Has intellectualism
become a specter of the so-called “deep state,” the esoteric, abstract organization who secretly rules over us and is run by covert no-name boogy men? Used to be that appreciative citizens relied
on wonks to run the complex systems of modern societies and, in healthy
democracies, with a reliance that generated respect, because the “experts” could
handle such abstractions that enabled us to live our lives in unprecedented freedom and prosperity. Then globalism think tank deep thinkers who got American
business to export labor in order to strangle the unions, and power hungry officials
like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who manipulated a very non-intellectual President Bush the Second
to get the electorate to support a twenty year, $5,000,000,000,000 incursion into Iraq and
Afghanistan (see picture caption below), and the writings of terribly misguided libertarians like Ayn Rand who persuaded
the Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, drunk on the neoliberal attraction of
derivatives to provide a false sense of security, to sign off on a subprime
mortgage profiteering binge that gave us the Great Recession, and college
financial aid officers who fed unsuspecting students $1,600,000,000,000 of federally subsidized
loans to pay for educations at too many new schools made too expensive by
fiscally conservative state legislators who pulled back on supporting higher
education while touting its need if students were to become members of the middle
class, only for them to realize there are no lucrative jobs, only a life time
of principal and interest payments,,,,made ordinary people suspicious of
intellectualism. Who can blame them?
Who are the proper "deep state" targets of the disillusioned, disenfranchised electorate, politicians or corporate heads? Wait, they can be both. There is wealth to be generated when one is both. Donald Rumsfeld was President and CEO of several companies between stints as Secretary of Defense. Dick Cheney was chairman
and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000 and had received stock
options from Halliburton. In the run-up to the Iraq War, Halliburton was
awarded a $7 billion contract for which only Halliburton was allowed to
bid. And Donald Trump who was supposed to divest from controlling his wealth by placing it in a blind trust in order to become president, had the trust run by his sons and daughter.
