Why do public intellectuals condescend to their readers?

yalereview.org

But Holiday’s execution conflicts with his intentions: To write as if your audience is made up of your intellectual inferiors, as he does, is not to make philosophy “accessible,” but rather to render it, however inadvertently, snobbish and alienating.

I have felt this more from academics at university. IMO the more someone is placed on a pedestal the more they will look at everyone else as "the other" and overtime, the inferior.

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