Here’s more evidence that, as I’ve long suspected, the great divide in American life is not race, gender, ethnicity, the familiar suspects. It’s education:
By the end of September, overall white support for impeachment had risen to 34 percent in that month’s Monmouth poll. Nearly all of that change, however, came from college-educated whites whose enthusiasm for ending the Trump presidency rose by 70 percent—jumping from 26 percent supporting it to 44 percent. For whites with no college degree, however, allegiance to Trump stayed strong, and support for impeachment barely budged, with a small uptick of 2 percent.
This should not be a surprise. A good education introduces the student not merely to an array of cultures, personality types, and intellectual disciplines, but cultivates an openness to intellectual updating. The healthy, properly functioning mind is a voyager.
This is why evangelicals are so immobile in their support for Trump: they hear from childhood that everything they need to know is all-settled, that to even doubt or reconsider a question is a failure of character itself and the fast-track to eternal punishment. This is why it’s a waste of time to try to reason with them; they must be defeated and let alone to sulk.