect examples.
Wow. I don’t know if I will recover from that whole thing about drill, baby, drill and the Polar bears and Peta. The illogic made my synapses snap.
I don’t think this is such a cheap shot. The interviewees could have refused to participate and they chose to share their opinions. And this is a political book about a politician with apparent aspirations for future office. It isn’t as though they were at a fiction book signing and then were asked political questions from out in left field and out of context. I’d say the video is fair game, and I’d say the interviewer was neutral and respectful.
For me, the part where they were actively advocating for Sarah Palin was the key. I might be more forgiving if the questioning had gone:
Q: So, do you support Sarah Palin for president?
A: Gosh, I don’t know. That’s why I’m buying the book … I have a lot of questions about Ms. Palin that I hope it answers, because right now I just don’t know enough.
In that case, not knowing her foreign policy opinions isn’t really a big deal. But that’s not how the questioning went.
The way in which I think it might be a cheap shot is that we really don’t know how edited the footage is … there may have been 10 conversations of the type I outlined above that just didn’t make it to the final cut. Now, I think that’s unlikely, but the possibility is there.
—Myca
And actually, now that i think of it … does anyone have any specific examples of questions from the video that they felt were unfair?
—Myca
you guys do realize there are vids out of obama supporters being similarly clueless.
Yeah, but Liberals tend to try to rectify said ignorance. Conservatives believe that ignorance is a virtue.
The method of questioning is unfair, which makes the actual answers sort of moot.
I am really intrigued that you don’t see that. There is a huge difference between, say, holding a sign which says “ask me about my political positions!” and being approached by a cameraman who asks you what they are, on camera.
All of those questions would probably be fair in a different context. They’re all fair questions for Palin, for example; they’re all fair questions for any politician who takes a view on her. But it is not fair to expect the public at a book signing, waiting outside a mall, to be able to articulate anything at all.
If I control the interview (writing the questions, choosing the subjects) and I control the editing (deciding which footage to include), then I can make Barack Obama supporters look like drooling morons and Palin supporters look like nuclear physicists.
As Sailorman alludes, ordinary people on the street rarely have sophisticated, nuanced, up-to-date political analyses of ongoing issues. It would be irrational for them to do so. *Activists* have that kind of information; it’s important to them.
Sophisticated liberal activists went out and filmed some yokels who believe something different. Does anyone really think that I couldn’t take a camera and go out and find some Democratic yokels to embarrass? I’ll start with the woman who thought Obama would be making her car payment.
I don’t think I’d characterize Michelle Obama as a yokel.
heh, can’t believe i didn’t think about that one first.
Serves you right. You beat me to the “Squid for Thanksgiving” punch, so I’m calling it even.
Hey Robert … I know that this is a bit off topic, but since it’s my post I’m allowed.
By posting here, you claim to accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people … but you oppose same sex marriage. Thus, I would like to ask you what your strategy is to grant gays and lesbians full legal equality.
Is it to remove the right to marriage from straight people?
—Myca
See, what you see as ‘the public at a book signing, waiting outside a mall’, I see as ‘a group of her supporters who don’t hesitate to explain that she ought to be president.’
As I said previously, if any of them had hesitated to offer full-throated support of her politically, then, yeah, I wouldn’t have expected them to be able to justify or explain it. Expecting people to be able to justify and explain their beliefs isn’t ‘playing gotcha’, it’s treating them like adults.
I mean, look … ask me about utilitarianism. I’ll explain why I (mostly) believe it in a fair amount of detail. Ask me about objectivism. I’ll explain why I think it’s a bad idea. Ask me about the virtues of the V8 Engine versus the V6? I’ll tell you that I don’t know a damn thing about it, but I’ll tell you that up front. What I won’t do is say, “Fuck yeah, V8s are the best! That’s the only kind of car I’d ever buy,” then clam up when asked to explain what makes them better.
—Myca
Yeah, the controlling the editing is a pretty reasonable objection, which is why I mentioned it previously … but for all the whining and moaning about unfair questions, still, nobody has offered one that they found to be unfair or a ‘gotcha’.
Mostly, I thought the interviewer just let the subjects talk … it was actually far less ‘gotcha’ than most similar videos I’ve seen.
Seriously. If people want to talk about how unfair it was, it’s put up or shut up time … what questions were unfair?
