[mindslight]

While I agree with you on this particular article, I disagree with your broader conclusion of anti-intellectualism. How exactly do you think we might get ourselves out of this situation if we don't even use a map?

Anti-intellectualism has helped bring us to this position, by neutralizing opposition into the easily-discardable "they took our jobs" rather than focusing on the actual mechanism by which the US working class was getting screwed - massive money printing to maintain price inflation (the official policy, in direct opposition to the marketing refrain that offshoring would reduce prices). That newly-printed money (representing the economic gains from offshoring) was then mostly given away to banks to loan back to us and otherwise pump up the asset bubble (ie "the rent is too damn high"). But even that realization has been neutralized by anti-intellectualism, with the myopic focus on the "deficit" and "government debt" in lieu of overall fiscal responsibility - once again helping to facilitate the trend of looting by the upper class with the cover of achieving society-wide austerity while turning a knob that does nothing of the sort.

Now this same anti-intellectualism has brought us Trumpism with its blind anger. All swagger and impotence, alienating our long-time allies and destroying our cherished American freedoms, putting us in a much worse position to do anything about China. And of course cheered on by the same people who've finally realized they've been had - by the previous scam quickly disappearing in the rear view mirror.

[jeetoid]

We won't see eye-to-eye on this, who exactly were the reasonable intellectuals that were going to save us? Maybe Hayek or Mises, Keynes won the day and look where we are.

The past century is defined by Progressivism, from the New Deal and subsequent Great Society, which was hoisted by the World Wars and complete centralization of society into the administrative state run by supposed experts.

At every level it's been experts and intellectuals of all sorts, think someone like Paul Krugman - there's countless others, who we're told have it all figured out and we should simply accept all their demands and if anyone disagrees well they're rubes and what do they know.