Catsidhe

To answer that last, the movers and shakers of this world are all freaks. They have to be because as a species we're not actually very clever. We're also heavily conditioned to mistrust difference and there are all sorts of hominid survival reasons for that but it does mean that the average person is wired to distrust anyone too bloody clever by half. This is spectacularly crap but it's embedded far more deeply than simply being cultural, methinks. Doesn't make it easier to stomach, of course.