—Myca
@26 – I believe that the state should not discriminate in granting recognition to the partnerships of consenting adults. Whatever state rights or privileges are granted to one form of coupling must be granted to all of them. That would grant gays and lesbians, among other sexual minorities, who wanted state recognition of their partnerships the same recognition awarded to everyone else.
So … separate but equal?
It would be a step up, granted, but I think that 1) that doesn’t address federal issues, and 2) there’s a decent argument that even if all the same legal rights are granted, calling it something different puts it on a lower level.
—Myca
The only separation would come from people’s choices to follow (or not) various religious traditions of matrimony in addition to the civil ritual. That’s outside the government’s purview in any event. I am very concerned with equal legal rights, more or less uninterested in what people think of one another (absent violence).
By “the state” I mean government, not literal states.
Oh, okay, I think that’s utterly reasonable.
Also reasonable … since gay couples could get married in the Episcopalian, Unitarian, UCC, or other theologically liberal churches, and call it legitimately ‘marriage.’ As long as there’s no distinction in law between two dudes joining a civil union and a dude and a chick joining a civil union, I’m good with that.
Okay Robert, I’m convinced. Feel free to take part in my threads.
—Myca
Oh, so we should only be talking about what you think are reasonable objections?
You know, for someone who has been known to moderate based on tone, you’re claiming that opposing views are “whining and moaning.” That’s obnoxious. It’s also bullshit; while my position may in the end be incorrect, it is far from a random outlier, I’m not whining, and I’m not moaning. i just think you are wrong.
And though you don’t like it when I say this: I really have a lot of trouble believing that you would be taking the exact same position were the situation reversed. You might accept it–I won’t go so far as to say that you’d completely flip-flop, denying any right to the interview–but I’d eat my hat if you characterized a Democratic “hey, that’s unfair!” response as “whining and moaning.”
I apologize for my tone.
No. Feel free to raise whatever objections you like, but if I think that they’re bullshit, I’ll say so. I was acknowledging an objection as reasonable … and that upset you somehow?
You’re saying “asking people in public what they think and why” is unfair. I think that that’s ludicrous, and, furthermore, that you wouldn’t be objecting if the people had reasonable answers.
I think that that you’re embracing this line of objection because once you committed to the position that the interview was unfair, and were asked for specific examples of that unfairness, you realized that you had none. You couldn’t stand, psychologically, to back down from your position, but you had no evidence for it.
Basically, you’ve realized that you’re wrong, and you can’t stand it and won’t admit it. This is something you’ve done before.
I simply do not believe that what you’re claiming is true. I think that you would happily chuckle at poorly justified beliefs loudly professed if you hadn’t previously taken the stand that the interview was unfair without evidence to back it up.
—Myca
Some response from the filmmakers:
Factual error, Myca. And I have no idea how else to get ahold of you. You said:
Also reasonable … since gay couples could get married in the Episcopalian, Unitarian, UCC, or other theologically liberal churches, and call it legitimately ‘marriage.’
My emphasis. From The Episcopal Church’s Constitution and Canons, scroll to Canon I.18.2:
Some Dioceses permit and some priests will perform liturgies that purport to bless unions between people of the same sex. But even if the State in which the rite is performed allows it at a secular level, such unions are not and cannot be called ‘marriage’ in the Episcopal church and are not so considered by it, despite the wishes of some of it’s priests and laity.
Minor derail: Dissolving matrimony for straight people would benefit a heck of a lot of women. The institution of marriage gives a lot of advantages to men and none to women.
Okay, back to the main topic. I’m not really seeing how questioning people at a book signing is unfair. If someone’s going to take the trouble to buy a book and visit with the author, it’s pretty fair to assume that they know who the author is, what the book is about, and if it’s political, the author’s views on the issues. (Not that I regard ‘Going Rogue is an actual book, it sounds more like a 300pg masturbatory aid for Conservatives.)
Good catch, Ron. I was mistaken.
—Myca
Have you ever been interviewed for TV? Have yuo ever known anyone who has been interviewed for TV? I have, and I do.
The reason I think your position is bullshit is because you don’t really seem to have any particular sense of how a setting can affect the answers of pretty much anyone who isn’t a trained professional.
The reason is that an interview is, in many respects, similar to a hostile encounter. It’s actually a bit like a cross examination–which for many people is one of the least pleasant experiences they have had. You seem to have this bizarre misconception that people who know something should also be able to talk about it on demand, and should be able to present their knoweldge and beliefs and justifications on demand. But that just isn’t true.
