With the development of information technology and education, people are now facing massive information every day, which makes some narcissistic people and misleading knowledge speak nonsense about any event with an egalitarian standpoint. For example, what you know about WebMD (American Health and Health Services Website) and Wikipedia , ordinary people think they have the same knowledge as doctors and diplomats. Even the most ridiculous ones, they also require equal consideration and an attitude against elitist .
2017 US President Trump election, the situation became even worse. On November 15, 2022, Trump announced his participation in the 2024 presidential election at his residence in Mar-a-Lago Manor in Florida. Although the Twitter account was blocked, the wave of " anti-intellectualism " is becoming increasingly fierce, which has sounded the alarm for whether Western democracy can be stable and last forever in the information age.
1, anti-intellectualism
What is anti-intellectualism? Richard Hofstadt 's "Anti-intellectualism in America" was published in 1963. However, decades later and even in the 21st century, American society - the worship of technology, out-of-control commercial and cultural consumerism, the practical orientation of education, and the contempt of humanistic values... The endless emergence of populist and violent incidents shows that the intensity of anti-intellectualism is periodic.
The author calls it a complex body, and the general characteristic of anti-intellectualism is the resentment and suspicion of intellectual life and people who are believed to represent this life (especially intellectuals), which tends to devalue this value.
Intellect is an important driving force for the development of human society, but in the United States, intelligence itself and people with intelligence are repeatedly hated and suspicious.
Some Americans are keen on pursuing business geniuses who strive for themselves and do not trust political elites. They are willing to accept incitement information, but refuse to listen to experts' opinions. What are the ideological roots and logic of those who despise intelligence in American life?
The United States has its unique and deeply rooted anti-intellectual gene. Trump's election as president is almost the pinnacle of the anti-intellectual phenomenon in recent years, and it happened in the 21st century.
Almost all societies advocate commercial myths and consumerism, the practical orientation of education is recognized, the authoritative media (the power class) have a purposeful and misleading dissemination of some attitudes and ideas, populism is rampant, and entertainment is gradually becoming a giant infant. Educational people gradually lose the criticism, curiosity, reasoning, imagination, creation and contemplation in their hearts.
There are many reasons for the opposition to the expert movement, including the openness of the Internet, the "customer first" thinking in higher education, and the entertainment of the news industry. With the rapid development of globalization, it has evolved into a common problem that plagues all "intellectuals".
What is strange is that the democratic dissemination of information, rather than the cultivation of educated masses, has begun to produce a group of slight and angry citizens who publicly accuse the improvement of intelligence. This coincides with the long-standing anti-intellectualism trend in American history.
The current phenomenon of boycotting professional knowledge and learning has led the general public to believe that no one knows more than others, which puts democratic institutions at risk of degenerating into populism (popularism ) or technicians governing the country, and the worst is the combination of the two.
Trump supporters want to see the emergence of a political leader who can save the United States, and his slogans of "America First" and "Make America Great Again" are a familiar and seemingly within reach for many supporters.
91-year-old linguist Chomsky , as an intellectual who "tells the truth honestly". He called US President Trump a "criminal madman" and an "anti-social arrogance", and spoke out the dilemma of the United States in today's international community.
21st century Trump supporters also shared the anxiety and anger of "anti-intellectualism" in American history: they hope to regain the privileges and superiority that their parents once enjoyed, the comfort of middle-class life, and the pride of being an American. They embrace their natural disgust for "power elites" and "intellectual elites", refuse to accept any "non-American" thoughts and practices, and pin the future of anti-intellectualism America on the victory of the election represented by Trump.
Trump said that the United States is being "destroyed" and that it is run for "to make America great and brilliant again." He listed his political achievements as president, and pointed out that there are many problems with the Biden administration, including high inflation and a surge in illegal immigration. He asked the American people to vote for him to "save our country."
2. Ideological control in democratic society
300 modernity has brought great progress to human society. Many unimaginable rights and freedoms in the past era have become indispensable basic contents of human life, but its problems have also been exposed along with these progress, becoming an inescapable confusion in this era.
