As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents,

more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

H.L. Mencken
The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

We are swiftly approaching a great and glorious Inauguration Day.

...criminal. But he's not stupid. And we only let him off the hook when we say he is. Plus we sound like the intellectual snobs that the Radical RW say we are.

NGU.

devoid of nuance or subtlety, all or nothing, black and white, rigid, inflexible, linear and irreversible .... are completely stupid.

I want my President to be smarter than I am. If that makes me an intellectual snob, lump me in with Mencken.

...devoid of nuance or subtlety, all or nothing, black and white, rigid, inflexible, linear and irreversible. But that doesn't make him stupid. In fact his real danger is the fact that he and his administration are calculatingly smart. And to deny that is to grossly underestimate the enemy. According to Sun Tsu, that's a fatal flaw in war. I'd prefer to understand the enemy and thus be able to defeat him, rather than hold on to a self-indulgent prejudice. What's more important to you, winning or name-calling?

NGU.

I am just so righteously pissed off right now. <sigh>

...into action. And it won't happen if we're blinded by anger and prejudice.

NGU.

Intellectual =/=> snob.

This war between those who believe intellectual ==> snob and those who dont, has to be won by us, the good guys :-) We forfeit the war when we lose the battle of the words in the pre-game stage itself.

Be intellectual, wear it on your sleeve and dont compromise on its importance to modern living by attaching the snob adjective to it.

Why do you think they were able to paint Al Gore like that?? And on this one, they've already won the battle of the words. This has been one of the Radical RW's most enduring scripts. And by buying into it, we just reinforce it. Who cares if a group of bumpkins knows you have a high IQ or not?? I sure don't. But do I care that they're consistently voting for GWBush** and his cronies because they know in their hearts that John Kerry and Al Gore and their ilk are intellectual snobs and wonks.

FWIW, some Dems are intellectual. Some are plain idiots. Some Radical RWers are idiots. Some are intellectual snobs. But to say we're all one (good) thing and they're all the (bad) other is exactly the kind of two-dimensional, black-n-white thinking denounced in another post here. And it's self-aggrandizing thinking that allows us to time and again scratch our heads and wonder why people don't flock to our side with open arms - and doesn't allow us to figure out a way to make that happen.

NGU.

My contention is that it is because we concede the attachment of snob to intellectual as somehow being valid that they push us more into a corner -- soon there wont be any space left for us.

Buying doesnt simply mean not/validating in our minds, it is the public discourse part that I am talking about. My principle is to never say snob with intelletual, for starters (there are a lot of other language decisions that I have made :))

The smiley (in my original posting) was there to take the sting off the us vs them -- I dont mean to imply either block is homogeneously good or bad nor that each individual is all good or all bad. I do concede that it is particularly ironic that I am complaining against ceding language ground and I was myself so loose with my own language. In my in-person conversations, I usually begin by saying that "there are always exceptions to most generalizations, but" ... :-)

He may have a sociopath's ruthlessness and guile, but it's obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that the boy's brainpan is half empty. The rightwing squalls about snobbery (or Bush-hating) because they can't counter with an instance of the idiot actually being smart -- he doesn't read, he's never written anything, his thoughts are banal and are delivered incoherently.

I won't help them perpetuate the bizarre pretense that we actually have a fully functioning president. We went through this before with Reagan and it only serves their purposes if we let them do it again.

...GW's in any way legitimate, or that he's been acting competently. But to say he's an idiot lets him off the hook. You bring up Reagan. We went through the same routine with him. We called him senile, doddering, two-dimensional, stupid etc. And middle America said, give him a break, he's a kindly old man.

Same thing here. Middle America says give Bush** a break, he's not all bright, but he's a nice guy. I say HOLD THE FUCKER RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING HE AND HIS CRIMINAL ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY. That's not going to happen if we paint him as a silly fool. GW summed it up best himself: the soft bigotry of low expectations. I'd add the soft, FATAL bigotry of low expectations.

The rightwing squalls about snobbery (or Bush-hating) - not because they can't counter with an instance of the idiot actually being smart - but BECAUSE IT WORKS. Because it allows this illegitimate criminal to rule as if he has a man-date. And just because someone doesn't read, has never written anything, has banal thoughts and delivers them incoherently, that doesn't mean he's stupid. It means he's lazy and irresponsible.

NGU.

can't be seen as an actual electoral minority of the misinformed and deformed. The prophet gets it wrong from the direction. The moron defines the people and cheats them into looking like the whole people.