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> Why can't they extend this to their own country?

Because they aren't a cohesive movement and, without someone to hate, could not manage even the rather poor pretense of unity with which they occasionally pretend to care to bother.

If they were capable of taking your advice, they wouldn't need it.

You have a good point here, and I'm afraid it's a human universal: humans are tribal and have a hard time forming coalitions and movements without someone to hate.

Being "universally woke" would mean not hating anyone, and that makes it hard to unite.

We really need an alien invasion. Any Trisolarans listening?

And people say I'm a misanthrope. We'll grow out of this Lord of the Flies nonsense eventually. Just another five, maybe ten thousand years, that's all.

> We really need an alien invasion. Any Trisolarans listening?

Except we shouldn't even hate _them_, because they're sentient beings too. I guess we should only hate the worst aspects of our own nature.

I mean, this is a classic paradox of tolerance problem.

If you extend diversity to include people who ideologically oppose diversity, then you're going to end up with more resistance and therefore less diversity.

Yes, it would be cool if we could just include populist nationalists in our policy but the problem is that those ideologies are inherently zero-compromise and reactionary. So, what now?

It’s telling to me that like 2/3 of the replies to my comment think I’m arguing for extending inclusiveness to Nazis and KKK and such.

That’s not what I said. I said rural Southern and Midwestern white working class culture. Many tend toward conservatism but the majority of them are not raging frothing at the mouth bigots. I was not talking about committed ideological hate mongers. I was talking about regular people and the way they feel ignored and mocked for where they come from or their cultural trappings.

Their conservative views are the views that were instilled in them by family and literally their whole culture. It’s absurd to expect large numbers of people to deviate far from such things, especially when the other side gives off condescending vibes toward them. That only pushes them to double down. It’s not how you change anyone’s mind.

When I think about ideologically committed bigots I honestly think more about Silicon Valley adjacent circles these days. Turn on “show dead” on HN to see dead comments and you’ll see a parade of race science defenders and stuff like that”low IQ people are not human.” (One I saw a week or so ago.)

I’ve seen comments around here from time to time that are more chilling than anything I’ve ever heard from Midwestern rural types. My all time favorite was to the effect that “the idea that all human life is valuable is a recent one, and maybe not one that is working out.” (Paraphrasing.) It about literally made me shudder. I’ve heard the N word in rural Ohio, but I’ve never heard anyone attempt an intellectual deconstruction of the value of human life.

Visit forums that are friendlier to the tech right like anything crypto adjacent and you’ll encounter much worse things. Human life is only valuable insofar as it scores high on an IQ test or makes money.

But coastal tech people don’t get mocked ruthlessly as inbred hicks in spite of the fact that coastal tech people fund the new right and are its intellectual backbone. Classism in the biggest “ism” in this country, and it’s the one that carries the least stigma.

I live in the south, for the record, and MAGA culture is prolific here. It’s not about conservatism, it’s about populism. This is the most successful cult we’ve seen in a long time. Their belief systems are predicated on allegiance to a living God, and their decisions are reactionary in nature. This is all underpinned with a populist “burn it all down” ideology, which sounds nice, but is inherently incompatible with growing and maintaining existing institutions.

We have transitioned past the point where most everyday people are reasonable and the American right is merely disagreeable. This is more akin to attempting to convert Christians to Judaism. It just doesn’t work, and it’s not productive. It will only make things worse.

This natural distrust in all that is organized or exists outside the control of one man means that these people don’t want to be part of our particular organization. The fact we are not devotees is evidence enough that we have been corrupted. This is the fatal populist checkmate. In their irrationality, they revel. The proposal of finding things out or working together towards a better state are hostile to it.

To be perfectly clear, these are not bad people. Nor does it have to do with what kind of people they are. Rather, they were vulnerable at the right time and, at this particular point in history, it is the perfect condition for populist messaging to work.

I agree that the situation is pretty far gone. The time for my comment was probably 15 years ago. But the postmortem still has value. If this movement implodes, which I think it eventually will, there may be a window for something better.

