It may be unfair, but I've always felt many Americans to equate "intelligent and refined" with "weak and ineffectual". Our quickness to blame our "effete intellectual elites", both in our politcal discourse and popular culture, is so deeply embedded in American thought that we don't even recognize it as a cultural characteristic. It just manifests itself automatically as if it were self-evident truth.
It may be a relic of a time when a "gentleman" was an aristocrat, hence an oppressor. In the new Republic, there was no nobility, and acting or appearing that way was unnaceptable.
I know it's not just me. I came from a more European culture that prized refinement and education, that aspired to it. And it was always astonishing to us how Americans, who we knew were no smarter or less capable than we were, always acted as if those qualities were effeminate, or even subversive.
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Re: "The Adlai Stevenson Disease"
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- Apocalypse Now.
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- Re: Apocalypse Now.
- Re: Apocalypse Now.
- They make your flesh crawl because that's part of your belief system.
- Re: They make your flesh crawl because that's part of your belief system.
- You're blowing smoke again.
- "Yeah, I’m perfectly aware that a bunch of crazy ragheads want to fly airliners into our office buildings, but they don’t live here, and they are not the spiritual heart of the Tea Party."
- Re: They make your flesh crawl because that's part of your belief system.
- Re: They make your flesh crawl because that's part of your belief system.
- They make your flesh crawl because that's part of your belief system.
- Re: Apocalypse Now.