Are We Dumbing Ourselves to Death?

Anti-intellectualism is not about intelligence (as the linked article helpfully points out).  Saying someone is ignorant is not the same thing as saying they are stupid.  In fact, in the actual definition of the word ignorant, you will notice that it is not as pejorative a term as your average seventh grader who just learned the word would have you believe, it is simply a lack of knowledge.  We are all ignorant of something. I am ignorant of how to integrate derivative equations, despite taking and passing two semesters of college calculus.  It's something I should have learned but did not, and the fact that I passed two terms (granted with D's) is a testament to the failure of something or other.
The problem is that ignorance has become acceptable and perhaps even lauded in certain quarters.  I'm not sure how old I was when I first felt self-conscious about being smart, but it happened, and it stuck with me until well into high school.  Through middle school I became rather adept at hiding my intelligence and feigning ignorance.  I suppose it's lucky for me that I'm rather good at taking tests, the standardized testing that we had to take in eighth grade finally clued the school system into the fact that I wasn't actually a lunkhead.
Honestly, it was sort of a surprise to me.  You might think that people suppressing their natural intelligence is a conscious decision, but actually it's more of a herd instinct in adolescence: don't stand out.  We want to fit in, and if ignorance is par for the course than so be it, bring on the Budweiser and Confederate flags, and I'll shout, "play Freebird" from the back row of a jazz concert.
How do people become racist?  You know, it's not that hard to figure out.  I've never met a racist toddler, we learn it.  We hear people we admire use the N-word or talk about "those people," and we accommodate our behavior to that standard.  And don't think that you need to have an uncle in the KKK for this to happen, it can happen in the most subtle ways.  Did you see your mom hug her purse a little tighter when that black man sat next to her on the bus?  Did you sense a little different tone in your grandfather's voice when he talked to the Latino teller at the bank?  Kids are little sponges, and they observe a lot more than you think.
The only thing that is going to counter-act that sort of conditioning is a lot of education and experiences that stretch you to form relationships with people who are different than you.
You can be smart and kind and still be a racist, in fact, some would tell you it's unavoidable to some extent because of a tribal mindset or because of unexamined privilege, or maybe a bit of both.  What ignorance does is never raise the question or the possibility that it might be bad. There is a difference between the sort of tacit racism that you find everywhere, and the active, hostile racism that breaks out with some regularity.  Both are the product of ignorance, but one is simply a lack of examination and one is a willful denial of reality.  Both are sinful, but only one is prone to violence.
We may have made this nest for ourselves, we may have glorified the marginally educated workingman a little too much.  We may have allowed people to consider personal freedom (and perhaps even salvation) as the be all and end all of existence, but the reality is that we are all connected.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, you mostly read about Israel being saved, people prayed for deliverance for their whole nation, not just for one or two people, or one or two thousand people.  An individual might be rescued from trouble here and there, but the idea of salvation was a larger picture.
The forms of Christianity that were dominant in this nation around the time of the founding, were largely individualistic, meaning they emphasized a "personal" faith and a "personal" salvation.  I think it may have been inevitable that this foundation would lead to fracturing of the community, both the churches and the nation.
The industrial revolution compounded the problem, by pulling people out of the simple, necessarily communal life of an agrarian society and putting them in a place where their identity more closely resembled drone ants or bees, and their intellect and curiosity was mostly just a nuisance to the productivity of a worker.
It's amazing to me how communism and capitalism both have this proletarian value system, and both of them utterly fail to empower the working class.  It's because educated people ask questions and desire more freedom and equality, and they don't want to just play the same old role.  Ultimately, we all want to be bourgeoisie.  We want to be the well to do, we want to be the upper managers and the executives, but we can't, and so we seethe and learn to hate, and we reject the "high-falutin" ways of the very people we aspire to be.
Pretend like you don't care.
Pretend you would rather have a beat up pickup truck than a Porsche.
Pretend you would rather eat hot dogs than sushi.
Pretend that "book learning" isn't really that important for the likes of you.
In other words: lie to yourself, stay ignorant, because if you ever learn the truth, you might have to change the way you behave.