Stock-In-Trade

The curse of being a Former Intellectual is lifelong and unbreakable, ultimately. Part of that is because the social framing is always incorrect. States of mental acuity or analytical sharpness aren't static, that's some bullshit IQ-numbers-are-actually-helpful kind of outdated thinking. You can indulge in it if you want, but I'm here to warn you there's nothing down at the end of that cul-de-sac except the collapsed curb sofas and busted-out fridges of "women aren't funny" and "Asians are good at math." The kind of FREE, PLEASE TAKE ideas that only get picked up by people with no ability to generate their own.

What I mean is there aren't really "smart" people. Yes, some people have more of an affinity to certain modes of critical thought or troubleshooting than others, but I'm here to tell you: being a "smart kid" is not who you end up being. I know that Me at 50 reading things Me at 23 wrote under the intensity and plasticity of both youth and programmatic instruction is a near impossibility: I have no idea what that fresh-faced uber-nerd was talking about it. It's not necessarily that I'm stupider (though this is arguable. I'm still mystified how my new electric kettle boils water so fast); I certainly know more, just volume-wise, than I did then, 100% as many lived years later. It's just that the type of knowledge you have and its application always have a context, which was in those days an intense familiarization with the western critical theory canon and the training to express it in recitation in a manner consistent with academic norms. Because it's not good enough to absorb the information, how "smart" you are also depends almost entirely on your ability to get it out of your stupid head. The late, great Christopher Hitchens isn't a genius because of his thoughts (plenty of people are atheists in public), he was one because he could proclaim in a manner that was both charismatic and made full use of his reading and training (deployed strategically depending on the audience and the debate opponent) when he explained it to lunkheads and dopes like you and me. Also he was British, so the accent did like 40% of the work.

There are less arduous ways for people to seem smart, especially in a capitalist social and societal milieu, and that is, of course, to have a shitload of money. It's the shortest shortcut really. Like everything else in this setting, the rules are such that there is literally nothing you cannot buy, up to and including a massive and unearned benefit of the doubt. Sure, the president is absolutely single-handedly driving a robust and relatively (vs the rest of the world) stable economy into a ditch he also seems to be simultaneously digging all on his own, but a certain percentage of the people voted exactly for this, believing despite all of the evidence consisting of literally everything he's ever said in earshot of another person. "Well, he's rich, he knows what he's doing." This is the same man who owns a gold toilet.

And this seems to be proportionally applied, e.g. if you have a lot more money, people are willing to give you a big giant wide berth the size of the world entire. Like this Elon Musk fella, who had a decent run back when nobody really knew who he was, but since he's become a public (and even richer) person, can only seem to destroy things spectacularly, like twitter, now Tesla, and also the whole federal government. But he's smart, he's got like a third of a trillion dollars! It must be us, we're just not understanding it right, because we're so stupid. If we were smarter, we'd be third-of-a-trillion-aires too, probably. So let's choose to defer to his judgment, even though he has never actually displayed any. Or you know what? Let's all just pre-submit. Richest person ever must mean most capable, that's way more important than institutions, due process or basic human empathy. Also if we're nice to him, maybe he'll just drop $10 million in loose change when we're around him. He wouldn't even miss it!

I want to be smarter about all this and make it make more sense, but I barely remember disjointed scraps of the episteme in which I was intellectually socialized. We read a lot of Marx and Foucault, as one does, but now it all seems so distant, soft echoes translating themselves back into their native German or French, beyond my American monoglot grasp. There's something there about the best way to hold a population hostage is to convince them to do it themselves, to be both jailor and jailed. But that's too sophisticated for a cat dad who hasn't finished a book in like three years and is trying to get through this writing business so I can go watch this cartoon I'm really into.

All I know for sure right now: I didn't get fired this week. Still have my job. Maybe I should thank the bully for not punching me in the face and stealing my lunch money, but they still have been terrorizing me (and millions of others) for two months now. I'm sure there's a cleverer way to frame all this and make it make sense, but I'll really, really have to think about it. Preferably like 27 years ago.