Some people have always believed batshit stuff with no good supporting evidence. But anti-intellectualism has been on the rise for the past, day, 30 years in particular.
Carl Sagan presciently called it out in “A Demon-Haunted World” back when new age and crystals and alien abductions were popular woo woo beliefs.
It seems to have become more popular to reject “bOoK LaRnin’” in favor of anti-science, which has also been co-opted for political purposes.
Full quote for somber appreciation, emphasis mine:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance
