Unclear on the Concept [UPDATED]

the atlantic has a shovel

I know, I know: Tom Nichols. But let’s do it anyway. I’ll keep it short, to limit the amount of Tom Nichols we’re exposed to. (“3.6 Roentgen? Not great, not terrible.”)

Following up on Anne Applebaum’s self-refuting hilarity at The Atlantic, Nichols wrote a warning yesterday about democracy. It’s in trouble!

Here’s his opening paragraph: “In The Atlantic’s newest cover story, Anne Applebaum details the onslaught of antidemocratic propaganda flooding the United States. If only Americans weren’t so ready to believe so much of it.”

So he’s worried about antidemocratic propaganda, and the very first thing he says about it is that Americans — the people of the democracy he says he’s describing, and yes, I know that the US is a constitutional republic — lack the capacity for discernment. We must protect democracy! For example, the great common mass of humanity is too stupid to think.

Annnnd we’re off to the races. Here, watch the love Tom Nichols feels for democratic society:

Name someone who has more obvious contempt for democratic pluralism and the character of his fellow citizens. Ordinary people are marked by their ennui and their listlessness and their bored, dimwitted, pathetic gorging on stupid ideas, and society is full of cranks who sneeze and cough their dismal mental output onto us, and democracy is very precious.

It’s like watching Ruth Reichl say, “I love pickled herring. For example, I hate pickled herring.” Tom Nichols is very opposed to autocracy, and passionately committed to democratic society, and he knows that democratic society is full of stupid human garbage who are worthless and braindead and incapable of thought. The man can’t write a sentence that maintains its own premise from beginning to end, while he pounds out angry warnings about intellectual laziness. I am unable to avoid laughing out loud.

Whoever’s writing the checks at The Atlantic, you should know that there are higher-class whores available for this work.

UPDATE: