the weekly standard<u+2019>s andrew ferguson, writing oct. 6 , on an article about donald trump in vanity fair by that magazine<u+2019>s editor, graydon carter : one of the weirder aspects of anti-trump mania is its sniffy tone. and it<u+2019>s especially weird coming from card-carrying liberal democrats. for two generations our culture and its institutions have been living under a liberal ascendancy. the country<u+2019>s elites<u+2014>the bigs of the news media and hollywood and the non-profit world and the arts and the academy<u+2014>have signed on to a catechism of personal liberation, particularly sexual liberation, and a kind of radical individual autonomy that even lets you choose whether you<u+2019>re a boy or a girl. we are taught to be <u+201c>nonjudgmental<u+201d> in matters of lifestyle and to accept a pristine relativism in metaphysics and morality. . . . carter<u+2019>s piece raises one further question, coming as it does from a credentialed member of the country<u+2019>s cultural elite. he calls the trump ascendancy the <u+201c>final stage of a dumbed down america.<u+201d> who could disagree? trump<u+2019>s rise, boosted by the forty percent of our fellow citizens who see him as a plausible president, is indeed evidence of a serious, system-wide failure. dumbing down is a good name for it. the question is, who did the dumbing down? our public schools? our universities? our entertainment media<u+2014>television, movies, popular music? the press? glossy magazines like vanity fair ? surely all of them share in the blame. and all of them, from the schools to movie studios, rest snugly (i almost wrote <u+201c>smugly<u+201d>) in the control of liberal democrats, and have done so for fifty years or more. if we<u+2019>re getting dumber, we know whom to thank. how odd is their sniffy contempt for donald trump, the purest flowering of the culture they<u+2019>ve created.
notable & quotable: trump<u+2019>s dumbed-down america - wsj
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