Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status?
Religion ticks all these boxes.
In some contexts, so does patriotism, racism, worship of the military, publicly dumping cases of Bud Light, etc etc etc. In some ways, even disdain for education is a sort of expensive status display.
The author is just describing what people of all kinds do. Yes, there are very silly beliefs which sometimes seduce educated elites. But that just makes them like everybody else.
Also, the author is picking on some trendy ideas which are currently held by some of the elites, but so what? It would be truly surprising if a decade-plus of higher education and immersion in data and discourse did not produce a different consensus. The author offers no evidence that “defund the police” is an inherently absurd idea, no more than other formerly radical ideas like universal suffrage or abolishing slavery. In my town, the police absorb over 20% of the city budget, have doubled their spend in the past decade, and are unaccountable to the people. So I think it’s at least a topic worthy of interest!