Intellectuals, in general, are not useless: they are harmful. They are people who are hoping that some hapless soul will cry out in the night “help me, help me. I don’t understand Habermassian hermeneutics and need someone to save me”. Discussions of both such philosophical doctrines and the load bearing characteristics of various construction materials are equally dull, but one makes a practical difference in the world.
So in much the same way that leftists practically need to create physical crises to advance political policies that otherwise would be laughed out of the room, so too do effete, useless intellectuals need to manufacture crises that only THEY understand, such as the fundamentally exploitative nature of Capitalism, or the true imperialistic history of the United States.
Since they need such emergencies, they are quite willing to lie to get them, to abuse the truth, and even to abuse the very people they are supposedly trying to save. Van Jones lied: he never abandoned his radical pose, in his own mind–which we might well term his romantic, sentimental AND angrily self righteous self image: that of the knight in shining African American armor riding off to save his African American princesses.
He lives in a fantasy world, a world that does not and never has existed. Rodney King got beaten–unlike his several passengers, who were arrested without incident–because he charged a police officer, and repeatedly refused commands to stop fighting. The guy was tased twice and hit with a baton in conformity with police protocols before he ever even hit the ground. The guy is something like 6’4″ and weighs something like 280. You take a guy like that, and put him on PCP, and it’s no wonder the officer in charge on the scene said he seriously considered shooting him. And he was stopped initially for leading police on a high speed chase, through numerous red lights, and for being a combative drunk, who later blew over a .20.
I mention this because Yale educated Jones says that the King verdict–which was eminently defensible legally and morally–is what led him to become a Communist.
What we need to understand is that leftist narratives are primarily created and propagated by people who are utterly incapable of achieving business or personal success through the normal avenues of having USEFUL ideas, a good work ethic, and people skills, all of which are harnessed in the direction of economic usefulness. Adolph Hitler never had a real job, and I don’t think Jones has either. His whole life has been political organizing.
Who is empowered by such organizing? Not the people. Rather, HE IS. Leftist organizing is about the empowerment of the intellectuals. The growth of the State is a growth in the power of those who don’t and can’t actually do anything useful. They cannot stand the idea of being left out, and the only way they can be included is if they lie, cheat and steal so as to control the systems of power and wealth creation.
Nobody wants to pick them for their kickball team, so they figure out how to get the teachers to put them in charge. It really is that simple, in many ways.
Obama is a good example of this. Being capable of doing nothing, he nonetheless entered his office believing he could do anything. He did not know what he did not know. He still doesn’t. This is the worst sort of ignorance.
We can only pray that God will save us from the people trying to save us.