People simply aren’t generally capable of explaining themselves well orally, and that is particularly true when the examiner is not deliberately trying to make them feel comfortable. I do interviews all the time.
So, for example, were i to spend the time I suspect that I could probably find out the answers to at least some (if not most) of the questions which the interviewer asked. Perhaps I would use different phrasing. Perhaps I would use a different tone. Perhaps I would change the order of the questions, and use more of a lead-in, to get my subject’s mind on track. For sure, I would use a different setting.
I know many, many, smart people. And I also know that a variety of them would “fail” an interview like this. If you wouldn’t, then great! like me, you’re in the (very small) population who can defend their positions orally on demand.
So when you say:
that’s almost exactly the opposite of what is happening. In fact, almost all of my personal anectodal experience, a lot of my professional training, and the anecdotal (and professional) experience of a lot of people I know (from TV producers to attorneys to therapists) supports my position. I’m trained in how to make my opponents look bad on the stand, and I’m trained in how to make my own witnesses look good. I’m trained in how to get accurate information, and how to get the answers i am looking for. I recognize this interview as bullshit.
The reason that I don’t focus on a particular interview question is because your underlying belief seems to incredibly misplaced that it is difficult to get past it.
And your claim that your beliefs are somehow justified in comparison to mine is, frankly, BS. You haven’t provided any evidence (whatever that would be) that what you are concluding about the interview was accurate, or fair. All you have done is made the claim that these people should be able to do it, because they have an opinion about Palin.
I don’t disagree with that. People should in a perfect world have some idea of why they support their favored candidate. the issue here is whether in the real world this interview (if you can call it that) really proves anything about that. I say it doesn’t, and I’ve explained why. You haven’t explained that, at all as far as I can tell.
I can get many people to say what I want them to say, and in many cases I can make them sound like it was their idea. That’s my job. But I don’t delude myself into thinking it’s what they “really feel,” or that it’s necessarily accurate w/r/t their position.
Mind you, I’m not claiming that Palin’s supporters are particularly knowledgeable. Palin herself isn’t particularly knowledgeable, either.
It’s possible that any one of those supporters actually has absolutely no knowledge of anything at all. Perhaps they only know talking points, if that. But you can’t find out whether that’s the case (or conclude whether that’s the case) based on an ‘interview’ like this.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to address this part:
Bullshit. I have admitted I’m wrong, on this blog, plenty of times. And I change my mind, on this blog, with at least some frequency. I’m not sure you do, though, at least not very often, which makes it especially ironic that you’d make that accusation about me.
In fact, many of my arguments here with people are based on my philosophical premise that I am often wrong and that I don’t know the objective truth, while many of your arguments appear to be based on the premise that you’re some sort of objective ‘correct god.’ If we were to objectively evaluate which one of the two of us was more likely to be open to the possibility that their position is incorrect, I don’t think it’d be you.
I wouldn’t have brought it up myself, but you are going to call me out on this, bring it on. Go ahead and start the search wars. I don’t think you’re going to win this one.
On the one hand, I think Sailorman is right: the video is unfair in the way that all interviews that are not (scripted or unscripted) PR or marketing pieces are unfair. They are intended to serve the needs of the ones asking the questions, not the ones of whom the questions are being asked; and even when the interviewer is not hostile, even when the questions are given to you in written form and you have time to formulate written responses (my primary experience, though I have also been interviewed for TV), it takes real work, and practice, to be able to give substantive answers. Each of the people in the video is, by definition–or at least needs to be assumed by definition–more complex and more thoughtful than the video makes them out to be. (How much more is a different question.)
On the other hand, Myca’s point was not that the video is not a cheap shot; he was not trying to argue that the video is an accurate representation of the kinds of individuals who support Sarah Palin. Rather, he was arguing that the answers given by the people on the video are representative of an anti-intellectualism that (I would agree) has taken hold in contemporary political discourse, perhaps especially on the right, but that I think you also see in the news media’s tendency these days to give equal weight to opposing points of view without providing any real (analytical or other) context, because providing that context might be misconstrued as unfairly “taking sides.”
Myca doesn’t actually lay this argument out in detail; rather, he assumes (rightly, I would think) that it will be more or less self-evident to readers of this blog, and I guess I just want to add that what I found most disturbing about the answers given in this video was how similar they are in form and perspective to the kinds of answers my freshman composition students give no matter what issue we happen to be discussing. They are similar to the rhetoric of answers that you hear on shows like Jerry Springer and other audience participation TV shows, where what matters is that you have an opinion, not whether you can say where your opinion comes from with any degree of rigor, or reevaluate your opinion in response to new facts.
