Originally published April 2023
America’s long history of anti-intellectual populism has made us neither brave nor free, and certainly not great
No one ever accused John Wayne of being an intellectual. From Daniel Boone and Wyatt Earp to Huey Long and George Wallace, there has always been a strong populist strain woven throughout our national mythology. Forget for a moment that any list of great Americans, from Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Frederick Douglass, contained a multitude of brilliant intellectuals.
Americans view our national identity as the quintessential everyman, even as we worship wealth and fame. It’s why we value athletes over academics, and billionaires over biologists. We want heroes that are “just like us,” only a bit better. We prefer Rambo over Roosevelt. John Wayne over John Adams. We celebrate Albert Einstein but worship Ted Williams. That I mention no women here further proves our narrow view of American mythology.
The groundwork for our modern shift in politics no doubt began earlier, but it was the film actor Ronald Reagan, who became the first American celebrity outside of politics to use his status to seek high office. Reagan entered politics as a registered Democrat, a committed liberal who revered Franklin Delano Roosevelt, voting for him four times.
It was during the McCarthy-era that Reagan became a fierce opponent of communism and began a shift from liberal to conservative ideals. He became the president of the Screen Actors Guild and oversaw the Blacklist of Hollywood writers accused of communist sympathies.
By the time he was stumping for Nixon in the ’60s, he had already changed his ideology but not his voter registration. Nixon’s camp felt Reagan could make a more significant impact by claiming to be a Democrat while actively campaigning for Nixon. It was during a Democrats for Nixon event where he was the keynote speaker that he was confronted with his newly acquired Republican voter registration and first admitted that he was a registered Republican.
“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party,” Reagan famously quipped. “The party left me.” (1)
So what happened in the 1960s that caused Reagan to feel that the party had left him? The “Southern Strategy” of the Republican Party was to convince former Democrats to switch parties as a protest against the Civil Rights movement. Reagan was right. The party had embraced civil rights and abandoned white supremacy. So Reagan switched parties.
It would become just another example of American populism being defined by its white supremacy and fear, and frankly, little else.
A Cult Of Ignorance
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been,” said famed American author Isaac Asimov. “The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread, winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” (2)
The response to the corruption of Nixon gave us Jimmy Carter, but after a deep recession, America chose Reagan, who then gave us the first Bush, his vice president. Next, we elected a young governor from Arkansas who jogged while eating Big Macs, followed by another Bush who presented himself as a sort of idiot savant, strong on the beer-drinking idiot end. Despite George W attending Yale and Harvard, he maintained his blue-collar bona fides by owning a ranch in Texas and failing to speak coherently in public.
What happened next would forever alter the future of American politics because a clear majority of the electorate chose a mixed-race community organizer who was anything but familiar or relatable to the bulk of white working-class America. He was educated at elite universities. He spoke like an educated man. He was aloof. He wasn’t white. This was not the guy they wanted to have a beer with, nor he with them.
In response, the opposition lost their minds, formed the Tea Party, chose a leader who demanded they block anything Obama ever wanted to do, no matter what, and promised to block as many appointments as possible, including to the Supreme Court. It’s when the Republican Party jumped the tracks of democracy and ventured into authoritarianism. With nothing left to run on but grievance, they had no choice but to abandon democratic ideals. It was that or never win again.
The irony of their decisions is that they thought they were still in control and would elect another conservative establishment Republican who would further their goals slowly and steadily. A third Bush, perhaps. They didn’t realize they’d opened the door to Trump and other would-be populist fascists until it was too late.
What remained after Trump decimated whatever was left of the party’s ideology and integrity, and expelled anyone disloyal to him, were fools and opportunists. That’s the core of the party now. Plutocrats, opportunists, and the fools who think they’re fighting for them.
The Confidence Of Arrogant Ignorance
The other day, I had a family member tell me most confidently that they were against vaccines of all kinds, that this was a private matter, a personal decision, and no one’s business but their own. They were annoyed that this would be disputed on any level.
Beyond the obvious science of how vaccines work and the long history of successfully eradicating diseases through their use, there is the nagging question in my mind concerning what was driving their decision because it wasn’t an informed, logical deduction based on verifiable information. It was pure gut feeling based on bad information and a distorted worldview.
Not to get too into the weeds on the matter, but vaccines only work as a collective effort. It’s not an everyone-gets-to-choose option. So yes, your decision to opt out is a blatant and clear “fuck you” to your community. You’re telling us that only you matter, that everyone else is beneath you, and that community is irrelevant. Beyond the gross narcissism is the even more egregious privilege that you can afford the risk.
In the movie “Animal House,” Dean Wormer tells Flounder, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
The Republican Plan
There is no polite way to say this, but the Republican Party, driven by the desire of wealthy plutocrats to end FDR’s New Deal Democracy, destroyed unions, outsourced American jobs overseas, called for the dismantling of democracy, the end of economic, environmental, and financial regulation, and an end to public education.
Immediately after the Great Depression, when FDR created the middle class, along with a more socialized system of taxation and safety nets, the moneyed class began to rebel against what they saw as a federal government that was too powerful. They were not interested in regulation, breaking up monopolies, or paying to care for the poor or infirm. They wanted to return to the days of unbridled excess and greed. They’ve been trying to get back there ever since.
