Anti-Intellectualism in the US.

[frigidmagi]

I thought we should have a discussion as to where it came from and why it's still here. The US specifically due to me not having a good enough grasp to discuss it elsewhere. I'm gonna offer my opinion and let y'all comment as you see fit (like I have a choice right?).

Anti-Intellectualism is a Wave:

When the US as a nation was first estblished by the Revolution, intellectuals were considered not just smart, but also cool and sexy. Men such as Thomas Jefferson being a prime example. This would change by the time of Andrew Jackson's generation. Jackson was elected on the strenght of the western and south vote. Being an outsider from the elite classes for various reasons (his wife was one, him being an asshole was another) he was the champion of the virtues of well... medocity. The glory of the common man was often boiled down to the idea that it was better to be an uneducated farmer or worker then a danified over book learned sissy. As you can guess, Jefferson hated Jackson. Say what you will Jefferson had great taste in enemies.

This was replaced in later generations by glorification of education and sciencifitic progressism. Scienicitist and Doctors, wise, educated men who had only the best of intentions would led us to a better tomorrow. This is mostly openly expressed in the 1920s and 1930s. It would also appear in the popular culture of the 1950s. By the 1960s however anti-intellectism was back.

Modern causes: Commies, experiments and atomic bombs.

The 1930s ended with the world being plunged into the horror of World War II. To this day it remains the largest, costliest, bloodiest conflict ever waged, with battles taking place on 3 continents and 2 oceans. The dream of science had become a nightmare of death. All the ideologies involved from Communism, Liberial Democracy and even Facisism had cloaked themselves in science and intellectism. All 3 had supporters among the intellectual elite. This would come back to bite everyone in the ass.

The 1950s was as much a period of brief denial as it was of stablity and rebuilding. To put it bluntly people were to damn tired and shell shocked to sit down and start thinking about what just happened. They wanted to forget as much of the horror as possible while glorifying in the victory and it's rewards. The 1960s could be considered the time when people woke to the implications of just what had occured in World War II.

The 1960s was the era when backlash against nuclear weapons, warfare, social darwinism and it's attentent theories of racism and a variety of other events finially exploded. The Jewish community began to ask "Where was God during the Holocaust?" The God is dead movement began in Christianity. Social Protests began to surge forward around a vareity of causes both good and bad. Professors began to speak out against social abuses. Tuskegee, the then still ongoing medical experiment in the American South that kept 400 black men affected with Syphallis untreated was denouced after 40 years.

Noam Chomsky began to write pro-Soviet and anti-United States works. Centered mostly around US involvement in Veitnam and other military actions. His work was supported publically by a number of university professors.

At this point the right wing segment of the US was firmly anti-communist and had been for almost a generation. The actions of anti-war, pro marxist college students and professors was seen as a betrayl of American values and way of life. Backlash occured with working and middle class Americans begining to turn their back on those intellectuals and questioning their right to assualt the legitmacy of the US government. This would be pushed even futher ahead by Chomsky's support for Iraqi terrorists, insurgents and militas against US troops and Ward Churchills comparing 911 victums to Nazi supporters. Even though support for the Iraq war and occupation have dropped greatly, the vast majority of US citizens do not condone attacks on US troops or citizens. While not representing the majority opinion these highly visual examples feed into the sense that intellectuals have abandoned the US, it's values and even it's basic right of self defense.

The left wing segment of the population focused more on social injustice, long upheld by intellectuals and the horrors of war. The Atomic Bomb and the Holocaust served as focial points of this. The feeling being that intellectuals hadn't helped at all just made things worse. Instead of enlighted wise men, sciencist were crazed menacing Franksteins who knew no restraint or ethical boundary. This would be grabbed by radical enviromentalist in later decades.

Not all enviromentalist go to the extreme of decrying science and resulting techonolgy but alot do. Greenpeace being a prime example, the current radicals who seized control of Greenpeace ousted the founder of the organization for being to soft on industralist and their intendent sciencist. These are the guys who attack animal experimenters, bomb suburbans in the drivers drive way and decry science and industral lifestyles and usually call for a return "to living in harmony with nature." To wit, a hunter gather or small scale substance farming. Among left wing anti-intellectuals is the feeling that intellctuals have abandoned humanity and ethical behavior in favor of mad pursuits and profit.

The current leading cause of both left and right wing anti intellectualism is a feeling of betrayal and anger over slights both real and imagined. It is currently unknown if there is any cure besides that of time.

[Mayabird]

I like to think that we're at the verge of an intellectual revival. There's a growing backlash against anti-intellectualism of all stripes. Then again, I'm living a cloistered existence on the campus of a techie institute, and it's always hard to see trends coming without hindsight involved.

[Comrade Tortoise]

There are also two bastions of anti-intellectualism. It is not just one.

The Fundamentalist movement which took root in the 20s an thirties as a reaction to the modern evolutionary sythesis and what they saw as the threat from liberal christianity. They have primarily been attacking science rather than intellectualism as a whole.

The post-modernist movement which arose out of the ashes of WW2 is the other facet. Extreme forms of this decry all knowledge as subjective...

