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The Deep Thinkers of the Left
LeBron James is the most prominent athlete in the NBA – a multi-national organization that generates billions in revenue. The NBA entertains sports fans all over the world, and is a powerful force in the world of entertainment and sports. Mr. James is widely considered to be one of the best players of all time. He has also become very outspoken in the realms of politics, social justice, economic equity, and so on. Some have questioned why his ability to play basketball would lead him to view himself as qualified to speak on other matters that have nothing to do with sports. Mr. James responds to his critics, “I will not just shut up and dribble … I get to sit up here and talk about what’s really important.”
While it may be true that basketball is not as important as the topics of worldly significance that he often speaks on, this does not mean that he has any particular expertise in these fields. But he continues to share his views on the matters of the day. He clearly views himself as above his occupation (playing basketball), and above the organization that made him famous (the NBA). He apparently believes that his brilliance on the basketball court translates into brilliance in many and varied other unrelated fields.
Prince Harry is one of the most prominent members of the British Royal Family – an organization of enormous historical significance that is closely followed by millions of people all over the world. He has been world-famous since the day he was born, and his membership in this exclusive club, due simply to his birth, has given him opportunities that most people could only dream of. He has also become very outspoken in the realms of politics, social justice, economic equity, and so on. Some have questioned why his royal birth would lead him to view himself as qualified to speak on other matters that have nothing to do with, um, with his area of expertise. Whatever that is. Prince Harry recently announced that he is writing his memoirs, which may seem odd for a 36-year-old who has done little in his life other than be rich and privileged. But he explains:
“I’m writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become. I’ve worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story—the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned—I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think,” he said in a press release. “I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that’s accurate and wholly truthful.”
So humanity will soon be blessed with the insight of a 36-year-old English Prince. He clearly views himself as above his occupation (being a prince), and above the organization that made him famous (the British Royal Family). He apparently believes that his birthright as a prince translates into insights that are worth sharing with people around the world.
Pope Francis is the leader of one of the most historically important organizations on the planet – The Catholic Church. He has also become very outspoken in the realms of politics, social justice, climate science, economic equity, and so on. Some have questioned why his occupation as a religious leader would lead him to view himself as qualified to speak on other matters that have nothing to do with Christianity. But he continues to use his position to promote leftist politics.
He speaks on religion too but spends an extraordinary amount of time on topics that would seem to be beyond his job in The Catholic Church. He clearly views himself as above his occupation (Pope of The Catholic Church), and above the organization that made him famous (The Catholic Church). He apparently believes that his position as a religious leader translates into brilliance in many and varied other unrelated fields.
A basketball player, a prince, and a Pope would seem to have little in common. But these three have one prominent quality in common – they are all devout leftists.
Many leftists seem to believe that they have a deep understanding of topics on which they have little apparent expertise. PJ O’Rourke touched on this topic with the great quote, “I’m not a liberal, so I have a poor grasp of stuff I don’t know anything about.”
This really does seem to be a common trait among leftists. LeBron James. Prince Harry. Pope Francis. Greta Thunberg. John Kerry. David Hogg. Al Gore. AOC. Nikole Hannah-Jones. Leonardo DiCaprio. And on and on and on.
This says a lot about leftist leaders.
But I think it says more about leftist voters. If you listen to basketball players, teenagers, actors, and so on as voices of authority on, well, on anything at all, then you must be a leftist.
And you must be a fool.
Published in General
We have a stupid elite. There is now sensibility instead of rationality.
Climate change is not about the science (which does not favor alarmist cant) but the satisfaction of the drama in the narrative and the fact that the better sorts of people feel the same way. The two popes prior to Francis were genuine intellectuals. Francis clearly prefers to feel his way which is tough and risky to do when doctrine is involved.
The sheer vile idiocy of supporting Castro, the cartoonish 16219 version of US history, the kneejerksentimentality that endorses trans and other sexual deviancies celebrated in the moment –all that serves a sensibility, a personal drama of taking the right side once issues have been simplified beyond their actual meaning and doing so in a group.
Stupid requires less effort and a simpler world view than the place (reality) where messy trade-offs and hard decisions rule.
