It’s not been a month since Americans voted in surprising, even shocking ways to put Donald Trump back in office. The time-honoured categories of age, race, gender and wealth weren’t the compass points everyone hoped or feared. Millions of women voted for Trump, as did young immigrants. Many Blacks rejected the Black candidate.
But what caused so many Americans to vote against their own tribes and seeming self-interest?
David Brooks has named America’s great new division, the fault line so few people saw, The Diploma Divide.
November 5 was a knife-fight between those who have a college degree and those who have a high school diploma. Indeed, Brooks calls this break between the well-educated and the not, the most important chasm in American life.
“High school graduates die nine years sooner than college-educated people. They die of opioid overdoses at six times the rate. They marry less and divorce more and are more likely to have a child out of wedlock. They are more likely to be obese. A recent American Enterprise Institute study found that 24 percent of people who graduated from high school at most have no close friends. They are less likely than college grads to visit public spaces or join community groups and sports leagues. They don’t speak in the right social justice jargon or hold the sort of luxury beliefs that are markers of public virtue.”
Brooks’ point is that these differences matter. “In country after country, people differ by education level on immigration, gender issues, the role of religion in the public square, national sovereignty, diversity, and whether you can trust experts to recommend a vaccine.”
In other words, America is now divided not so much around what people earn, or what colour their skin is, or where they’re from, or whether they’re men or women, but by how far they went in school, and where. Call this a new definition of class. The headline to Brooks’ latest Times piece summed this up perfectly: Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?
This is America’s political reality.
But will it be Canada’s? While I think Pierre Poilievre will win big next year, I don’t think it will be because of the revenge of the less-well-educated.
Because when it comes to education, Canada is a different planet from America.
Indeed, Canadians are among the best educated people in the world. We have a much better public education system than the US, and we lead the world in college and university completion. As of 2020, two in three Canadians aged 25 to 34 hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.
What’s more, as The Economist noted this week, Canada remains by far the most popular country in the world for recent university graduates. It asked: “Would you like to move permanently to another country? If so, to which country?”
I know: we have all kinds of other problems our highly-educated brains haven’t solved.
But I don’t get any sense that we’re riven by an impending class war.
So where is our great hidden divide that may be small now but that politicians on all sides are already prying open to find new votes?
I think it’s at another cultural fault line where you’re either this or that.
I think it’s between “bicycle people” and “car people.”
And as someone who screams at cars when I’m on my bike, and who honks at bikes when I’m in my car, I may be Canada’s new undecided voter of tomorrow.
Meanwhile…
1. Dee-fense! General Jennie Carignan is Chief of the Defence Staff and Canada’s top soldier. When Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said “we should not have women in combat roles,” here’s what Carignan said.
And if you think Trump’s Defense Secretary is macho, here’s Linda McMahon, his Education Secretary.
2. Good, better, worst. There’s a good dog! Plus another glass ceiling smashed…and Harry and Meghan’s Netflix doc about Polo is…a little off. But nothing compared to this.
3. You can get anything you want. Alice Brock, the founder of Alice’s Restaurant and the spark for Arlo Guthrie’s epic anti-establishment song, died this week at 83. Here’s Alice on making it up as you go along.
Speaking of restaurants, even menus sell hard. They always have.
4. Can you differentiate AI art from human art? Take the AI Art Turing Test. It seems the median score was 60%, a small bit above chance. So maybe just stick with reality when it comes to enjoying the arts.
Whatever your result, Eric Schmidt believes people will be the second most intelligent beings on earth.
5. A 25% tariff is small beans. Here’s Thomas Friedman (“I’m incredibly worried”) on the future of America and the world.
But if you just need relief from politics, here’s a wonderful story by Heather Cox Richardson, who always writes about American politics, on…“a break from the craziness of the news.”
6. Life imitates art. Last week I was reading Question 7, Richard Flanagan’s memoir that just won The Baillie Gifford Prize. In the final chapter, Flanagan fantasizes about having his legs amputated in order to save him from drowning when his kayak is wedged in the rocks of a surging Australian river. This week a kayaker trapped in an Australian river had his leg amputated in a 20-hour rescue.
7. Ben McNally’s Top Picks. Every holiday season, our favourite bookseller offers “25 books in (about) 25 minutes”, a speed-dating match-up for time-starved gift buyers. Here’s this season’s list, courtesy of Ben who not only urges you to buy these books, but from him.
8. You got money? We got…the world’s most expensive shopping streets. And how the techno-elite eat…and the super-rich stay that way.
9. The roulette of reality. Nassim Nicholas Taleb brought us the idea of Black Swans, which are sudden unexpected events with major effects, like 9/11. Here he is on reality which is “far more vicious than Russian Roulette.”
10. Rules for living. First, 32 rules for flying now. Next, how to survive your family this Christmas. Next, are you a cheerleader, poet, mad scientist or judge? Finally, how to use New Yorker cartoons to guide your life.
11. What I’m liking. The new streaming series, Say Nothing based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2020 book about the IRA. We know how it ends, but it’s as heart-thumping and breathtaking as can be. The only odd thing is, what’s such a violent, vengeful tale doing on Disney+?