Americans aren't stupid. Anti-intellectualism has little to do with intelligence.

The common strain that binds together the attitudes and ideas which I call anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to farm-near-me/">minimize the value of that life.

-- American historian Richard Hofstadter

The previous post sets the table.

From 2009: "Hot Hofstadter, cold Cappuccino," or a treatise on Nawbanian anti-intellectualism.

We're just America in a microcosm, after all. 

Are Americans Just Stupid? by David Niose Psychology Today

Anti-intellectualism has little to do with intelligence.

... To understand American anti-intellectualism, it’s important to realize that smart people can embrace dumb ideas. On an individual or social level, this happens when the right mix of factors come together. The first factor is our own makeup – all humans are to some degree biologically prone to intellectual laziness, emotional decision-making, confirmation bias, and other natural impulses that often obstruct critical thinking.

But beyond the biological elements, there are also numerous environmental factors that can reinforce or weaken anti-intellectual tendencies. The extent to which one's family embraces education and critical thinking, for example, will be a major factor for many. Also, and importantly, the existence of influential cultural institutions that promote anti-intellectualism may result in a population that, regardless of its raw intellectual abilities, will seem in many ways ignorant.

From 2009: "Hot Hofstadter, cold Cappuccino," or a treatise on Nawbanian anti-intellectualism.

This was one of my guest columns for the pre-merger Tribune, appearing there on December 12, 2009. 

Many of the columns didn't appear at the blog in their entirety until later, if at all, seeing as the Tribune's understandable directive at the time was that I could link to them and drive traffic to the newspaper's web site (which NAC did consistently for 16 years, and I'm still awaiting a thank you card, ingrates), but not publish the columns myself. 

When the merger rendered me redundant, I assumed all previous agreements went out the window. If not, I'm sure current management is as oblivious as ever.

Consequently, as an introduction to this column's blog link in 2009, I wrote this.

Code enforcement alert: Today's column knowingly and indiscriminately violates the city of New Albany's ban on words of four syllables or more. I'm at home this morning and available to be cited and/or arrested.

No one ever knocked. If there is any consistent pattern to governance in Nawbany, it's that our betters don't read. Especially since 2012.

---

BEER MONEY: Hot Hofstadter, cold Cappuccino.

On Monday evening, I overheard a New Albany city councilman explaining to a bystander how much more he knows about drainage issues than any number of trained experts in the field, and that our problems with stormwater primarily result from virulent conspiracies between city planners and a veritable mafia of builders.

I reached for my steaming wand, and thought immediately of Bayard R. Hall.

"(We) always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one, and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since unhappily, smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness."

Even though Hall might have written it yesterday, speaking perhaps as a resident of New Albany’s 3rd council district, or as a bemused observer of contemporary America’s penchant for creationist museums, masturbatory tea-party circles and Palin for Dogcatcher campaigns, all competing for the attention of a benumbed populace forever mistaking spasm for thought, his words actually date all the way back to 1843.

Hall penned them in reference to the political scene in frontier Indiana, thereby illustrating that anti-intellectualism was a cankerous sore on the American body politic long before George W. Bush took office.

“Anti-intellectualism is a term that in one sense describes a hostility towards, or mistrust of, those who call themselves intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as an attack on the merits of science, education or literature.”
--Wikipedia

From Hall, my thoughts raced to Richard Hofstadter. Those voters who have somehow managed to progress beyond the literary realm of “Left Behind” and the attractions of “Dancing with the Stars” might eventually come into contact with the work of the historian Hofstadter, whose 1964 book, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” charted the American cultural habit of loudly detesting the quality that separates humans from other mammals.

“The common strain that binds together the attitudes and ideas which I call anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to farm-near-me/">minimize the value of that life.”

Hofstadter devoted his all too brief career to advancing the primacy of ideas, and exploring the ways that behavior (primarily in the political sense, but also in related pursuits) is related to the way people use, or refuse, their minds.

Ariel Dorfman, a writer, paraphrases Hofstadter’s findings:

“Anti-intellectualism had its origins … in American traits that anteceded the nation's founding: the mistrust of secular modernization, the preference for practical and commercial solutions to problems and, above all, to the devastating influence of Protestant evangelism in everyday lives.”

Like the councilman spouting in the corridor, New Albany’s most renowned practitioners of the anti-intellectual craft tend somewhat bizarrely to be registered as Democrats, although it is difficult to imagine any of them voting for their party’s standard bearer, Barack Obama, in 2008. As such, they’re little more than political poseurs, and with each passing day, we find better ways to sidestep their obstructionist defaults.

