Not Joe Six-Pack

[kevin_standlee]

I've been avoiding most mention of politics here, partially because at least as far as the presidential election goes, it hardly matters how I vote, on account of I live in California, and it's a forgone conclusion how this state votes. (Happily, this means we don't have many presidential campaign commercials in our market.) The things on my ballot about which I'm passionate are voting in favor of Proposition 1A (High Speed Rail) and against Proposition 8 (undo existing same-sex marriages and prohibit future ones). But anyway, mckitterick pointed me at an article about "Joe Six-Pack" that resonated with me.

Mind you, I don't drink beer, and I have a B.Sc. in computer science and have a professional job that means that most people would consider me one of the Filthy Rich, despite my being under a crushing debt load and living in a medium-size apartment and not in the lap of luxury. Therefore, I can't be "Joe Six-Pack." Still, I was very taken by the article to which I linked above.

I've been reading a book about the growing anti-intellectualism of the USA. It's depressing reading. I hope we as a people aren't going to say that intellectually incurious people (a phrase I picked up from jaylake) like the current president and the woman running for vice president on the Republican ticket are "What America Should Be."

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've been reading a book about the growing anti-intellectualism of the USA.

It's not new. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) by Richard Hofstadter. Classic.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Sure. Specifically, I'm reading Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason.

You know, my grandparents, who raised me, were not that highly educated. My grandfather dropped out of the tenth grade to provide for his family. My grandmother completed high school and started college but her family couldn't afford it. They were proud of me graduating from college, not resentful.

[peanut13171.livejournal.com]

Jacoby was on Bill Moyers talking about her book a while back and yeah, it was depressing. Bill Moyers almost always has the Best Guests and the most interesting topics! I always make sure I catch his show on PBS.

If you read some of the comments made by the people who are going to vote for Palin, you know how screwed we are. "She's just like me." "She's a mom and can juggle career and kids." Worse, "She's pretty and feisty." ARGHHH!

[dancingguy.livejournal.com]

You know, Kevin, I thought you paid more attention that that.

1: "intellectually incurious"
Joe Biden has been in the Senate for 36 years, claims to be a "Constitutional Scholar", and still doesn't know which Article of the Constitution talks about the powers of the Legislative Branch (it's Article 1, the Article that lists ALL of the VP's powers).

If you have no clue what Joe's talking about, he sounds knowledgeable. If you do, he sounds like what he is, an idiot. From the Constitution, to Lebanon, to just about everything else he talked about during the debate, Joe routinely and repeatedly made crap up (list of 22 falsehoods here).

Barack Obama. Do you have even a single example of Obama being thoughtful? About anything? Let's consider his "intellectual history":
Won't release his college grades. Won't release his senior thesis (his wife's is poorly written whiny racialist pap). Went through law school without having, so far as anyone can tell, a serious intellectual conversation with anyone (when every thinks you agree with them, you haven't had a real conversation with any of them). Has refused to release his law review article(s) (the one people found is pretty damn bland. I know, because I read it). Taught at the University of Chicago without ever engaging a single conservative there in a discussion of their differing views. Was involved in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (search the site, he's got tons of links) to improve the education of Chicago children. Program was a failure, because they were more interested in political indoctrination than in actually educating the kids. Been in government since 1996. Doesn't have a single signature issue, has no real accomplishments, was and is pretty much a straight Democrat Ticket Party Line voter (voted with the Democrats 96% of the Time in the US Senate. IIRC, that's the highest rate for any Senator during his time there).

He is such a vapid, doctrinaire lefty that it never even occurred to him that being buddies with an unrepentant anti-American terrorist might drive away voters, or that people might have a problem with him spending 20 years in the pews of a church run by an anti-American bigot.

If that's what you call "intellectually curious", I'll take a hamburger. It at least will offer me something of value.

If you want to see real "lack of intellectual curiosity", look at how the press deals with any issues about Obama, such as his ties to anti-American terrorists. Now that's an solid example of people being "intellectually incurious".


Prop 8:
Couldn't you at least honestly describe the Initiative: "The Initiative to reverse the utterly illegitimate abuse of judicial power where 4 CA judges invented a 'right' to Same Sex Marriage"?

Or, do you actually think that the CA State Constitution does contain a right to SSM, somehow placed in there when none of the voters were looking? Because even the 4 thugs on the Court don't actually believe that (if they did, they would have used those parts, rather than "making their case" from State Statutes).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

How you word something is entirely dependent upon what you consider important. I do not believe that you can be convinced on your main points, and therefore I am going to give an analogy that you may or may not understand based on my involvement with transit advocacy: The exact same project can be described in two different ways, depending on your own beliefs:

1. An important investment in vital transportation infrastructure.

2. A costly and wasteful subsidy to a failed form of transportation.

...and it doesn't matter that the proposal is! It could be a bond issue to build more highways, expand airport capacity, extend BART to San Jose, or construct a high-speed rail system; no matter what it is, you will see different people describe it in the two ways above, completely dependent upon their own opinions about the value of the project.

Now I encourage you to not be fannish and see if you can understand the analogy with your dispute over how Proposition 8's title and summary should be worded.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Specifically to your point about Palin and Bush: Neither of them are stupid. But both of them appeal to a disappointingly large proportion of the American electorate who think that Stupid is Good.

BTW, criticizing Biden on getting the constitutional article reference wrong is IMO stooping to criticizing a typographical or gramatical error on an e-mail exchange -- it's juvenile. At least Biden has some idea of how the constitution is supposed to work. I would predict that Sarah Palin would fail the civics examination that this country requires immigrants to take to become Americans. Mind you, I think most people who are already Americans would also fail that examination.