I’m not sure it will survive the death of Trump. There is nobody else with… whatever weird formula he has. Nobody else has been able to nail his schtick.

Obviously it won't survive the death of Trump. No one expects that. Hence all the fringe freaks around him lately jockeying for good opening positions in the next administration, at the beginning of which is when I expect things to start going quickly and seriously bad, if they do.

What was it you said? "Zero-compromise and reactionary?"

I don't know, I suppose. You say you live in the South, and I only grew up there and then got the hell out. I believe I hear more of how folks in that culture speak with people they trust, but I admit you have a better view these days of what they show to those they don't.

You'll never meet a bigger hick or rube than that stupid asshole Curtis Yarvin, and these fucking chumps look up to him. Man can't wear a leather jacket or a pair of shoes, can't style himself or comport himself in any other manner than that of a surly teenager in his big brother's illfitting rocker drag, never uses one word where fifty will do because otherwise a toddler could see he's full of shit to the eyebrows, and to these total jackoffs he's as good as a real rock star. God damn, there really never was such a thing as a fascist who ever had an orgasm, hey?

The yarvin stuff is crazy to me mostly because he legitimately is an awful writer. So much unexplored angst in his work it feels like Im reading catcher in the rye again but he's completely unironic. Surely the neoreactionaries can find someone a bit more eloquent?

They have Land, but he understands exactly what he is doing and he will hurt you if you're not very careful. Yarvin is perfect for edgelords precisely because that's not true.

I read it and… I don’t get it. There isn’t much of a real argument.

Like in the famous “gentle introduction” he spends like 10000 words to convince you that… maybe Samuel Adams was an asshole? Okay, fine. Therefore the American revolution was a fraud, because… some Tory wrote a witty book mocking its leaders? Wow, so you are saying that a major revolution was not absolutely black and white and that maybe some of the folks on “our” side were dicks? What a revelation. Meanwhile there’s little engagement with the actual ideas, which are the important and lasting part.

That’s just one example. I have no interest in spending days deconstructing those walls of text. Let’s just say they did not change my mind on anything.

I have this theory that much of Yarvin’s underlying motive is a sublimated rage out about the idiocy and hypocrisy of San Francisco politics. He lived there at the time. But he couldn’t just say damn these SF latte sipping rich lefty people are hypocritical assholes. If you don’t like a place then for fuck’s sake just move.

A big irony is that SF is not a well functioning democracy. It’s a one party state controlled by boomer NIMBY property owners with a gigantic divide between rich and poor. It’s a f’ing feudal city state run by landlords, and he thinks the whole world should be like that?

I happen to dislike a lot of things about how SF is run and some things about its zeitgeist which is why I don’t live there.

Treating each link as a reference, the perhaps more famous "Open Letter" has a bibliography about eight hundred items deep.

That sounds impressive as hell till you actually start looking at them. Filtering out Youtube, broken, and frothing-at-the-eyeballs, less than a hundred were interesting and a couple of dozen proved actually worth following, when I carried out this exercise for my own interest some time around 2013.

As a collator, that gives Yarvin a considerably poorer score than Noah Smith, which I think would embarrass me were I either man. As anything else, I'm not sure whether Smith or Yarvin is actually more useless, but I may just need to move the decimal one place to the left in my epsilon.

I think the reason the left trashes this segment of the country is for two reasons. First, I don't think they're fully aware of how different the circumstances are for a middle-class (sub)urban person and a poor rural one. I doubt many "coastal elites" have spent much time in rural Alabama, for example. Second, they're able to extend empathy to the ignorant poor in other countries because they don't have to suffer the consequences of their ignorance and cultural backwardness. They absolutely do in this country, though. Just look what's going on.

In a very real sense I think the "left" (that is, Democrats) in the US see conservative, rural ignorance and prejudice as inexcusable. I don't think that view is fully unjustified either. Having spent time in Mississippi growing up, I will never forget how blatantly racist and hateful those people were. Even (especially?) the wealthy, educated "elites" there. And even with a poor school system, we have libraries, the internet, etc. Ignorance in the 21st century is absolutely a choice, excepting maybe people in the most brutal of circumstances.

