COLUMN: Liberal elitism — what is it, exactly?

Since Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes, the right has, in its inimitable fashion, scrambled to rationalize its own ideological branding mechanisms. Streep called conservatives out, plain and simple, for living in a different kind of bubble: the anti-intellectual one. The new security blanket of the far-righters is a safe space of their own, in which Democratic concerns are promulgated by an insidious and removed “liberal elite.”

And frankly, it’s strange. I don’t remember when it became such a crime to read and retain information; to seek higher education; to base skepticism in fact, instead of farce. The past year elevated conservative distrust of media to a new level: an aggressive rejection of the educated. The term “liberal elite” is a dog whistle meant to excuse and justify the lack of political understanding and higher learning among the President Donald Trump-supporting electorate, so it’s no surprise that the term was their favorite buzzword.

And for the Republican establishment, it is a wonderful phenomenon. If any respectable source of media, third-party investigative source or member of academia tells them differently, they’ll sing the chant they know so well: All these ridiculous complaints are simply coming from the liberal elites who don’t understand the “real world.”

The very fact that the term “overeducated” is used in any serious capacity is evidence enough for exactly how vigorously alive anti-intellectualism is. What is it, exactly, to be overeducated? Is it that those of us shooting off our AR-15s at backyard squirrels really understand the geopolitical ramifications of Russian interference in our elections more than Washington political scientists? Or is it that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, senior expert on forgetting federal agencies, is more qualified to head the Department of Energy than Stanford-educated nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz or Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu? Are Chu and Moniz, too, liberal elites?

The educated liberals from California must not get it — they’ve never seen this many lost steel or manufacturing jobs destroy a town. Liberals in Washington, D.C. are offering you vocational training and would support your former manufacturing town — but you turn them away, because they are not perfect solutions, and the out-of-touch elite must not get it. Your Republican representative has been re-elected thrice on the promise that those jobs will come back. You keep on waiting, believing him, all the while listening to the lies of anti-intellectualism on Fox News. You don’t need an education. You need your gosh darn job. And those ridiculous liberals just won’t make coal come back. It’s the liberals and their big government. It’s the immigrants. Whatever works.

The liberal elite does not exist. Liberal elitism, as a propagandist term, is the myth of a privileged group of Democrat-leaning voters who use their economic prosperity to cushion themselves from understanding real economic concerns, real subjugation and poverty. It makes sense, in a vacuum.

But where are they? The Democrats who vote do so consistently for a higher minimum wage, for affordable higher education, for subsidized child care, for national healthcare, for expanded workers’ rights, for taxes on the wealthy, for growing and sustaining a strong middle class — they are concerned most prominently, and deeply, for economic solutions that count. They are not trapped in a callous elitism.

But perhaps the banks on Wall Street were, when the market crashed and millions lost their homes. Maybe the conservative board of Walmart is, as it cuts the hours of its part-time workers to avoid providing health insurance to employees, all the while making billions in profit.

Or maybe Trump’s cabinet is. Maybe Betsy DeVos is the elite they’re talking about — a Secretary of Education who never let her children set foot in a public school and never took out a dime in a loan to pay for higher education.

Yes, there are liberals somewhere in California and New York who thought they, too, had the easy solutions. They do wear scarves, and they do eat kale. But they also struggle to pay off their student loans, they also barista at Starbucks to make rent and they also go to public schools. They are liberals, they vote Democratic and none of them share the lie of the anti-intellectualist propaganda. While far-right whites in the Rust Belt swallow the lie that education is for snowflakes, that same immigrant family believes that education is the key to the American Dream. One of them is right.

The dog whistle of liberal elites was perfectly placed and unfortunately effective. Maybe if voters had read 1984 or Animal Farm, they’d realize the ramifications of a total rejection of education. Or maybe they’d just shout, “Four legs good, two legs better.” At this point, I really don’t know.

Lily Vaughan is a sophomore majoring in history and political science. Her column,“Playing Politics,” runs every Friday.