The Danger of Giving Credence To Anti-Intellectualism
So are we just going to ignore all of President Trump’s idiotically idealistic statements going forward?
🤔And then what?!🎟🍿🎬
The matter of 17 people gunned downed by what could only be described as a disturbing and indisputably evil act is far too serious to start talking reckless about what heroic good you would have done in that situation to prevent it.
If I think to myself that “it goes without saying” then I shouldn’t feel the need to write this in response to the president’s rationale. The president and his flunkies should by all accounts indicate that remarks like these are truly faux pas, instead we are led to believe that the president truly believes in his own hype.
This excerpt by Vox reveals the extent at which the White House will go to such insensible lengths to not simply call out the president’s faux pas but ingratiate him even more into believing his own hype. Ideally, Ms. Huckabee Sanders, I get it. By attempting to translate Trump speak to us though I get this sense of condescension from the White House every time by authoritarian design. We aer made to feel as if we are always overreacting, or being dishonest with ourselves, or simply too sensitive. So, in order to keep us second guessing our instincts and wisdom, we are inundated with press briefings that desensitize our intellectual sensibilities with these sincere fictions of idealizations.
In this perceived ideal world we should all be taken aback and up in arms that armed student resource officers would be so stricken with fear by standing still in the chaotic moments of flight or fight response. We expect, and we are conditioned by Hollywood standards, that in reality the good guys — the preordained heroes with impeccable timing will shoot, corner, and apprehend the bad guys with such precision and coordination, amidst AR-15 bullets flying everywhere, and children and adults running everywhere. The ideal also follows that return fire (not an AR-15) will hit no one but the bad guy, and will not ricochet, but will obviously find its intended target due to the exceptional marksmanship and training that comes with the role — just because, they are cops. And cops don’t accidentally kill anyone, especially children. In these just-world idealizations the victims and the good guys always survive too. Those who unfortunately got shot will live and possibly get a photo op with the president — also they get to live because the bad guy’s aim is always so terrible. Then there is the job well done moment with a shot of the perpetrator cuffed and going off to jail followed by a press conference awarding heroic bravery — what a happy ending.
Who is actually falling for this? And what should we make of them?
People who reason in ways that defy logic and welocme idiocy of course. As faulty narrative goes…once again the gun is not the problem, it’s the people who do bad things with the gun are the problem. How do we prevent bad people with guns from killing people? Ideally, more guns, of course. Because, once again if we allow them to take away our second amendment right, then we are giving up our fundamental right to defend ourselves and our liberty. 🤨
When we recommend laws to restrict access to guns and put forth measures for their subsequent use, accountability, liability, and responsibility, we are actually protecting the second amendment.
More importantly we are protecting the innocent, an important factor to liberty itself.
To say that tighter gun control laws will not stop mass shootings and use this as a clever rebuttal is counterintuitive and is a wholly inaccurate inference from what is being proposed here. The idea is to mitigate all possible factors that would precipitate a mass shooting. To suggest that these laws are being presented as a cure all is ideologically self-centered.
Actually there is no cure all for anything. You may be prescribed some medication to rid yourself from a cold but that doesn’t mean that the cold virus has been eliminated in its entirety. What the prescription does do is mitigate the susceptibility of a bigger virus that could lead to not only your death but the deaths of unsuspecting others — en masse. Now like the common cold, guns are just as ubiquitous at this point — you can easily get one. We need to institute measures of care and control— that range from prevention, education and justification. This does not necessitate the sort of anti-intellectual discourse offered by politically incorrect transgressions to suppress some perceived elitism.
The president’s response to the complexities of our social concerns is indicative of his mental fitness to lead. if we were to actually believe in his genius then this is an absolute reach into an empty transparent bag.
Trump’s usage or reimagining of the word genius is more like a hard turning semantic shift into a ditch, rather than a subtle semantic progression. By ignoring constants in reality, we have simply gone off-road and out of control here with this. While many Trump supporters will sympathize with a myriad of sensibilities on the topic of his mental acuity, what gets ignored is the apparent truth.
The Atlantic spoke to the growing dangers of anti-intellectualism or intellectual debasement.
Even if the country’s psychiatrists were to make a unanimous statement regarding the president’s mental health, their words may be written off as partisan in today’s political environment. With declining support for fact-based discourse and trust in expert assessments, would there be any way of convincing Americans that these doctors weren’t simply lying, treasonous “liberals” — globalist snowflakes who got triggered?
The tribalistic focus of these in-groups winning an election based on divisive, hateful rhetoric and resentment has us acquiescing to forms of debasement. When we acquiesce or abandon diversity and critical thinking, we legitimate fallacious reasoning about the intellectual prowess of your man in office to our collective detriment.
When it comes to mitigating gun violence and its apparent links to and or association with the unfettered access to guns and ammunition, why do we insist on metaphorically shooting ourselves in the foot when we have the constitutional right to self-regulate and sustain our liberty, and thus our humanity?