Ironically, perhaps, we’re in an even worse place concerning income inequality than we were before the crash of ‘29. According to the nonpartisan CBO (Congressional Budget Office), “The total real wealth (that is, wealth adjusted to remove the effects of inflation) held by families in the United States tripled from 1989 to 2019—from $38 trillion in 2019 dollars (roughly four times the nation’s gross domestic product, or GDP) to $115 trillion (about five times GDP).” (3)
During the 1920s, “the share of income received by the wealthiest one percent of Americans rose from 12 percent to 19 percent, while the share received by the richest five percent jumped from 24 percent to 34 percent.” (4) Today, the Federal Reserve reports that the top 1% hold 32.3% of total wealth in the nation, while the bottom 50% holds just 2.6%. (5)
Republicans closed the factories, shipped the jobs elsewhere, stopped making things, and turned instead to making money. Banking became our leading industry, and salaries for average Americans plummeted. When adjusted for inflation, the 2022 federal minimum wage in the United States is around 40 percent lower than the minimum wage in 1970. (6)
“Over the past 47 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $50 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of American society to the top 1%, primarily because a growing percentage of corporate profits has been flowing into the stock portfolios of the wealthy and the powerful.” (7)
The Loss Of Working-Class Pride
What all that means is that America has a disappearing working class, a growing permanent subclass of poor, and an ever more affluent class of the obscenely wealthy. Forget the American Dream. You’d be lucky if you’re able to retire. If you do, you’ll likely suffer from catastrophic financial loss due to healthcare costs, which is enough to cause you to become understandably angry and driven to make rash decisions.
So when someone comes along, someone famous who presents themselves as a successful, wealthy businessman who understands how the game is played and tells you that he’s going to make it all better by making you solvent again, you’re probably going to listen.
It will help if this person is already a bit of a pariah and spurned by the elites, as it gives them credibility as an outsider. That credibility is somehow enhanced by how brazenly they buck convention and shit on tradition. Because what has that ever really done for you? They tell you that life used to be better and can be again, if only you give them money.
So you do.
The Sunk-Cost Fallacy is a type of faulty reasoning that explains our desire to continue with an endeavor long after it seems wise because we feel we are already invested in its success. Frankly, this is where nearly half of Americans find themselves at this point. They went all in on a degenerate businessman from Queens who managed to weasel his way onto a reality television show, and now they feel too invested ever to admit they were duped. They’d rather see the whole thing burn down than admit failure. They’d rather die than give the condescending libs a victory. What do they have left at this point but to ride the train off the cliff?
There was a time when America’s working men and women felt rational pride in a hard day’s work, a fair salary, and the knowledge that they were contributing to a strong nation. What do they have now? Resentment? Debt? Uncertainty? Fear? Despair?
Every Man For Themselves
Our problem today is that far too many people now view narcissism as a valid substitute for independence. We have gone from self-reliant to just plain selfish. It’s no longer about what you can do for your country, but what’s in it for you? We have always been a country in conflict with ourselves, but more often than not, we put aside our differences in times of national crisis.
The other day, someone suggested to me that what America really needed was a good war to bring everyone together. I reminded them that we had recently been through a global pandemic that should have been anything but political, and we couldn’t come together to fight that. A war wasn’t going to make it any better.
It’s impossible to predict how this will all shake out in the end. Can the Republican Party and its protected media ecosystem sustain the charade for much longer? Can Ron DeSantis out-Maga Trump and continue the destruction that was begun? Will the whole enterprise collapse under its own weight in the face of criminal indictments and billion-dollar lawsuits?
In a recent IPSOS/ABC poll, just 25% of Americans had a favorable view of Donald Trump, compared to 61% with an unfavorable view. (8) This poll is an outlier at the moment and would suggest a drop of over 20 points for the former president. When you combine that with Trump’s growing lead over prospective challenger Ron DeSantis (56-23%), you realize that the GOP may be destined to be stuck with a losing candidate they can’t shake. (9)
While Trump continues to maintain a stranglehold on the Republican Party, it is no longer translating into wins at the ballot box. Their policies are deeply unpopular across the country, with abortion, their flagship issue, driving Democratic turnout to record highs.
In Wisconsin, the liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz won a game-changing seat on the state Supreme Court. She won the special election by double digits, flipping control of the court and significantly altering the state’s future. Abortion was the deciding factor, and voters made themselves heard, loud and clear.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the Republican-controlled state legislature voted to remove two young Black members for protesting gun violence on the state House floor. The unprecedented move backfired when it launched the two men into the national spotlight, driving fundraising and a national profile. They were both summarily and unanimously reinstated by their county commissioners.
For the time being, the Democrats seem happy to sit back and allow the Republicans to self-destruct. Their standard bearer faces multiple criminal indictments in both state and federal courts, and their policies are increasingly out of step with the wants and needs of the electorate. While this is no time for Democrats to coast or think every election for the next decade won’t be critical, it’s not a promising trend line for Republicans.
The abortion fight is far from over, and every day seems to bring a new mass shooting. The lawsuit trial between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News Corp is set to begin on Monday, and it hasn’t looked good for Murdoch and company. Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages from the media outlet in what many believe is a textbook case of defamation with plenty of evidence already made public.
After nearly a decade of chaos, it’s hard to predict what will happen, but there’s a strong case to be made that this might be a turning point, where many dominoes fall at once, and the entire house of cards comes tumbling down.
One can only hope.
- https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2010/mar/30/charlie-crist/crist-says-reagan-was-democrat-converting-gop/
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
- https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-09/57598-family-wealth.pdf
- https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3432
- https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:129;series:Net worth;demographic:networth;population:all;units:shares
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065466/real-nominal-value-minimum-wage-us/
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/the-us-has-a-ruling-class-and-americans-must-stand-up-to-it
- https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
- https://morningconsult.com/2024-gop-primary-election-tracker/