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What a garbage article.
This is completely false - there is no counter-elite in Washington fighting against wasteful foreign wars, there is no counter-elite fighting against immigration policies that enrich the wealthy by driving down wages and driving up asset prices, there is no counter-elite fighting against H1-b visa abuse, there is no counter-elite fighting against omnipresent warrantless surveillance, there is no counter-elite fighting against obsequious support for foreign nations that the majority of the population dislike. Where is the counter-elite arguing against illegal immigrant farm labor, a policy which Trump has explicitly come out and supported? "Common sense" is completely, 100% correct in these cases.
The elite, cognitive or no, act in their own interests and those interests are not the same as that of the populace.
No, this isn't the problem - the problem is that this language policing makes it impossible for the lower classes to object to the policies responsible for their impoverishment and elite enrichment. They're not upset because they aren't smart enough to play the language game (plenty of them can and do), but because the entire purpose of this language game is to deny them the vocabulary to describe their problems. Illegal immigration directly contributes to the impoverishment of the wage-earning class, and so their opposition to it is considered low-class and problematic because it comes from them. The reason that this system is breaking down is not that these people hate thinking, but because the failures of the policies endorsed by these "cognitive elites" are finally reaching the more privileged classes. Unemployment among people with degrees is skyrocketing, and tech degrees are now far less capable of getting someone into a good career - not because the people getting them are stupid, but because the policies of outsourcing, infinity indians and overt discrimination against men.
But to leave the article aside and return to your post...
No, this isn't the case at all. These "fancy theories" are just so much squid ink deployed to mask the obvious underlying incentives - widespread H1-B abuse is a policy with very clear winners and losers. You don't actually need infinite immigration to run a modern government! What, exactly, is the fancy theory that justifies insider trading on the stock market by members of congress? That justifies immense corruption in military procurement (what's the fancy theory justifying 8000 dollar plastic wastebins)? You don't need a mass welfare scam run for the benefit of intertribal Somalian warfare, but that's exactly what all those "fancy theories" have produced. I'd actually go even further - when the democrats passed laws which meant the government provided vast amounts of money to their captive NGOs and political influence operations these actions are entirely understandable through the lens of common sense. It isn't that people are angry about these policies because they don't understand them, they are angry about these policies because they are directly injured by them!
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