By Tim Hartnett
February 21, 2025
Q. How many light bulbs does it take to change a philosophy?
A. Depends how you define good lighting.
When something goes by a name that means "the love of wisdom," finding anything worthwhile in it depends on how you define wisdom. If you get off being mired in redundancy and rhetorical twister philosophy is just the sport. The deconstructionists, post-modernists, Nazis and neo-fascists all swear by Nietzsche; his canon turns out a multi-purpose ideological vehicle for the ride to dystopia. Once you know that, and still think Freddy's writing amounts to something more than a college boy's joint addled literary amusement park, any pretense of philanthropy is self delusion.
Now, just what the hell does it mean "to be"? Is it really a question a healthy, goal driven person has all day for? A nice, long swim in the ocean fills that bill better than poring over Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre for years. Nobody on a path toward not being a boor remains stuck on those three long.
20th century philosophers bent over backwards trying to stay hip, but could never contain their sanctimony. If any of them had, it would have ended in spontaneous combustion. Hoffer did his damndest to drive dogmatic doctrine from the temple. The industry wouldn't hear of it. Academicians keep leading the flock right back to genuflection, services in a foreign tongue and Baal.
If "justice" is what you're after, it'll be long delayed when it takes one million words or more to figure out what it is. Up against that, the more efficient task is figuring out what it isn't. All the ones standing in justice's way today have been steeped to opacity in the isms of rage. They're in sects where the congregation leaves the pew mad at the world - and that, Little Adam, passes for enlightenment. Somebody's are guilty out there. There's a good chance you'll be counted among them showing too much particularity about who.
Can someone please invent us a device to measure the prevalence of fanatical philosophy in the various professions? In which is it likely to do most harm?
Sacha Biazzo talks about a philosophy of journalism, How to Cover Stupidity (Including Our Own), on the January 22nd Columbia Journalism Review web page. "Writers in Europe are wrestling with a philosophical concept that lies at the heart of much journalism," the subhead informs us. In true philosophical style Biazzo takes over 600 words to say what Pope did in 27:
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Knowing that you don't know it all is the safest, surest route to improve understanding. It's less than completely clear that professional journalism is really the target of Biazzo's essay. We hear:
"Isaac Asimov once said that "there is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been." Asimov argued that this ignorance is "nourished by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is as good as your knowledge."
Isaac's quotation has been whipped out on us more than once over recent years. Is the high academy who Asimov or those citing him, were scolding? Was it ever anyone other than the cursed peasant? His beating must go on until morality improves. Defenders of the faith have ruled that hand tool handling and toxic views go hand-in-hand.
Sheltering the profs, providing them running water, putting a plate on their tables and other survivability services can never redeem the serfdom. Their sins are mortal, vague, voluminous and unforgivable. All the ones pontificating at university while chowing on the best eats and bedding down in plush accommodation must justify themselves. With a multitude to look down upon... they almost feel like they've earned it.
Alas, what can be done for the helots? Or, is it to them? That's the "philosophical" matter before august deep thinkers. If the lowly don't think rightly, a perpetually moving target, can't they be dealt with expeditiously? Shall the post-modernists and neo-nazis fight that out? Both isms hate with equal fervor. Whether it's Jews or Kulak types, sanctimonians need targets for their sights.
Jefferson, with unintentional irony, said: "that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor". What were the unwashed ever thinking, seeking a bit of say so over fate? They didn't read Marx, Marcuse, Wittgenstein or anyone else who counts. And, therefore, must continue stocking the larders of better folk looking after them. It's absurd to believe those obsessively pushing words around should be bothered with the toil necessary to keep out of the rain, get to and fro or tedious matters like providing the grub. Despising the help, while riding in ease, is part and parcel to filling the role of post- modernista-mensch.
Socrates, who Biazzo alludes to, claimed to know the difference between knowledge and opinion. Without knowledge of how to change the oil, your opinion of a mechanic leaves something to be desired.
Can journalism honestly be compared to professions like medicine, engineering or chemistry? "Write about what you know about" young students are told. Does that mean covering police should be confined to constables or war to professional soldiers? Even the censorship crowd doesn't believe that. But they would tie both hands behind Joe Six-Pack's back and take the gloves off Amanda Marcotte. Is she more qualified to opine on Zimmerman or Rittenhouse than a man who has been in a few brawls? No qualification system invented so far can justify barring a layman's views from mass dissemination. Who, but the philosophizers, dream up such things?
The trouble arises when writers think of themselves as something more than what they are. Journalism is an art, the "roughest of fine arts" someone once said. What happens when art gets ruled by philosophy? The Nazi and Soviet eras furnish a stockpile of examples in all of them. None of the others came out quite as maimed and mauled as journalism under 20th century fanaticisms.
