I wish I could argue against this. I live in a fairly blue area, and I'm sick of the increasingly in-group behavior and language of the educated PMCs around me, treating the entirety of flyover country like the should be grateful for whatever neoliberalism gives to them and how DARE they not promptly adopt whatever culture-war virtue signal that all the Morally Correct people are using. There's a real gap in communication.
On the other hand...I know that IQ tests for voting would never work out or become a political football, but shouldn't people at least have SOME clue? Trillions spent in education, yet we're getting dumber. (So much for that Blue Tribe canard.) And meanwhile, the world is getting more and more complex. Where does this go? Some kind of new hierarchy (above/below the API)? Civilizational crash? World War III to hit the reset button? AGI to save us from ourselves (or wipe us all out; at this point, I'd take either)
Funny enough, ever since the GOP began consistently winning non-college voters and losing college-educated voters (2014-2016), right-wingers have made a concerted effort to make criticizing the electorate on any kind of intelligence-related grounds taboo. I'd settle for breaking that taboo for starters. And of course it's not good political strategy. No candidate, politician, or political operative who wants to win should say it. But it does need to be said at least occasionally.
It seems that 20% of folks are not quite best friends with the written word, while an impressive 53% are rocking their reading skills at a sixth-grade level or below—it's like a literary time warp!
I wish I could argue against this. I live in a fairly blue area, and I'm sick of the increasingly in-group behavior and language of the educated PMCs around me, treating the entirety of flyover country like the should be grateful for whatever neoliberalism gives to them and how DARE they not promptly adopt whatever culture-war virtue signal that all the Morally Correct people are using. There's a real gap in communication.
On the other hand...I know that IQ tests for voting would never work out or become a political football, but shouldn't people at least have SOME clue? Trillions spent in education, yet we're getting dumber. (So much for that Blue Tribe canard.) And meanwhile, the world is getting more and more complex. Where does this go? Some kind of new hierarchy (above/below the API)? Civilizational crash? World War III to hit the reset button? AGI to save us from ourselves (or wipe us all out; at this point, I'd take either)
Funny enough, ever since the GOP began consistently winning non-college voters and losing college-educated voters (2014-2016), right-wingers have made a concerted effort to make criticizing the electorate on any kind of intelligence-related grounds taboo. I'd settle for breaking that taboo for starters. And of course it's not good political strategy. No candidate, politician, or political operative who wants to win should say it. But it does need to be said at least occasionally.
It seems that 20% of folks are not quite best friends with the written word, while an impressive 53% are rocking their reading skills at a sixth-grade level or below—it's like a literary time warp!