This is very amusing. As we hear about the intellectual decline of the Left, Rep Chip Roy stands on the House floor and tells the world Conservatives in Congress have done nothing. The poorest states in the United States vote for Conservatives. The regions with the poorest health outcomes and largest state COVID deaths vote Red. Red states have the lowest longevity. Conservative fiscal planning led to the death of the economy of the state of Kansas.
Conservatives are planning an authoritarian government. Ohio Republicans wanted a 10-year old to carry a fetus to term and charged a woman suffering from the trauma of a miscarriage with a crime. In Texas, Republicans in Texas wanted a woman with a nonviable pregnancy to be at death’s door before she could get medical care.
One more thing. I wonder why we give so much credit to Cornell West, just for being erudite and congenial. I confess to having read a lot of his stuff when I was young and foolish. But his commentary on Claudine Gay, for instance, renders him a demagogue. It's as simple as that. And he really needs to run for President because Biden with his demagoguery about Jim Crow isn't black enough? West's entire act of incantation and calling everyone brother and sister has become repellent. The charm has evaporated.
I have actually agreed with Glenn about Cornell West being a thoughtful leftie with whom I disagree but also respect. I guess until now, that is. I have to say this from him is over a line I do not think any amount of erudition or good cheer can overcome. Me and Cornell part ways on what he says here about the long overdue firing of Claudine Gay:
“The same figures and forces enabling the ethnic cleansing and genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza—Ackman, Blum, Summers and others—push out the first Black woman president of Harvard!”
This post confirms my impression that Conservatives have a very narrow view of merit outside their very narrow point of view. There are a multitude of Black intellectuals who dismantle Conservative arguments. I laugh because Conservatives saw no difference between the qualifications of Raphael Warnock and Hershel Walker. Fortunately, there is no need for Black intellectuals to meet a Conservative standard. Christopher Rufo makes clear that only a limited rangef ideas Will be acceptable.
It isn’t just black public intellectuals in decline, it’s everything, and I don’t mean that in a doomsaying way, I mean we’re literally just a hell of a lot dumber or, at any rate, less intellectually capable than we were when Cornel West established himself as a cultural figure. Blame the internet, blame comic book movies, blame Wokeness, blame Trump, blame what you like, but that seems utterly beyond dispute. Kendi is a symptom of a decline larger than the sphere in which he operates, he is a product of our general inability to comprehend anything more complex than heroes and villains. It’s hard to imagine someone in the mainstream nowadays writing something even a tenth as compelling as that Coates reparations piece.
The Left has been attacking intellect and reason itself for so long that it is no surprise that so-called liberal intellectuals have less of the former and often fail to consult the latter in the fashion we came to expect.
I appreciate he's your pal, and I respect that you're showing support for him, but it seems to me that Cornell West has ridden that same decline as well. Check his twitter of late. He's busy posting antisemitic nonsense about genocide/ethnic cleansing in Gaza, as though those words have malleable meanings. He's apoplectic about the resignation of a mediocre plagiarist from Harvard which he's trying to code as the height of racism. He's reading off of the same ridiculous script as the people you say are emblematic of this decline. How is he any different? What am I missing?
Is it that there is a trend away from a captive black liberal voting block at an orators' beck and call? Is it a trend towards color blindness? Is it that blacks now trend toward individuality? All positive trends if correct.
My favorite example is from Gergen and Shields to Shields and Brooks to Brooks and Capehart. What was a staple of political fare I consumed for decades, deteriorated into something unlistenable because someone I used to know and her colleagues now run the diversity police at PBS. Thus the inarticulate clown who shares an identity marker with James Baldwin had to be appointed Shields' successor. Jim Lehrer turned his creation over to a bunch of idiots and kids because he wanted to make a cool exit in his old age and the rest followed the market forces, red meat for the subscribers, urban liberals in this case. The listener's question cannot be separated from the general polarization and decline of the discourse on both the Right and the Left, IMO. The deterioration of the Republican party into a Trump cult is the mirror image of the leftist race madness, along with January 6 and the rest of it. Arguably, the Right went crazy long before the Left did, starting with Newt Gingrich, and we got nothing but bomb throwers ever since. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the people who subscribe to this channel vilify Liz Cheney, think that COVID vaccination is an evil ploy, and vote for Trump. The Left has built its racism cult unchecked by reality in part because there's been no dialogue to be had. We haven't even yet reached parity on the crazy train. To keep up, the Democrats would have to run Al Sharpton, not Joe Biden.
