16 Comments

I grew up with those people, and dropped out of college to go back to their lifestyle, which in my youth felt so tight knit and understandable. Conservatives have lost, scarily understandably , their sense of hope for the future... so many psychological identity anchors are getting nuked... as their financial independence circles the drain. A progressive mindset is fundamentally more at ease with a changing society... I think on a primal level ... one looks to the past and the other looks to the future.... and for many they no longer see their place .... and we hate deep down being useless or not wanted .... I think it’s that existential angst about a role in society and connection that is the real zeitgeist of the ad.... even more deeply troubling because although the ad is cheap political propaganda.... the existential issues are profound and instead of coming together to figure out how we’re gonna get through another industrial revolution - this one even scarier than the last in many ways - all we have is demonization and hatred of each other at the top. Empathy compassion unity if you’re out there please come to planet earth

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The humanities help us understand the human condition. We could all use more education in the humanities. ✅

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I grew up in a working class family in Slovakia. My folks barely finished high school and worked in steel factories their whole lives. However, both have always read fairly extensively (mostly newspapers which, during communism, were mostly propaganda. Still, they read anyway). They have always displayed reverence for education and educators. I am so intrigued by the popular narrative that positions educators as elitists here in the U.S. and wonder if this is happening elsewhere?

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Excellent article, and in addition to the anti-education sentiments is the fact that these blue collar workers are not paying for someone else's education, some Wall Street financial firm is doing that. So instead of siding with cash-strapped college students, once again clueless voters side with Wall Street.

Perhaps Sallie Mae might take a hit in the pocket book. Cry me a river, I just Googled the company and they have $29 billion in assets. Why don't these people ever get mad at these corporations? It's like the Hillbilly Elegy author, Vance, who blames laziness and drug abuse on rural residents, instead of Sackler family and Purdue pharmaceuticals for putting the opioids into their community in the first place. I don't get the GOP/Trumpians, who always give Wall Street a free pass.

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