Does their destructive anti-intellectualism really matter?

It does, because it emits a catastrophic message to the community, mimicking Pink Floyd: “We don’t need no education – only ward heeling.”

It cynically condemns our children to the very same poisoned atmosphere of unaccountability and low common denominators that shaped New Albany’s malignant past and brought us to a state of apathetic degradation.

It furthers an atmosphere of congenital political underachievement. How many elected community “leaders” can you identify with support for the proposition that life’s difficulties are best confronted “with an intelligence of which no human should ever be ashamed,” as Dorfman phrases it.

Not many.

Rather, they persistently demand that we be ashamed, frightened and uncooperative. They denounce a pantheon of imaginary enemies, of shifty, phantom withholders of vital information, of smarty-pants book-learning engineers, of those who read, of those who write … of anyone who can “do” as they haven’t ever done, and cannot ever do.

Hence the purely imaginary cabal of zoning officials and contractors, plotting by candlelight to pump sewage into area basements.

In the same year as Hofstadter’s treatise on anti-intellectualism, his essay entitled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” was published in Harper’s Magazine. It is a compendium of American political paranoia, as directed against a cornucopia of enemies – free masonry, the international gold ring, the Illuminati, Catholics and Communists, among others.

Hofstadter offers that “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” behind which is a “paranoid style” of thought.

“I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”

Hofstadter died many years ago, and yet his words chillingly describe the prevailing New Albanian political “culture.”

Consider the incessant talk of malicious City Hall plots directed against selfless public servants on the council. Survey the chronic knee-jerking when these same public servants are asked for corroborating evidence to support their nonsensical conspiratorial claims. Chuckle at the recurring expressions of anti-intellectual rage when they’re presented with alternative, contemporary visions of the world and asked if they’ve heard of life outside the Open Air Museum.

Looking for the best place to begin rejecting the politics of anti-intellectualism and paranoia on the council, and for isolating their practitioners? It’s the council president’s chair – and the time for change is mercifully close at hand.

Roger believes that there are no big or little words, just the right ones. For daily commentary, visit the NA Confidential blog: www.cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com

On being an exile in one's own community (thanks, Jan Morris).

Not Mussolini.

It has been only a few months since I wrote about Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, "a meditation on the crossroads city of Trieste" (in Italy) by the Welsh journalist and writer Jan Morris, who was born in 1926 and remains with us.

We visited Trieste just after Thanksgiving, and I became enamored of this amazing place, although it must be said that my geographic promiscuity is legendary in this regard. Trieste is one of several hundred European cities, towns and goat crossings in which I'd live happily ever after if afforded the chance -- or rather, if I could afford it, having dedicated my life to pro bono pay scales in pursuit of various windmills.

La Mancha? I'd live there, too.

Back to Trieste. Morris's book is history, travelogue and social commentary all at once, canvassing Illyrians, Austrians, Italians, Slovenes and Jews; long-term expatriate resident James Joyce's fondness for whorehouses and ill-fated Emperor Maximilian's unfortunate career choice in Mexico; Karst limestone topography, native Bora winds, the Glagolitic (old Slavic) alphabet and young Sigmund Freud's failure to determine how eels copulate; mediocre opera, excellent coffee and various movable landmarks; and not to exclude robust viewpoints about racism and nationalism (unsurprisingly she's decidedly against them).

She offers this summary, incorporating a few words about exile.

“There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones. They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it. It is the nation of nowhere, and I have come to believe that its natural capital is Trieste.”

A noted last year, while Morris has not visited New Albany, she knows exactly what it feels like to exist here amid the reign of the mediocre charlatans. Internal exile, New Gahania-style, means being confined to quarters because it's too dumb to go outside.

The first mention at NA Confidential of Nawbany's congenital anti-intellectualism came in October of 2005, courtesy of long-forgotten 19th-century Hoosier writer and pedagogue, Bayard R. Hall:

In 1843, Hall wrote of frontier Indiana that "(w)e always preferred an ignorant bad man to a talented one, and hence attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since unhappily, smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and incompetence and goodness."

Remarkably, Hall foresaw the 2000s, prompting the query: Why am I still here, continuing to live in New Albany, when I might be residing in another part of the state, country or world?

(Reader’s note: The axiom known as Thrasher’s Razor fully applies to this rumination, because now more than ever, we’re all here because we’re not all there.)

As the missus reminds me on widely scattered occasions -- basically, every morning at breakfast -- I’ve never been much in sync with the sort of polite poseur’s society values craved by the underachieving likes of Bob Caesar. They're far too banal an ordeal for me.

