Sometimes being super intelligent puts you at the top of the totem pole, but sometimes it doesn't. Not in social settings, where nerd as a proxy for "super smart" is often a liability.

And then there's conservative politics, especially in the last few years, where smartness is denigrated, expertise derided. "Those scientists don't know what they're talking about! We need real, down-to-earth, ordinary people making decisions, not people with PhDs." (See climate change, vaccinations, transgender issues, etc, where conservative people dismiss human knowledge and insult the very smart people who helped collect and analyze data.)

It feels like Watership Down, doesn't it?