Anti-intellectualism isn't so new. In 1952, my parents told me they expected Adlai Stevenson to lose to Eisenhower because Stevenson was "an egghead." I was 7, and I could not understand why anyone could be too smart to be President. Now, I understand. We all want to be led by someone who "thinks like us" only better. Smart people don't think like us. Carter, Reagan, Clinton, W., and Obama all had a way of not making us think they were too smart.

We are rightly skeptical of what smart people tell us, because they are relying on knowledge accessible only to them on account of their smartness. Maybe they're wrong and maybe they're lying, and we can't tell, because who are we to argue with the poli-sci equivalent of quantum physics? We'll know the sky is falling when it hits us on the head. That may be too late, but at least it won't be too early.

My own view is that race is driving our politics, with other identity issues adding noise. Who cares how smart a President is - or how dumb and/or corrupt his opponent is - if his most important mission is to check the demographic boxes in appointing people to positions of authority? Could Biden have done a worse disservice to Justice Jackson than to declare that she was pulled from a pool that included only Black women? And could he have pissed off more White people by saying no one with their background need apply?

Yes, smart people are less bigoted, and bigotry - i.e., racial self-defense - has become the order of the day for many White Americans. Most White progressives see themselves surviving the elevation of everyone else. I suspect that most White people don't share their optimism. Deriding the majority for being stupid doesn't really advance the ball. The average American is of average intelligence. We cannot fix that, so we need instead to reckon with it.