One of the most difficult and disturbing aspects of teaching my freshman composition classes this semester was discovering how hard it was for my students to summarize a point of view without taking a position in relation to what they were summarizing. Whether they were trying to summarize a position they agreed with or disagreed with, my students overwhelmingly found it almost impossible to grasp the concept that once they introduced the first person pronoun into what they were writing, they were no longer summarizing, they were arguing–or at least expressing an opinion. I am making here no empirical claim about anything; this is purely my own intuitive, gut response to the video: but I connect my students’ inability to grasp what it means to summarize without taking a position and the kinds of answers given on the video–which, even if they do not accurately represent the people who gave them, do, I agree with Myca, represent an anti-intellectual rhetoric/ideology that is out there and that is very dangerous.
I can’t moderate this, since Myca is, after all, a moderator.
However, fwiw, it’s my opinion that further discussion of either Myca’s or SM’s hidden motives, or of propensities to changing minds, from either Myca or SM, is extremely unlikely to be either 1) pleasant to read, 2) pleasant to write, or 3) productive debate.
So I’d urge both of you to drop those topics entirely.
But, again, this is not a mod ruling, so it’s up to you guys what you do.
I’ll start with the woman who thought Obama would be making her car payment.
A banker.
(Sorry, started writing this before Amp’s note above.)
I’m inclined to agree with Sailorman’s position on the value of the video, but my main objection is a bit different. I tend to discount people who go “ooh, a camera! sure, i’ll talk in front of it!” from being a representative sample of anything EXCEPT people who feel the need to speak in front of any camera. Hence, it’s not a cheap shot at those people, but it’s a cheap shot at anyone who would want to support Palin.
However, I do agree with the main thrust of your post, Myca. I do find the oversimplification of complicated problems to be problematic, and I didn’t previously consider how this might be related to intellectualism and complicated answers as malevolent.
Similarly, though, I think that it’s also possible to see oversimplification as passively malevolent, and I don’t think this issue is limited to anti-intellectualism. If we go to war because someone did not want to think too much, or consider that our intelligence is wrong, yadda yadda, many people may die due to that person’s laziness or thoughtlessness. If we think that people have the obligation to think hard about what they’re doing, then how is causing the deaths of many people by thoughtlessness not malevolent? The people in charge had an obligation to think things through — thus, it’s not an accident when they don’t.
Nothing at all to be sorry about — you didn’t write about the topics that I said I wish people wouldn’t write about.
Plus, I wasn’t writing as a moderator, so you’d be perfectly free to ignore what I said in that instance, anyhow. :-)
Actually, you know what? You’re right.
Sailorman, since you’ve been warned about this in the past, and asked specifically not to do it since it’s fucking insulting, you’re banned for a month.
—Myca
Totally. Hell, I even say in my first sentence that it’s a cheap shot.
Absolutely. I actually also specifically say that this kind of anti-intellectualism is bipartisan, and I certainly believe that appealing to common prejudice can be productive for both sides. Since this kind of cheap populism tends to draw on the prejudice of poor white people, it can be equally productive in the ‘screw the rich’ column as it can be in the ‘screw the immigrants’ column … which is why the teabaggers are hugely anti-bailout, though their political leaders (Palin, Beck, et al.) were hugely pro-bailout.
Whoever appeals to that kind of anti-intellectualism, though, I oppose it. I don’t think that it’s more awesome when the left does it … it’s just that right now, anti-intellectualism on the left doesn’t seem to me to be a huge problem.
—Myca
Right. I’m not arguing that this video proves that Palin supporters are uninformed. I am making that as an assertion, not an argument.
These people are uninformed, though, and there’s a large part of the population that seems to think it’s a good thing, and that worries me.
—-Myca
Ya, sure, Amp, i’ll move on. We all have better things to write about.
If you’re ignorant and you run into something you don’t know, what are your options?
1) you can devalue yourself because you don’t know as much and don’t think you can ever know.
2) you can stay neutral, if you believe that you will learn more. I don’t mind finding something I don’t know, and I don’t feel devauled if I don’t know something, because I am reasonably convinced of my ability to learn almost anything I want to learn.
3) you can devalue the knowledge. This relieves you from both any degradation if you CAN’T learn, and also from any degradation if you don’t WANT to learn.
