Garbanzo Toons

American Digest

One of my favorite blogs is American Digest. It's full of fascinating posts that are brilliantly written. Even his links are worth reading. My only complaint is that sometimes I get sucked in and between the new posts and links within the posts, I spend too much time on the computer.

This post struck me in a number of different ways. First of all it begins with Harold Bloom, who I was upset to learn suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Maybe I'm too naive, but after reading The Western Cannon and his savage attacks on the various academics who want to replace western literature with multicultural drivel, I thought he was . . . well . . . I didn't think he would turn out to be a typical intellectual moonbat.

Second, it's extremly perceptive, it describes the BDS suffering intellectual so well.

Third, like many of his posts, it's funny . . . and caustic. I like that combination.

Gerard Van der leun, who writes American Digest, like me and so many other bloggers, used to be a left-leaner. So when he writes about lefties, he writes from experience, as he makes clear in this post.

So it is with the PAI "Professional American Intellectual." Indeed, many of them have wheedled their way into The Bubble of the Suddenly Wealthy since he always needs affirmation and they always need a grant. One of the first thing a PAI learns in school is how to mirror money. And money loves to be mirrored as much as the witch in "Sleeping Beauty." PAIs proliferate next to and within effortless money and the vast dark towers of American philanthropy. As Exhibits A to D I give you Senator and Mrs. Heinz-Kerry, the Hollywood Clintons, the George Soros Brigade, and the Huffington Huff of 2004 if you can bear to recall their antics. There are others and they are legion. This is, as I said, a fat country. We can afford a lot of them. We even let them jet about the nation to instruct us on how to live and think and believe and be. All the old snake oil of "the betters" who always know better and love to butt in to people's lives. Sometimes, since they are parasites on the body politic, we even allow them to run for office.

Looking at these intersecting bubble palaces wafting about America today, one can only feel irritated and saddened the inhabitants are compelled, en masse it seems, to move from hating Bush to hating The People as well. When this happens the murmured subtext is always thus: Oh, pity and fear the poor " Little People" who did not go to the right schools, read the right books, wear the right clothes, summer in the right places, speak the right French phrases, and have all the right friends. At parties, summer houses, and lunches in New York City for over 30 years I heard this nattering as a constant theme. I am ashamed now to say that I nattered right along with the rest. After all, once you've got a seat at the round table you've gotta walk the walk and talk the talk. That person standing behind your chair isn't the waiter and can't wait to sit down.

When you read this post, follow the links. And while you're there read this one too.

Ah well, the Enlightenment lies buried along the Western Front. It had some nice ideals, but left us living rapt in the spell of Reason. Now we are a "reasonable" society, a "scientific people" swaddled in a million theories of management -- convinced that all can be, somehow, managed through the limitless employment of Reason. Many of us, as we have seen in the past month, worship "intelligence uber alles," that strange and deadly viral god that kills the soul long before it kills the nations that embrace it. We see the apotheosis of this worship leap up from the dazed lands of Europe. We see it arc across our own skies.

You won't regret it. You may spend too much time there, though.

Labels: American Digest, BDS, books, Harold Bloom

posted by Harry @ 6:20 PM