The issue is that anti-intellectualists think that the very concept of knowing more than them about any given topic is elitism.
My conspiracy theorist mom would go on and on about how her spending an afternoon googling something put her ideas at a higher level than someone who got a degree studying it, and if I agreed with the person with the degree, then I was an idiot for not following her. She thought that right up until she died trying to treat her cancer with quack therapies.
Regardless of whether we frame it as “I’m better than you because I know more than you,” the anti-intellectualists will still be framing it as “I’m better than you because my ‘gut feeling’ knows more than you.” It’s a competition to them, not because someone told them they were lesser, but because they already believed they were greater.
My mom is on that path, but still alive. She won’t drink regular tap water because she’s scared of fluoride. She no longer believes germs exist. She won’t get vaccinated or get flu shots (and won’t vaccinate her dog either). Her “doctor” is an hour’s drive away because she had to search far and wide for one who wasn’t part of the “big medicine” conspiracy.
The issue is that anti-intellectualists think that the very concept of knowing more than them about any given topic is elitism.
My conspiracy theorist mom would go on and on about how her spending an afternoon googling something put her ideas at a higher level than someone who got a degree studying it, and if I agreed with the person with the degree, then I was an idiot for not following her. She thought that right up until she died trying to treat her cancer with quack therapies.
Regardless of whether we frame it as “I’m better than you because I know more than you,” the anti-intellectualists will still be framing it as “I’m better than you because my ‘gut feeling’ knows more than you.” It’s a competition to them, not because someone told them they were lesser, but because they already believed they were greater.
My mom is on that path, but still alive. She won’t drink regular tap water because she’s scared of fluoride. She no longer believes germs exist. She won’t get vaccinated or get flu shots (and won’t vaccinate her dog either). Her “doctor” is an hour’s drive away because she had to search far and wide for one who wasn’t part of the “big medicine” conspiracy.
It’s all so exhausting.
Well at least your anti vaccine mom is dead
There are way too many people like her who exist