Originally published at: MAGA hat-wearing philosopher ponders the correlation between education and liberalism | Boing Boing
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". . . when I read these books it was not with the intention of becoming educated or switching sides. . . "
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Use this one weird trick to be mistaken for a college-educated person even if you don’t have a degree:
Become a Biden supporter.
Republicans hate it!
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I have a t-shirt that says, in block letter ‘BE KIND’. I wear it at work, largely because I work with and among homeless persons and it is hard to be aggressive to someone with that on their shirt.
I had a fellow sports dad at our kid’s game ask me why I was wearing a ‘Woke’ shirt. I said ‘does that mean you are woke to your kids?’. He got angry.
Complex thought and anti-wokeness are not mutually compatible.
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Once you are educated, and no a high school diploma does not mean you are educated, you stop falling for hate as a platform. Seeing as high school education is closer to babysitting than education, it’s not hard to see why, in general, those who go to college and learn something see through the hate.
I promise you every single person that works at Faux news, for example, is highly education - probably from an Ivy League. Plenty of educated people support fascism, because it supports their own interests.
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My favorite part of that video is when he said, “My eyes were opened.” Almost as if he … I dunno … woke up. This is the thing that kills me about people making fun of or criticizing “wokeness”. What’s the opposite of being woke? Being asleep. Being asleep is a good thing? Is that really what some people are saying? Aren’t these the same people who love to say things like, “Wake up, sheeple!” Anywho, I’m glad that guy woke up. Hopefully more people will.
ETA:
To your point, Greg Gutfeld, highlighted in a different post today, has an English degree from Berkeley. So not only is he highly educate, he has a degree from a school with a liberal reputation.
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Jesus, Buddha… All woke people…
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Wow, I’m gobsmacked. He really, actually, truly learned something. And then did something about it.
Wow.
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It’s in the name, people!
LIBERAL Arts.
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I graduated from a Very. Large. SEC school and there were a LOT of conservative-minded students and faculty there. YMMV depending on the school, but a lot of conservatives are well educated.
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Having acquired a Rural Racist Grampa-in-Law by marriage, I’d like to encourage y’all to try to dig a little deeper with this than just sneering mockery. If you have values you cherish, and which represent the consensus in your community, and you see the handful of loved ones your family sends to higher education come back rejecting those values, your first thought is NOT going to be “Well, some stranger must have proven our values invalid,” it’s going to be, “People I don’t know or understand are opposed to my values and corrupting my kids.” The prevailing liberal idea that “All educated people know and agree on better, smarted things than uneducated people do, so if your beliefs clash with our institution’s dogma, they must be wrong” is just as myopic and irrational.
Contempt is not persuasive, and it will heal none of what this nation needs to heal. If you’re not even trying to empathize with or understand rural Americans, you’re not part of any solution - you’re just embodying and reinforcing their stereotype of high-falutin’, snobbish, overeducated liberals.
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Another myth, that only rural people are racist. they are not and racism can be found in cities, too.
I do have contempt for people who embrace genocide, yes. If that makes me the “bad guy” (which I don’t think it does) then so be it. I’ll stand by the people being targeted by fascist EVERY FUCKING TIME, because it is the RIGHT thing to do.
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I attended my middle schooler’s STEM event last night and of all the things i was prepared to see, living in a fairly maga town, the dude wearing a fucking ar-15 tshirt almost set me off. 
I did not engage him to inquire, as i was not prepared to hear the bullshit justification. He looked fairly educated, but how does one asses that considering the event?
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I should tolerate racists because they didn’t learn no better?
That idea needs to go die in a fucking fire, dude.
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That’s an interesting thought. Has anyone tried being compassionate and understanding to the racists, instead of caring about the harm they cause? Oh, wait, centrists have been for dedicated to that for decades and that’s part of why the fascists are at the verge of taking over now? All right, never mind then. 
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I grew up in a relatively rural part of my state - there were certainly some uneducated racists, and plenty of educated racists, and plenty of uneducated anti-racists…
If only we’d let them do a genocide, they’d just leave us all be! /s
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ETA: There’s a reason why one course of study is called Liberal Arts & SCIENCES.
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Yeah, there’s also always the assumption in these things that we’re all just liberals who could get along with the racist grampa if we wanted. Because nobody here is a black person who should be scared to be in his community after dark. Nobody here is a woman facing having their health care taken away. Nobody here is a trans person trying to decide at what point they need to abandon their home and flee. Those people just aren’t part of this.
I’ve written enough times here about how this “don’t further the divide” approach is predicated on ignoring that bigotry has real victims that I’m exhausted of it.
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