Anti Intellectualism is Killing America
POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Monday, July 13, 2026 01:26
VIEWED: 26774
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An interesting read. Applies also to Australia and the UK, but perhaps not yet quite as bad. And I got to say, one of the reasons I rarely post on this board is because the majority of people who now post here fit this category as described "motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions. Sound familiar?" Sure does.
Quote:
The tragedy in Charleston last week will no doubt lead to more discussion of several important and recurring issues in American culture—particularly racism and gun violence—but these dialogues are unlikely to bear much fruit until the nation undertakes a serious self-examination. Decrying racism and gun violence is fine, but for too long America’s social dysfunction has continued to intensify as the nation has ignored a key underlying pathology: anti-intellectualism.
America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof's actions on America's culture of racism and gun violence, but it's time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation's culture of ignorance.
In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” (link is external) where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball (link is external) into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president (link is external), it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value. Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.
In considering the senseless loss of nine lives in Charleston, of course racism jumps out as the main issue. But isn’t ignorance at the root of racism? And it’s true that the bloodshed is a reflection of America's violent, gun-crazed culture, but it is only our aversion to reason as a society that has allowed violence to define the culture. Rational public policy, including policies that allow reasonable restraints on gun access, simply isn't possible without an informed, engaged, and rationally thinking public.
Some will point out, correctly, that even educated people can still be racists, but this shouldn’t remove the spotlight from anti-intellectualism. Yes, even intelligent and educated individuals, often due to cultural and institutional influences, can sometimes carry racist biases. But critically thinking individuals recognize racism as wrong and undesirable, even if they aren’t yet able to eliminate every morsel of bias from their own psyches or from social institutions. An anti-intellectual society, however, will have large swaths of people who are motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions. Sound familiar?
And even though it may seem counter-intuitive, anti-intellectualism has little to do with intelligence. We know little about the raw intellectual abilities of Dylann Roof, but we do know that he is an ignorant racist who willfully allowed irrational hatred of an entire demographic to dictate his actions. Whatever his IQ, to some extent he is a product of a culture driven by fear and emotion, not rational thinking, and his actions reflect the paranoid mentality of one who fails to grasp basic notions of what it means to be human.
What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain the hyper-patriotism (link is external) that has many accepting an outlandish notion that America is far superior to the rest of the world?NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
It is the dumbing down of America, which has reached epidemic proportions, and created to keep the ruling class in the land of Status Quo. Man!, that felt good to get off my chest.
With the rise of the Tea Party, it is both part and parcel the pulse of this country to not question or demand change that would benefit us all.
Fuck the poor! As corporations pollute and dilute the masses, that remains their battlecry. And God forbid you or I even suggest or even hint at, a conscious effort by the superrich to control that self-same montra. How else do you convince millions to fork over hundreds of billions to the banks after they caused the near-collapse of the world-wide monetary system. And with nary a whimper in protest.
The Bailout, and it's root cause - the collapse, was all orchestrated. It was so convoluted that hardly anyone could figure it out. Indeed clever, evil!, but clever. The ramping up of basic human emotions has been under fire, especially during the 9/11 crisis, and has been throttled ever since.
The plan is to keep us busy whilst they fleece us. What better than to start a race war. I have been watching this develop very carefully over the last few years and it is indeed obvious. But, I could shout this from the rooftops and no one will listen. Yes, indeed.....a evil clever plan.
SGG
Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
An interesting read. Applies also to Australia and the UK, but perhaps not yet quite as bad. And I got to say, one of the reasons I rarely post on this board is because the majority of people who now post here fit this category as described "motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions. Sound familiar?" Sure does.Quote:
The tragedy in Charleston last week will no doubt lead to more discussion of several important and recurring issues in American culture—particularly racism and gun violence—but these dialogues are unlikely to bear much fruit until the nation undertakes a serious self-examination. Decrying racism and gun violence is fine, but for too long America’s social dysfunction has continued to intensify as the nation has ignored a key underlying pathology: anti-intellectualism.
America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof's actions on America's culture of racism and gun violence, but it's time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation's culture of ignorance.
In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,” (link is external) where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball (link is external) into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president (link is external), it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value. Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.
In considering the senseless loss of nine lives in Charleston, of course racism jumps out as the main issue. But isn’t ignorance at the root of racism? And it’s true that the bloodshed is a reflection of America's violent, gun-crazed culture, but it is only our aversion to reason as a society that has allowed violence to define the culture. Rational public policy, including policies that allow reasonable restraints on gun access, simply isn't possible without an informed, engaged, and rationally thinking public.
