Back when I was big stuff National Review did a cover story attacking me. Their biggest criticism was to compare me to Babbitt, of the 1920s book by the same name, saying “Produce, produce!” They were upset at my attacking academics as worthless. People like Buckley, who considered untranslated Latin or French as the height of sophistication, didn’t appreciate the putdown.
They looked upon me as unlike them and more like Babbitt, the unapologetic middle-class businessman whom the largely Marxist Intellectuals lampooned. Well, they got that right.
I got a bit of that here when I said that the Germans have no long words. Their long words are a combination of short words to describe something. Temperaturwechselfbestandigkeit looks like a long word. Actually it is literally temperature change withstanding. It is what we call a refractory, which is a material which withstands large temperature changes.
There used to be a feature on an old magazine making fun of this. It was supposed to be an German grandfather saying short words to describe things this way. The only comments I got on that piece were come repetitions of this kind of humor.
This is what I call Shrewd. People make fun of this German stringing together of simple words. The really Shrewd thing to do, they say, is to do exactly the same thing, but to translate it into GREEK. So if someone said “terrible lizard,” it would be a German grandfather joke.
But if you say dinosaur, it becomes Highly Sophisticated. You can’t say King Tyrant, but Tyrannaurus Rex is Smart!
That was the sort of Babbitry National Review saw in my writings.
I have an ingrained Anglo-Saxon distrust of anyone who makes a living by inventing big words. In my day a sociology course consisted entirely of learning a battery of enormous words. Political Correctness may dislike words like “crippled” because they degrade the disabled, who usually refer to themselves as the disabled. But you can also make a fat living by inventing terms like “differently abled,” debating them in journals, and imposing them on the public.
What would a lawyer do for a living if he didn’t spend his life looking up Opinions for which there is no more justifications than any other Opinions? What would a preacher do for sermons if he only had the directives Jesus gave, the Golden Rule and loving God?
And National Review could hardly dazzle anybody with its recitation of Great Society platitudes. Its pretense to the Uppah Clahss is all it’s got.
To the average Shrewd person, the moron who thinks he’s smart, a lawyer who can quote the cases is on the same par as an engineer who fills the blackboard with equations. The only difference is that all that lawyer’s time is absolutely worthless, worse than worthless, while the engineer can build something enormously valuable.
No one seems to notice this tiny difference. The Commentariat talks to itself in big words instead.






#1 by Dave on 10/25/2009 - 12:04 pm
My favorite example of this is Brookes and Shields on the Jim Leher News Hour.
“Sophisticates” styling themselves as insiders giving YOU “the skinny” (with feigned disagreement).
You are supposed to ignore the real life comedy of it all. And what is better is that it is all indelibly RECORDED to the participants’ everlasting embarrassment.
But the News Hour crew has a redeeming quality lacking in the National Review and CATO institute types: The News Hours crew unmistakably throws off tell-tale signs that you are NOT SUPPOSED to take them seriously. I think that is because you cannot directly participate in the (real) News Hour (day-to-day) circus without knowing that it is impossible to take any of it seriously.
This is in distinction to another PBS type, Bill Moyers that can actually threaten because hardly anyone recognizes that he is in fact a psychopathic manipulator. A genuinely sophisticated society would have a means to rein this type of personality in. But alas, this dangerous power mongering personality type goes unrecognized.
This is in distinction to the legions of closet buffoons that have positions of formal power in our society but that nobody really takes seriously,( like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi).
Knowledge of Wordism is extremely important. It is an attempt to answer the most fundamental of all questions: How do we get to a wholesome society that is capable of calculating reality accurately?
Knowledge of Wordism answers a big piece of the “HOW” you go about achieving that.
#2 by Simmons on 10/25/2009 - 5:49 pm
Well it seems the shrewd are shrewding themselves out of a job in England, and this after Nick punted in his debut. ( My guess the enormity of becoming the most popular opposition figure overwhelmed him, understandable)
Some posts ago I mentioned that we need a talking point that fuses our putdowns of PC and the Mantra together, somehow, someway. If Nick Griffith would have had that talking point and hammered it home his party would probably vault into second in popularity. Read any UK newspaper’s comments sections, the readers are ready for both PC and the anti-whites to be handed their asses. The UK is way out in front of us on these issues.
#3 by Dave on 10/25/2009 - 6:40 pm
Simmons,
The Nick Griffin BBC debut was fascinating theater. But it also pointed out that the BNP’s approach is to ignite a fight without much thinking about the relations involved in surfacing as a target.
I remember that famous episode of Ronald Reagan giving James Watt a bronze foot with a gunshot hole in it calling it the “shoot yourself in the foot award”.
This was a reminder that intelligence is a requirement (when taking on your enemies), not an elective.
That’s where Robert Whitaker comes in. Robert Whitaker has got the correct 360 degree approach nailed.
In contrast, Nick Griffin’s courage is a lot bigger than his hat size. For example, Nick Griffin had no problem alienating Britain’s Moslems, a not very intelligent move, since they are in fact potential allies, being a very right wing bunch at heart. At the same time Griffin performs as a “cat’s paw” for the Neo-Conservatives and is rewarded with ridicule. Go figure.
Robert Whitaker trained operatives would never make such errors. That’s because Whitaker is 360 degrees in his ideological grounding. He covers ALL THE BASES.
In fact, a lack of 360 degree grounding ails our enemies. They are unable to think through the whole of the IMPLICATIONS of their ideology and are busy alienating people unnecessarily.
The future belongs to those that have their act together. A mind like Robert Whitaker, operating in the background, is very much necessary to guide it.
The idea of fusing our PC putdowns with the Mantra is unnecessary. The Mantra needs to be spoken, that’s all. No “setup” is required.
You have to remember the principle (that I am guilty of violating all too often) is that the less said the better. A simple declarative sentence is very powerful. Tomes are a dime a dozen.
#4 by backbaygrouch4 on 10/26/2009 - 5:21 am
An enjoyable romp.
After Bob left Boston there was a mayoral election that brought Ray Flynn into office. As is customary our mayors don’t have enough wattage to light up a bathroom medicine cabinet, and Ray was no exception, but they do have street smarts. That can mean knowing what words are effective. A basketball scholarship student he got editorial sneers when he honestly answered what book influenced him most, “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” Late in the campaign his runoff opponent referred to him as a chameleon, a reasonable description. But he connected with the voters when in outrage he bellowed back, “He called me a Lizard.” Smaller words do work better.
As for big academic words, I was indulged by a good natured Prof who accepted my nonacademic definition of Sociology on a final simply as “The polysyllabification of the obvious.”
#5 by Simmons on 10/26/2009 - 11:15 am
That is incorrect Dave. The UK situation is different from ours and where they find themselves on the continuim, the populace is ready for a talking point that fuses the British population against the PC machinery.
As for Islam, move off that escalator to hell.
Elavating a person like Nick at this time is unthinkable, and not because he is unprepared or unqualified for his role is that he would be all alone. His allies regardless of party affilition need to be in place so as they can zero out the budget lines for Nick’s enemies while budgeting the cash flow to his allies, eg; Professor X has a salary reduction and program reduction while Program A gets fully funded while Prof X goes hungry. Not sexy but necessary, but if Nick is elevated into the lion’s den right now he is but bait in the arena.