No more. The shrieks and the howls are all we’ve got now. They pass for intellectual debate, addressed in academic departments and dissected in journals that once had greater concerns in mind. The isms that once struggled for primacy had given way to topical outrages: about income inequality, about the gold standard, about drones, about Benghazi, about Israel, about Stephen Colbert. And that’s the real danger: not that this political camp or that is growing intolerant, but that both are getting incorrigibly dumb.
All Out of Ideas: The Dumbing Down of American Discourse
A nutshell of why current culture war debates feel so brain-melting.
April 11, 2014 // 11:40 // 10 years ago
