Silver’s gold

This guy may be a great pollster — I’m not qualified to judge — but he’s a horrible social commenter:

The “partisan” divide in this case is between people who believe in critical inquiry and genuine expertise, and as a consequence also believe that a whole bunch of key intellectual developments have in fact taken place since 1950 1850, 1789, and people who fundamentally don’t believe in those things, and who therefore are opposed in principle to anything even vaguely resembling a modern university.

This is like complaining that not enough novels are written by people who really hate novels.

And there are of course enormous numbers of people in academia who have no particular fondness for the Democratic party, but who will support it because it isn’t, unlike the other offering on our two-item political buffet, actively committed to trying to destroy the institutions to which they have dedicated their professional lives.

Being a supporter of a rabidly anti-intellectual authoritarian cult (newsflash Nate: that’s a literal description of the Republican party in America in 2021) does in fact disqualify you from contributing to any legitimate intellectual enterprise, to the extent that your allegiance will interfere with contributing to that enterprise, which will be pretty much every day in one way or another.

. . . help me out here: Am I being tripped up by Poe if I take this straight?