I Don't Like The Intellectual Label.

Going Back To Why People Don't Vote, I Presume The Main Reason Is Because They Understand Without Reading Political Science Texts That It Doesn't Make Any Difference How They Vote. It's Not Going To Affect Policy, So Why Bother?

The Republicans Have Picked That As The One Thing That They Want To Hang On To To Try To Gain Some Political Stand, So They Have To Destroy What They Call Obamacare. This Is Now Not All The Republicans, It's A Wing Of The Republican Party, Which Is Called Conservative But In Fact Is Just Deeply Reactionary.

There Is Pakistan's Relationship With Afghanistan Which Will Also Be A Very Tricky Issue In The Coming Years. Then There Is A Large Part Of Pakistan Which Is Being Torn Apart From American Drone Attacks. The Country Is Being Invaded Constantly By A Terrorist Superpower. Again, This Is Not A Small Problem.

If You Take A Look At Places Like Harvard, It's Striking. In The Early ,50s, I Think There Were A Handful Of Jewish Professors, Three Or Four. But By The 1960s, There Were Jewish Deans And Administrators. In Fact, One Of The Reasons Why Mit Became A Great University Was Because They Admitted Jews Whereas Harvard Did Not.

French Intellectual Life Has, In My Opinion, Been Turned Into Something Cheap And Meretricious By The 'star' System. It Is Like Hollywood. Thus We Go From One Absurdity To Another - Stalinism, Existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - Some Of Them Obscene ( Stalinism), Some Simply Infantile And Ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What Is Striking, However, Is The Pomposity And Self-importance, At Each Stage.