What's more, I’ve never been able to swim a lick unless it’s against the metaphorical tide. Contrarianism fits me like a well-tailored suit, which of course I’d subsequently refuse to wear, because you can’t trust anyone who does. Suits are little more than costumes to facilitate hiding behind.

Wouldn’t I be happier elsewhere, in a place with a cultural climate more in keeping with my personal value system, as opposed to one that prompts severe allergic (read: aesthetic) reactions? Haven’t “they” always told me to leave town if I didn’t like “their” toxic farrago of ignorance?

To which I’ve always succinctly replied: “You first, my dear Gaston.”

All this being said, for the first time since the 1980s, the notion of living elsewhere is being tossed around my dusty cranium. The forthcoming "60" seems a nice, round age to begin contemplating future options. If I'm lucky, two quality decades remain, with maybe some pocket change before eternity.

Is an open air museum where the life of the mind is shunned like a displaced coronavirus sufferer really the final stop for me -- for us? I don't know. All I know is it's worth thinking about.   

"American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is."

Here's the pitch.

The belief that Russia is on our side in the war against secularism and sexual decadence is shared by a host of American Christian leaders, as well as their colleagues on the European far right.

Then this.

I his book, (Paul) Hollander described the prestige that Albanian communism once enjoyed in Sweden and Norway. Few Scandinavians had ever been there, but that didn’t matter: “Albania is picked up simply because it seems to be a club with a particularly sharp nail at the end of it with which to beat one’s own society, one’s own traditions, one’s own parents.” Now (Tucker) Carlson is using Russia as a club with which to beat his own society and his own traditions.

Whenever I hear the likes of Franklin Graham referred to as an "intellectual," I reach for my flask and eat lots of garlic. Thanks to the Bookseller for pointing the way to this fine read.

The False Romance of Russia, by Anne Applebaum (The Atlantic)

American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.

... Fortunately for all such critics, they don’t have to spend much time in the country they are “rooting” for, because there is no greater fantasy than the idea that Russia is a country of Christian values. In reality, Russia has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, nearly double that of the United States. It has an extremely low record of church attendance, though the numbers are difficult to measure, not least because any form of Christianity outside of the state-controlled Orthodox Church is liable to be considered a cult. A 2012 survey showed that religion plays an important role in the lives of only 15 percent of Russians. Only 5 percent have read the Bible.

If American Christians would find little to cheer for in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, American white nationalists would be disappointed too. Carlson has wondered aloud about America’s racial mix, asking, “How precisely is diversity our strength?” He would have a real dilemma in Russia. Nearly 20 percent of Russian citizens do not even identify as Russian, telling pollsters that they belong to different nationalities, ranging from Tartar and Azeri to Ukrainian and Moldovan; more than 6 percent of Russians are Muslims, as opposed to 1.1 percent of the U.S. population. And that might be a gross underestimate of the actual number of Russian Muslims, since in some parts of the country, Muslims are off-limits to census takers. Remember all those phony stories about Swedish and British neighborhoods that are supposedly no-go zones ruled by Sharia law? Russia has an actual province, Chechnya, that is officially ruled by Sharia law. The local regime tolerates polygamy, requires women to be veiled in public places, and tortures gay men. It is a no-go zone, right inside Russia.

As for Putin himself, there is no evidence that this former KGB officer has actually converted, but plenty of evidence that Putin’s recent public displays of Christianity are just as cynical as Stalin’s vaunted love for the working classes. Among other things, they are useful precisely because they can hoodwink naive foreigners. But you don’t need to listen to me say so. Listen, instead, to the words of a young Russian, Yegor Zhukov, who was put on trial for publishing videos critical of the regime. In an extraordinary courtroom speech, he addressed the loud support for “the institutions of the family” that Putin often offers in Russia, and contrasted it with reality ...

ASK THE BORED: Horse posteriors. Anti-intellectualism and indie business shaming on July 18. It's just as Jeff Gahan trains his blundering gatekeepers to be.

Your indulgence, please.

The city's mode of presenting relevant documents can make it challenging at times, but we persevere. There comes the pivot when you let their words speak for themselves, and so following are minutes from the Board of Public Works and Safety meeting last Tuesday (July 18).

After the minutes, blog links are provided from last week's coverage of the social research survey snafu, followed by the transcript of an exchange at the Bookseller's Fb page.

4 "Right Thing Done Rightly" as Team Gahan corrects Warren's social research faux pas, then enjoys an ice cold bucket of Lima-A-Ritas over at the roadhouse.


