Hello Karin, while I love the upbeat optimistic tone of your article it sadly doesn’t correspond with my personal experience. I spent much of 2017 and 2018 criss-crossing Trumpland (aka the Bible Belt) and interacting with hundreds of Trump supporters. They liked me (my English accent and turns of phrase insulated me from partisan political identification) but it was apparent that their world-views were so at odds with reality that there was no way for them to return from Trumpworld. Furthermore, the level of ignorance was so profound as to preclude any ability to sort fact from fiction.

I came to the conclusion that a great many people in the USA live in a mental universe that would be entirely familiar to the Venerable Bede. This mindset is reinforced weekly through their religious affiliations and daily through the propaganda (Fox, ultra-right-wing shock-jocks, etc.) they consume.

When you’re trying to bridge a gap between minds living in the eleventh century and the reality of the twenty-first, the task is likely insurmountable. I think a key difference between kindergarten-aged children and adults is that children can sometimes be helped to learn and grow, but most adults have rendered themselves impregnable to such assistance.

And believe me, I’d love to be wrong about this.