Even after people already have basic political and social and economic rights, modern society still has no instrumental rational "iron cage" fate, and how do people living in it face these fates? How to persist in shaping a good life in the face of incomplete human nature and inadequate moral rationality.
Every modern person maintains critical rationality and prudent optimism in today's confused life, maintaining and returning to the true self's true self.
In order to enable citizens to participate in social and political life more widely and meaningfully, the media should bear social responsibilities. Theoretically, the people are rulers in a democratic system. But in fact, the decision-making power in the core areas of life is in the hands of a private person who has a significant influence on the entire social order. One way to resolve this contradiction is to extend the democratic system to the investment field, work management system, etc. That is, forcibly curb public interference in government and private power.
In advanced industrial societies, this problem is usually solved in this way - using various means to deprive democratic political institutions of actual power, but at the same time keeping them in form undestructed.
This task is largely undertaken by the ideological agency that disseminates ideas and claims within the scope permitted by power, ensuring that any challenges to existing privileges and powers have shifted before they are formed and expanded. This complex task involves many levels and means. One aspect is thought control, which is achieved mainly through the power of the state media and related elite intellectual cultural departments.
The word "media democratization" itself is contradictory or even a bit self-subversive. Citizen participation is considered an infringement of press freedom and a blow to media independence. It will distort the media’s mission of fearless and impartial dissemination of information for the masses.
The view is worth pondering. The concept behind it is the issue of the actual operation of media under democratic systems, as well as some implicit concepts about the nature of democracy.
For example, in the era of Vietnam War and Watergate , the media ignored external pressure, government orders or private power, and learned how to exercise "power to dig deep into our national lives and disclose what they think should be exposed." This is also a belief that people generally hold.
Media has become a "new source of state power that cannot be ignored" and a "rampant democracy", resulting in the "weakening of government power" in the country and thus the "recession of foreign democratic influence". By working with one of the few Wall Street lawyers and bankers, Truman has been able to control the country. Excessive democracy has hindered the proper functioning of the democratic process.
If democratic rulers survive, the general public must be suppressed, return to the traditional state of numbness and obedience, and be excluded from political debate and political action.In the US presidential campaign in the 1980s, the Democratic Party was accused of being a puppet of "special interests" (workers, farmers, women, young people, elderly people, disabled people, minorities, etc.), thus endangering the "national interests." The default one that represents national interests is companies, consortiums and other business elites.
So far, this is a recognized fact that "as Americans, we often whip ourselves for various policies and behaviors that we do not recognize." And, as the Vietnam War incident showed, “a large-scale coverage would inevitably weaken support for advancing the war”, especially “those bloody image coverage on TV.” The Watergate incident that "caused the president to step down" (Anthony Lewis) reinforces such a pessimistic situation - free, independent, and opposing media have caused democracy to be at stake.
3. American intellectuals
Various forms of anti-intellectualism are still permeated in American life, but at the same time, intelligence has a new and more positive significance. Intellectuals have gradually enjoyed greater recognition, and in some way, they have enjoyed a more satisfactory status.
Many intellectuals are used to being abandoned; and for many years, based on the expectation that abandonment will continue, they have formed a common strong reaction to society; thus, they gradually feel that alienation is the only suitable and noble position they can take.
Although anti-intellectualism prevailed in the 1950s, intellectuals themselves, especially generations of middle-class and old-style intellectuals, were not inclined to fight back against American values in the 1920s.
On the contrary, unexpectedly, just as they were most violently attacked because of their so-called essentially infidelity, they re-embrace their country. Some of the old American values are indeed precious, while some old-school, obviously traditional, are highly praised, and they are regarded as monuments of individuality, remembering the solemn integrity of the United States.
American intellectuals no longer regard their country as a cultural desert they must escape; they no longer look at it with a "puberty embarrassment" when comparing the United States with Europe, as one writer believes.
Nowadays, intellectuals feel more comfortable in the United States; they have reached a compromise with American reality. The bourgeoisie in the American intellectual community has changed not only intellectuals, but also the country is changing and improving. It has matured culturally and no longer obeys European instruction.
