Examining Prejudices

Without examining, at least at present, the fairness of my prejudice, I will simply note it: when I encounter less-educated people, I expect their political and social opinions to be unsavory, derived directly from The View, or bad Sunday School, or HuffPo, or laundromat rumors.  They are powerless, they don't understand what is happening, they might vote but otherwise have no understanding how to influence their culture, and they can't even get their own self-interest straight. I don't worry about them, I don't think them dangerous even if they have money and businesses, and I think whatever evil they bring to the culture can be dealt with gradually and kindly. They either irritate me or bore me.

But when I encounter people who have some education and status, who have some idea how systems work, how power is distributed, and have the verbal cleverness to put their opponents down and put in a good word for their friends, I consider them very dangerous, possibly evil, and self-righteous enough that they cannot be reasoned with, and must be simply opposed.

Note that this is the opposite of the conventional wisdom, which regards the former as dangerous barbarians who should be disempowered in every way, and the latter as reasonable folks whom one can work with.

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern. CS Lewis, Preface to The Screwtape Letters.

I admit it. I want you to hate them too.