Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America

[Anomalocaris]

I think another reason is that America's own primary, secondary, and university education system is not anywhere close to up to the task of producing sufficient number of native science and engineering talents.   Consequently much of America's scientific preeminence and technological accomplishments have been built upon foreign talents who came to the U.S. to take advantage of our still adaquete graduate schools and career opportunities.

I think this created a social and cultural separation between the large portion of intellectual elite upon whom America had built her preeminence, and the cultural milieu in which ordinary Americans swim daily.  I suspect the typical native born American is less likely to have a friend or relative who is  a serious scientist, or the sort of engineer who dives deeply into the science behind his craft, than in other comparably advanced countries.

So I think Americans are more likely to think intellectualism is somehow foreign, although through the sort of propaganda induced cognitive dissonance that easily infect the undereducated and self complacent, they also tend to think the fruit of this intellectualism is not only their right by birth, but something from which they are entitled pick, chose, and alter to suit their personal cultural, political and psychological makeup.