Good clip -- I saw him once in Irving Farm on 3rd Street in the village in 2019. (Did a better job keeping my cool then than I did when I was sitting next to Ben Rhodes, whom I photographed at Blue Bottle in Union Station in DC last year.)
If you buy into the idea that black Americans face oppression, then the loss of Coates and the rise of Kendi is lamentable. In some ways, the likes of Kendi are expected when blacks must all be self-taught sirens of doom under the yoke of oppression. But in the long term we appreciate those like Tubman.
Today the courage and persistence of Tubman is not necessary. What if the overwhelming majority of problems black Americans face are indeed merely first world problems? Interestingly enough, I have personally heard stories of black Harvard students complaining that they were mistaken for students at Northeastern as an example of the harsh racism they endured.
Let me put it simply, a world of microaggressions does not lead men like Thurgood Marshall into battle. They find other things to do. Where is today's Great Migration? Nothing moves us so compellingly. We scrape the interwebz for outrage. I wonder if the fate of St. George entered the minds of the Harvard Corporation in their hunt for Gay. Is that as bad as it gets? Search committees for public intellectuals?
I posted this on YouTube but will share here as well...
I think it's unfair, and somewhat disingenuous, similar to many of the victim-centric arguments on the Left, to say that "Black intellectualism has declined in quality due to white people." That's a convenient scapegoat, but still only a scapegoat. I sense that Glenn was just being ironic in saying that, but the larger point is still important. Seems clear that people like Kendi are not qualified to even comment on the startling level of scholarship of someone like West. So, the decline is perplexing. Then again, maybe there is not really a decline, but an ascendence of ideas we find less-than-intellectual? One man's decline is another man's "we finally getting ours!" 😁
This is very amusing. As we hear about the intellectual decline of the Left, Rep Chip Roy stands on the House floor and tells the world Conservatives in Congress have done nothing. The poorest states in the United States vote for Conservatives. The regions with the poorest health outcomes and largest state COVID deaths vote Red. Red states have the lowest longevity. Conservative fiscal planning led to the death of the economy of the state of Kansas.
Conservatives are planning an authoritarian government. Ohio Republicans wanted a 10-year old to carry a fetus to term and charged a woman suffering from the trauma of a miscarriage with a crime. In Texas, Republicans in Texas wanted a woman with a nonviable pregnancy to be at death’s door before she could get medical care.
Why would anyone be proud to be a Conservative?
Hilarious .. “.... because white people have lost their mind” .. I agree!!
One more thing. I wonder why we give so much credit to Cornell West, just for being erudite and congenial. I confess to having read a lot of his stuff when I was young and foolish. But his commentary on Claudine Gay, for instance, renders him a demagogue. It's as simple as that. And he really needs to run for President because Biden with his demagoguery about Jim Crow isn't black enough? West's entire act of incantation and calling everyone brother and sister has become repellent. The charm has evaporated.
I have actually agreed with Glenn about Cornell West being a thoughtful leftie with whom I disagree but also respect. I guess until now, that is. I have to say this from him is over a line I do not think any amount of erudition or good cheer can overcome. Me and Cornell part ways on what he says here about the long overdue firing of Claudine Gay:
“The same figures and forces enabling the ethnic cleansing and genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza—Ackman, Blum, Summers and others—push out the first Black woman president of Harvard!”
This post confirms my impression that Conservatives have a very narrow view of merit outside their very narrow point of view. There are a multitude of Black intellectuals who dismantle Conservative arguments. I laugh because Conservatives saw no difference between the qualifications of Raphael Warnock and Hershel Walker. Fortunately, there is no need for Black intellectuals to meet a Conservative standard. Christopher Rufo makes clear that only a limited rangef ideas Will be acceptable.
