“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.’”
― Isaac Asimov

Tragically, we’ve lived through four years of a president who believes just this, yet he continues to strut the national stage as if he is Mussolini. Is this the secret to Trump’s popularity, to always pose as a superior person or elitist even though he can barely string two sentences together? Do his MAGA zombies love him because they feel inferior or stupid, but he makes them feel superior? I am bewildered as to how his lemmings  are blind to his blatant elitism & simultaneously despise anyone with more than a sixth grade education & accuse them of being the elitists?

 

He makes his cult members feel superior by putting down Mexicans, Muslims, the handicapped, women, etc. And this is racist or racial elitism but that never occurs to his “Walking Dead” fan club. It’s those damn liberals, students, professors, journalists, democrats, etc. who are responsible for your plight. Not his Wall St. buddies who wreck our economy again & again. The people like himself, who spend their lives pulling scams on the less informed & the gullible.

 

To support and believe that Trump “tells it like it is,” and is a typical American you can relate to is like saying you respect the slumlord who won’t do anything about the rats & cockroaches infesting your apartment. And who jacks up the rent at every opportunity & eventually throws you & your family into the gutter so he can build another Trump tower.

Talk about licking the boots of your master, this is beyond the absurd? This is Trump’s & his father before him’s history. Moreover, Trump has been ripping-off contractors, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, & even the laborers over the years who were foolish enough to work for him. All you have to do is read a few articles about his illustrious career as a casino mogul. Of course, reading is discouraged in Trump world, just ask the graduates of Trump University.

 

For the past half century or better, I have heard one of the favorite mantras of the anti-intellectuals or anti-elitists, “All you need is common sense!” Yet today, common sense has become very rare indeed. No one knows for sure what Trump’s actual net worth is & just because he claims to be a billionaire ad nauseam, that doesn’t make it a fact.

 

The habitual liar has finally been busted for claiming his properties are at a much lower value when it comes to paying his taxes but when he applies for loans, he claims these same properties to be far more valuable by factors of ten or probably much more than that. By-the-way, do you know that Trump had it written into his contract with the producers of “The Apprentice,” that every time his name was mentioned, they had to refer to him as Donald Trump the Billionaire?

I know, just more “fake news” right? How odd that every time something positive about Trump is said, it’s a fact but every time a criticism is leveled against him, it’s “fake news?” Yep! Where’s the “common sense” people? My intelligence tells me that Trump is the premiere snake-oil salesman America has ever produced.

 

And I believe his cult of the angry & bewildered hate “elitists” however they define them because, they feel inferior & jealous of those more intelligent than they are & it’s much easier to focus your anger on fellow victims. Furthermore, so-called elitists are remote from the average person’s world so they are easy targets. And how convenient it is to have a focus for all your pent-up anger at having been fucked-over for most of your life. Trump cleverly manipulated his minions into targeting Washington D.C. yet Trump & his daddy built their fortunes by manipulating the mayors, city councils, bankers, etc. and without the help of the government, the Trumps would’ve been just a couple more failed real estate developers.

 

To proclaim your hatred of the government & especially the liberals, reveals your ignorance & I seriously doubt that you’d gladly eliminate every one of their political programs & acts. Take ten minutes to review this basic list of what liberals & democrats have done for America & then tell me again of what terrible pedophiles, blood drinkers, etc. they are.

 

• The GI Bill
• Endangered Species Act
• Environmental Laws
• The Space Program
• The Peace Corps
• Americorps
• The Civil Rights Movement
• Earned Income Tax Credit
• Family & Medical Leave Act
• Consumer Product Safety Commission
• Americans With Disabilities Act
• Freedom of Information Act
• Women’s right to control their reproductive future
• Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
• The Internet
• Balancing the federal budget
• The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
• Lobbying Disclosure Act
• “Motor-Voter” Act
• The Voting Rights Act
• Unemployment Insurance
• Medicare/Medicaid
• Food Stamps/WIC
• Social Security
• Peace between Israel and Egypt

