The Sars-CoV2 pandemic has exacerbated growing political schisms in the United States. The schism between conservatives and liberals is very old but has taken a very dangerous turn in recent decades. It’s not just the willingness of Congressional conservatives to ally themselves with violent, right-wing movements. That would be bad enough for most us.
The more fundamental problem is the increasingly poor educational attainment of Republican party loyalists.
Or maybe I should really invert that statement. Yes. Yes, I will.
It’s the increasingly advanced educational attainment of Democrats that is the real red flag. Not concerning Democratic party ideals. It’s the fact that post-grad educated adults form an increasingly impermeable social world in major urban centers. And this world is wildly skewed toward Democratic party affiliation and ideology.
This is also the real reason that post-grad educated Democrats have fewer Republican friends or acquaintances (outside of corporate relationships). To the extent that post-grad educated Americans, as a social class, unconsciously prefer to hang out with similarly educated people, they are ensuring they don’t meet many Republicans.
So, educational attainment itself (and the capitalist engine behind it) is exacerbating the political party divide and threatening to create a political system between a super-elite AND everyone else.