It isn’t just black public intellectuals in decline, it’s everything, and I don’t mean that in a doomsaying way, I mean we’re literally just a hell of a lot dumber or, at any rate, less intellectually capable than we were when Cornel West established himself as a cultural figure. Blame the internet, blame comic book movies, blame Wokeness, blame Trump, blame what you like, but that seems utterly beyond dispute. Kendi is a symptom of a decline larger than the sphere in which he operates, he is a product of our general inability to comprehend anything more complex than heroes and villains. It’s hard to imagine someone in the mainstream nowadays writing something even a tenth as compelling as that Coates reparations piece.
There are intellectually sophisticated public black intellectuals, including folks such as Loury, McWhorter and Coleman Hughes.
The Left has been attacking intellect and reason itself for so long that it is no surprise that so-called liberal intellectuals have less of the former and often fail to consult the latter in the fashion we came to expect.
I complimented Coates’ Black Panther comic in exactly the way John is describing 😅
I appreciate he's your pal, and I respect that you're showing support for him, but it seems to me that Cornell West has ridden that same decline as well. Check his twitter of late. He's busy posting antisemitic nonsense about genocide/ethnic cleansing in Gaza, as though those words have malleable meanings. He's apoplectic about the resignation of a mediocre plagiarist from Harvard which he's trying to code as the height of racism. He's reading off of the same ridiculous script as the people you say are emblematic of this decline. How is he any different? What am I missing?
Is it that there is a trend away from a captive black liberal voting block at an orators' beck and call? Is it a trend towards color blindness? Is it that blacks now trend toward individuality? All positive trends if correct.
My favorite example is from Gergen and Shields to Shields and Brooks to Brooks and Capehart. What was a staple of political fare I consumed for decades, deteriorated into something unlistenable because someone I used to know and her colleagues now run the diversity police at PBS. Thus the inarticulate clown who shares an identity marker with James Baldwin had to be appointed Shields' successor. Jim Lehrer turned his creation over to a bunch of idiots and kids because he wanted to make a cool exit in his old age and the rest followed the market forces, red meat for the subscribers, urban liberals in this case. The listener's question cannot be separated from the general polarization and decline of the discourse on both the Right and the Left, IMO. The deterioration of the Republican party into a Trump cult is the mirror image of the leftist race madness, along with January 6 and the rest of it. Arguably, the Right went crazy long before the Left did, starting with Newt Gingrich, and we got nothing but bomb throwers ever since. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the people who subscribe to this channel vilify Liz Cheney, think that COVID vaccination is an evil ploy, and vote for Trump. The Left has built its racism cult unchecked by reality in part because there's been no dialogue to be had. We haven't even yet reached parity on the crazy train. To keep up, the Democrats would have to run Al Sharpton, not Joe Biden.
Good clip -- I saw him once in Irving Farm on 3rd Street in the village in 2019. (Did a better job keeping my cool then than I did when I was sitting next to Ben Rhodes, whom I photographed at Blue Bottle in Union Station in DC last year.)
If you buy into the idea that black Americans face oppression, then the loss of Coates and the rise of Kendi is lamentable. In some ways, the likes of Kendi are expected when blacks must all be self-taught sirens of doom under the yoke of oppression. But in the long term we appreciate those like Tubman.
Today the courage and persistence of Tubman is not necessary. What if the overwhelming majority of problems black Americans face are indeed merely first world problems? Interestingly enough, I have personally heard stories of black Harvard students complaining that they were mistaken for students at Northeastern as an example of the harsh racism they endured.
Let me put it simply, a world of microaggressions does not lead men like Thurgood Marshall into battle. They find other things to do. Where is today's Great Migration? Nothing moves us so compellingly. We scrape the interwebz for outrage. I wonder if the fate of St. George entered the minds of the Harvard Corporation in their hunt for Gay. Is that as bad as it gets? Search committees for public intellectuals?
I posted this on YouTube but will share here as well...
I think it's unfair, and somewhat disingenuous, similar to many of the victim-centric arguments on the Left, to say that "Black intellectualism has declined in quality due to white people." That's a convenient scapegoat, but still only a scapegoat. I sense that Glenn was just being ironic in saying that, but the larger point is still important. Seems clear that people like Kendi are not qualified to even comment on the startling level of scholarship of someone like West. So, the decline is perplexing. Then again, maybe there is not really a decline, but an ascendence of ideas we find less-than-intellectual? One man's decline is another man's "we finally getting ours!" 😁