Spoken like a rich white liberal. I grew up in Mississippi white and poor, and I had friends (when we could get away with that) who were black and poor.

If you haven't noticed the way those latter are kept apart - quite literally the oldest play in America - then you haven't been nearly as attentive as you imagine yourself to be. The ignorant contempt you display here confirms it. Well, as you correctly note, ignorance in some cases is a choice. Choose better.

Sure, there are good people there. But the people at the highest rungs of society there (doctors, lawyers, etc.) did perpetuate 1950s-level racism. Our family was told in no uncertain terms that they would not stand for us selling our house to a black family for example. I heard white kids saying slurs constantly, and not in a "rapping along to a song" kind of way.

Denying my personal experience and calling it ignorance is pretty fucking arrogant of you.

Oh, please. I denied nothing. If you object to my characterization of that experience, do so overtly. But I knew at least a dozen like you. You were friends with the young rich asshole kids of the old rich asshole antebellum planter families, because they were your family's social peers even if you yourself didn't respect them - your family owned real estate worth redlining! - and now you think you're being magnanimous and openminded by generalizing from there to the poor whites who picked on you and beat you up and the black kids you were ashamed you were afraid of.

Okay, let me be more clear. The contempt I display is not "ignorant contempt". It's rooted in years of experience. How could my comments possibly be interpreted as me thinking I'm being magnanimous? I very clearly expressed my sympathy with the liberal attitude toward the people in these states.

You're making quite a lot of assumptions about my experience, none of which is really correct. I wasn't openly hostile to these "antebellum plantation families", but I avoided them as much as possible. Most of my friends were from other liberal-leaning families.

Many of the people I spent time with were poor whites. I wasn't ever beat up by a poor white kid, and I wasn't afraid of any black kids. If I consider the political leanings of the white kids I knew, I didn't notice much difference in prejudice based on social class. So again, denying my experience just because you're mad (I assume?) that your segment of society is being painted with a certain brush. And imagining all sorts of things about my life to dismiss my attitude to boot.

Is what I wrote earlier unfair to you? Yes, probably (so are your replies to me). But I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about what I experienced, and that crosses boundaries of social class, despite your implication that it doesn't.

'My segment of society.' "Spoken like a rich white liberal." If we had the language to discuss class in this country, you would not find that such a mystifying statement, nor one that would cause you the shame that it does. You have no incentive to understand it, alas, because you are a member of the class which benefits from the lack. Thank goodness that's not my problem.

Prior experience over many iterations of this conversation strongly suggests your next play will be to accuse me of being (in some combination) fascist, racist, a Trump voter, homophobic, morbidly obese, or whatever other such libels occur to you. To my considerable surprise, predicting such deviations aloud lately seems not much to reduce the odds of their occurring. Let's see what happens this time!

Unfortunately for you, that is not my MO (and if you re-read the conversation you'll see it's you who has been defensive, feeling shame, and imagining/projecting things onto me the entire time). I've (mostly) addressed what you've written, not who I assume you are or what your attitudes are.

Also, I feel no shame for being called a "rich white liberal," which really shows how little you understand my psychology (or me, period).

All this vitriol even after I singled out rich southerners in my OP. Something isn't adding up here, but unlike you, I'm not going to assume what it is. Have a good one.

I'm here to demonstrate your prejudices, but not especially to you. So long.

Care to address the slurs and redlining?

Have I been less than clear? Those are core examples of exactly the trashy behavior I expect from the Mississippi social class and scene of which my other interlocutor and their family were part, during their time in my home state.

(My hometown, actually, I bet. Oxford, right? Biggest net exporter of nonmalodorous feces in the state, bar none. The university draws 'em like flies on...well, never mind. Bet you never put a finger in a bullet hole on the Lyceum's frontage, the way I did.)

Where my other interlocutor and I really differ is that they expect to get a pass for having been "one of the good ones," and I issue no such passes. It isn't that I consider anyone who grew up that rich beneath my consideration, only that I'm less inclined to be patient and gentle with those who can afford about as much such treatment as they like and yet still expect it free of charge from me.

