There Has Always Been Class Warfare In America

No, I don't mean rich versus poor.  I mean educated versus uneducated.  It's a by-product of our frontier days; America was a land with so many physical riches that one could become wealthy without an education.  But that frontier society no longer exists.  It takes knowledge, and the willingness to acquire it, to become wealthy in today's world.  Many Americans don't have that willingness; they would rather look for a bygone world, and then align themselves with the investors who did the most to take that world away from, against the intellectuals who could help them create a new path.  Sadly, the myth of the rich making everyone else richer dies hard.

The complicated relationship between America and its intellectuals has been the source of literature:  first, Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism In American Life," and now, Aaron Lecklider's "Inventing the Egghead."  I don't expect that reading books, however, is the way to win this particular type of class warfare.  In my experience--and I have spent my whole life around intellectuals--the well-educated are often far too guilty of talking to each other and not enough to people outside of their upbringing and experience.  I think that this is why we have devolved into a nation of red and blue states.  Liberals cluster so that they can debate ideas without fear of repression, while conservatives cluster because they fear exposure to new ideas will somehow destroy everything they believe it.

In consequence, I have felt for some time that the key for intellectuals is to find ways of breaking out of their social comfort zone, to interact more with those outside of their educational experience.  It is far from easy, but it can be done.  Bill Clinton was, ultimately, far from my ideal as a Democratic President, but he was a master at going back and forth from speaking to university presidents and farmers' markets without missing a beat or losing a listener.  More of us need to develop that capacity.

Because if we don't, we will lose this particular class war.  And America deserves better.