Not In It For The Attention, Mind You…
21st November 2009
And lately it seems to work both ways. If you think carbon is dangerous (more on this later) but there’s no cause for concern over giving Kalid Shiekh Mohammed a civilian trial, you must possess some keen insight, perhaps some X-ray vision, that gives you wisdom beyond the three dimensions and the earthly domain.
If, on the other hand, you just call things as they are — taxes hurt the economy, if you execute the bad guy he won’t kill any more little kids, cities with magnanimous social programs have teeming masses of homeless because if I was homeless I’d head down there too, maybe kids have attention deficit problems because they aren’t getting their asses whipped anymore — then you’re more mundane. You have demonstrated no irony, therefore you haven’t demonstrated this keen extra-dimensional insight. Therefore you must not have it, therefore you must be something of a dimwit. And far more horrifyingly still, you’re a little bit on the boring side.
It’s not a drive toward left-wing politics; if it was, it would be far less dangerous because it would capture the fascination only of those who are enamored of left-wing politics. This phenomenon has a deep impact on people who don’t give a rat’s ass about politics. It’s a mistaken realization of what intellectual wherewithal really is. It is an excessive fascination with where above-average intelligence might take a thought, with an inadequate understanding of how exactly that works.