Natalie has a point here, but I would submit that it’s really both, rather than one or the other. “Ignorant yokels” (to use her phrase) are the targets of Big Oil’s propaganda machine. Educated people who respect and understand science do not buy this crap.
Actually, even in the case of Reagan himself, most progressives don’t think that way. Yes, he put an end to the financial growth that the common American had experienced since the end of World War II, by getting us started with tax cuts for the uber-rich and trickle-down economics.
Yes, all this eventually came home to roost with Trump, but Reagan himself was a talented, sane, and (largely) law-abiding person. There’s a lot to be said for that, especially considering where we are now.
In response to the meme at left, it’s not “miserable” that these people believe what they do. Many of history’s most revered intellectuals have commented that intelligent people are far less capable of happiness than the common idiot. Check out Arthur Schopenhauer and Aldous Huxley.
FWIW, I’m not too sure.
To understand this, you have to put yourself in the mindset of the typical MAGA Trump supporter. These people believe that any amount of criminality and violence is justified if it keeps Trump in office, so as to protect the United States from the woke, radical left.
Obviously, not all college graduates are good people; of course there is no guarantee that higher education carries virtue along with it.
Yet there is clearly a strong correlation. There is a reason (perhaps many reasons) that Donald Trump does particularly well with people in states that are at the bottom of the rankings in terms of education. He got 65% of the vote in Alabama and 36% in Massachusetts. Trump’s platform? White nationalism, mass deportation, punishing the poor, tax cuts for billionaires, anti-environmentalism, support for the world’s tyrants, and the rejection of science. That’s not exactly virtue, is it?
I remember the first time I saw this technology implemented. About 20 years ago, some handy guy with a Prius had engineered and installed a solar PV roof, which, I have to admit, looked super-cool. Then I did the math and realized that the amount of energy added by the roof was so small that it was essentially meaningless.
Two decades later, they’re still ripping off gullible investors.
As former labor secretary Robert Reich notes at left, there are a couple of lessons we’ve learned from the DOGE efforts and the rest of the first six months of the current Trump presidency:
Our federal government and its employees perform services that are vital to our safety/wellbeing.
The White House, with or without Elon Musk, consistently lies to the American people. Perhaps the best example was the claim that there is massive fraud associated with Social Security, which proved to be groundless.
I like the wit of this Alex Cole fellow.
It’s as if the United States is trying to corner the market on the world’s very worst human beings.
Imagine that there actually is an increase in the number of beached whales in New England and that you want to know the cause. You can ask a marine biologist who’s been studying this subject for more than 20 years, or you can ask Donald Trump, as in this video.
It’s amazing. With each passing day, we enter an entirely new realm of stupidity.
I remember this quite clearly.
Our current hatred of foreigners is a new phenomenon, but it’s completely predictable given our decline in educational standards and the stagnation of wages for the working class.
The saddest part is that, although America has many problems, the existence of immigrants in our culture really isn’t one of them.
In 
