I was listening to Mike & Mike this morning, and they had a little argument concerning whether a football coach watching film was more or less intellectual than a chess match.
Here’s the problem: I would never let anyone called an ‘intellectual’ or ‘academic’ make policy decisions, decide our leadership in the country, etc. Of course, the ‘eggheads’ (as mentioned by a Clinton supporter) all are on the Obama bandwagon, and yet another reason not to support the man.
Of course, you college students out there who want to be a part of that ‘intellectual’ crowd are going to wonder why I make such a statement.
An academic works in the field of theory. You make a theory, try to prove or disprove it. If it is disproven, you create a new theory and start again. If it is proven, then you declare it good and move to another area to start the process again.
An academic, though, does not adapt on the fly. They deal in the black and white, not the shades of gray. Something is either right or wrong when it comes to theories.
Now, a football coach, businessman, farmer, or even president of the United States does not have the luxury of a stop and start. A farmer, if his crops are not growing at a slow pace, does not have the luxury of halting everything, replanting his crop, and trying again. A president does not have the luxury of stopping an action or policy suddenly and restopping it, as the momentum is carried through. Even if a mistake is made, that mistake carries on for a long time and in many cases needs to be ‘rode out’ to the end. It isn’t enough for a coach to stop and start a defense because it does not work, he has to adapt the defense as the game is being played and fix any fundamental errors through teaching between games. He can’t just dump the entire defensive team and start over.
In the lives of non-academics, actions have far reaching consequences. Things can change over days, months, and even years. For an example, we just cannot suddenly stop Nafta. That has consequences. We cannot just stand up and walk out of Iraq. That has consequences not only for us, for the Iraqi people. You can debate until you are blue in the face about whether we should have attacked in the first place (Personally, I wish the secondary reasons were emphasized more on this, as I think going in WAS a good idea), but you just can’t ‘stop the theory’ like I describe above that the academics want. The world does not work like a laboratory.
Here’s another example: the global warming crowd have whined for years about the fact the ozone layer hole needs closing. We must close the hole, they trumpeted. Now, the hole IS closing, and guess what? It’s causing MORE warming by doing so. Again, the world is not a lab. Actions have consequences, and many of those consequences cannot be foreseen even by the academics and their theories.
It is frustrating that we are going to elect the academics’ chosen candidate for president. By the time we all realize he’s in over his head, the damage will be done.
