The ultimate bad guys in contrast are the intelligentsia. Most working-class conservatives, for instance, don’t have much use for corporate executives, but they usually don’t feel especially passionate about their dislike for them. Their true hatred is directed at the “liberal elite” (this divides into various branches: the “Hollywood elite,” the “journalistic elite,” “university elite,” “fancy lawyers,” or “the medical establishment”)—that is, the sort of people who live in big coastal cities, watch public television or public radio, or even more, who might be involved in producing or appearing in same. It seems to me there are two perceptions that lie behind this resentment: (1) the perception that members of this elite see ordinary working people as a bunch of knuckle-dragging cavemen, and (2) the perception that these elites constitute an increasingly closed caste; one which the children of the working class would actually have far more difficulty breaking into than the class of actual capitalists.

It also seems to me that both these perceptions are largely accurate.

...

Conservative voters, I would suggest, tend to resent intellectuals more than they resent rich people, because they can imagine a scenario in which they or their children might become rich, but cannot possibly imagine one in which they could ever become a member of the cultural elite. If you think about it that’s not an unreasonable assessment. A truck driver’s daughter from Nebraska might not have very much chance of becoming a millionaire—America now has the lowest social mobility in the developed world—but it could happen. There’s virtually no way that same daughter will ever become an international human rights lawyer, or drama critic for the New York Times. Even if she could get into the right schools, there would certainly be no possible way for her to then go on to live in New York or San Francisco for the requisite years of unpaid internships. Even if the son of glazier got a toehold in a well-positioned bullshit job, he would likely, like Eric, be unable or unwilling to transform it into a platform for the obligatory networking. There are a thousand invisible barriers.

• David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs