The purpose is to destroy the expert class

[edhopper]

The people with knowledge, the ones who study and learn and find the truth of it all.
The GOP has been a Party free of facts and running on deception since at least Reagan.
They want the only reality to be the one they create to benefit themselves.
And now they have the power and will to eliminate anyone who can counter their anti-intellectual tyranny.
They are doing things we might not recover from. They are burning down the institutions that are vital to what our nation is, or was.

[SheltieLover]

1. Of course it is.

Imho, it began when Hillary was running & magats began calling literate people, especially experts in their field, like Sec. Clinton "elitists."

Elitists? Really, magats? Dumb shits.

[erronis]

8. I remember the days of the McCarthy hearings when those terms were also used.

Lumping liberals and communists and socialists and elitists together. Easier to attack as a group than worry about distinctions.

I'm sure this type of anti-intellectualism has been going on since we were swinging from the trees.

Of course, the RW has its own brand of know-it-alls.

[SheltieLover]

10. I suppose you are correct.

Revolting.

[no_hypocrisy]

32. Time to break out and re-read "Anti-intellectualism in American Life"

Anti-intellectualism in American Life is a book by Richard Hofstadter published in 1963 that won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism_in_American_Life

Worth getting for your own libraries.

[Meowmee]

2. Agree

I hope something happens to stop this and stamp out the fascists for good.

[erronis]

9. Unfortunately, this tendency towards love of power is part of our genetics (I believe.)

[Meowmee]

12. Maybe part of people like psycho's but not of everyone's 😁

[yellow dahlia]

3. Exactly. One of my daily refrains.

[rickyhall]

4. We sit and watch our great nation go down to idiots.

[rickyhall]

5. We sit and watch our great nation go down to idiots.

[KT2000]

6. Just as Mao did

that was the point of the Cultural Revolution.

[erronis]

11. Didn't work out very well for Mao or his ravaged country. Expect the same here.

[edhopper]

15. It worked for Mao

Last edited Wed May 7, 2025, 08:45 AM - Edit history (1)

His grip on China became absolute.

[KT2000]

30. He appointed idiots

to government positions too. The agriculture minister knew nothing about agriculture, but he knew he better meet and exceed quotas for food. In order not to be killed, the farmers lied about their crop yields, and the minister lied to Mao. They were even exporting food crops. The reality was that 30 million people starved over 3 years.

[yardwork]

34. Same thing happened under Stalin.

[BurnDoubt]

19. Agreed. Pondering this for a week or so.

Our culture has been dismembered. The hand-holds are gone. Monster Metamorphosis where our culture used to be. I feel we are perilously close to the breaking point as a Nation, and a species.

[FadedMullet]

27. You know, The Cultural Revolution in China has popped up twice for me online recently, thanks, no doubt, to......

........Googles algorithm responding to recent trends. So you and I are probably not the only ones thinking along those lines. The push for more lenient child labor laws fits into that kind of program. What's next, we all are required to wear cheap cotton "Trump Jackets", insulated with newspaper and build backyard iron furnaces.

[KT2000]

29. My friend who lived through

the Cultural Revolution has said twice now that this is worse. The level of fear coming from the government now she says is worse. Her father was a doctor and he was made to wear a dunce cap so people could yell at him. The principal in her grade school had to sit in a chair so the children could throw coal at her.

[Irish_Dem]

31. A Chinese friend of mine had a university professor father in northwest China.

The father was kidnapped, sent to a "re-education" camp, and forced to do hard labor
for the rest of his life.

[FoggyLake]

7. An uneducated or undereducated population....

...is less likely to question authority, challenge official narratives, or develop critical thinking skills.

[lastlib]

21. You are right-on!

I expanded this idea below.

[Nululu]

13. Like Pol Pot

[Martin68]

14. Very reminiscent of Pol Pot's crusade to kill all intellectuals and educated people. People with eyeglasses, were

killed because that was an indication of someone who could read.

[Iamscrewed]

16. 1930s Germany

Dictators play book 101,102.
Total failure to study history. Full fucking stop.

