Intellectuals are people who start with cartoons, and buff them until they look like portraits. Serious thinkers–another animal entirely–are people who look for as many actual pictures as they can find, from as many angles as possible, and reach decisions only after having done so.
Intellectuals are people who want to believe certain things about the world. Serious thinkers are people who have a vision for the world, who care about outcomes, and who realize that the starting point is always what is, not what ought to be.
What led to these comments was pondering that Van Jones became a Communist–in his own words–after being jailed in the aftermath of the very defensible “Not Guilty” verdict with reference to the officers who arrested Rodney King and his friends. He has dedicated a lifetime to what he probably refers to as an ideal (and what I would refer to as a nihilistic cult), on the basis of a lie.
Did he ever bother to try and learn the facts of the case? Do any Communists? No: if they did, they would not be Communists. Self evidently, people who simply want power can and have used Communism, but I am referring to people who on some level are delusional enough to self identify themselves as trying to help the world.
They start with very simple-minded, muddy, confused ideas, then read and write long books based on those cartoonish premises, such as greed being unique to Capitalism, and autocracies based on a different rhetorical stance as being even possibly better in reality.