“Pseudointellectual” is not a word that I like very much. Of out all times that it is used, four times out of five it is being used to express anti-intellectual sentiments. Yet there is no other way for me to put it: the members of the LaRouche Movement that haunt college campuses and other social areas are pseudointellectuals, period.
I have heard many stories of what they say and seen their signs many times. One said “Global Warming is a bigger fraud than your girlfriend’s orgasm.” I had heard of how they try to get college students to drop out and join them, and read some of their strange publications. Until the other day, though, I had never talked to one of them.
I was on my way to a job interview when one of them stopped me and asked me if I had a minute. I did, since I was supposed to arrive “betwee three and four” and it was 2:45. He began the conversation nicely by saying “me and these other guys have spent the whole last summer kicking Dick Cheney’s ass.” Realizing that I was in for the long haul, I began to give simple, sane responses to what he said, such as “what do you mean?” and “why Dick Cheney?” The lunacy got even deeper, however, and it would be almost impossible for me to reproduce exactly the barrage of conspiratorial, meaningless blabber that he began jabbing at me. I’ll just list the various things that he talked about (all of which I simply responded to with the same sort of calm “why?” questions):
- He and a bunch of other LaRouchies loved to “kick Cheney’s ass”.
- Dick Cheney and some order of the British Empire had organized the 9/11 attacks and are actively trying to destroy America.
- I seem to be too much of an “information-driven person” (he began implying this when I asked him for evidence to support the prior statement). The topic suddenly switched, for seemingly no reason, to science.
- We can only know if things are true through evidence, yet being too focused on evidence is bad.
- String Theory is obviously false. It’s a scientific fraud that is distracting us from real physics. He tried to explain something about String Theory, yet obviously knew less about String Theory than my cat.
- All that Newton did was steal from Kepler. Newton was a scientific fraudster too.
If the above points seem somehow coherent, then I have failed to express just how nonsensical his rambling seemed in person. He jumped from Politics to Science with no explanation, and when I asked him for one, he ignored me. He was obviously ignorant of all of the scientific issues that he seemed to know so much about, and it was impossible to quite understand what he was getting at.
Additionally, he asked me my age, to which I simply responded “why do you want to know?” When I told him that I had to go, he asked me to stay longer, than asked if he could call me later, then at least if I would accept his newspaper, which I threw away as soon as I could.
Does anybody else have experience talking to LaRouchies? From their signs, newspapers, the accounts that others have told me (I know many college students who have talked to them) and my conversation last week, it seems that all that they do is try to display wit and dazzle you with their knowledge (or apparent knowledge) of various topics. Only they know the answer (though they are horribly bad at explaining it) and anyone who (gasp!) demands evidence is simply buying into the big conspiracy and being a sheep.