Only problem with this is that “sophisticate,” by definition, is fake, thus the title “fake sophisticates” is redundant, like “real sterling,”
or “genuine gold.” Look it up, and then look up “sophist.” My premise would be that the progressives are sophisticated. Were they not, they’d be open to changing their thinking, given logical debate. Instead they practice the old addage, “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with the facts!”
Can anyone, other than God, come to anyone’s “emotional rescue?” Isn’t choosing to learn to think, as well as choosing to do so, rather than than reacting emotionally, a do-it-yourself process? Isn’t all learning do-it-yourself? Can any of us claim “to know” what someone else claims to know, without a thorough, logical, critical analysis of what is presented as “knowledge?” Isn’t that the problem, as Ayn Rand said decades ago: the left, in lieu of thought, prinicples, fundamentals, reasoning, examination of premises, chooses emotionally appealing to them “bromides?” Haven’t they lost the ability to discern the difference between “theory” and “axiom?” Don’t they appear to accept someone else’s conclusions (somehow) with a “There, I know that now; I need not examine that question ever again” smug satisfaction?
“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,” Solomon said a very long time ago. Experience bears that out. The only solution is humility, with the ability to say “I don’t know,” and then search for truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth – with the humble acceptance of the fact that there is “nothing new under the sun,” nothing universally, timelessly, morally, worth knowing, that is. “Modern” is a point in each generation’s brief time on the planet, meaningless otherwise outside technology, which comes and goes, as “the sun also rises.” And time, what is time? Like money, it is but something we use, or fail to use, as we’re passing through the journey we call “life.” Too many of us are technicians, regardless of our fields; too few of us are thinkers.
Someone we know, a perpetual student lifelong, now 73 years of age, explained to an Engineer what a Mobius Strip is. The Engineer said, “How come I’m an Engineer, and I never heard of this; whereas you are not an Engineer but know about it?” Our friend replied, “It’s because you have ‘an education,’ whereas I have ‘knowledge’.”
