Smart People Are Especially Prone to Tribalism, Dogmatism and Virtue Signaling

Symbolic capitalists – people who work in fields like education, consulting, finance, science and technology, arts and entertainment, media, law, human resources and so on – tend to have unusual political preferences and dispositions compared to most other Americans.

These idiosyncratic ways of talking and thinking about morality and politics have come to dominate symbolic capitalists’ preferred political party – the Democratic Party – leading to increased alienation from the party among “normie” voters.

These long-running trends (which date back to the late 1960s and accelerated during the Clinton years) were exacerbated as a result of the post-2010 “Great Awokening.” Symbolic capitalists consolidated themselves even more intensely into the Democratic Party, even as our own views grew more extreme relative to the rest of the public. During this period, the Democratic Party’s messaging and priorities shifted radically to reflect “our” desires, in ways that left the party increasingly out of step with the median voter. This generated electoral backlash among populations that are sociologically distant from “us,” such as ethnic and religious minorities, less affluent voters, less educated voters, and so on. These trends were reflected in every single midterm and general election after 2008 and culminated most recently with Donald Trump retaking the White House following the 2024 elections.

My book, We Have Never Been Woke, shows that the transformations the Democratic Party underwent during this period were not unique. After 2010, many other institutions, especially those connected to the symbolic economy, likewise grew more overtly moralistic and political, and became more morally and politically homogenous, in ways that put them out of step with most other Americans. However, they also grew more disdainful and intolerant towards public opinion on these matters, instead prioritizing the preferences and priorities of symbolic capitalists, who comprise their most valued employees, clientele, investors and audiences.

This has contributed to growing mistrust in “our” institutions among large swaths of the public, creating an opening for right-aligned political entrepreneurs to win support by running against “us,” and vowing to render institutions of knowledge and cultural production accountable and responsive to “the people” once more (as the book also shows, the contemporary backlash against the post-2010 Awokening isn’t unique either. This is a phenomenon that recurs in each of the previous periods of contestation within and about the symbolic professions too).

At present, most empirical indicators seem to suggest that the current “Great ...