I just yesterday watched a scathing video about why the US has always had a major strain of anti-intellectualism, starting from the very first colonists:
I feel like I wasted 25 min watching that (at 2x).
If your thesis is "The US was founded on anti-intellectual principles" and your only supporting facts are:
- Some of the early colonists were religiously-driven
- The inconvenient examples otherwise (e.g. the Enlightenment-influenced founders) can be ignored because some people at the time disliked them
- Some presidents since have been populists
Then that's a weak argument.... and also, that could have been a 15 min video without the histrionics.
Asimov wrote about it[0], and talked about it quite a bit.
So did Sagan. If you haven't watched Cosmos in awhile it might hit a little different these days, for multiple reasons (not all bad). The book is great too. Not to mention Sagan wrote "The Demon Haunted World".
There's a new form and an old form of this same thing happening today too. We have flat earthers, but other cults too. One of the common features of this cult of ignorance: having a little knowledge and thinking it is much more general. We all know those people who read a sentence or two and extrapolate. This happens all the time. Even in flat earthers. It's often seeking evidence to support the prior belief rather than updating that belief. Updating that belief can either strengthen the belief it weaken it. But if you're seeking truth you need you be willing to throw your beliefs out the window. Resistance to that is ego
[0] https://aphelis.net/cult-ignorance-isaac-asimov-1980/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World