I consider it likely that among those reading this, more of you grew up in families of intelligent, educated people than the national average. It is also likely that the number of readers who grew up in liberal and nonreligious families exceeds the norm. Not all, certainly. Quite possibly not even the majority. However, I think there must be many among you who understand the shock of leaving your family and community, perhaps to go to college, and slowly discovering that there are people who don't think like you.

Those of us who grew up in religious, working class families and were the first in our families to attend college also had the experience of learning that there are people who don't think like us. We just experienced it earlier in life. And then when we went off to college, we slowly discovered that there are people who do think like us.

My experience dictated that the conversation would start with "Isn't this a terrible thing?" and proceed to "Oil companies shouldn't be allowed to make a mess they can't clean up." or "Shouldn't we invest in clean energy?" However, though the conversation began as I expected, I was subsequently informed that the oil companies were fully capable of cleaning it up, and that the reason it had not been cleaned up already was a conspiracy on the part of President Obama.

This was particularly shocking to me because there were no warning signs. These were people who were all educated to a Master's Degree level. I had spoken to several on more innocuous topics, and they seemed both interesting and intelligent. ...

How could I have better predicted this?

Why were you shocked? Unless the degrees were in Petroleum Extraction Engineering, you have no reason to expect them to be any better informed on the relevant issues than the general population. (And incidentally, unless your own degrees are in those fields, you have no particular reason to be confident about your own opinions.) On this kind of issue, we all get our opinions and factoids from the media. Our choice of which media. Fox or MSNBC. And if it shocks you that some intelligent people choose to get their news fix from conservative sources, then you really have led a sheltered life. If the thing that shocked you is that the conservative media were saying bad things about the federal regulators, then maybe you ought to sample from right wing sources more often, if only to keep your finger on the national pulse.

I am not only confused, I am viscerally uncomfortable. How do we model for people whose cultural contexts and information delivering authorities are fundamentally different from our own, without lumping them into a faceless group?

By getting to know those people and by becoming familiar with those cultural contexts and information delivering authorities. Duh! It is really not difficult. Actually, if you analyze, you will probably discover that you are already expending considerable effort trying to insulate yourself from those people and those sources of information. Just stop expending all that effort building walls to maintain your accustomed comfort level. And then, after a short period of discomfort, you will find that your comfort range has become extended.

And you may discover something else by occasionally placing yourself in the 'silent minority' position. Which is that some of the people in your own select group of friends may secretly harbor unorthodox positions on some political issues, but keep their mouths shut to avoid trouble. There is no way the opinions you encountered upstate could have been "shocking" to you unless your usual circle practices a particularly powerful kind of censorship-by-exclusion.