JA WestenbergLove how "elitist" now just means "has the audacity to know things." Went to university? Elitist. Read a book? Elitist. Can point to a country on a map? Elitist. Meanwhile a man with a gold toilet is a man of the people.
SmutMagDotArt@Daojoan It's not elitist to go to university. It's elitist to believe the only way you can prove you are smart or educated is to give tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper with your name on it. Our entire labor market and social culture is based on that notion. And like, I think the viewing of Trump as a man of the people is dumb, too...but this post is dangerously close to equating poor with dumb. And I think that's probably what people are referring to.
Miss Megaphon@smutmag @Daojoan Interesting angle re: money.
Wondering whether the US academic system has sth to do with the view of them being elitist. You need money to become educated.
Here in Germany, college and university are free (though there are class threshholds obv).
We still have a right wing movement against intellectuals (which, btw, I do think is orchestrated by Putin et al.).
It seems to be stronger in the USA though.
Maybe because there *is* a connection between education and privilege?
@megaphon @Daojoan I do want to be clear: The MAGA movement (and republicans in general) here is totally, 100% anti-intellectual. And their hatred of college is part of it. But I'm definitely speaking to why people here might gravitate towards the anti-intellectualism. Their latching onto a true problem--that there is a big class divide that favors people who went to college. And that, yes, it's basically extrotion: Pay 10's to 100's of thousands of dollars, or be poor.
@megaphon @Daojoan From my own experience in college, I found quite a lot of the requirements entirely arbitrary, and found the system to be a scam. I'm the fool that dropped out my senior year--because college was honestly easier than my fairly tough high school, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was a scam.
But the scam aspect would be eradicated if it were free.