Some will point out, correctly, that even educated people can still be racists, but this shouldn’t remove the spotlight from anti-intellectualism. Yes, even intelligent and educated individuals, often due to cuNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:In Australia or America, the key underlying pathology is white supremacy, not anti-intellectualism. Ignorance is not at the root of racism. The root cause has always been about stealing money, property, women, land, even lives. The white supremacists like to beautify their plunder with justifications even they know are only hot air and empty words. Does that realization stop them and make them give back what they stole? Obviously not, because it is too intellectual. They keep what they steal. Malcolm Reynolds type plunderers are few and far between among the thieves of the world. www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Applies also to Australia and the UK, but perhaps not yet quite as bad.
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Last night, Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston church, sat for a moment, and then killed nine people. Roof’s crime cannot be divorced from the ideology of white supremacy which long animated his state nor from its potent symbol—the Confederate flag. Visitors to Charleston have long been treated to South Carolina’s attempt to clean its history and depict its secession as something other than a war to guarantee the enslavement of the majority of its residents. This notion is belied by any serious interrogation of the Civil War and the primary documents of its instigators. Yet the Confederate battle flag—the flag of Dylann Roof—still flies on the Capitol grounds.
The Confederate flag’s defenders often claim it represents “heritage not hate.” I agree—the heritage of White Supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. An entire people are poorer for his action. The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition this act—it endorses it. That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...”
This moral truth—“that the negro is not equal to the white man”—is exactly what animated Dylann Roof. More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded—with human sacrifice.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Unfortunately, black culture is what is doing it's best to ensure blacks remain unequal. My mom married a black guy a few years ago, and he's a pretty smart guy and super nice. Hangs out with white people. Says he feels "more at ease' with whites, because with black culture EVERYTHING is "racis" and overly dramatic and hate filled. He said he can't be in a group of black men because inevitably SOMEONE will start a fight about something. They tend to wear their emotional state on their sleeves.
The problem with white culture is that that white people are paranoid and the vast majority NEED to be led. Most white people can't exist without a hierarchy telling them their place in life. I think white people can be just as hate filled as black culture, but white people are more subdued about it. Then "holding it in" becomes a ticking bomb.
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Quote:
I rarely post on this board is because the majority of people who now post here fit this category as described "motivated by fear, susceptible to tribalism and simplistic explanations, incapable of emotional maturity, and prone to violent solutions. Sound familiar?" Sure does.
I think if this represents your point of view you're too simplistic. It wraps things up nicely in a bow and is lacking in observational information that may help us to understand possible solutions. I have a guy who works for maintenance here and he is locked into global warming being a naturally occurring event. He believes that because his information comes from those who for political and other reasons side with oil and coal. His source is the Republican Party and news outlets like Fox news. We have those types here in RWT. Republican’s and even some Democrats residing in districts where oil or coal creates jobs realize trying to shut these industries down means they are the ones out of a job. Politicians are lobbied with money and that is why they say what they say (mostly) not because they always believe it. The article suggests it is due to anti-intellectualism. People on the left believe that it must be that because the need to take action on global warming and gun control is so obvious. Therefore it must be due to the lack of intellect of the American people.
The fact is that 90 + % of Americans wanted better background checks for gun ownership. 80 + % of American gun owners wanted better background checks and still the bill did not pass. Why, because so many republican districts are gerrymandered and if they voted for better background checks they would be challenged in their next primary. Why, because they have locked themselves into needing the NRA’s stamp of approval or so they believe. The reasons for stupid things being allowed to continue are endless. Many times it is due to very smart and powerful people in the background pulling the strings. Even the Republicans have had to shift their opinions from there is no global warming, to there is but it is natural. This is because of the intellect of the people forcing them to.
More people in the world are graduating from college than ever before and it is not anti-intellectualism that stops things that make sense from getting done. It has more to do with personal gain, greed and power. It would be better described as the human condition than anti-intellectualism. Yes anti-intellectualism exists and can be shown as another possible contributor to the tragedy in Charleston. You could make the argument that it is partially responsible for why there have been no gains in smarter gun laws, and for being a blocking force in global warming. However it is too simplistic to chalk it up to that.
P.S. It is not the confederate flag that flies over the Capital in South Carolina. It is the confederate battle flag and it was first hung there in the 1960's as a way to say F U to the government in Washington during the civil rights movement. So yes it is a symbol of hate that's flying there. The Republican politicians running for President today saying flying that flag is a states issue, should also be asked if it's a states right to practice slavery. This is also the flag that represents the army that tried to destroy and overthrow our government. We have a central government and if they truly believe this is a states rights issue, then they can't possibly represent the entire country if elected.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
An interesting read. Applies also to Australia and the UK, but perhaps not yet quite as bad.
An interesting article, but quite a strech to be strapping it onto a single tanjentially related event, hoping to ride the publisity.
You hav to wonder about the attitude tho. Wen prezented with real solutionz, progressivez suddenly bekum conservativz kuz they dont want to chanj the thingz they grew up believing.
A wize man rote: Given enuf time, everything eventually bekumz a viktim uv its own flawz.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.nooalf.com
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Heh!
