100% of newspapers and magazines -and I will add about 96% of the books -are making an erroneous portrayal of reality. Sometimes a writer uses the fiction mode of writing in order to escape this trap and transmit a bit more of reality. But reality is nearby, nevertheless. We know the reality when we simply shut up and observe the world around us. For example there an important town, the Village of Oak Park, which I grew up next to, and where my father made money from a business. Oak Park, Illinois, is thought of as rather more educated and cultural and also more on the liberal side in some things. But I have had many experiences of the opposite, even in “good old Oak Park.” There are some really virulent persons who hate minorities, or women. They are there, in Oak Park; I have met them. So one sees this by just scratching under the surface a little. These kinds of people are very common; they are found also in allegedly “liberal” towns. All you need is to pay attention to everyday life. What the books, newspapers, or magazines are saying is not so. It is a whole manufactured reality.
Over the past 75 years (or I could suggest it has been since around 1940 or 1945, putting the last real intellectuality in the 1930s) what has been built up is a style, a whole “way of speaking,” in which reality is not being presented at all. There are supposed to be two major trends, liberal and conservative. Most people do not follow these nuanced “liberal” and “conservative” arguments. I repeat: this is all wrong.
There were a better intellectuals who got started in the thirties (eg. Chomsky). Those persons are now dying out, and what is left? What we see now is an intellectual depiction of a world that does not even really exists. And Charlie Kirk bought into all of this. To succeed, first he had to buy into the already existing general deterioration, the deteriorated intellectual world. So, why not present oneself as peaceable? He preferred to remain civil at all costs, which buys into the fiction that this is real, and, for example, the odd notion that the Right is not violent. That is not true — unless we only mean the big phonies on the Right. The general run of persons adhering to the view of rightists or conservatives are violent. They really are. Is it possible that Kirk never thought of talking to one of them? That he had no idea of what these people are like?
That seems unlikely or impossible. How he have been that stupid? Many persons are violent. Many on the Right are violent. It is so obvious. It is staring in your face. One may only avoid tis reality by strictly adhering to the false discourse that we have.
It is certainly safe to pretend to be peaceable. This is superficial. And why is that? Why is the pretending even important? Maybe, to be peaceable is essentially the same thing as being peaceable? One might argue that the apparent truth is sufficient. Maybe it does not matter what the reality is; it is just discourse, rhetoric, after all. And who cares if it is a veneer or not.
But I am arguing that it matters; and, that one can transcend the apparent qualities of an intellectual presentation by simply looking away from intellectualism and looking around one. Charlie Kirk could have done that. He could have seen what his followers were like (e.g. his gun lovers). Instead, he chose to live in the intellectual bubble that was waiting for him. And, in that deteriorated intellectual environment, he thrived —until he was sadly slaughtered by a video gamer and superficial leftist. While he was active and alive, all he needed to do was follow the general trend of the deteriorated intellectual discourse that had by then existed for 75 years, a world that is entirely given over to propaganda. Those person had been successful in creating an inaccurate view of reality — something that serves the educated class. He bought into that. His views align completely with the historical “Right,” but the intellectual deterioration of which I speak is itself not of the “Right” any more than, e.g. Disney is on the “Right.”
The historical Right, in it’s connection to the broad masses, contains a lot more violent behavior that does the left. It is totally obvious. That is to say, it is obvious unless you read the intellectual materials we are soaking in. The typical person who choosed the right over the left is not at all a peaceable person. Again: this is obvious—and, yet, the need to say so makes me feel strange.
With the intellectual conditioning we are subject to we evaluate his influence only in terms of where he stood in this bogus reality, the discourse world, a place where of a lot of well-compensated intellectuals stick to an artificial reality. All of these intellectuals have departed from the real world and live in the space of magazine or newsprint rhetoric.
The murdered intellectual Charlie Kirk operated within a cloud of cultural bullshit. For Chomsky, to say that somebody is an “intellectual” does not amount to praise. Chomsky said some rather negative things about them.
But what is an intellectual? The concept is very strange. Suppose you go down the hall and there’s a Nobel prize-winning physicist who spends seventy hours a week in his laboratory. We don’t call him an intellectual. He’s a great physicist, but not an intellectual. Now, take the janitor who cleans his floor, who never went to college. Suppose he happens to have a lot of insight into and understanding about human life, social relations, the political system and so on — he’s not called an intellectual. The people who are called intellectuals are those who use their privilege to speak out about issues of public concern. They’re called intellectuals. It’s a very strange category. They may not know what they’re talking about, but that doesn’t matter — they’re intellectuals!
What the ‘point’ of this sort of social behavior is is anybody’s guess. But I think it better just to reject the whole intellectual mileau as not being real, as being in a state of deterioration. Chomsky was more optimistic than I am; his optimism comes across; see article: [https://poetscountry.com/An-Interview-with-Noam-Chomsky]
The machine generates mass popularity. That is the technique; and so companies like Disney exist only because of their many many thousands of customers. If these subscribers leave due to the way Disney was caving into a nutcase president (Trump), their empire starts to fall apart. Now they wonder: what happens next? So, we must re-instate Kimmel.
Reality intruded for a moment. The customers started for the exists. Disney restored that person, Jimmy Kimmel. The deteriorated intellectual environment stumbled.
Ordinary people see through this bullshit view of the world. It is the “intellectuals” who do not get it.
Let us try to understand what I'm saying. I am saying that the portray of reality in this society is erroneous. Newspapers do not depict reality. Maybe it is impossible to do that. Ordinary persons have some grasp of reality, however. We seem to have some expectation that literature will depict real life, but that is not quite the case. Where do we find an solid understanding of what life is like? I would say that is found in the minds of ordinary persons, not in literature. I follows that literature, including newspapers and magazines do not depict the real world. They make up a fantasy about the world. So, in writing this that is what I was trying to say.
However there is this discourse that divides eveything up into a liberal side and a conservative side. What is going on here? There are these intellectual trends. I don't know what the significance of that is. To be an "educated" person one needs to take a side on this. It must have some relevance. And then there are the "intellectuals" They are held to be the experts in all such discussions. But can anyone really follow it? So what is this? The intellectual discussion seems to be a sort of "rite of passage" for being an educated person. You are not going to be taken seriously unless you can perform in the social debate.
Paradoxically, and in contrast to the above, there do emerge from time to time some persons, in the intellectual sphere of life, who do exceptionally well at this discourse. I follow some of these persons when they show up, e.g. I read Andrew Sullivan, I read, Judith Butler, I read Noam.
What does it all add up to? That is a question. The intellectual discussions that rise above the fray can be actually quite engaging. Now, suddenly, we feel sophisticated and smart.
Some of the discussions are actually pretty good.
So, what comes out of this is the idea that these intellectual discussions deteriorated over time. The idea is being offered of a general deterioration.
(This has been an "auto-commentary" on my own piece)
You’re more normal than most politicians.