Finding news consumers today less than satisfied with major media's products requires no effort. Go to the java joint, watering hole or community event and one is likely next to you in the bluest of cities. What Columbia teaches at its world renowned journalism school isn't helping. It's an ecole with no few imitators. There is considerable doubt in the wider world that their lessons are leading truthward. Is "philosophy" the question? It's hard to rule out. Where else do predilections overrule sensory perception? The trench-coated, gin-milled journeymen of the older school did a far more exacting job of making copy match with what functioning human faculties take in.
If it's a lack vital knowledge that keeps a redneck from voting "right," or for "what is in his interest," why is so little journalistic attention devoted to those hoarding that commodity? The world teems with people deprived of information they'd gladly have. Who are the proper arbiters of where the lowly should be looking? There is no shortage of homilists preaching that an epidemic of ignorance is responsible for the symptom Donald Trump. Anti-populist parsons never delve deep into what keeps American hardhats out-of-the-know.
What does it mean when government officials complain of under-informed masses while concealing information the public paid to compile by pallet-loads-per-hour? This is how the FDA described the necessity of taking over 50 years to reveal Covid vaccine data:
Reviewing and redacting records for exempt information is a time-consuming process that often requires government information specialists to review each page line-by-line. When a party requests a large amount of records, like Plaintiff did here, courts typically set a schedule whereby the processing and production of the non-exempt portions of records is made on a rolling basis.
[...]
FDA has assessed that there are more than 329,000 pages potentially responsive to Plaintiff's FOIA request. [...] FDA proposes to work through the list of documents that Plaintiff requested FDA prioritize for production in order of priority and process and release the non-exempt portions of those records to Plaintiff on a rolling basis. FDA proposes to process and produce the non-exempt portions of responsive records at a rate of 500 pages per month. This rate is consistent with processing schedules entered by courts across the country in FOIA cases.
How is it that this data becomes "exempt" in the first place? Rand Paul has been on that for years now. WATCH: Rand Paul Decries HHS Efforts To Obscure His Document Requests On Origin Of COVID-19 was for two documents of over 500 pages. They were both 100% redacted. Local governments are up to the same stunts in the name of "national security."
Trying to squeeze Feds, particularly the FBI, for information is as productive as milking a chicken - barring what meshes with their perpetual PR campaign. They cannot, we are told, be expected to comment on "ongoing investigations," which predictably go on as long as convenient. They are indifferent to how urgent the public's or the legislature's inquiries may be. The press seems to be as well. Feds have been clamming up like mobsters for decades. Try doing a Nexus/Lexus search of the news coverage. The Hoover Building will not be rushed. Eventually, the brass there knows, pesky nosy-parkers will dry up and blow away. Meanwhile, any development making the Bureau look good - no matter how sensitive - gets ink at warp speed.
Those in dubious battle against dreaded mis and dis information purport to spend most of their efforts covering government. Going by what gets aired or printed they find it synonymous with covering for government. How often does the ruling obsession with secrecy get op-eds or front pages? If democracy is in new and dire peril - as we are hourly informed - how can elections matter if bureaucracies in perpetual motion are opaque? When so much of what goes on in the gray soulless buildings - we all supposedly own - remains behind the scenes, how is it possible to know if you're being ripped-off, manipulated, dosed or led fatally astray?
Time magazine has a Media Bias/Fact Check reliability rating of "high." That's 5th on a 7 point scale with lowest being "Very Low" and highest "Factual Reporting." Whether or not that rating site is federally funded is worth knowing. In any case, the following was published by Time St. Patrick's Day of 2014:
According to the Associated Press analysis, which covers 99 federal agencies over six years, the Obama administration censored more documents and delayed or denied access to more government files than ever before. In 2013, the administration cited national security concerns a record 8,496 times as an excuse for withholding information from the public. That's a 57% increase over the year before and more than double the number in Obama's first year in office.
Sober readers that day may have remembered this was less than one year after Edward Snowden went on the lam. As has been widely reported, 44 waged an historic battle on whisteblowers. That fact is less an indictment of Obama than an indicator of historic trend. The government doesn't trust you to know and opens a file on anyone openly untrusting of them. Hence, these details should never be held as a defense for regime 43 that founded The Department of Homeland Security. That federal monstrosity emerged as the most redundantly parasitic, hyper-secret government paranoia cult yet known. They tacitly tell us "don't ask" more frequently than the Rom-Com genre says it aloud.
As far as JFK goes, the kooks have it backwards. If it ever all comes out we'll find that if the CIA and FBI had been in on it, John Kennedy might be going on 107 right now.
If democracy truly dies in darkness, what arena of common interest gets the least lumens? There is no valid philosophy of journalism. The only justifiable role of a reporter is to expose physical reality, however grisly, to consumers. Philosophical approaches to that task put supposed informers up to finding stories that match with tenets. That's what keeps them printing the legend of the evil peon who will re-legalize slavery, keep the wife barefoot and pregnant, construct genocidal internment camps and put monarchs back on thrones.
What isn't legendary is the philosophical demand to decry mass ignorance. It's the noise made by those whose meal tickets require keeping the audience under-informed and distracted.