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> During the age of a global pandemic, political chaos, and rampant anti-intellectualism

Not related to the rest of the article, but it seems hard to claim rampant anti-intellectualism as a feature of the time. Things like critical race theory, but also imagined cultural change through things like crypto seem highly intellectual to me.

How would you call it then, when people rather follow the advice of their Reality-TV-Star-President and drink bleach against COVID, but absolutely condemn advice by Fauci, CDC, etc, i.e. people who’ve been studying it* for decades?

*Not COVID obviously, but desease management.

> drink bleach against COVID

How many people do you think actually did this?

I suppose in periods of anti-intellectualism there must still be pockets of intellectualism bucking the trends of the majority culture.
Today's anti-intellectualism doesn't mean that not many people are intellectual, but that intellectualism is controversial. For example, critical race theory would have rested an obscure part of the social sciences, but when it went mainstream, it elicited an angry response. Like other institutions, academia and the avant-garde are less trusted than they used to be.
I suspect that the apparent rise of anti-intellectualism is a mirage of social media. The US has always had a large streak of it. It's just a lot more visible now.
> Like other institutions, academia and the avant-garde are less trusted than they used to be.

Is that ‘anti-intellectual’ or simply legitimate distrust?

While I read one of his books and enjoyed it, my best George Saunders experience was seeing him do a live reading. His friend actor Nick Offerman Zoomed in (giant screen on stage) and they riffed, and the whole thing was so very cool.
George Saunders is a national treasure.