CNN is not a good source. It’s better than Fox but their staff isn’t the brightest, they’re a little too aware of the value of Trump to bring viewers, and they’re too easily taken advantage of by Trump’s crew, ready to pedal rage inducing content.
I agree…but when it comes to jobs, most (especially better paid jobs) are in STEM, medicine, law and business management (atleast here in India). I assume its similar in USA too.
Unfortunately humanities is losing its attraction among younger generation when it comes to career opportunities.
Most kids in my extended family are pursuing STEM in college (undergraduate and masters). I can just barely recall one in humanities
Just to focus on this for a moment …
Talking about the long game, the headwind, the Homeric uphill battle:
It is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence. A prominent hypothesis states that this correlation reflects behavioral biases toward intuitive problem solving, which causes errors when intuition conflicts with reasoning. We tested predictions of this hypothesis by analyzing data from two large-scale Internet-cohort studies (combined N = 63,235). We report that atheists surpass religious individuals in terms of reasoning but not working-memory performance. The religiosity effect is robust across sociodemographic factors including age, education and country of origin. It varies significantly across religions and this co-occurs with substantial cross-group differences in religious dogmatism. Critically, the religiosity effect is strongest for tasks that explicitly manipulate conflict; more specifically, atheists outperform the most dogmatic religious group by a substantial margin (0.6 standard deviations) during a color-word conflict task but not during a challenging matrix-reasoning task. These results support the hypothesis that behavioral biases rather than impaired general intelligence underlie the religiosity effect.
Even as some here might question the effectiveness of advertising, demagoguery, or propaganda, and armed with the contribution of @kenobi_65 – that advertising’s efficacy depends somewhat on finding a target with a predisposition to agree – organized religion sows the seeds and fertilizes the ground. Young children (and that’s important) are regularly, consistently, and frequently taught to believe that for which there is no objective evidence, and to reject that for which the evidence is overwhelming, substantial, and credible.
It also reinforces The Most Extreme Form of binary thinking – eg, Good vs. Evil.
Beyond that, it’s generally at least a bit authoritarian and patriarchal (a bit? Ya’ think?).
If your goal was to build a Fox News/Newsmax/OANN viewer, and/or hobbyist conspiracy theorist, you could do no better than the organized religion route.
Projection: every accusation is actually a confession. This is nowhere truer than in the demonization [NPI] of public primary schools and “liberal” universities.
I want to be clear about one thing: religion <> organized religion. There are many beautiful, constructive, and beneficial aspects to religion. Add humans into the equation, though, and – in many ways, and in many cases – the result is a corrosive, coercive shit sandwich.
Meaning: I’d rather not debate the relative merits of religion. Instead, I’d like to offer organized religion as a political force to be resisted over time, and thoughts about how that could possibly be accomplished.
Amen 
I wouldn’t necessarily want to talk about intelligence; that’s a bit loaded and is often tied to all kinds of bigotry and elitism.
I would say though, IMHO, the correlation is more that religious societies generally don’t emphasize critical thinking and requiring high standards of evidence. You’re not going to meet a biblical literalist who consistently applies skeptical reasoning.
It’s a generalisation, and I am not going to claim that more atheist societies are havens of logical thought. But it is why, I think, the US is particularly susceptible to myths, lies and conspiracy theories.
Many of the people I know who voted trump believe claims that are preposterous on their face, that should ring alarm bells in anyone that understands the first thing about evaluating claims. Sadly, there are many people that don’t.
As I’ve said elsewhere, that ties back to the fact that Americans are raised to believe faith is a virtue. Which by definition means that critical thinking is a vice. We aren’t supposed to question or analyze, we are supposed to Believe; the more we deny evidence against that belief, the more virtuous we are because we are demonstrating faith.
So believing that Trump is benevolent and competent and will fix the economy and so on in face of all the evidence is a sign that someone is a good person, while doubting it is a sign of evil. Not in spite of the evidence he is nothing of the sort, but because of it.
Not really.
I mean, if you want to be an engineer or doctor or lawyer and such then you need a professional degree.
But businesses seem to find those with a solid liberal arts education more valuable. They want people who can think and write well. They’d prefer to teach people their way of doing things than square peg goes in square hole they may come out of university with a business degree.
It will be more than the price of eggs the voters are angry about. The things Biden has been criticized for are mostly things the federal govt does not control. But gets blamed for.
Everything Trump will do he can be directly blamed for.
MAGA will have full steam control of everything. For two years. It will be clear to voters by 2026 what is going on. House goes to democrats. Full chaos for two years. But Trump will get little done then. GOP does not know what to do with Vance. Trump health failing by the end.
Election 2028. State of the union speech 2029. “It has been a long ordeal. 12 years. Now it is over.”
Except he has an R next to his name, so they’ll blame the Democrats. The Democrats will probably blame the Democrats; like everyone else they go out of their way to pander to the Right, to the point of self destruction.
Unions for one:
Biden broke the railroad workers strike
Complete non-response to Janus.
I am not sure which is less likely: that the “electorate” could somehow be made better and smarter or that the Democrats could actually put together a platform and campaign that turned working class anger against business. But I don’t think the issue is people are bad or stupid. Cynical, hurting, blinded by rage, angry there are no real alternatives, yes.
But it is the failure of the Democrats not to realize and (pun intended) capitalize on that by talking specifically and constantly about class, showing how the present system is built on class and exploitation, and offering real, profound solutions. It should be obvious that if you craft a party–its policies, its rhetoric, its posturing, and its imaging–around the rich and the professional middle/managerial class, the working class is unlikely to show up to vote for it. But that’s where the Democrats are. That means cutting out 70-90% of the electorate.
As the late, great Utah Phillips put it,
“I don’t know much about what you call class,
But the upper and middle can both kiss my ass.”
To address the OP directly: critical thinking teaching for all ages that starts by asking “what should we be thinking critically about? How about the problems we face as a society? Where do they come from, how are they reproduced systematically, and how do we organize to fight back so people, not capital, run things?”
There are voters who will always go with the trumps of the world. Trump captured those too, libertarians of a certain type. Males. They do not care too much about abortion as long as we try to “root out the deep state.” They often showed up just to vote for president, not the down ballot items. Even though many may hate their mayor as well. Link. Politics: a view from the prairie: The Federal Government