 

• The Department of Education
• The Department of Energy
• The Department of Transportation
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Labor Laws
• The Marshall Plan
• Winning World War II
• Food Safety Laws
• Workplace Safety Laws
• The Tennessee Valley Project
• The Civilian Conservation Corps
• The Securites and Exchange Commission
• Women’s Right to Vote
• Universal Public Education
• National Weather Service
• Product Labeling Laws
• Truth in Advertising Laws
• Morrill Land Grant Act
• Rural Electrification
• Public Universities
• Bank Deposit Insurance (FDIC)
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Public Broadcasting
• Supporting the establishment of Israel
• The United Nations
• NATO

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/10/14/156663/-

 

In other words, for the working class & middle class supporters of Trump who attack the government so viciously makes about as much sense as a guy from one of those ghost towns in the Appalachians with a family barely surviving & totally dependent on food stamps to cancel his family’s food stamps because it’s one of those damn elitist democrat programs.

 

Common sense? You might care to note that your beloved Republican party voted against every single one of those programs on the list above. And for the record, you might dismiss me as yet another apologist & dupe for the democratic party or the liberals but you couldn’t be more wrong. I am one of the harshest critics of the democratic party primarily because of their abandonment of America’s workers starting with Clinton’s passing of NAFTA.

 

Returning to the focus of this essay, elitism or anti-elitism, I believe most people use the term to refer specifically to “intellectuals.” Instead of using the term, intellectual elite, we should say they are people who pursue intellectual or academic excellence. Well, I don’t know about you but I sure as Hell want the smartest doctor to operate on me, not some average Joe doctor. I also prefer that the pilot who’s flying the jet I’m on was at the top of his class in aviator school. Do you get my point?

 

And in case it’s escaped your “common sense,” Trump is clearly an elitist. Do common folk own private jets, yachts, penthouses, etc.? Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan struts around with the same smirk as Jamie Dimon, America’s greatest bank robber & Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy who also thought that his shit didn’t stink.

Furthermore, the 74 million “Christian” evangelicals & fundamentalists who sing Trump’s praises and were a major factor in his being elected, aren’t morally superior or elite, are they? Trump brags about being able to grab women by their pussies because he’s a celebrity but that doesn’t trouble the spiritual elite. And he hangs out with his good pal, Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted serial rapist & pedophile but hey, boys will be boys, right?

 

Were Plato and Aristotle elitists? A history professor of mine once told us that you can roughly divide Western Civilization between these two men in terms of their influence on it. Or what about the list of Western Civilization’s top ten most cited authors which includes Plato & Aristotle, Freud, the Bible, & Noam Chomsky, the only one on the list who is alive? And for the record, I’m very proud to claim Noam as a friend of mine. We’ve been corresponding since 2006. Were these people elitists? Why has this term taken on such a negative connotation? Could it be that it’s a product of the propaganda that the truly evil form of elitists, like Trump & his ilk have been spreading all their lives?

 

And no, this isn’t more liberal propaganda because if you study a little history, you’ll find that the rich & powerful throughout history have done their best to divide & conquer the masses. To accomplish this end, they have waged a constant cultural war designed to make us fear & hate each other. Try to keep this in mind & watch as many Trump rallies as you can stomach to see for yourself if this is his consistent strategy.

 

The thing that most politicians & many religious leaders have in common is their love for authoritarian rule over their flocks. This is why Trump goes weak in the knees when he’s in the company of the world’s most brutal dictators. The word “dictator” seems to have fallen out of favor so now they’re called, “authoritarians,” but evil is evil no matter what name you give it.

 

Lest you think I’m defending intellectual snobbery, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m saying that if a person has devoted their life to developing their intellectual or academic skills such as critical & analytical abilities, they deserve respect. Just as a person who has become a top level mechanic, carpenter, electrician, etc. deserves respect not mockery.

