Op-Ed: The Anti-Dumbing of America - Susan Jacoby strikes back at the beast

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There have been howls for decades from American intellectuals and freethinkers on the severe overdose of dumbing down which the society has had to endure. From the undisputed hub of global intellect to the baffling fact that intelligence is now portrayed in mainstream media as some sort of crime is a bit of a step downwards.

An ancient history lesson for those under 40 about the current version of anti-intellectualism in all its magnificent squalor:

In the late 70s, the idea of communication to the lowest common denominator took hold in American business studies. The euphemism was “levels of communication”, and the idea was that you spelled things out so even the most mentally inactive person could at least believe they understood the subject.

It spread, inevitably, to media, much like syphilis, and with much the same effect on media content. People with no vocabularies were writing the news, editing the magazines, creating this wonderful culture we all adore so much.

Jacoby’s op-ed is a piece on the concept of “elitism”, which is now a form of abuse among anti-intellectuals and anyone else who slept through college. A quote from her NYT op-ed will indicate the style:

The assault on “elite” did not begin with politicians, although it does have political antecedents in sneers directed at “eggheads” during the anti-Communist crusades of the 1950s. The broader cultural perversion of its meaning dates from the late 1960s, when the academic left pinned the label on faculty members who resisted the establishment of separate departments for what were then called “minority studies.” In this case, two distinct faculty groups were tarred with elitism — those who wanted to incorporate black and women’s studies into the core curriculum, and those who thought that blacks and women had produced nothing worthy of study. Instead of elitist, the former group should have been described as “inclusionary” and the latter as “bigoted.”

Yep, Joe McCarthy, that wonderful guy, was one of the patriarchs of the earlier version of the disease. The 60s version got lost in the pro-intelligence part of the counter culture, but it revived. As you can see, even anti-intellectualism has an ugly side, however ineffectual.

(“Eggheads” means “nerds” in 1950s-speak. The word “nerd” never even had a pedigree, outside some brain dead media, but it’s stuck with those who have plenty of room for a monosyllable in their brains.)

Jacoby’s no single issue person, and that fact keeps popping out. It may be the same field, but she’s good at finding its many applications to everyday life. This is from The Age of American Unreason:

The Way We Live Now: Just Us Folks

The word is everywhere, a plague spread by the President of the United States, television anchors, radio talk show hosts, preachers in megachurches, self-help gurus, and anyone else attempting to demonstrate his or her identification with ordinary, presumably wholesome American values. Only a few decades ago, Americans were addressed as people or, in the more distant past, ladies and gentlemen. Now we are all folks. Television commentators, apparently confusing themselves with the clergy, routinely declare that "our prayers go out to those folks"—whether the folks are victims of drought, hurricane, flood, child molestation, corporate layoffs, identify theft, or the war in Iraq (as long as the victims are American and not Iraqi). Irony is reserved for fiction

Folksy, isn’t it?

Actually, there’s a sad story to all this pseudo-egalitarianism.

At the turn of the 20th century, humanists were spreading the word about “the common folk”, demanding rights for the lower classes in Europe. Jack London, HG Wells, and others were pounding away on this cause, and it was in fact one of the beginnings of the collapse of that very class based society.

It then became a justification for communism, Nazism, and the Rise Of The Common Man was an excuse for anything. The whole idea was perverted.

Rise of the Common Criminal might be another description. Being an uneducated, disgusting ignoramus was a multi purpose social asset. You could be pitied, and demand your right to be an uneducated, disgusting ignoramus because of your poor background, poor personal hygiene, or whatever else gave you the implied right to be a boor.

It was also convenient. Marginalizing the intelligent, or anyone able to understand what you were doing, was a simple way of being a Man Of The People, while being as corrupt, tyrannical and intolerant of democratic opposition as possible. Certainly worked for Hitler, Lenin, Mao, and a range of other delightful “folks”.

The ability to run economies, cultures, and whole societies into the ground is one of the more common symptoms of the disease.

Usually keeps the undertakers pretty busy, too.

Jacoby also quotes Orwell quite effectively in this rather short excerpt:

As George Orwell noted in 1946, “A man may take to drink because he feels himself a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts” In this continuous blurring of clarity and intellectual discrimination, political speech is always ahead of the curve—especially because today’s media possess the power to amplify and spread error with an efficiency that might have astonished even Orwell.

Not that modern media could possibly be mistaken for English, or any real attempt at communication in any form.

If someone keeps screaming at you for long enough, you’re quite likely to think there’s a reason for it. That adds credibility to things that don’t deserve it. If the screaming doesn’t work, the repetition probably will establish the message.

It’s hard to imagine anything more out of step with American media than someone championing the cause of intelligence.

You’ll find the word “elitist” as part of the keywords in speeches by anyone and anything, in its pejorative sense. Even Hillary Clinton, who hardly qualifies as the living epitome of one of the huddled masses, had it inserted into her comments about economists’ views of her “tax holiday” on gasoline.

Her minders and speech writers have also been calling Obama “elitist”, indicating that Communications 101 is still alive and well. If you look closely, you can tell where some of them went to college. Some colleges don’t teach vocabulary, just bull.

The usual result of these tides of anti-intelligence is either the total failure of the society, like the Cultural Revolution, or they’re just written out of existence by the subsequent generations, who rediscovered the fact that the Earth orbits around the Sun.

Good luck, America.