>Their minds have hijacked the public trust, each one acting as the pinnacle of intellect, an individual example of brilliance to cut through all the dullness, before sacrificing the very rigor that put them there in order to maintain the illusion floated by the media, by them, even by us. The public intellectual once meant public action, a voice from the outside shifting the inside, but then it became personal, populated by self-serving insiders. The public intellectual thus became an extension — rather than an indictment — of the American Dream, the idea that one person, on their own, can achieve anything, including being the smartest person in the room as well as the richest.

>That includes online activists and writers like Mikki Kendall, who regularly leads discussions about feminism and race on Twitter; Bill McKibben, who cofounded 360.org, an online community of climate change activists; and YouTubers like Natalie Wynn, whose ContraPoints video essays respond to real questions from alt-right men. In both models, complex thought does not reside solely with the individual, but engages the community.

I do not like this article. It does not organize its criticisms well, and it is really hard to understand exactly why the author dislikes the individual intellectuals she calls out, and likes the others. For example, Peterson actively engages his audience, but doesn't get credit for it. The best guess I have for the author's position is trying to portray her left-of-center political as authoritative by appealing to higher abstractions; I honestly don't know. It is strange.