Understanding Anti-intellectualism, Facebook, Family, and Politics. In the summer of 1976, one of my professors recommended that I read Richard Hofstadler’s classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Hofstadler identifies and explains an anti-intellectualism that has been present in America since its beginning and particularly since Jacksonian democracy/populism. I later discovered that Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 1835 and 1840) also had identified an anti-intellectualism view among many Americans. One could understand anti-intellectualism and intellectualism as world views, prisms from which one interprets people, institutions, ideas, and the world. Anti-intellectualism is defined as a social attitude that systematically denigrates science-based facts, academic and institutional authorities, and the pursuit of theory and knowledge. It identifies two types of knowledge: intellect and intelligence. Intellect is defined as developing, challenging, and evolving ideas, whereas intelligence is defined as utilizing ideas in a practical manner. Anti-intellectuals prefer intelligence rather than intellect. There are three types of anti-intellectualism: religious anti-rationalism, populist anti-elitism, and unreflective instrumentalism (Daniel Rigney, 1991). Religious anti-rationalism is the rejection of reason, logic, and fact in favor of emotions, morals, and religious absolutes. Populist anti-elitism is a rejection of elite institutions such as universities, government organizations/bureaucracies, or think tanks and a rejection of social and/or intellectual elite such as professors, bureaucrats, experts, or scientists. Unreflective instrumentalism is the belief that the pursuit of theory and knowledge is unnecessary unless it can be used for very practical means such as profit or how to build a better brake system. It is important to note that anti-intellectualism is not a result of a lack of education, but rather the result of a life-long, overall socialization process.
In my 39 years of teaching, conducting research, and writing at the university level, I noticed an anti-intellectualism among my students on very rare occasions. I joined Facebook in 2011 and I idealistically believed that I could use it to reach out and teach those outside my classroom and the university environment. That belief came into question with the Trump era. It was on Facebook, beginning with the 2016 election through the Trump presidency and now the Biden presidency that I have detected a very clear anti-intellectualism. I have been referred to in a mocking and scornful manner as “overeducated,” “longwinded,” an “elitist,” an “expert,” a “university snob,” a “Ph.D. type,” an “egghead,” and “Mr. Ph.D.” Terms such as these are used by those who exhibit an anti-intellectualism. They were used by those who were upset that I would dare to correct their false statements or challenge their reasoning, logic, or consistency or complicate what they believed to be a simple matter or issue. They did not like my “long winded” explanations and opinions that I posted. Many of them unfriended me or simply blocked my posts. I was puzzled because teaching the development and evolution of ideas and challenging those ideas is what I had been doing in the classroom and in my research my entire career and I had never been the conspicuous object of anti-intellectual resentment. Now, this Facebook anti-intellectualism was being directed toward me personally and quite honestly I wanted to understand.
It is in this effort to understand that I wrote this brief essay that focuses initially on the influences of my mother and father on me. It illustrates that even within the same family one can find both anti-intellectual and intellectual world views. As many of you know, I grew up in a working class family. My father was born in the Great Depression and graduated from high school primarily because of my mother’s help in several classes his senior year. He fought in Korea and then worked on the railroad his entire life. He was a self-taught mechanic. The only reading material he had was in the garage and it was all self-help magazines with articles such as to how to fix a carburetor, how to put brake shoes on a Buick, or how to build a better dog house. He was a very practical man and viewed most issues as black and white. I never saw my father pick up and read a book in the house, although he read the local newspaper religiously. I remember him showing little interest in history, art, philosophy, science, or literature. One of his comments about politics that I specifically remember is that he, a life-long Democrat, simply could never have voted for that “egghead,” Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956. Of course, I spent my entire career as one of those academic “eggheads.”
While he was for the most part a man of few words, when my father did speak he typically expressed value in monetary terms. His explanation as to why businesses in the 1960s finally opened their counters to African-Americans or hired African-Americans was simple, “it meant more money for the business owner.” “Getting ahead” was always measured in terms of a pay day or salary. He wanted me to go to college so I could get a “good paying job.” Education was merely a means to a monetary end. When I decided to leave the Naval Academy after my second year, he could not understand why I wanted to give up what he called “a free fifty-thousand dollar education.” My father never asked about anything I was reading. He never expressed interest about any of the classes that I took at the Naval Academy, Marshall University, or the University of North Texas. He never understood why I wanted to become a professor at a university, nor what I did as a university faculty member. He often expressed his complete disbelief in the fact that the university actually paid me to conduct research on politics, present my research at conferences, and publish my research in the form of scholarly articles and books. He saw no practical value to these activities. My father loved me dearly and was very proud of me but he never understood my career path nor did he fully understand me. While I loved my father, he exhibited the characteristics of anti-intellectualism. I do note, as perhaps a caveat to my characterization of my father, he was one of just a handful of people who actually talked to me about the war in Vietnam in the late 60s and early 70s when I was in high school. He always listened to what I had to say and had questions about my differing interpretations and comments. I can remember several of our much nuanced discussions in front of the television as the names of those killed in Vietnam scrolled past. With that in mind, it is better to understand anti-intellectualism and intellectualism on a continuum rather than as discrete categories.
