I agree, Justin, regarding the degradation of language since social media supplanted face-to-face or even telephone conversations, and even more since screens replaced books as our go-to source of entertainment.

Anti-intellectualism is a threat to human culture, but less of a threat than the loss of truth as a force in our political discourse. And here I must take exception with your seeming dismissal of both sides of the divide, when one side actually promotes education, science, fact-based discourse, and responsible behavior.

When you imply that Rachel Maddow is equivalent to Sean Hannity, you invite your reader to suspect you have not watched them both. There is no equivalence, for one of them is a Rhodes Scholar presenting meticulously researched, nuanced, and factually corroborated news, while the other is a college dropout promoting easily debunked conspiracy theories. One of them, in other words, is resisting the trend you decry, while the other is accelerating it.