> this is not normal practice in most civilized parts of the US (pretty much anywhere on the east and west coasts)
Much of the interior of the US could be described as civilized...
Much of the interior of the US could be described as civilized...
I don't really understand this, although my hunch is it has roots in feelings of intellectual superiority.
As well as good old fashioned, 'fear of people with different values and culture than your own'
He starts off with "Wow! That must have be tough growing up as an Indian in Georgia! Those guys are so backward."
My friend replies "Actually, I had a great childhood. Never had any problems being Indian. Georgia is a great place to grow up."
Of course the guy from SF had never actually been to Georgia.
These are the same people who would bristle if you said something bad about people in another country and say "How do you know? You can't understand a place by reading about it in the newspaper."
If a person is considering ideas (especially political ideas) then they might view those ideas as being held by a person like themself. Some ideas are very easy to picture being held by a very similar person (e.g. spicy food), but the more complex the idea (e.g. Trexit) the more difficult it becomes to conceive of the mindset that the similar person would need to have in order to have reached the differing conclusion.
The key here is that it's not really about a differing mindset, so much as different circumstances that construct the differing mindset. This, I assert, is very difficult to account for completely without simply accepting all views at face value as both perfectly valid and a complete mystery, unknowable outside each person's mind.
As such, it is inconceivable to the person who thinks they understand both the issues at hand and the mind of the relevant populace to reach a conclusion that contradicts the logical consequences of the (broken) assumptions, and thus the conclusion is that the one who holds such opinions is an illogical dunce, and unacceptable in this rational age. In actuality the assumptions are broken in a subtle way such that it is easy to miss the leap made to broad-brush painting.