A key indicator of how perfective a society is, is how important the typical subject matter is in the popular culture and media (including cable news media and the internet).
Concretization question: How important is the typical subject matter on Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Beck's (call 'em "The Glenns" for convenience) columns/programs, as compared with (i.e., contrasted to) the rest of the media? How about Noam Chomsky? Whatever else you think of him, the shit he typically talks about is damn important. And how about what representative members of the Ayn Rand Society have to talk about, as it relates to contemporary political culture? Why aren't they prominent in today's mass-media discussion?Wouldn't they have the most of importance to offer in explanation of this whole "Ayn Rand phenomenon?" (One of them is a prominent Aristotle scholar currently at the No. 3 ranked department of philosophy in the English-speaking world, for crying out loud - and is editing a volume on Ayn Rand's epistemology due out this summer, as well another, much-anticipated Wiley-Blackwell volume due out hopefully in the very near future. Which would be of greater importance for understanding Rand's Objectivist ideas, that or the next rendition of Ayn Rand Nation by a fuckin' amateur? Which will the leftwing interblogs devote their attention to this time around? Last time around, with near-identical publication dates ca. March 2012, it was Gary Weiss's Ayn Rand Nation getting all their attention, with Leonard Peikoff's Understanding Objectivism getting none of their attention.) I mean, how fucking low does a culture have to be for their voices not being the most prominent in media discussions of Ayn Rand? Isn't that pretty much as pathetically bad as Chomsky not being all over the popular media?
Relevant distinction: "Intellectually high-brow" and "Important" (also consider: "Relevant")
More to come . . . .
#saganized
P.S. Another checkmate to come . . .
P.P.S. 24 days left...
