It also comes down to those people MAGA hates having so much power in culture, politics, and the economy. If the liberal kale-eaters didn't have so much economic/political clout, they'd just be another minority group for MAGA to shit on and make memes about. It's because college-educated, kale-eating liberals *have* so much power and wealth that they become demonized to such a degree.

The Big Sort is exactly that: the people with education, wealth, and ultimately power cleaving themselves off from everyone else via physical geography, culture, and wealth and then expecting things to be live-and-let-live. If you think one chunk of society can just cleave off from the rest because it has more money and cultural power than the other and looks down on them, and then you expect thing to be *okay* politically after that cleavage then you are smoking metaphorical crack rocks by the boat load. Post-college liberals created the education/wealth divide during The Big Sort and then got all surprised when populism came around to take their precious democracy from them as a punishment.

Point being, if the smart liberal kids tend to marry each other and think alike and always have more money than the average non-college couple who doesn't make as good money as they do and doesn't have the same views on culture or economics, then there's probably going to be a lot of beef between those groups just based on one group having way more college education and money and cultural clout, while the other group has to get by without college and without as good net family unit income. That is Iraqi Sunni vs Shia-style segregation by choice, so don't be surprised if it ends up with Sunni vs Shia-style politics and eventually bloodshed. When you rip a country apart at the fabric, you don't always get to seem them back together.