My mother, also born during the Great Depression, was always reading books. When I was young, I can remember her reading poetry, classic novels, great literature; the very books that I later loved to read and still read today. Her favorite book was Wuthering Heights. We went to the library together when I was young. Later when I was at Marshall University, she often asked what I was reading and what I was studying. I shared many of my books with her and we often discussed them. My mother was the first person to take me to an art gallery. She went through a brief period of paint by numbers when I was in elementary school. It was through this that I came to appreciate and love the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and others. She was always interested in song lyrics. I remember her writing down song lyrics and she was the person who introduced me to the lyrics of Bob Dylan. She rarely saw issues as black and white. For her, important issues were always shades of gray. For my mother, education was a value in and of itself. It was a means to enriching her life, to expanding her knowledge beyond out little town. It was a means to learn to think critically. She never put a monetary value on it. She later took a position as Secretary of the American Legion in my small hometown. She loved and took pride in providing flags to the local schools, helping to clean or build wheelchair ramps at the homes of disabled veterans, helping with military funerals, supporting youth sports, interacting with community leaders to implement projects, and overseeing grants to help students go on to college. She said many times that this was the real value of her job as secretary. It had nothing to do with her salary. My mother exhibited the characteristics of an intellectual.
My father showed nothing but love toward me and my brothers and I cherish my memories with him. While he influenced me in terms of the importance of family, hard work, loyalty, honesty, truth, self-initiative, independence, and self-confidence, it is without a doubt that I am much more a product of my mother. Just as she did, I believe that education is a both a value and goal in and of itself. It is not simply a means to a better paying job. Education reveals the truth, beauty, wonder, humor, error, ugliness, and tragedy of humans and their history. It expands our horizons. It teaches one to think critically. It illuminates the past, enriches the present, and prepares us for the future. It indicates time and time again that what happens in the world to people can rarely, if ever, be explained in simple black and white terms.
When looking at the current political environment, there is no doubt in my mind that my mother could never have voted for Donald Trump, while my father could very possibly have voted for him. Survey after survey and research indicates that anti-intellectualism is a prominent characteristic of Trump supporters. While this essay is not meant in any way to disparage anti-intellectuals for their world view, I do note that populist politicians throughout history have wielded the anti-intellectual play card for their own political gain. By giving anti-intellectuals a target (academics, eggheads, elites, experts, beltway types, scientists, researchers, universities, think tanks, and government bureaucrats and bureaucracies) to mistrust, blame, or fear, the populist can organize and manipulate his anti-intellectual supporters. Populists are able to position fundamentally non-partisan issues as both “elitist” and belonging to their political opponents.
President Trump, a populist, routinely dismissed and showed his contempt for the “experts.” He stated several times that he knew more than the military generals and did not need their advice to make decisions. He refused to read the morning intelligence reports and take advice from the CIA. In fact, he rarely read anything. He publicly sided with Russian President Putin over his own intelligence agencies. He waged and is still waging a campaign to slander Dr. Anthony Fauci, considered the nation's top COVID 19 expert and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. He positioned the non-partisan issues of climate change, institutional racism, critical race theory, voting rights, and the fairness of elections as “elitist” and identified them with the Democratic Party. He did the same for COVID 19, social distancing, minimizing large gatherings, the use of masks, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates. This led many of his anti-intellectual supporters to ignore the severity of the disease and to not take precautions against COVID 19. He was able to create an alternative reality with misinformation and disinformation. In the age of social media algorithmic echo chambers, Trump was able to use anti-intellectualism even more perversely to undermine the factual basis of democracy in general. This is precisely what he and his elected supporters have done and are continuing to do so.
In sum, I initially understood the Facebook anti-intellectual comments directed toward me in a very personal manner and sought to understand why. I note that I often think through issues by writing. Through the thought process in this brief essay, I have come to the conclusion that these were not personal attacks toward me per se but rather the expressions of a broader anti-intellectualism that characterizes Trump’s populism. I was mistaken to interpret them personally and I no longer do so. Finally, I am still not sure how to combat the use of anti-intellectualism by populists other than continuing to seek the truth and to be myself – “overeducated.”
For a discussion of populism under Trump, see my essays Explaining Republican Populism under Trump Part 1 (March 14), Part 2 (March 15), Part 3 (March 16), and Part 4 (April 9) in this blog.
コメント