”The average American doesn’t care about college or universities at all. They resent education, and they consider professors a bunch of freeloaders who get summers off ”
When you go through 4 years for your undergraduate and your professor does the very barest minimum to teach the class, provides no help, defers constantly to their GAs, etc it's hard to not come to this conclusion. While it may not be true in general my experience is not much different than average and I can count the number of actual good, thought provoking, professors I've had on exactly 1 hand.
I understand the point of tenure but the dose makes the poison. Tenure should have a way to be taken under these circumstances. Otherwise, it provides an ivory tower from which a barely capable professor rests their laurels. The result, of course, is a vastly negative view of professors and academia in general.