[...]

In the thread under John’s Tempe update post last night, I read some comments about right wingers collecting the Harvard and Penn presidents’ scalps. Someone noted that wingnuts really ramped up their campaign to destroy higher education when women began outnumbering men on campus.

That sounds about right. Educated women are less likely to settle for abusive, controlling men as mates, which is bad news for right-wing males. Also, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives enrage wingnuts for obvious reasons. It’s not enough that their bought-and-paid-for SCOTUS blew up affirmative action in higher ed — they want to delegitimize the very notion that systemic biases exist.

But I’ve got to think a main motivation for the attack on higher ed is the fact that college-educated voters are increasingly gravitating toward Democrats. If I recall correctly, in many recent elections, education levels have been more predictive of voter behavior than any other factor, including income.

Couldn’t Republicans try to figure out why they are losing college educated voters and adopt policies to lure them back? Haha, no! That would mean confronting the extremist morons who are no longer just the foot soldiers in the conservative movement but now comprise its officer corps and generalissimos too. It’s easier to just destroy public education instead.

Will voters put up with it? So far, they have in Florida, which failing presidential candidate Ron DeSantis says is “where woke goes to die.” But the lack of national enthusiasm for his candidacy, plus the electoral backlash against anti-woke agitators outside of far-right strongholds, provides hope that the rest of the country is where this dumb woke panic finally goes to die.