Anti-Intellectualism in America is a problem that goes far back. I happen to be studying Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (a fantastic novel with anti-intellectualism at its heart) for college right now, so I thought I'd share some of the sources I've been reading. This first one's a complaint from 1888 by James Russel Lowell with regards to this emerging trend of ignoring scholars, where he writes:

"...in the opinion of some of our leading politicians and many of our newspapers, men of scholarly minds are ipso facto debarred from forming any judgement on public affairs; or if they should be so unscrupulous as to do so... they must at least refrain from communicating it to their fellow citizens."

Even in the 19th Century, learned men were being dismissed for speaking out against politicians, and the result of this were unnecessary debates where subjects failed to be addressed in favour of debating legitimacy. It's seen in Fahrenheit through the burning of books - they have already been declared illegitimate, and are thus burned without consideration for their content. Thankfully we're not at that stage in our own society yet, but the educated evidence for climate change is being considered suspicious like the books in Bradbury's novel. In Richard Hofstander's book (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life), he describes how politicians can dismiss education in this way by questioning their adequacy "for the difficult and dirty work of day-to-day politics". In other words, politicians are capable of dismissing scholars by claiming they don't understand politics, when in actuality politicians don't understand the evidence. You can see this in relation to books in Fahrenheit and how so few people understand their content, and refuse to try.

From all of this a scenario emerges where nothing is accomplished due to the mistrust of fact, and the result is a reality that's not strictly real but rather what was passed as real. So how can you have an informed democracy when your nation lives in unreality? You can't, and your government will end up reacting too late when a real threat manifests itself with serious consequences. Here's a final quote from Bradbury himself. He's speaking of books themselves, but you can see it in relation to the knowledge they contain, and education in general:

"If you didn't have books and the ability to read, you couldn't be a part of any civilization, you couldn't be part of a democracy... we are a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way."

Don't let Ray Bradbury down, congress!