[dancingguy.livejournal.com]

BTW, criticizing Biden on getting the constitutional article reference wrong is IMO stooping to criticizing a typographical or gramatical error on an e-mail exchange

Go back and read what I said.

The problem isn't that Biden said "Article 1" when he meant "Article 2". The problem is that the complete and entire list of the VPs duties is in Article 1, and Article 1 is about the Legislative Branch.

To put it another way, Biden claimed that Cheney was dishonest for claiming that the VP is at least partially a legislative office. Biden's "backing" for this claim is that the VP's duties are defined in Article 1 (true), and that Article 1 is about the Executive (false). If he actually knew what he was talking about, he never would have brought this up, because the VP's duties / powers (he is the presiding officer of the Senate, and he gets to vote in case of ties) are legislative.

At least Biden has some idea of how the constitution is supposed to work.

No, he doesn't. Because if he did he never would have brought that up. 36 years in the Senate, a "Constitutional Scholar", and he can't tell the difference between a Legislative Duty and an Executive one.

I would predict that Sarah Palin would fail the civics examination that this country requires immigrants to take to become Americans.

Well, I'd happily bet you a good deal of money that you're wrong. She's a governor. Governors are all policy wonks. She, additionally, is a book worm.

You really shouldn't be getting your information about Republicans from the MSM. Unless, that is, you like being lied to.


But both of them appeal to a disappointingly large proportion of the American electorate who think that Stupid is Good.

Um, no. We don't think that "stupid is good." We think that a lot of people who think they're "smart" are, in reality, functional idiots who you wouldn't trust with a bread knife, let alone real power. We think that intellectual snobs who've never actually accomplished anything, but think their "elite education" qualifies them to run everything, are worthless losers worthy of contempt, not respect. And we think that character and judgment (Ayers, Wright) are more valuable than a Harvard degree.

Now, do we think it's necessarily the case that a Harvard degree means you've been educated beyond your competence, and had any actually sense in you destroyed? No.

But it's likely, given how the "elite" Universities seem more interested in indoctrination than in teaching critical reasoning.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It really doesn't matter how much Governor Palin does or does not know about how the federal government works -- I didn't need John McCain's selection of her as his running mate to tell me how much I distrust his judgment. His systematic attempts to destroy what little passenger rail we have in this country would have been enough for me to vote for anyone other than him.

In addition, while the Democrats may not be much better, I have some hope that they may at least slow the attempts to turn the USA into a police state with a President who thinks that he can rule by decree. It's bad enough that there are IMO a lot of people in this country who think that "the President should make a law" without having the office-holder him/herself think that's so.

And it may be interesting to watch as the Republicans rediscover states' rights. (Whichever party is not in power always rediscovers states' rights, while forgetting they ever existing when they are in power.)

[dancingguy.livejournal.com]

Ah, so all the bullshit about "intellectual curiosity" was nothing be a lame excuse for you to be a snob while pretending you actually have valid reasons for what you were going to do regardless.

And to think I used to respect you.

Let's be clear here:

Joe Biden is an idiot. He's not "intellectually curious", because he would need to have a functioning intellect to to qualify, and he doesn't. He's a joke, a buffoon, and he earned the < 1% of the vote he got in the Iowa voting.

Barack Obama is a party-line Democrat who has never displayed the least bit of evidence that he's thought about anything.

You are so "intellectually incurious" that you didn't bother to find out anything about the people you're supporting before launching your paean to them, because if you had you would have come up with something you could actually justify.

Bye.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

See, I told you it was useless to argue with a True Believer. Oddly enough, I agree completely with your posted story from The Onion.

You've defined "snob" in a strange way, but do that extent you are acting like a whole lot of other people in our society. The USA has been increasingly becoming anti-intellectual and relying solely on what might be considered "magical thinking." BTW, people on the left end of the ideological spectrum are just as capable of such fuzzy-brained thinking, of which I despair just as much.

For the record, I'm not at all happy with what is likely to happen to the economy under an Obama administratrion; however, I'm sufficiently worried about the creeping loss of civil rights in this county under the current Republicans, and even more worried that McCain would continue that trend, that I'm prepared to vote for the Democrats to slow down -- it's probably impossible to stop -- the creeping police state into which we're slowly slipping.

My own personal political beliefs tend toward libertarianism, if it weren't for the fact that there are so many loony libs out there who think that libertarianism is "I have the right to do anything I want, and you don't."

I'm sorry that you feel you have to pour so much hatred onto someone simply because you disagree with them politically. Presumably I'm going to be one of the people up against the wall when the True Right Thinking People are in charge. But I do remember the series of quotes that ends with "And when they came for me, there was nobody to speak up," so therefore I feel I have to do something now before it's too late.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I don't actually have much of a problem with people being snobs.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I guess it matters what one considers a "snob." I am disdainful of people who openly distrust people solely because they are intelligent. Unfortunately, it's politically popular to pick on smart people and to condescend to "Joe Six-Pack."

[daveon.livejournal.com]

As I said elsewhere, I believe that life should be aspirational not flat. A snob looks down on other people, but there are times when people should be looked down on. Your comments about anti-intellectualism are particularly on the mark for that.

I think the qualative difference is this: you shouldn't look down on people because you think you're superior. You should be allowed to if they are deliberately acting inferior because they think its clever or they feel comfortable being that way.

I am a food snob. I like eating and I like good food and drink and I like to try new things. I can think of nothing worse than going to a Cheesecake Factory in a new city because you're scared that you're going to not like the food and you want a big portion.

We're not on the planet all that long, we really should be paying more attention to just how amazing living actually is.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd happily bet you a good deal of money that you're wrong.

Well, it won't happen, but I'll take that bet.

Palin as a policy wonk :) Warms the cockles of my heart that one does.