 

Many who idolize Trump have fallen for his deceitful tactics & strategies such as conflating the truism that everyone has the right to their opinion with the assumption that therefore, all opinions are equally valid. This would be like someone such as myself who consider it a great accomplishment to replace a battery in my car, arguing with a guy who can rebuild an engine about some intricate & hidden problem with my car’s engine & has been a top-rated mechanic for over 50 years. Again, who would you trust to work on your car which you entrust your family’s to, me, or a trusted mechanic you may have known for decades? On the other hand, who would you trust your children’s education with, me, who has been a lifelong lover of learning, earned a B.A. in English literature, taken enough college courses to have earned two B.A.s if I applied for it. Was reading at the 11^th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. Have collected a library of approximately 10,000 classics, etc. etc. etc.? Or, your friendly & knowledgeable mechanic?

 

Again, this is the centuries old tactic of dividing & conquering us so we don’t wise-up & rise-up. This is why our Founding Fathers, for all their faults, tried their best to separate the powers of the Church & State. They were intellectual elites & students of history & the Enlightenment and were only too aware of the lessons of history. Kings & the Church elites have always enjoyed the special rights & privileges they’ve given themselves i.e. the majority of the crops the peasants grew, the best food, best accommodations, etc. and so what if the peasants couldn’t survive on the crumbs of the leftovers.

 

The State tells us we must bow to their authority laid out in their laws but when the rich elite, the 1%, break the laws, like Trump has done all his life, they aren’t held accountable. The Church threatens us with eternal damnation while many pastors, preachers, ministers, rabbis, etc. become multi-millionaires with their own private jets, mansions, etc. & their sheep keep sending them the little money they may have leftover after paying their rent which Trump type realtors keep jacking-up.

 

Another factor to bear in mind is the fact that the elite cockroaches know how powerful the use of spectacle is. Roman emperors & senates kept their starving citizens distracted by holding gladiator competitions & throwing people to the lions in the Collaseum which when you think of it, is kind of like the thrill fans of “The Walking Dead,” enjoy.

 

Today’s Circus Maximus is headed by vampires like Trump who used his time in office to suck out every dollar he could for himself & his spawn. Speaking of money, why is it that so many of us want to send our kids to one of those terrible, “elite” universities? Could it be because they believe that a degree from them practically guarantees their children a high-paying job upon graduation?

 

Yet many, if not most of those parents who’d love to be able to afford to send their kids to an elite college don’t really give a shit about academic excellence, only about how much money their children might earn. Of course, because the greed of the 1% just keeps growing & they know they, the owners of those universities know they have a captive audience, the price of admission has gone through the roof.

 

Sadly, most students are forced to in effect, make Faustian deals with the Devil which are the Corporate Cockroach class because they leave university owing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. Basically, colleges have become little more than glorified trade schools. Not that trade schools are necessarily a bad thing. I’m not one of those who believe that everyone should go to college. But I do believe that everyone who wants to, should be able to & shouldn’t have to sell their soul in order to afford it.

 

America is rapidly circling the drain in my opinion & I bet that when the last nail is pounded into our collective coffin, the “leaders” and the 1% will plead ignorance. Don’t you believe it. They’ve known all along & they simply don’t give a fuck! You Trump zombies may recall his exclamation during one of his hate rallies, “I love the poorly educated!” A Freudian slip if ever there was one & I’m sure the prayer of every grifter, used car salesman, lawyer, & televangelist.

 

Sorry but I have more bad news for you anti-intellectuals or anti-elitists, the “Smart phones,” you carry with you all day weren’t invented by dummies with less than a sixth grade education. In fact, the Internet was invented mostly by a British citizen by the name of Sir Tim Burners-Lee who attended Oxford University & he and his colleagues at M.I.T., yep, intellectuals, gave the world perhaps the greatest tool for learning & sharing knowledge. Try imagining a world without the world-wide web today.

 

Moreover, I can’t think of any advances, inventions, discoveries in science or technology that weren’t the product of intellectual elites? I know you who have been indoctrinated into believing the M.A.G.A. myth can’t tell us exactly when that supposed golden age was. Perhaps you think it was in the 1950s & before Black people were allowed to vote? And if you do, that tells us that you’re one of those patriotic, good Christians of the KKK.