3 Warren's sad Board of Works social research meltdown: "Jeff Gahan’s appointees could use a refresher course in due process. After all, it is a tenet of representative government and basic justice."

2 Warren's bored, hysterical and useless -- or, "Oops – NA BoW Messes Up."

1 Democratic Party stalwart Warren Nash: Heck, this board hasn't ever approved social research study requests. Besides, we already have a captive sociologist.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the Fb transcript isn't when Warren Nash knowingly contradicts his own meeting minutes. We've come to expect it from him.

Rather, it's when councilman Phipps -- seldom the punctual debater on social media -- leaps heroically into the fray to forge a resolution, and naturally begins by thanking the wrong people for prompting the investigation.

BUT look at the top of the BoW meeting minutes, and you'll see Phipps' name as among those attending the very same BoW meeting when all this first occurred.

Was Nash napping, or was Phipps -- or both? Maybe they had to check first with Adam Dickey to determine whether they were there, or not.

Yes, there's even more. 

I've also included the minutes (above) documenting Brittany Enah's (Underground Classic Cuts) request to close Bank Street for a street party on the 22nd.

The request was shelved owing to the concurrent RiverStage production at the amphitheater, and probably legitimately, but it's the tone of rejection you should note.

I corresponded with Brittany after the meeting, and she felt angered and humiliated by the board's attitude, which I view as a legitimate reaction on her part, seeing as the otherwise dispassionate meeting minutes completely convey the bullying flavor of the interrogation.

Seemingly everyone in the room (except Phipps, who was there but apparently wasn't there) took a turn at bat upbraiding Brittany for not knowing proper procedures.

When was the last time anyone from the board or any other arm of municipal government undertook to educate anyone about anything?

Maybe on its Facebook page?

Nope. Read closely.

It's delicious: petty Nashian officialdom on what is and isn't really official. Next week, if merited, he'll flip to a different explanation, and Dickey will bask in the warm glow of tumescence.

If indie business owners don't know the exact procedure for such requests, then perhaps an august institution like Develop New Albany could take precious time off from planning another spate of one-off "signature" events to educate the business owners to help plan their own events properly -- but wait, maybe the Board of Works itself might embrace such an inclusive attitude.

Fat chance, bub.

You see, the reason why this street closing request played out the way it did is because Jeff Gahan's monetization regime needs to control events, because to control events is to (a) regulate their content according to Gahanian standards of suburban propriety, and (b) exact the proper rivulets of tribute in return.

The only surprise last Tuesday is that Nash didn't inform Brittany that she should join DNA at the proper partnership level if she expects any degree of politeness and helpfulness from the Bored.

DNA is the "official" arm. Underground Station? Just a bunch of indie business complainers who won't pay the right lady.

In summary, last Tuesday's meeting did not represent a shining moment in the recent history of the Board of Public Works and Safety. Few do, but this one was special -- epochal, perhaps.

Team Gahan's corrosive paranoia and compulsive wagon-circling seem to have been codified in official policy. Insiders are coddled, and "outsiders" scorned with bureaucratic gobbledygook, if not open abuse.

This is your New Gahania, readers. It doesn't have to be. Is it 2019 yet?

"Right Thing Done Rightly" as Team Gahan corrects Warren's social research faux pas, then enjoys an ice cold bucket of Lima-A-Ritas over at the roadhouse.

“Quiet! I must say you people are a nuisance. If this is retirement, I’d rather be back at that Levy Pants.” Miss Trixie raked at them with her cookie box. “Now get out of my house and mail me my check.”

-- John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

---

There was a city council meeting on Thursday evening. I'm told the bunker door was barred and the wagons circled before the tailgate party even shut down.

Warren's sad Board of Works social research meltdown: "Jeff Gahan’s appointees could use a refresher course in due process. After all, it is a tenet of representative government and basic justice."

Warren's bored, hysterical and useless -- or, "Oops – NA BoW Messes Up."

Democratic Party stalwart Warren Nash: Heck, this board hasn't ever approved social research study requests. Besides, we already have a captive sociologist.

Unsurprisingly, the usual pillared suspects have engineered their way out of the embarrassing box their superannuated gatekeeper devised for them. No error is acknowledged, and no public input recognized beyond the perimeter of the closed circle.

Alas, the newspaper that broke the story did so unwittingly, and never once followed up amid preparations for Cooking School: The Spatula Strikes Back.

The Bookseller now returns for a final update.

Right Thing Done Rightly (NewAlbanist)

If you’ve followed this blog the past 2 days, you may want a status update.

