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Rupert Pupkin's avatar

There is the additional factor that right-leaning audiences have a complete, self-reinforcing media ecosystem to lure them away from the mainstream. Every defenestration at the NY Times or Facebook suppression of a story about Hunter Biden shunts more right-of-center media consumers to Earth 2.0. That phenomenon is working in the same direction as educational polarization.

I am currently in the only Republican congressional district in a blue state and it is very, very Trumpy. Very Trumpy. Like, sub-contractors go out of their way to tell you how Trumpy they are when they show up for a job, you know, just that's clear to my ECCO-wearing ass up front.

IMHO mainstream media outlets are totally unaware of just how alienating they can be to non-urban, non-diehard-liberals. (For the own-the-libs side of the coin, The Fox News Cinematic Universe, that is a feature, not a bug.) On paper, I am the exact demographic that the NY Times et al. is pursuing, yet I don't read it at all because it feels like a liberal echo chamber where city-dwelling millennials with liberal arts degrees vigorously inhale their own farts and then write condescending articles about how I am a bad person because I don't understand the subtle bouquet of artisanal fart-smell.

I read my local paper and a few substacks of differing ideological viewpoints. So, to me, there is no upside of education polarization because it isn't translating to cultural power, it is just empowering bad ideas from the left the way right-wing media translates into virtue-signalling legislation in Texas.

A recent example: Andrew Sullivan interviewed Brihana Joy on his podcast and it was delightful to hear two ridiculously intelligent people bat ideas around. That is the cultural hegemony I want; core liberal values of empiricism, debate and free speech. But when Andrew pointed out that 'defund the police' was a brilliant slogan to sweep Trumpy Republicans into power, Joy sternly lectured him, asserting that 'defund the police' actually means 'increase police funding and reallocate resources to better serve the community' and that he was willfully misunderstanding 'the movement'. Then she played the race card. In other words, fuck you for not adopting our faculty lounge lexicon of literal irony where words mean their opposite; also, you're racist.

To me, that is what the cultural hegemony of education polarization is delivering; a lefty purity spiral that aggressively and gleefully sics the Thought Police on anyone who deviates even slightly from The Party. That is the highly-educated mirror image of the dumb righty purity spiral that demands absolute fealty to the alternate reality where Trump won in 2020 and Democrats are a whisker from implementing full-blown socialist totalitarianism using Jewish space lasers and Italian satellites.

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Rory Hester's avatar

Democrats believe as do their voters that they are the party that supports the working class (minimum wage, unions, etc…), but if the educational polarization continues, then s their an inflection point where Democrat voters abandon the working class and pivot to policies that only support themselves.

Student Loan Forgiveness is one of the issues on the forefront on this. Most blue collar workers don’t go to college and don’t obviously benefit from this, whereas the rising creative educated class will.

And I suppose the same question goes for Republicans… at what point do they alter.

As I have said before, I honestly think there’s a scenario where the parties switch sides at least economically.

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