re: #68 ClaudeMonet

Intellectuals spend years lecturing people from their ivory tower, telling them how stupid they are, what they should believe, how they should live, all in accordance with their sheltered, academic, theoretical, comfy existence. Why? Because it’s a hell of a lot easier than getting their hands dirty and finding out how people really live, believe, etc., how the various threads of their lives intertwine.

Then they wonder why those they lecture get pissed off at them.

Perhaps it’s my background, but I have always preferred being persuaded by someone who knows something of the real situation over being told by someone who’s read a lot of books and articles and is well-versed in theory. (Ludicrous example—When I was in college, a popular Theology course, “Marriage and the Family”, was taught by a Jesuit. My view was, “WTF would he know about it?”)

That doesn’t excuse the nativists and anti-intellectuals from being assholes, but it does explain some of their anger, not that they can even articulate it.

I can see this as possibly part of it but doesn’t explain all of it. It’s too simplistic. You also have to consider that politically ‘anti-intellectualism’ has been used over and over as part of the political parlay for years. The whole ‘we don’t have to listen to the book-learned’ has and still a political point of rhetoric ironically use by the ‘elites’ of whatever side is in question. So a lot of what you’re saying in terms of people not wanting to listen to book learned has been culturaly created on purpose in order to basically win politically.

I also think that it has a lot to with the school and education system that regardless of trying the higher education parts of it are still out of reach for a lot of people. When part of the cultural meme or myth is that everyone can be unlimitedly successful if they only work hard and get an education and that myth proves to be not as rosy or people find they can’t access the parts of the tool box that they need to do it, it’s human nature to start discrediting the actual ‘myth’ and mocking it.

Plus the US has a massive celebrity culture and has for a long time. Where rich and famous rule as cultural icons. Many have got where they are not because of old stuffy and stupid education or some sort of intellectual smarts. I don’t doubt that this is somewhere in the mix as well.