Posted on 11/24/2013 2:30:43 PM PST by ReformationFan
I went to a lecture recently presented by the Smithsonian. The subject of the talk was Jack Kerouac’s Francophone roots, and I was expecting lots of intellectual wanna-be Beatniks. Instead I was surrounded by a roomful of typical old lib academics.
It felt as though I were living inside of NPR. You know the type: the women are skeletal from not eating meat and from biking too much and have salt and pepper hair which they cut when they decided they hated men and also decided to look like one. They prefer the unkempt, “natural” look to actually bothering to maintain the frizz. The men are not noticeably thin, but are noticeably lacking in bulk. Both sexes (it’s difficult sometimes to distinguish them) dress in neutral earth tones, the organic fiber of their clothes having been manufactured ethically. They dress for comfort and for hiking simultaneously, even in the city, and sip water constantly, as if they don’t know where their next sustainable bottle of H2O is coming from. Many of them wear glasses (it adds to the intellectual mystique), little artsy specs with thick frames that sit on the end of the nose. This positioning accentuates the elitist, I know better than you look.
I had a beer and observed. I was the only one under 50, I think, and definitely the only one who read On the Road without trying to dissect it for profound insight. I found it mostly a practical guide to how to be wild and still survive, with the occasional thoughtful reflection thrown in between breaths. The people attending this lecture seemed as opposite Jack Kerouac, a noted conservative, as they could get.
This type of liberal shows up everywhere: at book stores, coffee shops, farmers’ markets, lectures, concerts, museums. And why, thought I, is it that liberals seem to own the arts and everything aesthetic?
Two thoughts:
Libs don’t actually own the arts, they just make it look that way.
Liberals are great showmen and women – I don’t want to discriminate here. (Ever wonder, by the way, why liberals are so gung-ho about gender neutrality but then have a conniption when you don’t write he/she his/her? Anywaaay…
Everything liberals do is about appearance and how their behavior is perceived. This is why their lifestyles are so contradictory. And since they generally reject God and the eternal, the glories of this world are all that matter. They want to feel good without having to do good. They want to look good in the eyes of others without having to sacrifice. And when they do something, they don’t do it quietly simply for the enjoyment of themselves or of others. They make a spectacle of it so you can’t help but notice.
This is why it seems that liberals own the arts. They want to appear to everyone else in the world to be cultured, non-discriminatory, interested, and intellectual. I’m sure there were other non-liberals at the lecture I attended (actually, being D.C., there is no guarantee of this), but I didn’t notice them in the sea of exaggerated progressives aggressively flaunting their open minds. Conservatives tend to enjoy things passively, absorbing art and culture for their own sakes, because they enjoy them. This contrast may also be why the liberal media is liberal. Leftists are much more about showing and telling. (It’s why they also rule the bumper sticker world.)
The arts are another way they can force ideologies on you and control you.
The arts, when acknowledged at all, are associated with poverty. Especially in these terrible democratic I mean economic times, the arts take a hit. They are a low priority, and rather than let the market do its thing, the liberals do theirs: they force the arts to stay afloat by taking money people could better spend on subsisting and spend it on artists’ salaries, supplies, and marketing for asinine projects. If there’s one thing liberals love more than spending money on fluff no one cares about, it’s spending other people’s money on fluff no one cares about. And where government money goes, a government message goes with it. (Hello, Sesame Street)
“In my opinion, I think it’s because libs like to live in fantasyland a/k/a the only place where their ideas actually work.”
Reminds me of this quote:
What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world’s stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual’s theories serves as proof of humanity’s irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy? - Daniel J Flynn
I’ve certainly got no aversion to commercial art. Its easy money made easier by the fact that I don’t try to think of myself as the next Ansel Adams and don’t expect to be paid like a star.
I actually enjoy coming up with company logos and I do it for a fraction of what ad agencies charge.
Could part of it be because the left’s themes are simply easier to capture in art? I see a paradox where lefties — the elites, not the zombies — tend to be very well educated, very intelligent, very creative, yet the left’s ideas are in general much simpler than those of conservatism/classical liberalism. Take economics, where leftwingers basically want a centrally run command economy. This is pure simplicity compared to the Austrian model which understands deeper and subtler things like distributed intelligence and spontaneous order. And then the question is, which of these models would be easier to comment on or express artistically (assuming one wanted to do such a thing)? The first model clearly would be, because it’s simpler.
So maybe there’s more lefty art simply because lefty art is easier to pull off. Maybe it’s easier to do their themes proper justice artistically. Sort of like the reason there are piles of rock guitarists out there but relatively few jazz guitarists. Jazz is just a much more difficult genre. Almost anybody can improvise a pentatonic rock solo over some I-IV-V chords but almost nobody can play a good lead over complex jazz harmonies. Likewise almost anyone can riff on “social justice” but to flesh out the subleties of negative rights and that sort of thing? How would you capture that in graffiti? How would you write an angsty song defending equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome? Etc.
I have a feeling that leftist artists have an easier job and therefore can be more prolific, and by being more prolific can flood the zone and achieve a kind of dominance.
Creativity suffers the demands of responsibility.
>> Leftists are much more about showing and telling
Leftists are dangerous control freaks. Liberals are not necessarily Leftists.
I do not know of any books or drawings written by a liberal that i actually like, although i don,t doubt there are some exceptions, there are some liberal actors that i liked until they came out of the closet.
I associate liberal arts with gay oriented movies and vulgar drawings and books or movies like Maude or mash and the shows of that era. i did not like them then nor now.
I have not watched tv for at least 20 years except in a motel once every 6 months or more but i doubt if they have improved any.
I don’t agree with anything in your post.
>> [ blue collar morons and you Corporate idiots ] ... Go on and applaud your conservative self for “being your own boss” and “running your own business”. Big deal.
That’s an extremely naive statement.
You’re implying the arts are nothing more than a manifestation of liberalism which is absurd.
You don’t think being literate is important?
You don’t think being an opera singer or concert pianist is work?
Fiction will always mean something regardless of whether or not the author intended it to.
So being a ballet dancer or film director or concert pianist isn’t hard work? Are you serious?
>> So being a ballet dancer or film director or concert pianist isn’t hard work?
I happen to respect these skills. Why do you deem them to be liberal in nature?
I was responding to someone who said being in the Arts isn’t real work.
Great post.
The poster didn’t reference what you enumerated.
How many conservatives do you believe consider the concert pianist unworthy of professional recognition?
Liberal Arts is a generic term that encompasses everything from music to studying the Constitution.
So music and literature aren’t real fields?
Because they like to Piss in Jars and have a Crucifix fixation?
You continue with the false premise.
Music and literature are not the domain of liberalism.
I was probably a little loose with the vocabulary, but aren’t music and literature primarily judged subjectively?
I was responding to a blanket statement that the reason liberals own the arts is because conservatives would ‘are too busy working’. There was no distinction made between the various arts in question.
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