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In his new (first!) book – The Cult of Smart – Freddie deBoer argues that neoliberalism created around itself a myth of meritocratic success. He calls it…well…the cult of smart.
Let’s take a look at what Freddie has to say. The Cult of Smart gives us plenty to chew on.
We’ve seen a flurry of activity on the left. Yes, this includes activism on a wide range of issues. But I’m not talking about that here. Here, I’m talking about a flurry of new ways to label or describe our actions. The left increasingly uses elevator words to do these things.
What does that mean? The left uses loftier words for its actions than those actions warrant. It inflates the language. During the early months of COVID-19, activists proposed modest, temporary rent subsidies. But they called those subsidies ‘cancel rent.’ Even though the subsidies would do no such thing. I’ll post plenty more examples below. For now, I’ll note that things like this happen a lot these days.
I want to ask why. And not only why, but is it a bad thing? If so, how bad is it?
Yes. Is that a problem?
Robert Caro’s series The Years of Lyndon Johnson sounds like a bad idea for lots of reasons. At a minimum, LBJ seems rather outré. I mean, a white southerner who rose through the ranks of the racist southern Democratic Party of the 1940s and 1950s? Yes, LBJ ushered through important Civil Rights legislation. And then he followed it up by prosecuting the disastrous Vietnam War. To top it off, the Great Man Theory of history went out of style decades ago. Though leftists and liberals disagree on much, it seems they can at least agree that Great White Men ought not drive history so much.
But, despite these concerns, Caro’s project works. I mean, it works. It works really, really well. Let’s take a look at The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