I no longer have reason to believe that the work of the Institute for Social Research will be impeded in New Albany. And that’s a good thing. Thanks to all who made this happen.

Suffice it to say that the city has exercised its regulatory responsibilities in a courteous and professional manner. As an advocate in this matter, representing only myself but on behalf of a situation I saw as a misunderstanding, I was at all times treated with courtesy and respect.

Warren's sad Board of Works social research meltdown: "Jeff Gahan’s appointees could use a refresher course in due process. After all, it is a tenet of representative government and basic justice."

Play some Skynyrd, won't ya?

Another day, another fresh angle on another Gahan administration scandal. Heavens, these guys are making Donald Trump look reasonable.

Warren's bored, hysterical and useless -- or, "Oops – NA BoW Messes Up."

Democratic Party stalwart Warren Nash: Heck, this board hasn't ever approved social research study requests. Besides, we already have a captive sociologist.

The Bookseller returns today with this update. You'll want to click through and read the complete dispatch. I'm very busy today with a writing assignment and a corresponding deadline, but will do my best to update you in this space. Tonight is a city council meeting, and the issue will be raised there.

As an aside, I wonder if Mayor Gahan has considered reassigning Warren Nash to help David Dugout with the public housing putsch? Mr. Nash might be the NAHA board member with the responsibility of saying "no" when HUD comes calling. After all, he has much practice as Gahan's BOW gatekeeper.

Board Needs, Wants Direction (NewAlbanist)

Jeff Gahan’s appointees could use a refresher course in due process. After all, it is a tenet of representative government and basic justice.

Yesterday we reported on a decision by the city’s Board of Public Works and Safety (BoW), appointed by Gahan and chaired by former mayor Warren Nash (1971-75) that appears to thwart the work of one of the nation’s most-respected social research institutions.

I believe that decision was misguided and does not comport with the relevant city ordinance. A strong case can be made that the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan (ISR) needn’t have even appeared before the board and I will try to make that case tonight at New Albany’s city council meeting and, if necessary, at next week’s BoW meeting (10 a.m., city hall).

Further, due process requires that a board with such broad public responsibility state its reason for withholding its approval. In the absence of a defensible rationale, that approval should be forthcoming. After all, the relevant city ordinance says nothing about prohibiting the requested activities – if it’s applicable in the case at all, it’s only about regulating them.

Witnesses report that even before the meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Nash showed sheer annoyance that the ISR notification letter had been placed on the agenda. He griped that “Kathy (Cousins) knows we never approve these.” He went on to reject the notification, saying, “Since I’ve been on the board, we’ve never approved anything like this.”

That’s a pretty sad state of affairs, isn’t it? The body charged with evaluating and approving solicitations (again, this is hardly applicable) has erected barriers to even be heard ...

Warren's bored, hysterical and useless -- or, "Oops – NA BoW Messes Up."

Meretricious?

Why yes, Shane, but ... more like incredulity.

incredulity

[in-kri-doo-li-tee, -dyoo-]

noun

1. the quality or state of being incredulous; inability or unwillingness to believe.

The scandal-plagued Gahan administration has suffered another own goal -- another foot shooting, another faux pas. How often must the citizenry be embarrassed this way, Adam?

Democratic Party stalwart Warren Nash: Heck, this board hasn't ever approved social research study requests. Besides, we already have a captive sociologist.

On Tuesday morning, Board of Works gatekeeper Warren Nash told a representative of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) that the city of New Albany couldn't risk allowing academic research to be conducted.

How very local Democratic Party of us. Just a bit about the ISR ...

Our History

Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is among the world’s largest and oldest academic survey research organizations, and a leader in the development and application of social science methods and education.

With researchers from a broad range of academic disciplines, ISR serves as a national laboratory for the social sciences, advancing public understanding of human behavior through empirical research of extraordinary depth and breadth.

The Bookseller has obtained the same Institute of Social Research background materials viewed by BOW. You'll want to click through and read the entire piece, but here's an introduction.

Oops – NA BoW Messes Up (NewAlbanist)

Karen Rice had no idea what she was walking into Tuesday because she represents a professional organization.

Ms. Rice hand-delivered a “To Whom It May Concern” letter from her organization, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. As written, it is a courtesy letter informing those concerned that some people in our geographical area will be surveyed and that ISR representatives may be in the area over the coming months conducting important survey research.

Then Ms. Rice met the Hon. Warren Nash, who currently serves as chairman of the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety. He and his two colleagues said “no way.”