I'm just not understanding your entire position, I guess. They are saying the overt racism is inexcusable and hating that ignorance makes sense to them. You are saying they grew up rich and so ... what exactly? They were also subtly racist? Or that if they were impoverished they would have been just as racist?

They're generalizing ignorantly from a very narrow slice of a culture, which they saw because that was the narrow slice in which their own family chose to participate, and proceeding to blame quite literally everyone else possible but themself and their parents for that entirely intentional choice. They have either failed to study sufficient history to find the error, or have done so and found the error preferable. Neither merits my respect.

I don't even care they won't listen to me trying to explain how they're blinkered, because I have been trying for three mortal decades and that literally never works; to somebody like this one, I'll never be anything but poor white trash, no matter just how cleverly they always think they say it.

I grew up poor and white in Mississippi and I didn't grow up hearing slurs. That is white trash behavior - white trash, not poor! - as I was raised to believe from before I myself could speak. Like public drunkenness or indecent exposure, that is, an "unforced error" invariably both culpable and shameful. And here we have this fool who not only did grow up with those who knew no better, they themself is ignorant enough not to know they should have known better, yet believes themself qualified not merely to opine but to condescend. Must I wipe their nose for them as well? Another orifice, perhaps?

Growing up poor and white in Mississippi probably puts you on better footing than growing rich and white in Mississippi. The most vile racism I've seen from is from genteel folks who should "know better." They're not racist because they're ignorant. They're racist because they like to be. They enjoy their place on the hierarchy.

Coming from a lower-socio economic background - i.e. growing up poor - is very much a proper diversity characteristic (regardless of ethnicity or anything else).

I’ll explain it clearly: it is impossible to accommodate someone who wants you dead.

It doesn't seem to stop people from having sympathy for the victims of collective punishment, like Palestinian Muslims whose social views tend toward the extreme right, in other countries.

It's hard, I agree. When someone hates you it's by far the easiest path to hate them back. But that's not going to change anyone's mind. It will make them double down.

Edit: I'm not bashing Queers for Palestine. It's brilliant. It's probably changed some peoples' minds in that region of the world. You don't hear about it, of course, because when people reconsider long-held and culturally dominant beliefs they often don't say anything about it for a long time. They reconsider quietly. Bigots and hate-mongers and war-mongers are loud.

One big rule for interpreting culture is: the craziest, meanest, most bigoted people are almost always the loudest. The wise whisper and the idiot yells.

I'm trying and failing to square the idea that liberals just need to "appeal to the rural lower class" with the idea that failing to do so is why Clinton lost. The Clintons come from Arkansas. Advocating for the rural/conservative lower class has been their M.O. since the 70s. It was a cornerstone of Hillary's campaigns, and a major focus of where she spent time campaigning.

If you don't know that about Clinton's strategy, are you really the right person to be commentating on how she should have built her campaign instead?

Yet they are able to support Hamas and other similar groups so I don't think this really explains it fully.

I do not know of any leader on the left that supports Hamas. Please share.

Note, Palestinian people are not Hamas.

But it's unfair to believe someone wants you dead just because of their origin.

There are millions (probably tens of millions) of rural Southerners. Many don't want you dead, but vote red because they don't feel accommodated. Many vote blue.

Moreover, when somebody grows up around people who hate a certain group, it's human nature that they'll also develop hatred. What do you do with those people?

I believe the best you can do if pacify them, and convert those whose hatred isn't ingrained. Acknowledging people and accepting the non-hatred parts of their culture is an easy way to reduce the motivation to kill you, and convert those on the fence, without giving leverage. Funding is another way, and while it can give leverage (because adversarial groups shift their own funding towards aggression), I believe if done carefully, the decrease in hatred will outweigh the increase in power, making aggressive efforts overall less effective.

Ok, what parts of rural Southern culture aren't being accommodated? The rural way of life is already insanely subsidized.

I'll agree that most "neoliberals" already at least pretend to be accommodating to rural Southerners. The problem is there are too many people who are way too general in their criticism and mocking towards them, and the popular Democrats don't publicly call this out (another problem is that neoliberals are inauthentic, but that's a general problem I think for a more general discussion).