If you look at the state of education in the US and at the available means of learning, it quickly becomes apparent that a lot of people either can’t or won’t learn a lot of things.
And I’m not even talking about climate change, where there are really only a small handful of people with the training and knowledge to understand the studies and compare them and evaluate study design and such. I’m also talking about foreign policy, which is actually fairly hard to understand without investing a fair bit of time. I’m also talking about understanding the Constitution, which continues to be a source of serious dispute among people who spend half their lives studying it.
Many of these things require a fairly decent perspective to understand, which takes effort. But many people don’t have the time for such effort, or don’t have the means, or don’t have the money.
From a cognitive perspective, if they can’t learn and therefore put themselves in category #2 above, that leaves them with the choice either to accept that they are ignorant/devalued, or to assert the irrelevance of the knowledge in question. (note that false knowledge is irrelevant, so asserting falsity also works here.)
Unsurprisingly, they tend to choose to devalue the knowledge rather than to feel bad about themselves.
———-
Since this was probably still being written when I posted #46, I’m allowing it through. —Myca
I think a lot of what we consider anti-intellectualism is actually pro-rationalism/anti-empiricism*. Now, I may be a bit biased because of my strong pro-empiricist and anti-rationalist views (“rationalism”, to me, is the excuse people use to set up dogmatic secular cults) and thus I might be seeing this play out everywhere, but this is what I see happening.
No one will openly admit, even to themselves – especially to themselves – that they are holding on to dogma in defiance of the facts. What they can do, however, is prime themselves to be in defiance of the facts by poisoning the well of those institutions most likely to uncover empirical facts contrary to their views – which is almost exclusively academia’s role in society. When this does happen, they can convince people – again, most importantly themselves – that they’re not, in fact, just ignoring inconvenient facts. They have that poisoned well to draw back upon. They predicted what academia would do, those bastards! And technically, they aren’t committing any ad hoc fallacy here. No, the fallacy happened back in the contingency stage when through their pre-emptive attacks on academia they effectively made their position unfalsifiable.
Modern anti-empiricism in a rather simplified but mostly accurate nutshell: I say penguins can fly! But ornithologists and zoologists can’t be trusted because they’re biased against folk like me! I bet they’ll rig up a study next week showing that they cant! (Next week comes, said study shows up.) See? I predicted this! And since my predictive powers have been vindicated, shouldn’t you trust my initial statement all the more?
Now, a couple of caveats. Academia isn’t perfect. And I don’t just mean that in the sense that their conclusions can be wrong. Dogmatic factions and political interests can wrest control of certain academic disciplines, at least for a short while. (Nowhere is this more true than in archaeology, where what a given nation’s archaeologists want to believe about their cultural ancestors and what was actually true about them can be in conflict. It usually takes third party foreign opinions to help sort it all out.) And new discoveries that contradict existing theories won’t usually be met with a fair mind from those whose reputations and careers have been built on those theories. And also, sometimes – just sometimes – conspiracy theories can be right. But I see academia the same way Winston Churchill saw democracy. Sure, it’s flawed, but what better system do we have? What other institution do we have whose sole mission is to discover the truths about the world? Think tanks? They have the same drawbacks that academia does, except here political agendas are the norm and not the exception. To say, either explicitly, or implicitly through the sum of all your positions, that you’re willing to accept facts that contradict your position but those that come from “mainstream academia” is somehow suspect, is basically saying you’re not willing to accept facts that contradict your position. Who else would devote time and energy to any such research? I could make a drunken bar boast that I’m willing to risk death by being shot, and add in the condition that “as long as it’s not from a gun”, and still be an order of magnitude more honest than that. Bows and arrows still pack a mean punch, after all.
To the extent that the right wing in America is more anti-intellectual, I’d say it mostly has to do with the trend society has been undertaking over the past 300 years, paralleling the rise in prominence of independent academia. Namely, very right wing views (seen from today’s lens) have been getting replaced by increasingly left wing views. A society in which hierarchy was strict and the lower orders knew their place has been replaced with modern social mores where being seen as rich or privileged is often seen as insulting and people who believe that “hierarchy [should be] strict and the lower orders [should know] their place” are considered too simplistically villainous even for the makers of Disney films. Academia played a large role by deflating the underlying social myths with scientific fact (such as that social higher-ups were genetically superior to the riff-raff), but it doesn’t necessarily only have to do this from only a left-wing direction. The Soviet Union was plenty anti-intellectual, and it had to be in order to stave off the academic revolt against the founding myths of their society.