To be certain, U of M was not asking for permission as the type of work they do wouldn’t require the permission of a municipality. However, they do understand that in an age of scam artists, citizens might become concerned when they receive a letter and a subsequent visitor asking questions. Who would one call if they suspected something fishy? The police or the mayor’s office, of course.

To allay those concerns, the ISR politely informed a public meeting of city officials that their scientific work would be carried out here.

I’m grateful that our local newspaper managed to find the space to report on what should have been innocuous news. But Mr. Nash turned it into something else ...

Maybe Nash misunderstood, though the materials certainly aren't ambiguous, or in a blind panic, reasoned that social research is dangerous in a place where the mayor has seized public housing and Democrats make war on the poor.

He might have scanned the Gahan for Mayor for Life donor list and not seen the ISR's friendly tithe -- and of course, if they aren't "for" the mayor via their wallet, they're surely "against him.

The rampant City Hall paranoia is especially thick this summer, isn't it? It makes sense if you remember that Nash's role on BOW has less to do with public safety than representing Gahan's political fingers in every conceivable pie, because what good are geniuses of the flood plain if they're not erecting plaques to themselves?

Democratic Party stalwart Warren Nash: Heck, this board hasn't ever approved social research study requests. Besides, we already have a captive sociologist.

On the other hand, the reporter Morris did a wonderful public service today with this concluding portion of his Board of Public Works and Keep You Safe from the Eggheads coverage.

Has board chairman and Democratic Party bigwig Warren Nash ever looked quite this flagrantly out of touch?

What was that?

Oh, yes; you're right. The street piano debacle two years ago was worse. We apologize, Ms. Rice. Some day this bone-headed junta will be back to greeting customers at Wal-Mart.

New Albany street conversion likely to begin next month, by Chris Morris (N and T)

SOLICITATION QUESTION DENIED

The board also denied a request from Karen Rice, representing the University of Michigan, for a door-to-door survey to be conducted in New Albany as part of a larger social research study being completed in the Louisville area.

The study would have likely lasted through the end of the year. Rice said residents are contacted first, with a letter, before being solicited for response. They would also be paid for their time.

Nash said it has always been board policy to deny such requests.

"Since I have been on the board we have never approved anything like this," he said.

Let's hope the University of Michigan makes a second request, or just comes and performs the study without asking permission -- you know, like the religious zealots and political candidates knocking on doors without ever seeking permission from Warren Nash and the Band of Bored.

Anti-intellectualism AND self-centeredness ... or, the thoroughly depressing week that was, Part 3.

Is there any compelling reason why they both can't be killing America, simultaneously?

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America: Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason, by David Niose

... In considering the senseless loss of nine lives in Charleston, of course racism jumps out as the main issue. But isn’t ignorance at the root of racism? And it’s true that the bloodshed is a reflection of America's violent, gun-crazed culture, but it is only our aversion to reason as a society that has allowed violence to define the culture. Rational public policy, including policies that allow reasonable restraints on gun access, simply isn't possible without an informed, engaged, and rationally thinking public.

The bookend essay at Psychology Today isn't so much counterpoint as piling on.

No, Self-centeredness is Killing America: A lack of empathy is at the root of our ills, by Ravi Chandra M.D.

David Niose rightly points out one problem in America: anti-intellectualism and the abandonment of critical thinking in certain sectors of society. However, I think this is simply a spoke on the deeper, more central issue that is at the hub of why we hate, are polarized and sometimes kill in the name of our beliefs. We are very, very self-centered and therefore we believe our own snuff.

Everlasting municipal dysfunction, bowel movements and political cowardice.

On Sunday, I did not rest. I ranted. It didn't make me feel better. It made me feel worse.

Ranting on John Rosenbarger's fundamental contradictions in the aftermath of an atrocious day in the neighborhood.

... Conversely, while many of the complete street platitudes uttered yesterday make me feel good, the reality that there is no discernible will on anyone's part to implement them induces a very bad feeling. If you really believe the city will wither and die unless something is done, as Rosenbarger actually said aloud -- for heaven's sake, John (and your political bosses over uncounted generations) -- doesn't it mean you're ready to dispense with the idiotic charade and actually DO SOMETHING to change it?

My blogging co-conspirator weighed in at FB, and perfectly encapsulated my feelings.

Jeff Gillenwater: Whenever someone like Rosenbarger claims, as they often do, that New Albany and surrounding areas are just too scared and stupid to take very obvious steps toward improvement, that there's little to no hope, no valid reason to invest any more of one's mind or money here thinking it will get better any time soon, I believe them a little more each time -- as I've learned over the past few years just how dedicated they are to proving it. 

