Knowing Nothing

Longish piece by Echidne of the Snakes on American anti-intellectualism.

And that shows you the marvelous sleight-of-hand that has taken place! Knowledge has become not something that you have to work to acquire but something which is about emotions, about social rankings, about making yourself better than other people! Perversely, knowledge has become something which props hierarchies! And the solution to this dilemma is not to open up the gates of learning for all but to deny the value of learning altogether. Or, perhaps, to ridicule the ignorant ones because that props up another type of hierarchy?