Trump's line of attack reflected his own insecurity. Throughout his candidacy and his presidency, Trump boasted often about his intellectual credentials. A study of presidential word choice found that he spoke at a fourth-grade vocabulary level, the lowest of any president in the past century; his own secretary of state reportedly described him as a "moron," and his secretary of defense said his understanding of world affairs was that of a fifth or sixth grader. Stung by these and other disparaging remarks about his intellect, Trump was at pains to insist that he was a "smart person," in fact a "very stable genius." Asked during his 2016 presidential campaign to name the foreign-policy experts he was consulting, he replied, "I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things." He repeatedly asserted that he had a high IQ and that his critics had low ones, an insult he directed especially against African Americans. Enamored with the genetics of IQ, Trump often pointed out that his uncle had been a professor at MIT ("an academic genius"), evidence that he, Trump, had "good genes, very good genes."

The weaponization of college credentials shows how merit can become a kind of tyranny. It is worth reconstructing how it came about. The age of globalization brought vast inequalities and stagnant wages for the working class. In the U.S., the richest 10 percent captured most of the gains, and the bottom half received virtually none. Liberal and progressive parties of the 1990s and 2000s did not address this inequality directly, by seeking structural reform of the economy. Instead, they embraced market-driven globalization and addressed the uneven benefits it bestowed by seeking a fuller equality of opportunity. This was the point of the rhetoric of rising. If barriers to achievement could be dismantled, then everyone would have an equal chance to succeed; regardless of race or class or gender, people could rise as far as their talent and effort would take them. And if opportunities were truly equal, those who rose highest could be said to deserve their success and the rewards it brings. This was the meritocratic promise. It was not a promise of greater equality, but a promise of greater and fairer mobility. It accepted that the rungs on the income ladder were growing farther apart and offered simply to help people compete more fairly to clamber up the rungs.