 

Chances are you are a regular viewer of FOX “News,” the fear & hate channel that drills into its viewers heads & hearts that it’s Blacks, Mexicans, gays, Muslims, etc. who are responsible for your humiliating & miserable situation. But the facts are that it was Democrats & Republicans who pushed for the passage of NAFTA. And behind them are the true puppet masters, the 1% who we are forced to subsidize & give them one tax cut after another & it was your hypocritical hero, Trump, who gave them one of the biggest tax cuts in history. So much for his “draining the swamp in Washington.”

I understand your anger at our government & many of your grievances are legitimate but to believe that we can fix things by tearing down the government physically is like burning your home down with all your possessions in it & then being forced to stay in a homeless shelter. Not very smart.

 

The way to make this government accountable to us, the 99%, is to inform ourselves, unite, boycott, & force the passage of a bill removing money i.e. legal bribes that corporations give to politicians to seduce them & turn them into corporate whores (high-priced call girls). There are several other critically important actions we must also make a reality but as long as we keep  wrongly blaming one another, the game remains the same & we all lose!

 

I have observed & written about this tragic phenomenon of anti-intellectualism in America for over 30 years & it makes me very sad because there are billions of people on this planet who would be ecstatic to have the opportunity to even learn the basics of reading, writing, & arithmetic. And a third or better of our population believe education is at the root of the evil destroying America.

 

“Elitism is the idea that people, by belonging to a particular class, gender, culture, sex, race, or nationality, or by having certain attributes, are better than other people. It is the concept, the guiding principle, that gives the right to other people to dominate others and deny to some the privilege and rights which others are being afforded.”

Ponder this question if you will, why is it that we put the wealthy up on pedestals as elites because of their wealth. We put athletic superstars up on pedestals as well. And the same can be said for movie stars, rock stars, etc. etc. etc. yet if a person has attained a level on intellectual superiority or excellence, we dismiss them as elitist snobs who think they’re better than us?

The other elitists whom we idolize, are better than us only in that they have much more money than we do, or they’re far better athletes than we are, etc. but if someone is smarter than we are, we in effect, spit on them! Personally, I love it when I meet someone smarter than myself if they’re not an arrogant asshole like Trump, because I can then pick their brains & get tips on ways to become more intelligent than I am.

 

In the meantime, let’s delve a bit deeper into this word, “elitism,” and how it relates to Trump’s infamous reign of grifting on a scale that has surpassed all other presidents by light years. First of all, you must always bear in mind that he has the intelligence level of a third grader. And he’s like a spoiled-brat & boorish bully who has been used to getting his way for most of his life. When historians look back on this period & write books on it, and if we haven’t blown the world up or died from our wanton climate destruction, future generations are going to marvel at how we let such an obvious phony become our president. He has seized every opportunity during his tenure in the White House to stuff his bank accounts from his grifting & outright larceny, theft, & embezzlement.

 

Early in his career of real estate development, Donny longed to be part of New York City’s social elite & attend their parties where intellectual, artistic, & cultural events were held but he was simply so crass & boorish or rude, lewd, & crude that they didn’t invite him to their soirees.

 

This deeply offended his delicate sensibilities so he began attacking them for their snobbishness & irrelevance and he has flip-flopped back & forth over the decades between hating them & still longing to become a member of the “in-crowd.” It seems obvious that because he clearly wasn’t anywhere close to being an intellectual elite, or an athletic, musical, or a movie star, he focused on trying to become a financial elite. But don’t forget that he has reminded us more than once of his “really big brain.” And come to think of it, I guess we could say that he is in an elite class of his own when it comes to bragging?

 

On a very serious note though, Donny’s willful ignorance has cost the lives of several hundred thousands of American citizens that was the direct result of his calling the COVID virus a hoax & his active undermining of the CDC’s advice to wear masks, socially distance ourselves, etc. And when he advised people to drink bleach, I was totally flabbergasted at such stupidity. If only he’d have taken his own advice when he contracted the virus, we’d have been spared so much more suffering, death, & division.

