I'm an academic. I regularly have misgivings and doubts about my chosen field, but mostly I love the work I do, which is research and teaching. Scraping new bits of knowledge out of the corners of well-worn subjects is what I'm good at. Making history real and relevant for my students, who are at that precarious age where they are discovering themselves and opening themselves up to new ideas, is what I live for.
I am trained to identify biases in the work of others, and I am trained to be able to spot my own biases so that I can lay claim to them - and hopefully not allow them to creep into my work. This is just one method of determining the validity of an argument. My dissertation advisor once wrote me a letter of recommendation in which she commended my ability to spot and pick apart facile and fallacious arguments. That ability is something I take very seriously, as I am a genuine idealist who really believes in the liberating power of the truth.
I have colleagues who are in roughly the same position I am: the dissertation stage of the PhD. We've all gone through the same program, with the same faculty, training, and exposure to the same foundational aspects of our field. And yet, my colleagues who call themselves "conservative" conveniently forget their training and academic rigor when it is time to take sides in the culture war.
My conservative colleagues have been trained, just as I have, to spot bias when it appears, and to scrutinize the assertions of others with a critical eye. But the mentality of conservatism - that unholy trifecta of entitlement, resistance to progress, and an utter lack of compassion - renders all of this training null and void. I cruise Facebook and wince when I see a colleague post links from "Right Wing News" and Allen fucking West as gospel, as some sort of mic drop, without even thinking to question what the links contain. The content of the links makes her feel good on a gut level, because it hits all of the points above. This colleague feels that her Christian beliefs place her above the rest of us unsaved garbage (entitlement); this view means that in her world, only a select few devout Christian believers deserve happy and fulfilling lives (resistance to progress); and she contemptuously refuses to walk in the shoes of anyone who is different (lack of compassion).
Contemporary American conservatism, to function, requires a great deal of lying, whitewashing, and denial. These are all things that an academic should endeavor to avoid as if their tenure depended on it. And yet every day, I see educated people posting another meme or link that backs up their twisted worldview and incites fear. From my colleague I have learned that Christians are "persecuted" because they cannot control non-Christians. I have learned that Obama is a socialist who won't do anything about ISIS because he is a Muslim. I have learned that (noted war criminal and actual psychopath) Allen West is apparently an authority on all matters affecting the African American community. I have learned that police officers should always be obeyed, no matter what, and if you don't, you have no one to blame but yourself if you are murdered in cold blood. I have learned that the United States should be subject to Biblical law because her God can beat up your God. And so on. On and on it goes.
How can one earn a PhD in any discipline without critiquing everything that goes through their own head? After four years of doctoral study, I don't even really know what I don't know anymore.
I respect my colleague's abilities as a scholar, and I generally like her when we're socializing. It is the constant stream of Facebook invective and the extremist, willfully ignorant views she spews constantly that leave me scratching my head. We have the same education. We have learned from the same people. My bias detector is always on, and everything I read I critique. I have tried many times to consider and respect her beliefs, but to her a "debate" is spitting Bible verses at her opponent. And opponent is the word, because she truly believes that she's on one team, and the rest of us are on another team, and her team needs to score more points so she can gloat. It really is like a bitter sports rivalry these days.
Conservatism, once upon a time, offered a few useful, if somewhat tenuous, ideas for society. Now it is a morass of ignorance staunchly defended by people who ought to know better, people who have the tools to separate from all that is destructive about conservative dogma, but simply choose not to.