For me Pope Francis is the worst of the lot. Lebron holds forth on politics and culture because he understands basketball is ultimately a frivolous game, no matter how good he is at it and how much money he makes. So he tries to make his mark in something of real significance, even if wholly incompetent at it. I get it.
Pope Francis already holds a position that is not just important in secular terms, but has supernatural and eternal significance: Christ’s Vicar on Earth, the latest in the long line of successors of St. Peter charged with proclaiming the Gospel and saving souls until the Return of Our Lord. Meddling as he does in worldly affairs of no lasting import shows he doesn’t get what it means to be Pope, and so prefers to be “relevant.” At least Lebron is trying to climb up rather than slide down.
Back in the 80’s we thought Ferris Bueller was cool for skipping school for a day and going to a baseball game. Yet it never occurred to Ferris that rather than dodging the Vice Principal all day, he could instead take the position of cosmic moral scold and shame adults into indulging him rather than punishing his ignorance. Who would have dreamed that Teenage Environmental Scold would be an available gig four decades later and that a snotty brat, with nothing of the charm of Ferris, could browbeat adults into letting her take an entire semester off and sail the world while they grovelled at her feet?
She’s clearly mentally damaged. For that she deserves our compassion and her parents and the other adults using her to promote their agenda deserve our complete contempt.
But, that’s what the Left does — it exploits damaged people so as to concentrate power among leftists. Think of the adulation given George Floyd (murals and landmarks and a virtual day of mourning (Juneteenth)) who died of a fentanyl overdose and once pointed a loaded gun at the abdomen of a pregnant woman during a home invasion. Leftism is a bottomless pit of self-deification, hubris, and perversity.
Related somewhat:
That’s worth at least two points!
This is why the Left was perfectly comfortable when no candidate of quality emerged to run against Trump. They were going to fix the election process anyway. The Leftists run on fumes and they have a fixed agenda that a puppet can carry out. Biden might make through this term but if not that is of no real consequence. Biden is not directing the nation’s course.
Yes, Biden is just another of the Left’s damaged exploitees.
Didn’t we already get that from the Oba-Messiah
Gell-Mann amnesia. Coined by Michael Creighton to describe a phenomenon observed by Murray Gell-Mann
What do you want to bet that her racism was made evident by her insisting that Lil’ O do his homework and clean up his room?
Greta is the abused pawn of her parents, and the adults around her. She is their mouthpiece and her tantrums are a proxy for theirs. She speaks nothing but what they have trained her to say. She sees nothing but what they have trained her to see.
It is very sad to see abused children paraded in public. And no one rescues her. Probably because her parents and control team limit access to her.
I need to keep that written down somewhere, so I don’t keep forgetting. :-)
You are right. Biden is misdirecting this nation’s course.
What’s a basketball record worth:
LeBron Admirer: Did you know LeBron holds the record for Game-7 wins?
Michael Jordan: What’s a Game-7?
Stupid or lazy it typically leads to evil…historically and overwhelmingly from the left (emphasis mine):
“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.” ~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Is it reasonable to infer that good behavior strengthens one’s ability to continue good behavior whereas continued bad behavior does the opposite?
Kind of to the first statement. We will always battle our sin nature.
Absolutely concerning bad behavior. When we continue to do wrong knowingly we singe our conscience. Or to put it another way. We harden our heart.
In short, yes. It has been my observation it is more than reasonable and is fundamental to human development. This leads us to the quintessential nature vs. nurture discussion, so I’ll avoid that rabbit hole for the moment. Practice does seem to make perfect over time, whether it is hitting a baseball, applying Boyle’s gas law or expressing empathy and compassion. Your question extends this generality to include some concept of morality and ethics. Can those be practiced or learned? Or is that now brainwashing, which many of us agree the left is quite adept? Do we share the same definition of good vs. bad behavior?
Without beginning the discussion if morals exist there must be a moral law-giver, we might reasonably agree: that which protects and improves human life (encourages human flourishing) is good; that which degrades or destroys human life is bad. Practicing either usually encourages more of the same yet both tendencies are reversible given the fragility of human consciousness.