[frigidmagi]

Those are really both subsects in the two bases I covered, right wing and left wing. I was being really broad and more interested in root causes then anything else. Sorry for missing them.

[Comrade Tortoise]

It's alright. What I find really interesting is that scientists get a bad rap in all of this. The scientist becomes a madman with no ethical restraint, etc. When the majority of the nasty things that cause and perpetuate anti-intellectualism are caused by/maintained by the non-science disciplines. Well, not necessarily true, at least not the physical/life sciences. The social sciences perhaps... There were horrors committed by the axis powers, and then there was splitting the atom in a weaponized way, but one might think that the sting of those would have stopped swelling by now...

[Shark Bait]

There were horrors committed by the axis powers, and then there was splitting the atom in a weaponized way, but one might think that the sting of those would have stopped swelling by now...

The sting of those are good things, it put limits on all sciences and helped lay down the ethical codes for experimentation we have now. In one of my psych classes we just finished up a brief section on codes of conduct in psychology experimentation and we saw that there are really two events that caused the APA codes to be written the way they are now. The Nuremberg trials and the less well known Milgram study of obedience, if you look at those as well as even earlier studies (such as baby Albert) you can see why some folks see scientists as morally devoid nut jobs.

Aside from that I think we are seeing either a true resurgence of intellectualism OR a type of counter culture split where being an intellectual is becoming more in style. For example discovery channel and all the spin offs and subsidiaries (animal planet, discovery science, discovery health ect.) and of course the internet
Being the guy who knows random and interesting information has become the thing to be in many circles not just my own, so yeah I'd like to believe that intellectualism is coming back.

[frigidmagi]

. There were horrors committed by the axis powers, and then there was splitting the atom in a weaponized way, but one might think that the sting of those would have stopped swelling by now...

In this case animal experimentation is used to keep those feelings going, as is continuing weapons research.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Ah yes, animal experimentation. The new holocaust

[Mayabird]

Ah yes, animal experimentation. The new holocaust

There's a growing backlash against the animal rights nuts as well. This is actually getting support faster and easier since their opponents can describe themselves as being for medicine. People want their medication a whole lot more than they want some rats to not suffer. Not to mention, the kooks who go about threatening scientists and burning down laboratories don't present themselves well.

[Steve]

The glory of the common man was often boiled down to the idea that it was better to be an uneducated farmer or worker then a danified over book learned sissy. As you can guess, Jefferson hated Jackson. Say what you will Jefferson had great taste in enemies.

The same went for John Q. Adams, who was denounced (anonymously at the time) by Walt Whitman as undemocratic (Whitman was defending "the People" for not appreciating Adams enough upon the Old Man Eloquent's death, because he believed Adams was not a friend of the common man, was an elitist, and didn't deserve popular adulation.... despite the fact that Adams had just fought a long nine year struggle against the South to protect the Right of Petition to Congress, most of it fought on his own; Adams also successfully argued on behalf of the Amistad mutiniers to the United States Supreme Court).

Adams himself angrily refused to attend the ceremony where Harvard granted then-President Jackson an honorary law degree, viciously upbraiding his alma mater for pandering to Jackson.

Because of his opposition to Jackson and his "democratic" evolution of the US government, we have sadly relegated John Q. Adams to the dustbin of history as a mostly-failed president whose only distinction was through his father, and not as the great man and protector of liberty that he was. Such is the power of anti-intellectualism....

[Comrade Tortoise]

heh. Jackson... democratic my aching ass. That bastard was such a "common man" he bit his thumb at the supreme court when they ordered him not to ethnically cleanse the Cherokee.

[frigidmagi]

I wouldn't call it enthic cleansing CT. You see enthic cleansing at least has the virtue of being moderatly quick about it.

There was nothing quick about the Trail of Tears or the wars that were fought with native tribes (someone it seems tossed us onto a plot of land and forgot the tell people we were coming... Or us that folks already lived there, imagined that!).

[Steve]

heh. Jackson... democratic my aching ass. That bastard was such a "common man" he bit his thumb at the supreme court when they ordered him not to ethnically cleanse the Cherokee.

Ah, but his decision was quite popular at the time, at least amongst Georgians.....

[Mayabird]

heh. Jackson... democratic my aching ass. That bastard was such a "common man" he bit his thumb at the supreme court when they ordered him not to ethnically cleanse the Cherokee.

Ah, but his decision was quite popular at the time, at least amongst Georgians.....

[Obligatory comment about how much Georgia sucks.]

Of course it was popular. They got to steal an entire nation with pre-existing modern infrastructure. First one to the grist mill or newspaper printing press got it, and it's not like slave-owning scum have any moral issues with it.

[Steve]

heh. Jackson... democratic my aching ass. That bastard was such a "common man" he bit his thumb at the supreme court when they ordered him not to ethnically cleanse the Cherokee.

Ah, but his decision was quite popular at the time, at least amongst Georgians.....

[Obligatory comment about how much Georgia sucks.]

Of course it was popular. They got to steal an entire nation with pre-existing modern infrastructure. First one to the grist mill or newspaper printing press got it, and it's not like slave-owning scum have any moral issues with it.

Just breathe in calmly and begin to hum "Marching Through Georgia", Amy. :)