And I don't think you get what I'm saying. As I say in what’s effectively part one (the article I link to in this one’s first sentence), I posit an old cold war between these two social classes, the intellectuals and the unreflective masses. And this second article looks at where things stand in the modern form of this cold war. It looks like the masses are winning.
You seem to be saying that’s a good thing, but most of the article’s not about evaluating which side deserves to win. At the end I suggest it may be bad for intellectuals to be left entirely on the sidelines, but what interests me more here is just establishing the one-sidedness of modern liberalism in this cold war, in economics, politics, academia, and pop culture.
So no, I’m not simply cheering for the humanities to beat down the unwashed masses. I’m observing that modernity is only paradoxically an Age of Reason. Intellectual countercultures are finding themselves squeezed out. There’s an obvious downside of the populist empowerment of the masses (see Trump and WWII). But that doesn’t mean intellectual elitism has no downside either (see all the historic problems with decadent aristocracies).
On a side note, some of your points come across as hysterical outbursts of trolling. You quoted me as saying something about “the postmodern condition,” and you ask a rhetorical question about the identity of postmodernists—as if the two things were the same. The postmodern condition isn’t just the ideology promoted by certain academics. Art, technology, industry, science (quantum mechanics and Einstein’s relativity theory), the world wars, and other factors came together to cast all kinds of doubt on modern metanarratives, leading to mass cynicism and anxiety.
Academics didn’t create the postmodern condition; rather, they tried to explain what was happening. And yes, in doing so, postmodern elites may have inadvertently cast doubt on themselves. That’s part of the irony of the postmodern condition, which postmodern intellectuals also talk about. So, what was your point supposed to be?
