"The entire intellectual elite, I am convinced, must also share much of the blame."
I believe that he is right about this, but what might be some incidental implications of his remark?
I am not going to suggest that he thinks any of the things I think, but 'weaknesses' of the US intellectual elite are there for all to see, I believe.
Some of my comments re the compartmentalization of disciplines plays some part in the failure of the intellectual elite, I believe.
Further, it is hard to really coherently refer to an 'intellectual elite' as a distinct and identifiable 'body', in the American public and private academic, and private sector, 'system'.
There are, just one example, political pundits, often with certain academic credentials, politics or economics or medicine or law or management or investment, other than the 'nonacademic' one of 'journalist'.
These credentials, and the scope of their expertises, are seldom seriously questioned, except among the academic disciplines themselves from which these pundits emerge politically.
A larger political voice for them is strictly gratuitous under our system, where no higher authority governs technical punditry itself.
Also the tendency for politicians, and powerful segments of society, to 'coopt' both exact and social sciences, both within and outside academia, is another powerful factor in the processes that got us here.
Good examples are medicine and architecture. Back at the time Ayn Rand, a pseudo-intellectual elite, wrote The Fountainhead, architecture ruled construction projects. Not any more.
Similarly for medicine and the control drug companies have increasingly exerted over the field of medicine.
This presents the spectre of scientific intellectuals, perhaps part of the so-called intellectual elite, serving as handmaidens of this or that political or commercial cause, which they may support, or which supports them, or their research.
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