GIANTS AND PYGMIES

A lesser-known Howard Zinn quote I found really interesting lately was…

“It’s very interesting that intellectual giants and intellectual pygmies often have the same policies.”

He was referring to Reagan and Kissinger. I’ll let you work out which one is which.

However, it raises a few possibilites…

1. The idiot in the relationship is manipulated by the clever one
2. They are both clever
3. They are both idiots

Zinn was actually getting at numbers 1 and 3. In these kinds of political relationship a bad policy is often blamed on the one seen to be less intelligent (Bush, Reagan etc) because they are seen to be stupid. However, if the policies are coming from the more intelligent guy in the shadows…doesn’t that make him an idiot too?

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