"Indeed. I've been trying to grasp what that something else is, and to date, the most plausible conjecture comes from the world of literary fiction. Specifically, the novel by Milan Kundera, _The joke_ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joke_(novel)) which offers interesting insights into the collective psyche of Czech intellectuals during the communist period. It stipulates that intellectuals embraced communism en masse in 1947 because it offered them an illusion of getting what they did not have before - power.
I think that the same principle may be at work since the 1980s - the market/"new economy" system created an illusion of college graduates getting direct access to power - either through their "innovations" (the myth of IT work) or through corporate ladder (e.g. meteoric careers of business management graduates.)"
My experience of the intelligentia in Romania and of academia in the U.S. supports your argument. Except I don't think the Tea party draws its strength from the 80's college crowd. For one thing, most tea baggers are way older than that.
But yeah, I rode into the university on the coattails of the 60's and naively believed I was there to pursue truth, beauty, justice, and freedom. Ha! And yet, I don't regret the luxury of those delusions. I had a wonderful time studying what I was interested in and wound up being able to make a decent living despite avoiding "technical" subjects. The thing is, learning technology is fairly trivial compared to learning to think, analyze, write, judge, etc.
This is what the current crop of bureaucrats don't understand or rather, don't care about. I did read "The Joke" at your prompting and thought it was spot on.
Wojtek ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk