"Growing up in a blue-collar family that had supported FDR and Truman, I remember well that my family and our blue-collar friends shared the broader disdain that many Americans felt for 'the egghead Stevenson, as opposed to the Republican candidate, the more down-to-earth Dwight Eisenhower. One of the favorite refrains in our blue-collar milieu about men like Stevenson and other 'eggheads' was that they never got their hands dirty.
"In 2016 Trump benefitted from a deep strain in the American character. It was influenced by our frontier experience and contempt for the 'tenderfoot,' by the spread of Jacksonian democracy and populism, by the free-wheeling capitalism of the Gilded Age, by our respect for practical men like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Charles Lindberg, for common sense and 'the school of hard knocks' as opposed to book-learning and being 'overly educated.'"
Walter G. Moss at History News Network argues that "[u]nfortunately, the crassness and anti-intellectualism of President Trump are not aberrations in our culture, but a reflection of our darker side."
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