Others believe them, too, and smart, engaged people - many with both the talent and intent to contribute in important ways - end up leaving as it quickly becomes the only reasonable thing to do in response. As it turns out, most people with choices don't actually want to sacrifice their intelligence, their passion, and their overall better selves to a bunch of sadly dysfunctional twits and their senseless, self-imposed limitations. 

Along those lines, a note to political wannabes in New Albany, incumbent and otherwise, starting with the Democratic Party Chair and trickling down just like their 30-year-old, failed economic plan: If your stump speech does not include a rather strident section about the need to and your willingness to immediately and completely revamp the city's planning and development/redevelopment departments from scratch, don't bother calling me, emailing me, sending me paper mail, or attempting to schmooze me at events and, for decency's sake, stay the hell off my porch.

Roger A. Baylor: Obviously, when it comes to everyday business, I can't throw in the towel, and I won't, because I tend to be an ornery and stubborn SOB. But as of yesterday, self-interest increasingly will define what I do. These regressives just aren't worth my time and effort.

JG: New Albany needs your business a lot more than your business needs New Albany. The same is true for others. I sincerely think that should be much more fully explored en masse. I dislike the subsidy/quid pro quo game but, if that's going to be the primary deal for the foreseeable future - if city officials are going to stand by and not only tell people that what they're doing is impossible while they're doing it but also actively work to prove and reinforce impossibility as some sort of self-immolation - then hand them fuel and a match and keep your distance. 

There are any number of towns or neighborhoods in the metro that would be happy to have those business and personal investments and would likely do more to acknowledge the respective contributions with contributions of their own. The desire to feed people is noble. Allowing one's self to be starved in the process so that others can advance their pitiful, "public" careers isn't. This City that so regularly and so openly disrespects the many people and ideas doing the work on the ground every day makes people mean, distrustful, and resentful but those feelings, too, as legitimate as they are in context, can be much better directed.

RAB: Adam Dickey might be interested in this thread, although last time I wrote him back, the conversation ended rather abruptly ... which probably owes to the fact that in this town, talking a good game is all there really is. If accomplishment genuinely mattered ...

I'll stop there. How does one end a post like this?

By scoffing at the usual suspects for the umpteenth time? By beating up on myself for every believing any of their perennial bullshit? By thinking that maybe, some day, a genuine reformer will claw his or her way through the unbearably anti-progressive local political party structures, when the likelihood of it happening is roughly equal to my cat setting up a soapbox in Rent Boy Park and reciting Aristotle in letter-perfect ancient Greek?

I'm not sure why Saturday's vacuous folderol should be any more annoying than the palpable nonsense I've heard repeated for ten uninterrupted years, but it was, and the same old song and dance has become colossally tiresome. It's way past time that they came running to us, rather than the other way around. I'd consider an Occupy The City County Building movement if I wasn't afraid the doltishly endless cowardice would rub off on me.

How about a bowel movement instead?

Now, that's more like it.

Today's Tribune column: "Hot Hofstadter, cold Cappuccino."

Code enforcement alert: Today's column knowingly and indiscriminately violates the city of New Albany's ban on words of four syllables or more. I'm at home this morning and available to be cited and/or arrested.

BAYLOR: Hot Hofstadter, cold Cappuccino

On Monday evening, I overheard a New Albany city councilman explaining to a bystander how much more he knows about drainage issues than any number of trained experts in the field, and that our problems with stormwater primarily result from virulent conspiracies between city planners and a veritable mafia of builders.

I reached for my steaming wand, and thought immediately of Bayard R. Hall.

The Economist: "Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future."

Sunday mornings are a fine time to catch up on the previous week's reading, such as this insightful column that will not be read aloud on FOX.

----

Lexington: Ship of fools
(Nov. 13th, 2008 ... from The Economist print edition)

Political parties die from the head down

JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party” now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.

There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000—many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases—by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.

The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head”. He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.

This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves “professionals”. McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring “tacit” intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy” will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans”, with their “volkish” wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g”s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by Beltway journalists from the Weekly Standard and the National Review who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then noisily championed her cause.

Time for reflection
How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses? There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride”. Anonymous McCain aides complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying “whack job”. One of the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship of the Republican Party to John Sununu, a sensible and clever man who has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th).

But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not conservative or populist enough—Mr McCain, after all, was an amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama’s associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

Kathleen Parker on Chris Buckley, National Review: "(Republicans) do not ... deserve to win this time, and someone had to remind them why."

