Lol, not EVERY decision. Only major, usually political, issues that require a stance.
Oh, okay! I thought you were talking about such important things like white wine, or red. 
I don’t think I go back and forth with myself, however when other people bring up things to consider, it does moderate my point of view. Being entrenched in one’s own opinion only doesn’t require much thinking.
Haha, bus, I make most important decisions in 15 minutes. Therefore I’m not an intellectual ever. Decisive, yes. I have nobody to debate with. It’s just me.
@busdriver11 No, no, not a tramp stamp! I’m a lady. O:-) It’ll be on the inside ankle, and very small.
Funny, LasMa. Just don’t get hepatitis for your trouble! Who knows, maybe I’ll do that for my retirement gift. However, I remember one poster’s story here on cc about her grandmother, I forget who it was. Apparently everyone is afraid of Grandma, because she has a buzzard tattooed on her back. However, back when she got it, it was a hummingbird.
“Haha, bus, I make most important decisions in 15 minutes. Therefore I’m not an intellectual ever. Decisive, yes. I have nobody to debate with. It’s just me.”
Fifteen whole minutes? You intellectual, you!
Lol busdriver.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
But does that just make me a plagiarist?
“Lol, not EVERY decision. Only major, usually political, issues that require a stance.”
That sounds like a speech my brother’s best man made at his wedding, talking about (my brother) and his wife and decisions to be made from her viewpoint" “So, who should make the decision about what color to pain the bedroom?” “Why, me of course, J (my brother) has much more important decisions to make”. “How about what area to live in?” “Oh, that is mine, J has a lot more important decisions to decide…”…goes down a whole list, then (according to his friend)…“So what are the important decsions (J) will make?” “Oh, you know, like nuclear disarmament, global peace, the economy, all those really big decisions”
Back to the original discussion.There are people who see themselves as intellectuals (or fashion themselves as such), and quite frankly can be a bore, they are often the people Donna talked about, who want to show just how smart they are (or think they are), talk about some pretentious book they read or movie they saw, basically will try to show how much more clever or smart there are than others.
Anti intellectualism is born of the notion that anyone who can put half a thought together or is educated must be like that, they must look down on everyone else, that they must think themselves so superior, so smug, and more than a bit of that I think is those who have that idea themselves would behave like that if they were in that position. It is kind of a parallel to the old arguments about the nouveau riche with their displays of conspicuous consumption (which old money found to be pretty gauche), based on personal experience from the people in the private school my son went to, it is because they grew up ‘not to the manor born’ but expected that ‘rich people’ most necessarily behave like they look down on those with less money or spend their time figuring out ways to display their wealth.
The irony is that few who the anti intellectuals would call “intellectual” with a sneer are like that. More importantly, intellectual has become in our world of sound bites to be a pejorative, much as liberal has, instead of looking at an idea and saying “that idea is stupid’, in the last 35 years or so you have it used as a blanket blame for everything that has gone wrong (or supposedly has gone wrong). Reagan used it to great effect during debates, with his infamous “There you go again” stuff, Bush the senior used both intellectual and liberal as perjorative, which is ironic given the man’s credentials and his family background, X generations on both sides going to Yale, etc. Instead of arguing ideas, we have the Fox News commentator version of intellectual, where the likes of Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly blame everything on 'liberals or intellectuals” with a sneer.
If I was going to define it, I would use the term someone who thinks through their positions versus someone who reacts to them with emotional and other biases (and note, this has nothing to do with liberal or conservative at all). When things are based entirely on ‘gut reactions’, when you have people arguing ‘but we have been doing it that way for thousands of years’ as an argument about public policy or law, it is a classic example. Those who foamed at the mouth about going to war in Iraq were another example, or those who see a problem, feel badly, and immediately want to ‘do something’, like when we saw the chaos in Somalia and sent troops in there to try and help, when it was a quagmire, or when the US sent troups into Lebanon under UN authority and ended up getting almost 200 Marines killed because of thoughtlessness. The idea that ‘conventional wisdom’ (which Einstein called a bunch of preconceptions drilled into people, mostly before the age of 18) is the stuff of real value is part of this anti intellectualism, or that appealing to ‘will of the masses’ somehow is the way to go, the ‘wisdom of the common people’ which often is "the ignorance of the mass of people’.
It is nothing new, read up sometime on the campaign between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams in the 1820’s, it was a classic in the field. Claude Pepper lost his senate seat around 1950 in Florida when his opponent in his campaign accused Pepper of being one of those ‘intellectuals", said his wife was a thespian, he matriculated before marriage and so forth, and Pepper lost. anti intellectualism is just another form of the ignorance is bliss, learning ‘ruins the mind’ and other forms of peasant wisdom that are one of the few things common to human beings all over the world. Groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda, some forms of populist movements in the US, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, were often centered on the idea that intellect and learning are oppression, that wisdom is found through ‘common sense’ and in ‘the will of the masses’, or in ‘revealed truth’ (ISIS’ interpretation of Islam, fundamentlist Christians in the US), rather than thinking through ideas and offering something new.It is very easy to say, when someone proposes a new idea and instead of debating it, on its merits or failures, we have empassioned ‘discussions’ based on gut feelings and emotions (on all ends), rather than offering ideas. Conservatives have gotten stuck with a label of being anti intellectual, catering the knuckle draggers, because the thoughtful conservatives, who have ideas, have been buried under a tidal wave of going by the guy, appeal to the masses through fear kind of people. It is interesting that people once considered arch conservative have said much the same thing over the years, Goldwater was repulsed by what conservative came to mean, so did people like Buckley and others who are credited with building the framework of modern conservatism, and saw it become associated with what they called the whackjob right, the anti intellectual, religious fundamentalism and so forth.