 

Remember, M.A.G.A. morons don’t trust anyone with more than a sixth grade education so it doesn’t matter where you get your medical advice from, Alex Jones, a witch doctor, your astrologer, etc. Again because everyone is entitled to their own facts & everyone’s opinion is equally valid. So, if you or any of your loved ones comes down with a serious disease, you can simply hold a séance in your backyard & hell, you might as well have a barbecue at the same time & get drunk with the other intellectual giants who you call friends. And you don’t have to worry about losing your home because of the outrageous costs of our medical system.

 

Moreover, you may have noticed Donny’s fondness of calling out the “fake news?” This is definitely an area of expertise for him because he’s been deploying it for decades in his never-ending agenda of self-aggrandizement. For example, back in the 60s whenever there was a radio program on that mentioned Trump’s name, he’d call in & pretend to be an anonymous caller & he’d remind the audience what a brilliant businessman Donny was & how successful he was. If you recall, Donny has repeatedly claimed that daddy only loaned him a mere million dollars but it’s been revealed that it was more like $400,000,000 and countless political favors he had in his pocket due to his mafia connections, favors by city councils, zoning departments, etc. Yep! A self-made man if there ever was one?

 

Furthermore, because Donny wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, he had his own Joseph Goebbels in the form of Steve Bannon much like Georgie “Dubya” Bush had his Karl Rove. The two years the DNC wasted on trying to prove that the Russians were responsible for Donny’s win in 2016 was just that, a tremendous waste of time & energy.

 

In my opinion, it mattered little who was behind the trolling & bots & etc. Much more significant was the fact that Steve Bannon’s organization, Cambridge Analytica, was allowed to target & post tens of thousands of fake news stories about Hillary on Facebook. Especially when you consider the fact that something like 70% of Facebook users relie on Facebook for their news.

 

In other words, the mentally and morally-challenged individuals who believed that everything Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, etc. spewed out was the gospel truth, received a tremendous boon because of the power Facebook had accrued over the years. And we mustn’t forget how much FOX “news,”  has done to help Bush & Trump gain popularity & credibility. Talk about “fake news,” I have been referring to FOX “news” as the Fear and Hate channel pretty much from the introduction of it to our airwaves. (actually after about a year of its establishment)

 

Another very critical fact that hopefully won’t slide down our collective “memory hole,” is the complex web of lies the Bush administration wove to push into our invasion & occupation of Iraq. How many American lives were lost? How many American soldiers were maimed physically & mentally? How many innocent Iraqis? And what were the consequences? We stirred-up a hornet’s nest in the Middle East that may take several decades if ever, to calm back down? And for the record, I blame the New York Times to a considerable degree for helping to launch that immoral invasion as well as FOX “news.”

Okay, it’s time for another lesson from history, F.D.R. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) who passed the New Deal (with a lot of pressure from below) was the greatest president America ever had. And the “New Deal” really pissed-off & scared the obscenely wealthy in America because they’ve never been fond of sharing with us, the peasants who create their wealth. Anyway, in his inaugural address in 1933 at the height of the “Great Depression,” proclaimed that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

This is such a profound insight & a true gem of wisdom because it reminds us that in effect, the rich & powerful use fear to control & manipulate us. Most notably when it comes to stirring the public up so they’ll go along with yet another war in our never-ending parade of wars.

 

Additionally, President Eisenhower warned us as he was leaving office to “Be aware of the military/industrial complex.” (he wanted to add Congress but his P.R. people feared that was going too far in terms of honesty) I don’t  believe Eisenhower tried to slow down the build-up of the military/industrial complex while he was in office? But I could be wrong about that?

 

Strolling on along our path to oblivion largely as a result of disrespect & dismissal of intelligence & intellectual excellence, we meet a  honest scholar & former, cold war warrior, Chalmers Johnson. You might care to take two minutes to review his credentials & background if you give a shit about these minor issues? This video clip is well worth taking the time to watch & I hope you will.

