The way we think about and talk about “stupidity” in Britain is both quite interesting and also not very helpful, imo https://twitter.com/johnjcrace/status/1264471335042002947

It’s a sort of denial of class — the fervent belief in “meritocracy” meaning that we have to pretend everyone succeeds on “cleverness” — combined with an obsession with class — a politics and media built on an in-group of people who assume themselves/each other to be clever.

And people want “cleverness” rather than knowledge or experience, because the latter requires specialism, and we’re a nation that venerates the generalist? And we don’t trust “intellectuals”, so it’s a slick, facile cleverness, honed in tutorials. Maybe.