>>2666738>>2667309To offer at least a brief defense of this cultural "anti-intellectualism" the "intellectual" currents in America have often been just as much responsible for the present state of things as rampant ignorance. Plenty of "respectable" news outlets solemnly explained in detail how Iraq had WMDs, for example. The liberal defense of every advance for neoliberalism has been "Well you fucking IDIOTS, you MORONS, you just don't understand how economics works!"
Seriously, if you ever want to see the worst examples of intellectual elitism in an American Context, check out The West Wing. There's an episode where they're dealing with what amounts to NAFTA protests and the President's cabinet is just dripping with contempt at all the "stupids" who oppose it. The series ends with them "heroically" working to privatize social security because the "experts" say it's going to collapse.
I can't really speak to the situation in Europe or the culture around theory there, but in America at least (and I suspect part of this might be rooted in us not really having an aristocracy that would/could patronize "useless" intellectual endeavors) there isn't much of an existing culture of liberatory theory, I guess you could say. John Brown thought he was on a mission from God. There are these old wobbly propaganda that basically contrasts the muscular factory worker demanding people organize
now to these effete utopians that want to ponder high-minded theory.
If you want to be depressed, then consider the current of "intellectualism" in American politics is most prominently associated with the Democratic Party. There's a Conservative intellectual tradition, to be sure, but nowhere is "intellectualism" more prominently perceived in American politics than in the fucking nerds that are jerking off to tort reform. Some Democrats are legitimately arguing that Biden was the most progressive president in 50 years because of the CHIPS Act, and I don't know a single goddamn person who even knows what that is. These freaks will say shit like "Ohmigawd! Hakeem Jeffries is proposing a bill that'll extend delinquencies on the credit of families making under $100k to 140 Days Minimum!" No one knows what the fuck that means. At least with Republican Voodoo economics people can conceptualize "Taxes take money, cutting taxes means I get less money taken."
So what does an "expert" mean in an American context? Usually some guy in a polo shirt explaining that coal miners in Virginia can just "learn to code" and that they'll even offer deductions on peoples' taxes for folks that take an accredited program to learn C++. It's something that seems nakedly stupid on its face, but if you're just a working class guy and they've got a masters degree they can conjure up any kind of rhetorical jiu-jitsu to say actually you're fucking stupid for not realizing how great an idea this is.