She's a woman on a mission, looking to deliver electoral Armageddon to the Left, while standing up to the sinister
pseudointellectual European baddies and the internal "separatists", as she, in a leaflet through my door, described Plaid Cymru and The Scottish National Party: language that makes them sound like they spend their time clad in balaclavas, firing Kalashnikovs, riding round in old Citroens and bombing pavement cafes, rather than trying to promote a civilised devolutionary agenda.
At the same time we can't seem to decide if beauty pageants are worth our time: No pageant season goes by without a
pseudointellectual pointing out publicly that the resources and attention squandered on beauty contests are better off allotted to women's education or women's health.
This obsession leads Philaminte to become convinced that she should marry her eldest daughter to an entirely inappropriate
pseudointellectual poet - a self-professed genius who turns out to be little more than a posturing fool.
From his obvious ample experience, John warns Jack that Monica is a
pseudointellectual, extravagantly narcissistic man-eater, but--"go ahead, throw yourself into the propeller!"
Instead, both arrogantly wave away any criticism of their ability with the dismissive air of
pseudointellectual academics.
I call this
pseudointellectual mishmash "vulgar Keynesianism." It's the same claptrap that has passed for economic wisdom in this country for more than fifty years and seems to have originated in the first edition of Paul Samuelson's Economics (1948), the best-selling economics textbook of all time and the one from which a plurality of several generations of college students acquired whatever they knew about economic analysis.
To answer this question, we briefly highlight the concepts of xenophobia, unexamined privilege, and
pseudointellectual resistance (dependency on scientific explanations).
Melville's story of John Claggart's hatred of Billy Budd is similar; or consider Henry James's terrible study in envy, Madame Merle, who fueled by her bored, dissipated, and disappointing life, arranges the disastrous match of the energetic, attractive Isabel Archer to the impotent,
pseudointellectual Gilbert Osmond, only to observe Osmond suck the life out of her.
Sometimes it seemed to offer a
pseudointellectual explanation.
D'Souza became a national phenomenon with a book attacking PC culture at universities, which was defensible, if overstated, and an apologia for American racism, which he termed "rational discrimination." With its
pseudointellectual patina, D'Souza's work, even more than Charles Murray's, seems designed to offer solace to those who miss the good old days of Jim Crow laws and late-night cross burnings.
* Plain instead of inflated,
pseudointellectual language
Reflecting on this linkage, Bauer offers an important generalization about ideology, intellectuals, and genocide that "when an intellectual or
pseudointellectual elite with a genocidal program...