Over the past few decades, Americans have increasingly been accused of “anti-intellectualism” and it’s not an unfair charge. The level of respect Americans have for “elites,” “experts,” and “intellectuals” is leaving the toilet on the way down the drain. Some of this is because of the nature of modern media. It’s hard to have respect for an “expert” who’s spouting off on social media about how much they love communism or who constantly gets things wrong on cable news shows they probably shouldn’t have gone on in the first place. As Hegel said, “No man is a hero to his valet.” So, when people got a chance to see these “intellectuals” up close and personal, they realized that they didn’t seem that much smarter than anyone else. After you see enough supposedly “brilliant” college professors trying to explain why some homeless white guy is part of a system of white supremacy or who believes all women because they would never lie about anything important, it’s hard to respect the profession. There was a time in America when saying that you were a professor at Harvard would have identified you as the smartest person in the room, but today, just as many people are likely to assume that it means you don’t know what gender anyone is and may need a safe space to hide in if someone walks in wearing a Redskins jersey.
That wasn’t always the case. We live in a country that built the Hoover Dam, created nuclear bombs, came up with the Internet, and put a man on the moon with 60’s technology. The level of respect for the people that accomplished those things along with other brilliant Americans like Einstein, Edison, and Tesla is still sky-high. Conservatives, who are perhaps the group most accused of anti-intellectualism, still hold people that could fairly be described as intellectuals in high esteem. You are not going to lose a group of conservatives talking about the wisdom of Ayn Rand, Thomas Sowell, Antonin Scalia, or Milton Friedman. Beyond that, Americans of all stripes still seem to have great respect for experts that have proven themselves in the real world. Who do you want doing your brain surgery? The guy who has successfully done 500 of them or the professor who has never done any and has a theory about how the brain works that he came up with based on Mayan mythology?
Of course, now we’re starting to get to the heart of the issue, which brings us to Anthony Fauci.