Thanks Steve. A powerful, insightful article. Indeed, based on the analysis, it's not surprising that Trump could make the following statement at his latest rally in West Virginia, with his supporters in the background nodding and shouting in agreement with every single point:

“Also at stake in this election is Medicare. Republicans want to protect Medicare. Democrats want to raid Medicare to pay for their socialism. We’ll end up being another Venezuela. That’s not going to happen to us. And Josh, Josh will help. Josh will help a lot. That vote means so much. Democrats wanna destroy Medicare with so-called “Medicare for all,” robbing our seniors of the benefits they paid into for their entire lives. Republicans wanna protect Medicare for our great seniors who have earned it and paid for it. For many, many years, they’ve been paying for it.”

Folks, think about those sentences, quoted verbatim. I'm left almost speechless. Perhaps that's the case with the mainstream media too, because I've not seen much discussion about that type of statement. Yet additional evidence in support of Rauch's thesis.

Finally, note the end of the article too about academia's left-leaning composition or even dominance. It's not surprising that conservatives have been attacking academia at least since the 1980s with a host of books & articles, or that a standard characterization of conservatives these days is that universities are simply "liberal re-education camps." The epistemic challenge will be a difficult one to combat for this and so many other reasons in the current era. Best to all, -Joe