Where are the progressives… intellectuals?

Recently, in light of the saga or rather drama surrounding the St Vincent Building and Loan Association and the lack of information, misinformation and uncertainties that prevailed and are still prevailing, someone on Facebook asked where were the progressives and intellectuals? {{more}}I imagined that the individual was led to ask that question since the public has found difficulty believing the utterances of some of our politicians and yearn for more balanced comments. The truth is that there are politicians that the public can trust, but then the country is so divided that if one finds oneself on one or the other side of the political fence it is going to be difficult to believe whatever the other says.

That is where we are. So, for most of us whatever comes from the mouth of the other side is wrong. But it doesnât stop there, for this applies to other commentators who are not politicians. We have such a mindset and are so politically poisoned that our first inclination is to attach political labels to anyone who has the audacity to comment on a public matter. We are so politically and materially driven that we suspect anyone who makes any such comment. And in some, or even many cases, they might be right.

This is our dilemma. That individual must have something to gain, we argue. We try to see if whatever he/she says sounds like what has been coming from the mouths of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition. Really, people do not have minds of their own and exist by parroting what their man or woman says. So, there is little public opinion. Public opinion comes down to the opinions of the ULP, NDP or Green Party. They have a monopoly on all thought, it would appear.

The other issue has to do with labelling. We spout around the words progressive and intellectual and all of us seem to have a different view of what these mean or really of who fits into which category. This labelling has been going on for some time. Is he a Marxist or Socialist? If he is a Socialist, isnât that the same thing as saying he is a Marxist? That is how our mind works. To defend Cuba or Venezuela on any issue is to show your real worth. To be critical of the USA, well that is something else because it means you are favouring someone else or somewhere else.

We have probably gotten some of this madness from the US media which we soak up day and night. There is nothing wrong with the US media, because there are a wide variety of opinions being shared, but we stick to FOX, CNN and MSNBC and do not go beyond these. Today, I was in fact planning to write on Obamaâs State of the Union Address, with which I was fascinated and to me seems to be pointing the US in the right direction. Today, the reviews are that he had given a leftist presentation and the Republicans in particular dread this move to the left. But America is something else where this is concerned.

In fairness to them, some of this came out of the McCarthy era, where a Communist was found under every bed. They hardly use the word Communist these days. But in their mind a Socialist is a Communist. Poor Obama has been accused by the Republicans of being a closet Socialist and the “leftâ in the US feels that he has betrayed their cause by not being on the left. The problem with the US is that they have not had the political history that Europe and Britain had, where they have had to deal with parties, persons and movements of different political tendencies and orientations.

But the question posed on Facebook still stands, even if we do not clear up the confusion about those labels. I went about searching for definitions of intellectual. One definition states that an intellectual is one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate or ask and answer questions about a wide variety of different ideas. Another one claims that everyone is an intellectual, but not everyone functions as an intellectual. One of the persons whom I admired most, the now deceased Palestinian Edward Said, argued that “the role of the intellectual is not to consolidate authority but to understand, interpret and question it.â Said was strong on the need to speak truth to power. He calls for a principled stand and moral norms that allow one to speak truth to power.

This, to me, is the crux of the matter, for some are so caught up satisfying their selfish ambitions that they are forced to compromise themselves. Quite often when there are discussions on radio, we yearn for those with the information to come forward and inform us, but this hardly ever happens. I was so pleased on Monday night to hear one of our chartered accountants and management consultants phone in to the Jerry George programme to provide us with a context within which we can better understand the Building and Loan issue. All of us were the better for this.

I wish more persons who can share that kind of information and stimulate our thinking will come forward. I want to end with another quote from Edward Said: “Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one but which you decide not to take.â

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian.