Alicia may well be overlooking the other element in these highly educated, upper IQ intelligentsia,...shear, unmitigated evil.
These denizens of the Liberal Hive fully embrace their positions as lords and masters of the smelly, Walmart folk.
Pride was the first sin (Lucifer's) and I would make the case that all sin is rooted in pride; when we sin, or act outside of God's will, we do so with a presupposition that we know better than God and/or we are somehow exempted from His law and judgement.
Elites take it a step beyond, presuming not only to know what is best for themselves, but what is best for everybody else, whom they see as inferior, and they leave nothing but misery in their wake. C.S. Lewis summed it up nicely when he wrote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”