The Death of the Public Intellectual

The Death of the Public Intellectual does not signal that we are all brain-dead

Ideas have power. Ideas can change minds or reinforce tightly held beliefs and prejudices. Ideas can capture the public’s imagination. I’m not talking about sound bites or the flagrant manipulation of sentiment by appealing to racism, fear, or hysteria of one brand or another. At the risk of sounding overblown or pretentious, I will put forward a few ideas that might have legs: democracy and fascism, climate responsibility, the ethical life, the role of imagination, and spirituality. These topics interest me, and I would hope that joining in an intellectual conversation, sharing and discussing our ideas in a civil way, might help us find a way forward.

Sadly, this kind of conversation is on life support in today's information environment. We are treated to speculation about the size of Trump's sexual organ, the length of his time in the saddle, Melania's absence, and his devastation that there are no crowds protesting his trial in lower Manhattan. I never thought that I would be cheering David Pecker for his ability to string together a few coherent, believable sentences. Instead of a real conversation, we are reduced to sloganeering and “bothsidesism” that includes vile insults as well as calls for execution. Will it be by firing squad, or maybe just shot with an AK 47 and unrecognizably mutilated?

Someone posted on my Twitter account a clip of an animated Marjorie Taylor Green ranting incoherently about fake meat Bill Gates grew in a "peach tree dish." Surely, it is a delicacy that will add to the wonders of Georgia. The woman is totally unhinged, yet she gets lots of coverage, and this is exactly what she wants, what the Right wants, and what her donors demand. This is the script: monopolize our attention, clog the airtime, and then move ahead with the other agenda, and we're not talking QAnon or some other nonsense. It doesn't matter whether MTG is an idiot or an Oxonian. She's just a pawn. Their Queen is about to checkmate our democracy.

If you did a survey—now at this moment, not yesterday before the Peach Tree idiocy—you’d find that more respondents believe Bill Gates is experimenting with synthetic meat and that it's finding its way to your neighborhood butcher without proper labeling. I’ll put money on it.

In the process, MTG has also heaped more distrust on the FDA and the entire expert class of technocrats who are ruining America. She’s also created an atmosphere where people who have done good work, gone to college, and gained some standing in their communities for careful thought, attention to science, and language are pilloried. Of course, you don’t have to know a damn thing about scientific experiments to know that we’re being poisoned by fake meat. Actually the less you know, the more credible you are. There's not much of an audience for a man or woman who actually knows something about the real poisons that can infect the food chain. They’re just boring.

Who qualifies as a public intellectual and what is their role? Narrowly defined, they would be an academic, philosopher, economist, or scientist who devotes some of their time to commenting on public issues and, I would venture, subjects that a large number of people find interesting. In science, both Neil deGrasse and Steven Hawkins fit the bill. For all his faults, the late Milton Friedman would have to be included as testimony that his or her opinions don’t have to be as solid as Euclidean geometry.

Who are the current crop of public intellectuals? Dan Rather comes to mind. With less reverence for academia in America, there are no philosophers such as Albert Camus or Bertrand Russell. Rachel Maddow gets high marks; she’s an Oxonian, yet Google calls her a television presenter. John Oliver and Steve Colbert are very bright and provide sharp commentary in their quirky way. Charlie Rose was in the running until he demonstrated that he'd disconnected his head from his penis. Susan Sontag and Gore Vidal are no longer with us. Thomas Friedman tries. No one today commands the respect of an Edward R. Murrow, but there must be people who could assume that role, yet as I survey the Op-Ed page across America, brilliant voices do not speak out clearly and strongly for fear of getting mowed down.

We've always had crazies, even in mighty positions. Sometimes, the powerful maniacs have kept a low profile, or maybe they just didn’t stop taking their meds. But now after Trump in this era of Fox News, the Marjorie Green’s of the airwaves flaunt their stupidity because the media will lap it up, and that’s key.

When I lived in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, an older woman installed herself daily on one of the benches set on Broadway's median divide and screamed at the traffic. None of it made much sense, a 70’s version of Fake Meat and Peach Tree Dishes. But, my point—no one paid her any attention. If MTG were shouting her nonsense from the same bench, they'd have to close Broadway to make room for the TV crews.

The woman I used to see at 102nd Street has now been replaced by a silent public monument. She didn’t make the cut. Dan Rather has 2.5 million followers on Twitter, and MTG has almost 900,000. She's still behind, but her brand of insanity is getting exposure. Lauren Boebert has 1.3 million! Watch out, Dan. They’re coming after you.

If you can't shut her up, stop paying attention to her or giving her undue attention—just stop it.

*Daniel Drezne made these nominations:

1) Ta-Nehisi Coates: Any book or long-form essay of his becomes the topic of conversation among elites. That’s influence.

2) Masha Gessen: I have found her thoughts about the Age of Trump and the Age of Hysteria surrounding Trump to be invaluable. She might even be right about Trump acting more like a teenager than a toddler.

3) Francis Fukuyama: Many people would have a hard time repeating something like “The End of History,” which holds up better than you think. However, Fukuyama’s latest work on political decay has proven to be both prescient and vital.

4) Ron Chernow: I suspect some might not think of Chernow as an intellectual, to which I would respond by noting that Chernow’s biographies lead to reinterpretations of American history. If nothing else, reading Grant will cause multiple generations to rethink what we were taught about Grant — and Robert E. Lee — when we were kids. Since the Civil War still plays a role in current political life, that is no mean achievement.

5) David Autor: The hardest-working labor economist in the profession and probably the least well-known name on this list, Autor's research into the effects of technological change and globalization on the American worker guides much of the current conversation on these topics.