The New Intellectual

I’m an intellectual.

I speak three languages, some better than others.

I can recite the preamble to the Constitution and can sing it as well. I know all the words to the national anthem. I can say the pledge of allegiance, leaving out the “under God”.

My favorite novel is Moby-Dick. I know that there is an American Literature that is not British literature minus the accent.

I know the difference between differential and integral calculus. In fact, I left the calculus behind years ago because I mastered it and proceeded open-eyed to many more of the wonders of mathematics.

Starting in 1980 with the Reagan revolution, being an intellectual fell out of favor, and in the meanest way. A solid mastery of the liberal arts education became something to be ashamed of. Don’t get me wrong : if you major in philosophy, you’re going to have a tougher time finding a gainful niche than a computer scientist.

But the greed-is-good Geckolotry of Wall Street became a sadder and sadder reality. Education fell, en grands pas into schooling, where the idea of learning turned into an exercise in resumé building, focused on getting into a so-called good college, finding a place in society where success meant being marketable. Smart people didn’t take history, or poetics, or art, unless servicing some kind of international business or law degree. Winthrop’s shining city on a hill soon became a shining city on a hill of money. Nearly thirty years later, the city is not so much of a hill as it is a pile. And I wouldn’t call it shining, but steaming.

Thirty years where the avant-garde photomontage is only of currency, in a world where currency lost its ability to be figurative. The Chien Andolu busting its balls in the pursuit of selfishness. A selfishness where knowing less was knowing more. Turn off, tune out, drop into ignorance and you’ll get applause.

Not e-on-plural-potatos ignorance. Sunni and shi’ite ignorance. Wall Street ignorance. Affecting an accent ignorance. Palin ignorance.

We’re about to come out of it, my friends. Tuesday will be a reckoning, a thumping, a revelation. Morning time in America.

We will have a President who, unashamedly, started as a professor. A President of Constitutional Law. A President who will sit quietly and pensively in the Oval Office when he needs to.

I may somehow get my dream : where I sit in my office, in my chair, at my desk. My feet are on the desk, my hands folder, my fingers interlocked, my eyes closed. And anyone that bothers me will feel obliged to say “I’m sorry that interrupted you while you were working.”

It is daybreak. It is time to get clean.

Chromatic. Pentatonic. Terpsichorien.

Le déjeuner des Canotiers.

Victory.

Hope.