Condescension over Humanity
Swarthmore takes in the intelligent and turns out intellectual snobs. We do not always consciously recognize it, but our sense of superiority manifests itself in mocking sneers, patronizing laughter and a thousand minor expressions of disgust. We constantly reinforce our feelings of superiority, distancing ourselves from the majority of people in this country and worldwide.
This point was driven home last week. While America was shocked by the sheer magnitude of death, too many of us were lost in intellectual and emotional disconnect, clinically analyzing the failures of President Bush’s foreign policy. As people worldwide, even some of our fellow Swarthmore students, dealt with the deaths of friends and family, and dreamt dreams "filled with balls of fire," too many of us reacted as if this were just another event outside the bubble to be analyzed with the tools of political science.
America’s willingness to trade civil liberties for safety was greeted with the rolling eyes and knowing sighs of jaded Swarthmore students. When some pressed for military action, we responded with patronizing laughter, certain that we knew better than foolish, emotional Americans. We respond to prayers and the very phrase "God Bless America" with the crudest, basest atheism - "What’s the point? As if God existed!"
Are we so unwise that we believe that superior intelligence translates automatically into correctness? Surely not. After all, the Henry Kissingers and Milton Friedmans of the world are not stupid, yet most of us reject them. And yet, when 94 percent of the American public supports military action, many of us are content to believe that the pacifistic six percent aligns perfectly with the only intelligent people in America.
In the same way that slavery redounded even upon the slave owners, so does our intellectual superiority strike us as we wield it, producing hypocrisy, moral stupidity and emotional obtuseness. We sympathize with the counterproductive violence of the Black Panthers as the product of great anger, yet we offer no such understanding to an angry American people demanding violence. We forgive the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party as the expression of a culture that values social goals above individual rights, and yet mock Americans ready to mimic the Chinese.
Hofan Chau distilled this hypocrisy into eight paragraphs last week, first deriding President Bush’s speech as an irresponsible appeal to nationalism, and then implicitly excusing the terrorists by calling upon us to understand their anger. A quick comparison of Bush’s speech to Osama bin Laden’s 1998 "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders" reveals the bankruptcy of this analysis. As poor as Bush’s speech was, I do not recall him saying anything comparable to bin Laden’s call for "every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God’s command to kill the Americans."
We don’t have to reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator, or pretend that there is no difference between stupid and smart. We should, however, be consistent. When we look outside the United States, or to minorities within it, our intellectual snobbery is limited by a strong tolerance and understanding that conservatives deride as "liberal guilt." We acknowledge that because we are different from others, we should be careful not to presume that our thinking and our lifestyles are superior.
When we look at the mainstream United States, however, there is nothing to hold back our intellectual snobbery. We feel that we understand America intimately, because we live in America, and because many of us are Americans, and therefore we see nothing to stop us from condemning American actions as merely stupid. After all, we are part of the same culture, the same society, the same history, and the same economy, and yet we do not think in the same way.
But maybe we are not really of the same history, society, culture and economy. The mere fact that we line up in opposition to the American public on so many issues should be a tip off to us that there are a million differences between any given Swarthmore student and any given American. This being the case, we should fight against the urge to ascribe every action we oppose to the stupidity of the people.
I showed last week’s Phoenix to a Carleton graduate who was my boss two years ago. "You know, Swarthmore students may be very intelligent," he told me in response, "but when it comes to the fundamental test of just being human beings, you are failing."
This is a test we must endeavor to pass. We owe it to ourselves to live up to the goals of our institution, but we also owe it to the American people. Otherwise, there will be no reason for them to tolerate the stupidity of Swarthmore students.