Myca, with all due respect, I don’t see a ban here as warranted, especially since Sailorman wasn’t the one who brought up the meta-topic of motives and changing minds. I’m not a mod, of course, but I feel I had to say this.
That’s really fascinating Sylphhead … I’ve actually been working on a theory that dovetails with that, about the right’s anti-intellectualism being a feature of their principled adherence to Classical Liberalism as opposed to the left’s more Pragmatic Liberal approach.
I was just thinking about it this evening, and when it’s more fleshed out, I’ll post it.
—Myca
Okay, just to be clear, I don’t want to discuss this, especially in Sailorman’s absence, but since I figure others probably have the same reaction and questions that sylphhead does, here goes.
Sailorman has a history of questioning my motives and implying that I’m a hypocrite when I disagree with him.
Examples would include this comment thread and, more recently, here.
When he did the same thing here, (which was the first discussion of motive in the thread) it really pissed me off, and rather than just ban him then (which is what I should have done), I went on the attack. That was my mistake, and I shouldn’t have made it. Don’t respond to an ad hominem with another ad hominem.
Anyhow, since he’d been asked not to imply I’m an unprincipled hypocrite who takes positions simply out of convenience on more than one previous occasion (and even acknowledged that in his post here, saying, “you don’t like it when I say this”) he’s taking a break.
If he’d had some evidence of contradictory positions I’d taken in the past, or of situations where I’d argued one thing for my allies and another for my opponents, I would have a very different attitude. His argument didn’t involve evidence, and was instead just, “I’ll bet you’re a hypocrite.” That’s not nice.
So that’s how my decision making process went.
NOW, if anyone would like to discuss moderation any further, please move it to an open thread.
—Myca
Hmm. I’m a Londoner so more remotely affected by the US political scene.
I wouldn’t feel too smug though about stoopid blind Palin worshippers.
There’s plenty of the same on t’other side of the political divide.
Remember this?
I’m interested in Sarah Palin because she is a woman in politics and I’m seeing alot of very disturbing sexist bitching coming from the left.
When Margaret Thatcher rose to prominence here we never saw anything like the level of anti woman vitriol that has been directed at that woman, and at Hillary also I think.
But the stuff that has been said about Sarah Palin, the crude teenage frat boy joke style commentary etc. To see this coming from the left has been an eye opener for me.
@ Claire,
I seem to remember a lot of feminists with ‘ditch the bitch’ banners, albeit after she was elected.
I think left wing/liberal mysogny is par for the course in politics, and some feminists apporve of it, because they place their politics above their feminist principles and think anything goes.
I’d agree with the first part, but I’m not sure of the second. I’ve seen a lot of sexist criticisms of Palin from the left, but not so much from feminist sources. I may have a skewed picture, since I don’t read most of the big blogs, but the ones I read actually spent a fair amount of time on criticizing sexist attacks on Palin.
—Myca
I haven’t seen many feminists making sexist attacks on Palin (I can’t think of any, offhand.) I have seen lots of liberals do so – and sometimes getting criticized by feminists for it.
Feminist != liberal.
You can follow links from here .
Soooo, following the links, I find …. Daily Kos, Salon, Firedoglake, and HuffPo.
Aren’t those all pretty much standard lefty, rather than feminist-specific?
Not that that makes it okay, obviously, but if the argument is that feminists threw lots of sexist shit at Palin, I dont think that really backs it up.
—Myca
My observation wasn’t specifically about feminists , but about gross sexism from the left, from whom I expected a little better frankly.
It is the slurs and coarse references to her sex that I have found sickening.
( examples would be Andrew Sullivans quip about all the evil in the galaxy issuing from her vagina. Also the t shirt slogans with ‘Sarah Palin is a c*nt’ on them.) I don’t find these witty. She is a woman. So am I. References to her reproductive organs and sexuality make ME feel humiliated somehow.
To see the left using their opponents sex in this way, I dunno, maybe I’m getting old but I’m starting to see things differently.
And I’m finding myself growing in admiration for Sarah Palin. You have to have a backbone to put up with that kind of shit.
The Brontosaurus had a lot of back-bone, but it had very little brain. I wouldn’t want one of them running my country. Palin and the Brontosaurus have much in common. They’d both be comfortable in the Jurassic.
