To your point about every mainstream journalist (oxymoron alert) sounding like a war hawk, I think the effect of the rise of social media has been to necessitate more rigidity throughout the MSM. No American war has had a lockstep recitation of lies and disinformation to the extent that the Ukraine War has featured.
On antiintellectualism, that is a thread that goes back to to this country’s beginnings. Religion has no business in politics, and it has been not only tolerated, but encouraged and promoted and used for pandering by hucksters. Richard Hofstadter won a Pulitzer 59 years ago for Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, in which he traced the predominant attitudes of many Americans’ irrational attraction to self-defeating policies. From Wikipedia:
Hofstadter described anti-intellectualism as “resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life.”[6]
Also, he described the term as a view that "intellectuals...are pretentious, conceited... and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive ... The plain sense of the common man is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise."
I think this helps to explain blue-collar Trump loyalists.
Politics is just religion for people who wish to believe they've transcended politics. Charismatic competition, ignorance, and violence are the elements of which the state is built and no amount of feelings changes that fact.
Wikipedia's definition of anti-intellectualism is classist pro-PMC trash and any class that generates agency-free religious blather like "those who are considered to represent it" frankly deserves to be anti-ed.
To your point about every mainstream journalist (oxymoron alert) sounding like a war hawk, I think the effect of the rise of social media has been to necessitate more rigidity throughout the MSM. No American war has had a lockstep recitation of lies and disinformation to the extent that the Ukraine War has featured.
On antiintellectualism, that is a thread that goes back to to this country’s beginnings. Religion has no business in politics, and it has been not only tolerated, but encouraged and promoted and used for pandering by hucksters. Richard Hofstadter won a Pulitzer 59 years ago for Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, in which he traced the predominant attitudes of many Americans’ irrational attraction to self-defeating policies. From Wikipedia:
Hofstadter described anti-intellectualism as “resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life.”[6]
Also, he described the term as a view that "intellectuals...are pretentious, conceited... and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive ... The plain sense of the common man is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise."
I think this helps to explain blue-collar Trump loyalists.
Politics is just religion for people who wish to believe they've transcended politics. Charismatic competition, ignorance, and violence are the elements of which the state is built and no amount of feelings changes that fact.
Wikipedia's definition of anti-intellectualism is classist pro-PMC trash and any class that generates agency-free religious blather like "those who are considered to represent it" frankly deserves to be anti-ed.