Well, guilty as charged!
I've been on this board so long .... where everything starts as a bar-fight and real discussions never occur ... that I myself have become somewhat incapable of discussion.
A couple of sideways notes:
HISTORY OF AMERICAN INTELLECTUALISM
My more intellectual friends pointed out to me ... decades ago ... the fundamental anti-intellectualism of Americans. It was justified as "the wisdom of the rough-hewn farmer/frontiersman" being better than the corrupt, dandified, static intellectuals of Europe. During the anti-war movement, it was expressed as disdain for those "effete intellectual snobs" (VP Spiro Agnew, expressing a widely-promoted anti-anti-war sentiment).
Lately, it was expressed right here on this board as
Quote:[G: http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=59799&p=3]. I'm going to answer that "criticism", if it can be called such, with this:
So funny... oooooo French! Mon dieu! Such a heavy intellect!
Well, it's minor intellectualism. And do you have something against intellectualism? (I think the answer is "yes")
There are all kinds of reasons why Americans are particularly ignorant: Most of us are far away from any other nation, protected from foreign ideas by two large oceans on either side and a USA-clone up north. We have a history of disdain for learning anything from history, since our "pioneer" meme is to build everything from scratch. And most of us are English-only, inoculating us against any threat of contamination.
PROMOTERS OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
But NO nation with a strong central government wants intellectuals, because they ask awkward questions. And just as certainly, no CORPORATION wants to foster intellectualism either, since intellectuals are less easily influenced into going into debt to buy shit they don't need, and (again) they ask awkward questions.
There is a lot of deep psychology involved in promoting anti-intellectualism, and I think it's based on the following premise/ paradigm which is embedded in advertising and propaganda, and it's this:
"Emotions", for the most part, are what "motivate" us. (Both the word "emotion" and "motivate" come from the same root word, which means- to cause to move.) So, what causes most people "to move" is what they FEEL. At the basis of all advertising is the idea that YOUR EMOTIONS MATTER. That it's IMPORTANT for you to feel happy, to feel successful, to feel accepted, to feel in control. And that feeling sad, or fearful, or uncertain, or alone, is to be avoided at all costs.
Using that meme, they can cause you to assuage your unhappiness/fear/uncertainty by buying their crossover vehicle (which makes you a confident explorer, because that's how its shown on TV), or their light beer (which makes you part of the fun crowd, because that's how its shown on TV) etc. Politicians do the same thing, of course, by manipulating fear.
The underlying expected mindset is of confidence and self-worth, ready to pick one's self up time after time, hypomania. However, studies show that people who are classified as "mildly depressed" are MORE accurate in their judgment of situational outcomes, so even our psychologists are skewed towards hypomania as being the preferred norm.
EMOTIONS VERSUS THOUGHT
People also avoid thoughts which make them uncomfortable. There is another meme which has gained a lot of currency, and that is the meme of "intuition": Gut reaction is more valuable/true than a thought-out approach. However, in real life head versus heart situations (what you feel versus what you think), thought wins out. But this view that people must be comfortable at all times puts a real barrier to meeting new ideas and confronting difficult truths.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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It's a concept I came to accept many years ago.
There's a strong - and irrational - strain of mythology about the superiority of the American 'common man' that dates back to the early 1800s. Back then the pool of politicians running for office had become notably shallow. After all, the brilliant thinkers of the American Revolution had passed away. In order to get elected the politicians had to break from comparisons to the past and settle on a theme the population would embrace. The first candidate to use the 'common man' campaign slogan was Andrew Jackson. He was America's first populist candidate, but not the last. And in its way, as a sales pitch that told the market what it wanted to hear, it was so brilliant it's used to this day. 
The virus persists in politics, from dumbya as America's worst president but who got re-elected as the guy you want at your barbecue, to the TPers, to the portrayal of liberals, who are presumably educated, as un-American Latte-drinking, prius-driving, and birkenstock-wearing.
But the sales pitch of the common man has been hijacked by many interests. Any time you want to invoke beliefs to avoid a discussion of facts - from global warming, to the 'exceptionalism' of America, to the benefits of capitalism, to 'right to protect' - all you have to do is portray the other side as effete snobs. Or, if you're 'G' and THUGGR, as suspicious, foreign, un-American communists, but certainly NOT the common man.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Nothing says dishonest propaganda and anti intellectualism like reliance on ad hominems to avoid the topic.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Quote:
Originally posted by G:Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Nothing says dishonest propaganda and anti intellectualism like reliance on ad hominems to avoid the topic.
I addressed the topic at length - it was the third post, well before yours. Guess you didn't read it.
Don't be goaded G. There are many posts that should go unheeded. Sig and kiki's are two. If the thread dies because there are no posts you to wish to address so be it. Just start or wait for a new one. Of course it's up to you but I hate to see good logic go to waste on those incapable of absorbing it.
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