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I don't agree with this assessment at all. Populism is seductive and people fall for it for a wide variety of reasons. "Ignorant" is a bit of a catch-all here and is doing a lot of the lifting, and that seems unfair.
Populism of any sort is toxic to democracy after a certain dose. Obama leveraged populist rhetoric without invoking nationalist or exclusionary concepts, and that's about as far as populism can go without being unethical.
The rise of conservative talk radio, and the media sphere it eventually evolved into, is at the heart of this slide into populism. Combine exclusive media exposure and gerrymandering and you have a race to extremes.
I strongly recommend anyone coming by this thread to read Why We're Polarized and/or What's Our Problem, two books that explore this radicalization in-depth.
I strongly agree with this sentiment, however. This is most definitely what the article is about, at it's true heart. The question is, is shame enough or is it more radicalizing over time? We honestly don't know.
Oh it definitely is. My general assessment would be the truly bad people who know all the things we know and still hold insane positions is vanishingly small. Trump, for example, has no ideology. He has and will reverse course on basically any position he holds. Do we think he actually gave a shit about overturning Roe, knowing that he's probably paid for more abortions than Planned Parenthood? Even in the category of bigots, I think it's largely more of a function of ignorance that it is some deeply held belief. Like, if you're white I'm sure you know someone who'll drone on about "orientals" except the people they personally know who are "one of the good ones."
I don't think that we're disagreeing. I think Rush, for example, falls pretty firmly into the bad people group and is part of a machine that is basically keeping people ignorant. Fox News is the prominent example, and it's hard to call its viewers much more than ignorant, and there would be far fewer of them if they weren't all aggrieved about their economic situations and had some basic knowledge. It's not a secret that economic/education has taken a major dive in the last few decades, and I simply don't think you end up with this populist movement without that.