What's the Matter with Stanford?

The left is a mess. Why? There is a lot of talk about the media, corporations, "triangulation," expecting too much from our elected officials, and of course, the massive stupidity of our fellow countrymen which we, somehow, don't share.

This may all be true. But what I know is the academy. I've spent enough time in school, and kept my ear to the tracks enough, to see some real serious problems with the academy, and how it has lost touch with its responsibility to the public.

How fucked is the academy? It's full of:

• Overspecialized pinheads who inevitably try to extend their tiny field to cover all creation. You'd think these folks were trying to scare up funding, but even economists do it. Must be genetic.
• Sell-outs
• Third-World-Movement Anti-Imperialist Revolutionary Wannabe's, those brave Professors who wax poetic over the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle in between shopping trips to Whole Foods. Fight the Power!
• And the related group of postmodernist/critical theory doucebags, who substitute the upper-middle-class-guilt-fueled rage of the Revolutionaries with upper-middle-class flightiness and fecklessness.

Here is our case in point, a charming dialogue between the late Richard Rorty and the dead-in-frontal-lobe-only Robert Harrison. Now, I don't know jack about Rorty's "formal" "philosophy," but in this rather broad discussion about politics and the such, he makes a good amount of sense to my ears, most of the time.

The key moment, around minute 50, goes like this:

HARRISON: Shouldn't philosophers try to re-think our relationship with nature in order to solve our looming environmental crisis?

RORTY: Nah, that's a problem for engineers to address within the current system.

HARRISON: But don't we need a new system?

RORTY: What political system would you propose, other than social democracy?

HARRISON: We need a radical rethinking, finding new heroes in the past -- we should re-read Thoreau! Then engage in voluntary impoverishment! But I don't actually mean that, I'm just saying we should, you know, think about it. Because we are the problem.

You get the picture. What's notable isn't just the silliness of Professer Harrison's knee-jerk negativity (radical rethinking!), it's that he is a professor. At Stanford, one of the nation's most prestigious schools.

Think about the incredible intellectual flaccidity that precedes this kind of dialogue. For a great example, just click here, and try to figure out what the fuck this guy is saying. This kind of crap is all over the modern academy. Long on whiny critiques, dead short on anything concrete. Long on self-righteous impugning of everyone--but everyone! and dead dog short on any sense of personal responsibility to create workable solutions. Utter, utter douchebaggery.

These are the people "educating" large numbers of our leaders; they set the tone of our high-end discourse and create standards of knowledge and learning that resonate throughout our society.

These people are fucking everything up. They are full of shit, and anything they could contribute is powerfully overwhelmed by the fecal tide. After decades of this kind of nonsense, we're left with--instead of leaders or even grunts--a bunch of fools who won't tell someone that two and two are four, if they're from another culture, because they don't want to be guilty of "cultural imperialism." And, anything from our culture is irreversibly tainted--must be quarantined in thought and practice, festooned with asterisks, the footnotes reading-- what? White? Imperialist? Evidence-based?

Yes, friends, we're talking about nihilism. I know this song has been sung before, but we leftists don't seem to take it seriously. We don't see the problem.

But the problem is all too real. It should be clear to us now, that we cannot afford to diddle ourselves in the bushes while the city burns. But how can we not, when the answer to the big question about what we should do with this damn society is "Uhh, re-read Thoreau!" That is worthless! But it's what we get from the modern "academy."

And it is crippling! People inculcated with this whiny anti-everything-ism can barely decide which shoe to tie first. Take back our society? Fight a winning fight against the massive right-wing machine that is driving us headlong into Banana Republic-dom? Convince our fellow citizens--of anything--when we don't really believe anything, because that would be "oppressive"? Make a plan of action?

Doing things have consequences! Consequences are bad! We must not do anything!

Do you really think this is a dim-witted parody? Am I really going too far? Have you looked around this country recently? Have you looked at the left?