Russia and conservative media (murdoch media, etc) seeding regressive/anti-intellectual movements has been massively successful, western society is just completely unprepared to deal with freedom of speech being leveraged to spew an unending firehose of bullshit, it's a "copyleft" style trojan approach of using our own democratic values against us.
The firehose of bullshit has led to the rise of anti-intellectual movements, an anti-intellectual president, and a party that just votes absolutely lockstep with him no matter what he does. They don't give a shit about absolutely anything, not fires or hurricanes or plagues, and just let all these problems fester. It has a lot of other negative effects too of course, but we have reached the point where we simply can't respond even to acute crises anymore, our system has long-since lost its higher functioning in terms of setting goals and being able to execute them (what you'd call "self-actualization" in maslow's hierachy) and now is struggling even to maintain basic homeostasis (the "physical needs" tier of the maslow hierarchy).
(I include Brexit, Bolsanaro, Duarte, etc in this as well - western democracy is in deep fucking shit worldwide and if we don’t get our shit together and deal with the firehose of falsehoods we will be supplanted by more authoritarian forms of government that don’t suffer this vulnerability because they don’t tolerate free speech and dissent.)
It is also super depressing to know that even with everything that's gone on, less than 5% of america has even changed its mind. Even with the plague, even with the fires, even with civil unrest and mass arrests, even as the post office is dismantled and we lose the ability even to get a fucking package on time, 40% of america will go in the booth and pull the lever for more of this. It goes beyond just "doesn't affect me, who cares", or "that's 20 years from now me's problem", this has all affected everyone, now, today, and people still want more as long as they get to own the libs. It's maddening.
Intellectuals have led us to credit crisis. But "Nobody saw it coming!" Is not a response. Remember that statement?
Intellectuals have led us to forever wars everywhere.
Intellectuals have overseen the collapse of the family unit in the last 70 years
Intellectuals old us in the 90s that the polar caps would melt in....2020
Intellectuals have led us to a permanent underclass of people in cities like detroit, chicago, NY and Philadelphia.
I'd say that's enough. People have a right to call out the bullshit.
Because most of what intellectuals say is bullshit.
Human knowledge is limited. intellectuals have failed to exercise basic humility.
The bill is now due and those institutions need to dissappear (unis, newspapers etc) so something new can rise.