There’s nothing wrong with having an education beyond high school. There’s nothing wrong with questioning the opinions and advice of one’s elders, of testing what one hears against what one has learned and seen after having engaged one’s surrounding cultures and maybe walked a mile in someone else’s shoes.
There’s nothing wrong with being well-traveled, or even a little bit traveled. It makes sense that one who has “been around,” seen something of the world, ventured beyond one’s yard or surrounding ZIP codes, is likely to have been exposed to other customs and cultures, other people, and walked away with a fuller picture of the diversity and differences—and similarities—between and among us.
This all appears to have some bearing on the dynamics that exist today, in terms of the fertile ground that people like Donald Trump and other vermin who peddle disinformation need in order to gain adherents. One begins to realize how much they depend on narrow world views and gullibility and grievance and an aversion to introspection.
People like Trump bank on ignorance and hope to find people who have already been terminally indoctrinated by their jaded elders and peers. They plow and sow in the fertile ground of anger and apathy, trusting that their screeds will be received as gospel. How else to explain an embrace of antisemitism, or an openness to isolationism, or a fear of immigrants?
Trump, Putin, and their ilk? They’re all predators.
3 Cents' 