People with second-rate minds now expect to be treated like first-rate elites

From Albion's Seed, Special Providence, and now, 10/19 by Arnold Kling.

My point is this: the differences in values that we see today can be traced back to before the colonies broke from England. These are genuine differences, not arbitrary tribal hatreds. And we lived with those differences for most of our history (not the time of the Civil War, obviously). The question becomes, why now have relationships become so uncomfortable?

For an answer, I would just point to the usual suspects: more centralized government power raises the stakes; there are incentives in the media business to make the stakes seem even higher than they are; smart phones make cultural/political phenomena seem more immediate and pressing.

Finally, the last fifty years of expansion of college education has not gone well, in that people with second-rate minds now expect to be treated like first-rate elites. In order to do that, many college-educated people have adopted a set of beliefs and attitudes that are certain to differentiate themselves from the rest of the public, because the beliefs and attitudes make little or no sense. This approach to class differentiation produces animosity all around.