NAC has been following this story since Christopher Buckley's on-line Obama endorsement first broke.

William F. Buckley was articulate and intelligent, whereas contemporary conservatism boasts a crass anti-intellectualism that lately has become viral.

Surveying the scurrilous faith-based wreckage of the conservative movement, which today embraces the "we the people don't need no education" line of non-thought and would correspondingly not hesitate to ostracize Buckley elder in the same way that it has impugned the younger, as well as previously savaging Kathleen Parker for her apostasy in denouncing Sarah Palin, LEO’s Stephen George said it best earlier this week:

Let’s call this line of thinking the terrorism of the idiocracy. It did not start with John McCain or Sarah Palin — although they have found wild profit in it — and it surely will not end there. In actuality, it begins in the vacuum created by a general ignorance of the world around you, the pride you take in that ignorance, and the vulnerability that leaves you with. When some addled shit-peddler like McCain or Palin fills the vacuum with radical lies, these barely literate masses take a crazed posture, and the worst of their own fear and loathing manifests itself in heinous, hilarious ways.

Like the woman who still insists, despite McCain himself telling her otherwise, that Obama is an “Arab” and, by implication, “Arab” is bad. Naturally, McCain scored media points by calling off that particular dog, but he never said anything like, “Hey nut-job, Arab is not a bad word.” In fact, by avoiding saying that but nonetheless acknowledging she’d erred, he subtly reinforced her “epithet.”

----

WFB Would Be Proud, by Kathleen Parker (Friday, October 17, 2008)

Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Barack Obama -- followed by his abrupt departure from the back page of the magazine his father founded, National Review -- has caused a ripple of contempt from the conservative right.

Nay, make that a tsunami of hostility. An avalanche of venom. A cataclysm of ... well, you get the idea. People are mad. Good riddance, they say, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Let us proceed, gingerly.

I am not a passive bystander to these events. Buckley is a friend, as are other members of his family, especially Uncle Reid, with whom I have worked for several years. National Review is home to many friends, and its online editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez, kindly subscribes to my column. Like Buckley, I have enjoyed a decent fragging for suggesting that Sarah Palin excuse herself from the Republican ticket.

What gives here?

What does it mean that the right cannot politely entertain dissenting opinions within its ranks? What, if anything, does it portend that Buckley The Younger has bolted from the right, even resigning (with enthusiastic editorial approval) from the family flagship?

Some have opined, ridiculously, that Buckley -- son of the famous William F. Buckley (WFB) -- was merely seeking attention. Christo, as family and friends call him, has written more than a dozen acclaimed books, one of which, "Thank You for Smoking," became a movie. In 2004, he won the Thurber Prize for American Humor for "No Way to Treat a First Lady." For 18 years he edited a magazine, Forbes Life, and otherwise seems to be doing all right.

Other critics have surmised that Buckley's "betrayal" was a publicity stunt for his newest novel, "Supreme Courtship" (which I reviewed for National Review). When you're as funny and write as well as Buckley, you don't have to resort to stunts. You are the stunt.

So why did he do it?

Because he had to. It's in his genes.

True believers of whatever stripe too often forget that the men and women who create movements are first and foremost radicals. Great movements are not the result of relaxing afternoons musing along the Seine but emerge from flames of passion ignited by injustice.

When WFB created the modern conservative movement, he didn't call a neighborhood meeting and whisper, "Come along now." He stood athwart history and yelled, "Stop!"

His son, though he customarily takes the more circuitous route to the revolution via satire, is now merely answering WFB's original call to political activism. Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, the younger Buckley said: "I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me."

In 1955, when WFB announced his new magazine and explained the reasons for it, he described conservatives as "non-licensed nonconformists":

"Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity."

Fast-forward half a century, and the old is the new.

Radical conservatives are still having an interesting time of it, though these days they are being mutilated by fellow "conservatives." The well-fed Right now cultivates ignorance as a political strategy and humiliates itself when its brightest sons seek sanctuary in the solitude of personal honor.

The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing -- the "kooks" the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right -- have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.

Instead, as Christopher Buckley pointed out in a blog post on thedailybeast.com explaining his departure from National Review, eight years of "conservatism" have brought us "a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance."
Republicans are not short on brainpower -- or pride -- but they have strayed off course. They do not, in fact, deserve to win this time, and someone had to remind them why.

Christopher Buckley, ever the swashbuckling heir to his father's defiant spirit, walked the plank so that the sinking mother ship might right itself.

No doubt his seafaring father is cheering from heaven: "Ahoy there, Christo! Well done, my son."