I both agree and disagree.
I also grew up in this environment. The author is right, facts are literally meaningless to these people. They live in a safe space bubble of misinformation because the real world is too complex and overwhelming for them to handle. So their beliefs about the world are usually a collection of lies and heuristics to support their identity and ideology which needs to be simple, black and white and allows them to feel self righteous indignation as well as morally and mentally superior to the rest of humanity. Any facts, no matter how valid, that puncture the bubble are ignored. Any facts no matter how irrational and false are supported if they uphold it.
One tactic I’ve had fun with when talking to these people is to make up pro liberal facts, and then when they ask where I read it I say fox news. They don’t know how to respond. I gave up trying to have intelligent debates with these people a long time ago. But apparently even bill O’Reilly admits the stimulus package created twelve million jobs.
I once tried explaining to one of them that their welfare would be targeted by the gop who they kept voting for. Their response was no, the gop would only target people who abused welfare, not her. What She really meant was she believed the gop was only going to take away welfare from people she thinks she is morally superior to. Blacks and Latinos. Trying to explain that she was on the chopping block too was a waste of time. Even if she lost her welfare she’d never take responsibility for it. It sucks.
Having said that, there are high school educated whites and white evangelicals.
White evangelicals have supported the gop candidate for president by about 75-85% since the 1980s. They supported Trump, Romney, McCain, Bush, etc. They are consistently Republican.
But if you look at whites with a high school education as a group (35% of the electorate) they are more varied. In 2008 the gop won them by about 14%. It was 25% in 2012 and 39% in 2016. There are lots of white religious evangelicals in that group who would have voted for any Republican 80% of the time like they always do. But there are also a lot who supported Obama who then turned to Trump.
I think those people need an outreach by Democrats. Once you factor out the white evangelicals from that group of high school educated whites, the Dems have been losing this group for the last few cycles.
However the religious right, etc are a lost cause and not worth the effort.
Also it is really more authoritarianism that is the problem. Religious fundamentalism is just the spiritual ideology of right wing fundamentalists whether they be in the US or the Middle East. If you want to understand these people better, read up on right wing authoritarianism.