Professor Johnson tells us in a nutshell & in detail within his trilogy before passing away in 2010 that we can be a Democracy or we can be an Empire, a tyranny but we can’t be both at the same time and our Republic is circling the drain ever faster because of the absurd amount of money we’re wasting on our military budget (an oxymoron if ever there was one).

 

Remember the mantra of “common sense” that those who reside in Trump land believe is their province alone? Well, please be so kind as to explain to me why there’s never enough money when it comes to our health, education, or welfare but magically, the Pentagon always manages to keep on producing bombs, missiles, etc. that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each & we’re able to give them to nations like the Ukraine & the several little proxy wars we’ve got going around the world?

 

Chalmers lays it out in excellent detail but you’re probably in a hurry to get back to watching your “reality television” program to spend an hour listening to Chalmers, right? Yeah, I’m just another one of those intellectual elite snobs because I actually give a shit about our destruction unlike all the Sunshine Patriots who idolize the circus  master with the girly-hands.

 

Here’s a list of just the top 100 “Defense contractors,” it’s too bad for us that we stopped calling it the War Dept. decades ago, at least that was honest. https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2022/07/26/top-100-defense-contractors-2021/

 

You might also note that it used to be a serious crime to be a “war profiteer,” of course that didn’t apply to the President of Vice, Dick Cheney, who made millions from Halliburton whom he just happened to work for & awarded the lion’s share of contracts to “rebuild” Iraq after we bombed it back into the Stone Age. And no big deal that Halliburton lost pallets of money it was supposed to use to help the Iraqis and never got around to rebuilding a majority of those projects it got paid for anyway. Yep! Good old American Crony Capitalism in action yet again.

 

Oh well? Moving right along, we should also bear in mind the enormous power & influence of what’s called the P.R. industry (Public Relations). In short, they’re responsible for creating & manipulating images. Not only of products but also political policies, politicians, actors, etc. Note for example that on Obama’s first run at the presidency, the P.R. firm that managed his image, won one of the highest awards in marketing for the year.

 

The key or the most critical point in the context of the PR industry is that they come up with the tools, tactics, & strategies of selling the public on everything from launching new wars to the corporate ideology that helps to persuade us that habitual liars & grifters par excellence like Trump the Terrible Tot is the greatest president we’ve ever had.

 

Here’s another little dose of “common sense” for you if you can wake your senses long enough to shake free from Trump-speak? Take a look at a world map showing U.S. military bases and N.A.T.O. countries & compare it to a map showing the countries that China & Russia own or dominate. It’s  clear that we, the defenders of Freedom & Democracy are attempting to & have already done so to a large extent, surrounding Russia & China with hostile forces. And no, I’m not fucking defending Putin or making excuses for him but let’s get real!

 

America’s military might is superior to something like the next 25 nations below us combined. So why are we some of the most frightened & fearful people on earth? My moral & intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, has pointed out that the rest of the world is far more afraid of America than any other country! Does that get your patriotic juices flowing? If it does, you just might want to take a look in a mirror because it means you’re a tyrant or a dictator lover like Trump, the would be tin-pot dictator who gets weak in the knees when he’s around his idols like Putin, M.B.S. of Saudi Arabia, Duterte of the Phillipines, Bolsanaro of Brazil, etc. Yep! Rally round the flag pole, boys!

As Chalmers Johnson details for us, we have close to 800 military bases around the globe in 150 different countries not to mention how many secret, black operations sites? You might argue that “Ignorance is Bliss,” well yeah, if you’re part of the Church or the State. Throughout history they have done their best to keep people stupid, it’s far easier to control them than it is those pesky, intellectual elites. Also worthy of note is the fact that over 60% of our government’s billion dollar PR “budget” goes to the Pentagon.

Here’s a little parting gift that came to me in the middle of the night, a few days back;

Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of a moron!

 

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon  October 16, 2022