Band of Bullshitters

[Aroura]

No.  The uneducated will remain uneducated...in 4 years or 40.  As pointed out in the "Good Article" thread they would have to want to change and they don't.

The only question is whether or not the educated can motivate themselves to get off their fucking asses.  I suspect the jury is still out on this one.

I know.  I constantly see full blown anti-intellectualism.
Comments I've recently seen in places like 538 include people bashing the "over-educated", youtube rants about "coddled college kids", and the struggles of the "working" poor.
As if most people didn't have to work their way through college, amassing huge amounts of debt.  As if college graduates are lazy elitists who never work.

You cannot motivate them to gain more education, they despise the very notion!  It appears they are raised to hate learning, and resent those who embrace it.  I don't know how to even talk to someone who is a devout Christian but thinks "bleeding heart liberal" is an insult.  Do they not realize that term is a direct positive comparison to Jesus? There is so much contradiction in everything they believe, and they have no interest in looking outside that box.

So, they will willingly put chains around their own ankles, and force them around ours while they are at it.

Look, I grew up in a conservative town.  I remember my mom flipping out when my grade school teachers sent us home with "vote for Reagan" buttons.  My family was unusually liberal for the area.  But all of my old friends from my home town now, I see what they post, I see how they think.  The ones who left and went to college or the cities and explored life ALL became more liberal, the ones who stayed on their farms and clung to the old ways remained conservative.

It seems to me it isn't about education, per say, but the exposure to the "others" that education and city life forces on you.  It makes you realize they are people just like you, since you see them, get to know them, so the fear is reduced.  The city is the same way.  City poor people work just as hard as country poor people, the difference is that city poor people are more likely to be exposed to many colors and cultures, and so become more open to them, and less easily coerced by blind fear and hatred.

If we could just force this exposure on the isolated people in the rural red areas, I honestly think that would be enough, no education required but the education of living your life outside of your comfort zone.  But they don't want to leave their safe spaces (so ironic that they pick o liberals for this term, when they live their whole lives in one), and it's pretty hard to bring the exposure TO them.