It is shocking that 58% of Republicans think negatively about college. Demos President appeared on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd and explained how that came about that should disturb us all.
The anti-intellectualism of Republicans explained.
It isn’t an accident that a large percentage of Republicans view college in a negative light. But that thinking is directly responsible for their anti-science stance.
“Heather, I want to ask you to reference this stat here,” said Chuck Todd. “I want to put it up here. On this issue, sort of the anti-intellectual stream that’s taking place in the Republican electorate. 58% of Republicans believe colleges and university have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country. I mean it was a startling, wait a minute, I thought we all agreed college was good. We can have a debate about openness in ideologies and universities. But when did we go all the way there?
“Well, I think you really have to, sort of follow, the thread of this narrative,” Heather McGhee said. You know Republican strategists began to really recognize how much more highly educated folks were trending towards being more liberal. And we can talk about why that might be. I mean Republicans would say it’s a nefarious liberal bias on campus. Others might say that it’s actually the more that you study America’s history in the world, you understand how much we’ve fallen short on values of justice and equality. And you want to tend to work more voraciously towards those goals. But if you look at right-wing media, a narrative has really taken root. It’s like that the liberal outrage on campus of the day, and that’s where that’s coming from. There’s been a real spotlight a distortion I think of the news of what is coming out of college campuses. But it’s just very clear. You start to see it pop up on Breitbart. You start to see pop up on Fox News, and then it moves into the Republican vote.”
Ms. McGhee hit the nail on the head.
A real democracy requires an educated population. Democracy is a threat to the plutocracy’s permanence. It is clear that Republicans are following the script, the Powell Manifesto.