Rich and powerful people accepted it, and even followed intellectuals and artists. Therefore, the United States has become a very pleasant place to carry out rational or artistic activities, and such pursuits can also be rewarded here.
Some older intellectuals whose adult memories can be traced back to the cultural debates of the 1930s, and for some, they also go back to the 1920s, seemingly determined to give up overly simple, distancing practices, even though they have been misled and fallen into it; but for younger people, this is obviously an incomprehensible moral failure.
In the mass cultural industry and the growing school and university system, the expansion of new positions has helped intellectuals be incorporated into the permanent war economy. "The freedom of thought in the United States is subject to harsh attacks, and generally speaking, intellectuals show a heartbreaking lack of fighting spirit in maintaining those rights as prerequisites for their existence."
If the rich class accepts intellectuals, it is simply because the latter becomes tame and no longer considered to challenge wealth; on the contrary, they will "climb and kneel down in defiance of dignity" in the face of wealth.
Intellectuals are more powerless than before, especially those who have become new people who focus on reality. "They are greedy for power and give up their freedom of speech in this position, but as politicians, they have not given themselves any important value."As long as intellectuals are "absorbed into an officially recognized social system, they will not only lose their traditional rebelliousness, but will also no longer play the role of intellectuals to a certain extent."
Anti-intellectualism is based on the American democratic system and egalitarian sentiment. The intellectual class, whether or not it enjoys the privileges of many elites, must be considered elites in their thoughts and ways of their functions.
The pioneering spirit of the United States has turned vulgarly towards greed and conquest. The materialism it cultivates is more adventurous and attractive than the business of other countries. However, because of this fact, it consumes and changes too many excellent American qualities.
When any writer or thinker can see himself as a person with potentially prolific wisdom, he is born in a special state of life, and is also given a character and temperament that can only be adapted in some limited aspects. This is the limit given to him by fate, and he must act in it.
In the past, one of the main virtues of free society was that all kinds of life styles of intellectuals could exist. Of course, in the modern environment, the path of choice may be closed, and those who dominate future culture may also be single-minded and accept only one belief or another.
For at least three-quarters of the time in the past 100 years, business has been despised by American intellectuals and regarded as typical enemies by them; and businessmen themselves have accepted this role long ago, so that the hostility between business and intelligence seems to be natural. Intelligence is always a potential threat to any institutional organization or established center of power.
The conflict between business and intellectual value is considered to be inevitable: on the one hand, people centered on money and power, only care about the expansion of the US dollar and business, only care about growth and empty optimism; on the other hand, people with critical intelligence, who are full of distrust of American civilization, and care about quality and moral value.
Intellectuals are well aware of the complex means of merchants shaping American civilization according to their purposes and standards. Businessmen are everywhere: they fill the pockets of political parties; they own or control influential media and popular cultural institutions; they attend university and local school boards; they mobilize and fund cultural security committees; their opinions influence the real power departments.
Contemporary businessmen like to see themselves as doers and benefactors of the country, shouldering huge responsibilities and bearing hostility from rash people who don’t have to pay wages, so it’s hard for them to truly accept the idea that they can do whatever they want. Businessmen will only make headlines on newspapers when they enter politics or hold administrative offices.
In fact, the prestige of businessmen is largely destroyed by their own achievements: they created giant corporations, an inhuman institution that obscures their reputation while regulating their careers; they are constantly advocating "American life" and free enterprise, making these flexible abstract concepts the norm of public, absorbing and assimilating the reputation of individual entrepreneurs. Once upon a time, great people created wealth; now great systems create lucky people with wealth.
Merchants are human beings after all, and they also have a natural yearning for respect that money cannot be bought. If the anti-intellectualism of merchants is narrowly understood as hostility to intellectuals, it is mainly an political phenomenon ; broadly understood as doubts about intelligence itself, it becomes part of the broad American love for practicality and direct experience, which extends to almost every aspect of American life.
The vitality of practicality is a virtue; what really has serious consequences for spiritual culture in history is the tendency to mysticalize practicality. The United States is essentially a business country, and the American career is business! Americans stand with practicality, with progress and invention, with money and comfort.
(The picture comes from the Internet, infringement must be deleted)
