Yeah, while it's particularly bad lately, I'm remembering Richard Hofstadter's book, "Anti-intellectualism in American Life", which one the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for tracing the religious, cultural, and economic roots of american anti-intellectualism.
These problems are not new.
> Hofstadter was born in Buffalo, New York, on August 6, 1916,[10] to a Jewish father
> [...]
> Influenced by his wife, Hofstadter was a member of the Young Communist League in college, and in April 1938 he joined the Communist Party USA; he quit in 1939.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter#Political_v...
McCarthy was right all along.