The problem, in my view, is not so much anti-intellectualism as general dearth of sociological imagination as defined by C. Wright Mills (cf. <http://www.camden.rutgers.edu/~wood/207socimagination.htm>), which is as MIA among the most literate Americans as the least, evidenced by the fact that political and philosophical schools of sociological imagination -- from Marxism to post-structuralism -- turn into theory of individual self-fashioning when imported and assimilated into American "high culture." --
[WS:] Great quote, is not it? However, I would not say that there is dearth of sociological imagination. I think there is some good research and some bad research in social science, and that the latter is more visible is due mainly to lower entry barriers: virtually every rambling can pass for social science nowadays, but some technical proficiency is required to pass for natural sciences.
The problem of anti-intellectualism is not than much of dearth of sociological imagination, but sociological imagination of a wrong kind. Anti-intellectualism is a form of linking personal biography with history, albeit in a twisted and factually inaccurate way. More specifically, it is blaming the wrong social forces and identifying wrong social issues as causes of ones personal problems. I often met people who were far from failing to search beyond personal experiences to explain their own predicaments - they were quite determined to look for social causes. They did have a sociological imagination, to be sure, albeit very misguided one.
Here is an example. I started a conversation with a man on a Greyhound bus that quickly turned into politics, or rather Bush bashing. It was quite rewarding to hear this blue collar Pennsylvania guy bitching how the Republicans are destroying this country, until he stated Blacks were partially responsible for that. This completely threw me off, and I asked for a clarification. He explained that we have Bush because - and this is not a typo - Blacks overwhelmingly vote for Republicans.
Ridiculous as it may sound, this is actually the mechanism behind anti-intellectualism - linking personal troubles with wrong social forces. Most people are not dumb, they understand that their personal lives are affected by larger social forces. Where they fail however, is that they take "fast food for thought" explanations of those connections - just as they go to a fast food joint when they are hungry instead of looking for a better value. They do it because it is the easiest and most familiar way - go with what they think everyone else around them believes or eats. By that logic, if people are looking for sociological answers to their personal troubles, they do not think critically but rather grab the first available answer, no matter how ridiculous: "Blacks voting Republican" "Intellectuals destroying America" on the right, as well as a myriad of conspiracy theories and off the shelf "systemic" explanations found on the left.
It is not dearth of sociological imagination, but high transaction costs of getting the right answers posed by that imagination. I think it was Schopenhauer who said that everyone wants to have an opinion, but not everyone knows how to form one. Enter the "fast food for thought" aka stock knowledge or beliefs circulating in the "folk wisdom," sometimes deliberately planted there by propaganda, that are takes for granted at their face value, without any critical examination of their truth value. Everyone falls into this trap, but not everyone is aware of it.
Wojtek