Mick Hartley listens to Jarhead director, Sam Mendes unburden himself of the usual menu of right-on platitudes. I'm always struck by the uniformity of views among the artists and literati I've interviewed. For almost all of them, the notion that there might just be another point of view simply doesn't exist. It's their religion, really, which is ironic, since they usually make a point of saying how much they distrust religion. Other people's religion, that is.Follow up on this entry, including incisive comments, can be found here.
(My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who'd put a tray of tea in front of her.)
One of the commentators, posting at Evil Pundit of Doom, makes the following interesting observation:
I think we are looking at a hyper-conformist subculture.Well, yes. As Wonker has suggested many times, let's take this one step further. The mental age of most of these leftist intellectuals (a term as oxy-moronic as "Conventional Wisdom" is when referring to Hollywood), is approximately 15. You can only find this kind of goose-stepping conformity and cliquishness in the average suburban high school—or, historically, in Stalin's Kremlin, Hitler's Third Reich, or, more recently, Saddam's Iraqi thug-ocracy. Such figures as these as well as their contemporary imitators, have abandoned intellect altogether in favor of a highly-refined herding instinct that places them at the head of a mindless larger herd that exists for their personal convenience. The irony is that the larger herds, collectively and individually, possesses significantly greater intelligence than the poseurs at the head of the herds. But all are afraid to break ranks in order to confront the uncomfortable world of reality they feel they've finessed by creating a fantasy world of their own.
Within the humanities, any given individuals personal success is wholly dependent on the good opinion of one's professional peers. Its not like in the sciences or business where natural or market forces can prove an iconoclast right. In the humanities, popularity is everything and those that do not conform to current fads face professionally fatal ostracism.
Combine this fear of expulsion with a culture of overweening intellectual and moral arrogance that leads them to believe that no other group has ideas or experiences of any worth whatsoever and you get a subculture of individuals who will not deviate from the herd in the least.
The result: the oppressed right today is vastly more articulate, disciplined, and reasonable than the left. This is why the left sends goons and thugs to break up every campus public event that dares speak from the right. These Stalinists know they'll get what's left of their heads handed back to them on a platter if conservatives are allowed to hold forth uninterrupted for any length of time. (Observe, too, the verbal diarrhea of leftist pundits on the cable talk shows who eat up all available minutes spewing talking points, depriving their more polite opposition on the right of the opportunity to get in a word edgewise before the commercial break cuts them off.) The left simply no longer possess the intelligence or the cogent arguments to confront the right intellectually. So they try to intimidate or silence all speakers from the right.
This crude tactic, aided and abetted by the MSM, worked brilliantly for a time. But now with cable TV and the Web making short work of these leftist gatekeepers, their days of ruling the roost, or, if you will, of heading up the herd, are now drawing to a close. And they will soon find that they are members of no clique at all, a fate worse for them than death itself.
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