It always strikes me as odd when people are so in thrall to somebody else’s culture that they are eager to flush down the toilet everything of their own that is tons better and miles more advanced than in the culture they so admire.
Sánchez-Cuenca is a Spanish professor of poli-sci who wrote a fun, crabby book whose tone is reminiscent of my own “vile freakazoids” posts. In Intellectual Stupidity he mocks Spanish writers and public intellectuals for the stupid things they have written a propos of everything in the world. This would be great but for one problem: Sánchez-Cuenca deplores (will you ever be able to hear this word and not think of Hillary’s baskets of deplorables?) the participation of the country’s intellectuals in public life.
I believe that said participation is actually the best thing about Spanish culture because Spain’s writers, professors, philosophers, film-makers, etc don’t lock themselves up in an ivory tower and, instead, engage actively with current events. They write articles for the leading newspapers, you know all about their opinions on pressing topics, they are passionately involved in discussing the elections, terrorism, education, abortion, and even driving rules.
Do you know what the leading American writers think about anything other than their own importance for world literature? I highly doubt so. This is why their writing is so divorced from the experiences of normal people.
Sánchez-Cuenca, however, is so in thrall to the word “Anglo” that he wants Spain to ditch its rich tradition of intellectual engagement and adopt the Anglo practice of allowing the public space to be colonized by the likes of stupid Ross Douthat and incoherent David Brooks. And that’s too self-defeating even to be contemplated.
Yes, a talented novelist or a famous poet might get too enamored of a beautiful metaphor and get confused on the facts. But their lack of literary talent doesn’t prevent the Douthats and the Brookses of the world from regaling their audiences with one arrant show of idiocy after another.
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