Not to draw to much from this well, but Lewis has a chapter called Let’s Pretend, quite a little shock value in this title. He says: “To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending…you are a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies and all doomed to death. So that, in a way, this dressing up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek. But the odd thing is that God has ordered us to do it. Why? What is the good of pretending -to be what you are not? … well, this pretense leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person that you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.”
“Fake it ’til you make it” — by the grace of God.
This is a good start point. My son, the musician, was been liberal all his life, although not deeply engaged with the political side of that. I think this would be common early for those with his interests. Now that he is teaching guitar to young people, some very young, practice is in the forefront. He emphasizes that one will not likely excel without regular practice. My son has also turned a corner on personal health and responsibility. He will finish his college bachelors degree program this month. This is good for me in my closing years.
There are early, late, slow and fast learners. I have met each of those criteria in my own life, with many battles yet to come. Each comes with it’s pros & cons. Comfort and convenience frequently influence our decisions. Yet history has shown, those that successfully struggle through hardships and challenges usually leave longer-lasting, positive impacts. Practice is hard work!
Affluence and wealth can be its own worst enemy; making life easier for the next generation does have its drawbacks. Most won’t choose to practice what is difficult unless there is some external motivation. Who in their right mind would choose to run a marathon (questioning my own sanity, I’ve run 3) unless there was some other, hopefully positive, motivation? Exceptions exist but we tend to reaffirm ourselves by choosing the path of least resistance. I think this typifies most of today’s cultural mindset, especially the Left.
Thank you for sharing about your son. He has found a passion that leaves a positive impact on humanity: teaching music. I am (politely) envious – his is a skillset I was not blessed with. Or maybe I just didn’t practice enough ;-)
Everyone has and is entitled to an opinion. The difference with the three leftists profiled in this piece is that they are in positions of celebrity, or, in the case of the Pope, some actual authority. Of the three the Pope certainly has a right to state his beliefs in an authoritative manner. He wasn’t born into his position. He rose through the heirarchy of the Church and was duly elected to his position by the College of Cardinals. His position brings with it a certain actual authority for those who are members of the Catholic church. He can use that authority to shape the doctrines of the church, and he can impose those beliefs on leaders of other countries who are Catholics as well.
LeBron James is a basketball player. He may or may not actually be educated in the areas about which he pontificates. A lot of people express opinions about things they possess little or no knowledge of. The difference is that LeBron sees his celebrity as a platform from which he can express his views in hope of affecting other people’s beliefs. I am sure that there are a very large number of people as ignorant as he who might think that because of his obvious talents the things he says are both relevant and correct. That isn’t on LeBron, that is on them. Caveat emptor.
Prince Harry is a young man who was born into a very exclusive club, as Dr Bastiat pointed out. His life experience has certainly not been without trials and tragedies, as all people’s lives are. If he wants to write book, more power to him. I don’t foresee that I will ever feel the need to buy or read his book. Lots of people write books. The vast majority of them sell very few copies. I suspect that he will be given some kind of enormous advance for his blatherings, and the publisher will eat the financial losses incurred by it publishing.
I am no longer a Catholic. The Pope has no impact on my life. He can say whatever he wants to say. I don’t care. I am not, nor have I ever been a basketball fan. I really don’t give a rat’s behind how good a basketball player LeBron is. What he says about anything, including basketball, is totally irrelevant to me. Prince Harry is, in my opinion, a bit of a twit. I like his grandmother a great deal. I didn’t give his mother much thought when she was living, and a bit less since she passed. His father is a bit of a fool as well. I find his current situation uninteresting and irrelevant, his wife an opportunist and grotesquely ungrateful. These people, and, indeed, all celebrities hold no fascination for me, nor do I care what they think about anything. If you do, they aren’t the problem, you are.
What are you now?
Noam Chomsky is the original deep thinker of the left. If he stuck to linguistics, his area of ‘expertise’, no one would know who he is
If only…
His books were terribly researched. I hated reading his stuff in college.
Steven Pinker is more interesting and knowledgeable
He can also make his opinion based on actual evidence which is nice.
He is a conspiracy empiricist