The Desperation of America’s Anti‑Intellectuals

found online by Raymond

 
From Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica:

There are millions of them; the anti-science, anti-climate, pro-Trump anti-intellectuals. The second class minds of America, those who embrace their god and their guns, but eschew everything meaningful in these changing fortunes of time. In 2016, they demonstrated an anti-intellectualism never before seen on such a large scale. They voted for Donald Trump, a man without class, or appeal to the rational, intellectual minds among us. They voted for the winner of the trophy for crass, setting the stage for an uncertain future not only for America but the world.

If you are looking for clues, historian and author Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962) offers them because Trump’s crassness has a definite appeal to the ever-growing anti-intellectual strain in American culture. In so many ways Trump epitomizes this frightening aspect. His global-warming denials and appointments of so many second-class minds like that of Energy secretary Rick Perry, who insists that “the science is still out” on climate change, are just two indications of Trump’s attack on rationality. As conservative columnist David Brooks has written of Trump,

“He has no . . . capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out.”

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