There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power
There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power
From Burke to Buckley to Patrick Deneen, we've seen a 200-year history of defending the indefensible
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One thing to understand is that our ability to reason comes down to how we weigh our knowledge of the material in question. Someone can be extremely knowledgeable (and through that knowledge, intellectual) about one topic; and dumb as rocks in another. One of the culture shocks for me when I started working in the medical field was not just the existence, but the prevalence of stupid doctors. You'd think that someone who could become a doctor would be an all around curious and open-minded person... and when they're talking about their area of expertise, it 100% seems that way; but once they deviate into other areas, it starts to show that they're just as much a joe-dipshit as the rest of us.
So, you could have someone who's intellectual as fuck in the context of like orthopedic surgery; but even in other parts of the field of medicine, their brain hits a brick wall and suddenly your ortho doc drinking the covid conspiracy theory koolaid; or conned by some talkshow host into paying money for NFTs; or swallowing the lies about dragshows somehow being about grooming children.
There is absolutely such a thing as a conservative intellectual: just means they're really smart in some unrelated area; and really stupid with politics. There are also plenty of folks who buy into the hatred spewed by the political rightwing. Tricking rednecks into voting against their own interests is one thing - a bigger problem is that for a lot of voters, the cruelty is the point. They don't give a fuck about children: they just want to hurt trans people. They don't give a fuck about fetuses: they just want to hurt women. Assuming that conservatives are just politically stupid is actually giving them the benefit of the doubt - cuz the alternative is that they're just evil.... and evil paired with intellect is both real and incredibly dangerous.
I'm changing careers to become an engineer so I have been keeping an ear to the ground in those industries.
When COVID rolled around, there were engineers on reddit complaining about thier peers buying into the vaccine and anti-mask bullshit.
How could someone who needs to be versed in the difficult subject of physics be hoodwinked by con men?
Stupid people are truly everywhere.
DUDE.... I don't even work in the medical field. But I have such a similar experience. I grew up going to private schools and had lots of friends as doctors.... so many of them were dumb as rocks outside of their area of expertise.... Especially socially. To this day I constantly meet doctors that have no "social" or "street smarts" and are dumb as hell at technology, etc etc etc. I know that becoming a doctor takes a lot of effort, and focus, and specific knowledge.... But... There's a certain intuitiveness that comes with being generally "smart". And for whatever reason, doctors don't have that. I don't think all doctors are "stupid". But it seems like a profession you send someone who is stupid into, to do well..... I really hate saying that but I relate so much to your comment its crazy lol.
The social bit is pretty wild. I've seen doctors - in the middle of surgery - lash out yelling at the techs and nurses, throw instruments, stomp their feet... straight up like a toddler, but with 20+ years of education. You'd think part of medschool would include some basic social and leadership training. I mean, in terms of the team dynamic, the doctor is always the leader, and it's not a great look when your leader is throwing a tantrum like some 4 year old who just got told 'no' for the first time in their life and is an hour passed nap time.
The other extreme exists too ofc - some of the absolute best people I've ever met are doctors.
The takeaway is there isn't really a correlation, or at least not near as much of one as you'd expect. Take almost any slice of the population and you'll find a handful of genuinely outstanding human beings; a few absolute wastes of oxygen; and a horde of folks scattered in between. Take a slice exclusively of doctors, and... same. You'd expect that slice to be heavily weighted on the positive end, but the reality doesn't pan out that way. I suspect you'd get similar results with a random sample of physicists, or highschool students, or people living in some ghetto - you get the point.
The only times I'd expect it to deviate much from that are population samples that are in a position to abuse power. CEOs, oligarchs... looks at thread title ...those guys.
I only disagree on one thing:
- I don't think they mainly "want to hurt". I think what they want is to control: force others to follow their own moral beliefs or even to just do what they think will be good for that doing the forcing.
What we think as Evil is not done by charicatural evil people with who enjoy hurting others, rather it's done by people who see themselves as good people and have massive excuses to hurt and even do harm to others, and sometimes that's to such a level that they believing they're actually helping those other people their forcing to comply with their own morals.
So a lot of that stuff is Moralism, practiced by people who actually see themselves as good people, which is why you'll also find people who believe themselves to be lefties trying to force others to comply with their own beliefs (rather than, you know, trying to convince them). That said, this kind of leveraging social systems to stroke their inner authoritarianism seems to be a lot more common in the rightwing.
PS: By the way, I think it's because of this paradox of people who see themselves as good people forcing their moral compass on others all they while telling themselves they're "doing the right thing" that is so difficult to stop this kind of thing. Such righteous autoritarians are extremelly defensive when confronted with what they're doing because they genuinelly think they're good people doing what's-right/needs-to-be-done/some-other-excuse.
Oh for sure -- but I'd categorize those as the 'politically stupid' variety. They're the ones convinced that they need to step up in defense of all the damsels in distress from the trans boogeymen just waiting to pounce in womens' restrooms. They think they're doing good, it's just their gullibility has been taken advantage of and steered into unwittingly supporting horrible things. Not evil, just stupid, and thjus a tool for evil.
Then there are the ones who just straight up hate trans people. Evil.
It's more of a spectrum than a dichotomy, but the modern 'red team' falls somewhere between those two points.