[ReRe]

22. You know they hate history,

because history = knowledge.
Knowledge is their mortal enemy.

[Botany]

17. Robert W Service speaks for me.

GRIN


If you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about—
Grin.
If you're feeling pretty groggy, and you're licked beyond a doubt—
Grin.
Don't let him see you're funking, let him know with every clout,
Though your face is battered to a pulp, your blooming heart is stout;
Just stand upon your pins until the beggar knocks you out—
And grin.
This life's a bally battle, and the same advice holds true
Of grin.
If you're up against it badly, then it's only one on you,
So grin.
If the future's black as thunder, don't let people see you're blue;
Just cultivate a cast-iron smile of joy the whole day through;
If they call you "Little Sunshine," wish that they'd no troubles, too—
You may—grin.
Rise up in the morning with the will that, smooth or rough,
You'll grin.
Sink to sleep at midnight, and although you're feeling tough,
Yet grin.
There's nothing gained by whining, and you're not that kind of stuff;
You're a fighter from away back, and you won't take a rebuff;
Your trouble is that you don't know when you have had enough—
Don't give in.
If Fate should down you, just get up and take another cuff;
You may bank on it that there is no philosophy like bluff,
And grin.

[BurnDoubt]

18. "Good Morning, Good Simpleton!"...

Try "A Canticle For Liebowitz" for a good read and a great Lesson.

[lastlib]

20. T. Jefferson: "An insightful and informed citizenry.....

....is the archenemy of tyranny." The wealthy autocrats/oligarchs do not want "an insightful and informed citizenry" capable of opposing their tyranny, so keeping the citizenry uninformed, uneducated, and incapable of critical thinking is their key to creating the tyranny and the reality they want to maintain their power. It is the on-ramp of their superhighway to serfdom for us.

[Bayard]

28. Fox News is their playbook

I don't know if it started out that way, but it has performed beyond all expectations in the dumbing down of America.

[lastlib]

35. Television in general has contributed to that.

The mindless idiotic sitcoms, the utterly stupid and vapid "reality" shows---think "Honey Boo-boo" and Kardashians---have served well to lower the average IQ of Americans and to obliterate their critical thinking skills. We are now largely brain-dead zombies with the mission of enriching our corporate masters.

[hay rick]

23. Turns out the "deep state" is the professionals who make the government function.

[markodochartaigh]

24. "They want the only reality to be the one they create to benefit themselves"

This seems appropriate here:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

[FakeNoose]

25. There's a strong element of anti-semitism in this as well

The idiot MAGAs have ruined us forever.

[summer_in_TX]

26. Yes. But there's a counter effort to recruit volunteers to create a centralized database to document

everything that Trump and his followers are breaking so one day we can hold them fully accountable and be able to rebuild.

https://criticalread.substack.com/p/we-need-a-way-to-aggregate-what-donald

What we need is a central repository of information so that the full extent of the damage can be found in one place and assessed by the public -- and so that there’s a comprehensive record of what needs to be fixed and restored when the time comes to do so. (Sort of like a truth commission, but in real time.)

To aggregate all the existing information, organize it, and collect new data, we need a place, a process, and people.

[yardwork]

33. Yes.

[johnnyfins]

36. I once had a mentor/boss

That thought he was always ahead of everyone else. He told me once that he used to paint murals in the city. This would have been in the 1970s. He said they would drive a nail into the wall, attach a string to it, and tie the paintbrush to the other end, so that when you held the paintbrush and kept the string tight, you could make perfect curves. He actually said "I invented that".

I said " Really? You invented the compass?"

This is TSF in a nutshell.

[edhopper]

37. I was a billboard painter

we used that technique. I imagine it went back to ancient times.

[Liberal In Texas]

38. This is part of them wanting to eliminate the Middle Class.

Righties think that the middle class has too much extra time and resources that endanger the privileged lofty positions of the uber wealthy. People having to work 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet don't have time to go to protests or even enough time to vote. And the serfs should have to take any crap job the overlords decide they need to have to run their sweat shops.