(Not an age joke, but I do think her politics are dark-age-esque.)
Yeah. I can understand that. The left says a lot of mean things about creationists, too, so I’m starting to want one writing my science curriculum.
—Myca
Admiration doesn’t have to mean wanting someone to be in office, Myca. In many ways I admire Hillary Clinton a LOT – but I’d vote for people I like a lot less, but who share my politics, before I’d vote for her.
And I think it contributes to a decent political culture if we can admit that people on the other side are stand-up figures, in our view, or have some other merit. Frex, I think it says something extremely decent about Joe Biden that after umpteen years in the Senate, he was not even close to being a wealthy man. (Whether the Obama administration crashes and burns or soars like the eagle, he’ll probably be able to do pretty well in post-VP retirement, and I don’t begrudge him that.) Either he’s just profoundly stupid, which doesn’t seem to be the case other than in terms of foot-mouth disease, or he’s an honest guy, and my money is on column B.
(And how sad is it that “he’s a genuinely honest guy” is high praise, rather than something routine?)
Yep, I see the parallel between dealing with people who discount your chosen belief (creationism) vs. discounting your sex/gender (women), Myca. ;) Unless that’s not what you meant?
Palin putting up with that shit regarding her gender doesn’t get my vote, but does get my admiration _in that regard_. I also have admiration for Hillary Clinton dealing with the kind of shit that was tossed at her. Nor was that admiration why I voted for her in the primaries (or in New York).
Palin actually exists, though. Palin (and sylphhead’s pedantics) 1, Brontosaurus (and politicalguineapig) 0.
No, no, I certainly didn’t mean that she ought to be discounted because of her gender … it was just a gentle reminder that, 1) as Robert says, admiration and political support are two different things, and 2) admiring someone because people say mean things about them doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I mean, Palin’s an interesting case, right … I think she’s been attacked unfairly (and in a sexist way) an awful lot … but I also think that she’s deliberately propagated falsehoods and unfairly attacked others, and has done so an awful lot.
So, admire her? No, not much. She is so much of what is wrong with American politics.
But it doesn’t take admiration for her personally to wish for sexist attacks on her to end. She has a right to be free of that kind of stuff … it doesn’t take a virtue test to earn the right to be free of sexism. Everyone deserves it.
—Myca
I should have been clearer before, I was referring to the link to the Cintra Wilson piece, I linked to Jezebel because the first response to that post expressed the ‘anything goes’ line that some feminists feel when it comes to politics.
feminists threw lots of sexist shit at Palin,
Not quite;
I think left wing/liberal mysogny is par for the course in politics, and some feminists apporve of it,
This is an important distinction to make, that it is mostly tacit approval of the sexism of others, for instance, saying that sexism is not sexism when it’s applied to SP respresents one strain of this thinking.
As for feminist specific, if a feminist speaks that’s specific enough.
I was using Brontosaurus as a metaphor. I could have said Apatosaurus, but I didn’t know if people would know that one. Actually I could have used that joke about any of the big herbivorous dinosaurs. (Except for the duckbills, because they were fairly medium-sized, and they were pretty smart.)
As for Palin, according to Descartes, she and a lot of other people don’t actually exist. “I think therefore I am,” doesn’t seem to apply there.
Actually, Apatosaurus = Brontosaurus. Same species — was given two different names by competing fossil hunters (yes, they used to compete, and the image of competitive 19th century fossil hunting expeditions is highly amusing, look it up). Apatosaurus was the first name. Brontosaurus the second. As a consequence, Brontosaurus — although it’s popular with lay people — is an obsolete term. All Brontosaurs are Apatosaurs, but not all Apatosaurs are Brontosaurs because technically there are no Brontosaurs.
If you wish to generate lots of names for sauropods, and are willing to stand some chance of creating inaccurate ones, just add a word meaning “large” to “saur” and you’ll come out right more than wrong. No reallybigausaurus yet, but give it time.
Actually, I thought that the ‘brontosaurus’ was an unreal species – a bit like ‘Piltdown Man’. As I recall, a cetosaur’s skull (very rounded on top) was mistakenly used to complete an apatosaur’s skeleton. I could actually go and check this out, of course, but it’s easier to allow myself to be corrected by Alas’s better-informed readers.
A “Brontosaurus” is an Apatosaur body with a Camarasaur head. Given the circumstances of its initial discovery, it’s highly likely that it was a deliberate hoax, like Piltdown Man.