Since the Enlightenment, gatherings of intellectuals in the West, be they formal (universities) or informal (the blogsphere) were places of where thinking persons congregated in order to share the and exchange the thoughts, and in some cases the great thoughts, of the day.
No more, it seems. The intelligentsia of our day assemble quietly before the Great Ones, listen politely, with the approving "Yea" thrown in to show that we were still awake. Our intelligentsia has been stricken with a bizarre case of arrested development. It seems that in such matters independent thought has been has been recused and replaced by the proclamations of the "qualified"; that is, folks that have been approved to think by our indoctrinating institutions - but only if these thoughts comport with the dogma of those that "qualified" these folks in the first place. Our elite universities seem to have become places filled with ideological cement. A place where bright young people go to have the establishment's political rhetoric drilled and drilled and then drilled some more until those "other" heretical doubts have been cast out.
(I watch in utter fascination as Paul Krugman, he of Nobel fame, engages his adherents in a shameless exercise of propaganda and mind control as well as the disciples of the Left in general, in much the same way that Sarah Palin performs her mind f*** on her advocates. The difference, of course, is that Krugman has that nifty Nobel Prize to provide credibility. Funny that. A Prize awarded by a politically driven entity in an area that is far more an ART than a SCIENCE for the purposes of furthering the Nobel Committee's agenda (eyes rolling? Really? Did your eyes roll for the Obama Peace Prize LOL HAHAHAHAHAHA ROFL LMAO... sorry, that got away from me again....) is then used to gain credibility to further a political agenda that had very little to do with the area of study that led to the Nobel in the first place. Noodle that for a moment before rolling those eyes...
Today, our political discussions have been reduced to links to articles written by others supporting our particular bias. "You don't need to think, just quote me!! After all, I won the Nobel!! And don't worry, I would NEVER have an ulterior motive..." Thanks, King Paul Krugman... (for those Monty Python fans, I am reminded of the "How'd you become King, then" dialogue from the "Holy Grail"). No need to think for ourselves. Politics is merely a debate to be won. Too busy with your life to the point where your politics have not evolved in 30 years? No time to think for yourself and then express those thoughts, but need to sound intelligent and engaged? No problem. Go with the Mantra.... over and over and over... after all, if we repeat something often enough, it'll be true, won't it?
WTF!!??
On one side, we have the Keynesian failures. Their contention - that we simply were not Keynesian enough... that what needs be done is more and more deficit and stimulus spending - is as much akin to bleeding patients prior to the advent of germ theory as anything the other side offers. After all, the folks on the Right talk out of their A$$ about their fiscal conservatism... and then spend and spend like Keynesians... hence my term - 2H1P, the 2 headed 1 party. Each side might say different things but their body's do the exact same thing. To keep their respective devotees in support of this cluster f*#!, each side manufactures issues that have no functional bearing on the problems at hand. Every once in a while the masses start to awake from their coma, at which point the Left stirs the abortion pot, the one and only truly worthwhile issue separating the Left and Right (and I am going to leave this alone other than to say that the level of denial on the part of the Left as to what actually happens during an abortion is akin to the denial of any people engaged in unspeakable crimes against humanity.... but what can one expect from a group harboring no small percentage of pro-abortion vegetarians, my favorite example of the outrageously FOS? Libertarians have no interest in funding government thugs to round up women and doctors... that does not make us lacking in knowing right from wrong. It means we see the futility, as well as the unintended consequences, of empowering a government to impose morality and ethics with yet more violence).
To be fair to the Left, the Right has engaged in nothing less than an extreme attempt at Social Control - to which the Left has responded in a tit-for-tat issue-oriented (inflamed) strategy that has left the U.S. exactly where our founders desperately tried to prevent - a place where 50.000001 can inflict damage at will on the other 49.999999. Our founders tried to assure minority rights. That meant rights of the POLITICAL minority - not what has come to be defined as as minority rights.
The U.S. has bifurcated into Red and Blue. How much more bifurcation can the U.S. withstand before our ugly political discourse and Regionalism devolves into political violence? The Left, comprising most of our intelligentsia, seems to be bereft of folks with any knowledge of the game of chess... or perhaps are suffering with a delusion of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness... The odds of a Leftist/Socialist takeover of the American political and economic system are remote in the extreme - as that outcome would likely end in violence, a violence the Left is ill equipped to arise from victorious (know a lot of Left-Wing criminals, state troopers, FBI agents, or special forces personnel?).
Lest you think that I am out of my mind for suggesting that the U.S. could, in fact, erupt in bloodshed... I respectfully submit the souls of the hundreds of millions of people that lived and loved, and lost all in the violence of politics; that is, a body politic that over reaches in its attempt at control.