There are many examples of rural white discrimination, e.g. the FAA "personality tests" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43882962#43883255) and affirmative action (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520658; it benefit blacks, but didn't benefit rural Southerners despite them being underrepresented in college).

More generally, there's an issue when you point these out someone will reply saying "but also...". I understand blacks and foreigners are also discriminated against and deserve to be accommodated. You shouldn't need to argue that whites aren't being discriminated against and are very accommodated, because there will always be some cases where it's untrue, and it doesn't really hurt black anti-discrimination efforts regardless. I'd argue that constant downplaying of white discrimination hurts black anti-discrimination efforts more, because it drives undecided people who've seen it firsthand towards those who acknowledge it, who as of today tend to be bigoted themselves. That's why I feel the need to say something about it.

George W Bush spoke with an acquired (some may say feigned) accent that led his detractors to call him dubya. They probably thought it was just a funny way of disparaging a political opponent, but what the southern ear heard them say was “people who speak with this accent are dumb hicks and should be looked down upon”. That’s the thinnest end of a very big wedge of cultural stereotypes that underpin what is perceived as “liberal condescension towards the south”.

> The rural way of life is already insanely subsidized.

So is ours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

None of this would exist without probably trillions in DARPA, NASA, DoD, and government-funded university research on computers and networks.

We live in a complex internetworked and interdependent civilization. Everyone is subsidized by everyone else, and balancing the books is incredibly hard.

Sure, but I don't yap about being a yeoman software developer and how independent I am from it despite being totally dependent on a long petrochemical supply chain.

Half the content that gets upvoted on this site is about being hipster, independent yeoman software developers.

Two important caveats.

1) DEI does include rural American white culture, Christian conservative culture, and all the rest...

2) ...except for people who want to eliminate people. Sorry, but you can't make room for someone that wants to end your existence. And there is a non-insignificant number of MAGA that want, support, and promote doing just that.

> Why can't they extend this to their own country?

We do. We literally do. We literally think our country can be better than it is. If you don't see this, you are blinding yourself.

> You don't win friends or change peoples' minds by mocking and bashing people. That just makes them double down out of spite.

> They know they are mocked as dumb, in-bred, ignorant, bigoted, small minded, etc.

The irony.

Edit: I also find it interesting that as much as the is opposed to DEI, they still support it. They just pretend they don't. Heck, even now the government is still supporting DEI initiatives with Trump's approval. It's crazy.

Identity politics of all sorts get their salience by having enemies to coalesce around. Who would be the enemy of your broadened woke coalition? White coastal elites?

cosmopolitans of the rootless variety

As someone who grew up in "rural American white culture, Christian conservative culture", you can't get away with saying half the shit they say about cities and urban areas about them. We propose solutions but those solutions are economic, not a return to default status for them. I've seen the vile, disgusting things rural people say about minorities and LGBT because outwardly I'm just another white dude. I've had grandmas scream at me about Obama being the devil (because I thought canvassing in '08 was a good idea).

I’m white and not from the south. But I went to FSU as an undergrad. White people assumed I was just like them in attitude and beliefs. One friend tried to get me into Christianity. He casually mentioned that black dominated churches weren’t real Christians. For “them” it was cultural and not a real belief.

The biggest snowflakes in the country are white southern Christians in my experience. Anything that challenges their privilege is an attack to them.

I'm going to paint with a fairly broad brush here, for which I apologize. But it lines up with the majority of the politically outspoken people I'm referring to. For context, I grew up in the south. I also regularly disagree with my liberal friends when they categorize Southern conservatives as brainwashed idiots.

But (here's the but): When I lived in the South, I heard a _lot_ of abject vitriol toward liberal elites, ivory tower academics (Piled Higher and Deeper, ho ho ho), and antisemitism occasionally dog whistled (but often just blunt racism) as anti-banker or anti-world order. You can throw in more things, like Civil War denialism and using racial slurs at the workplace in front of people of the target race with no recourse.

I currently live in a metropolitan area of a swing state. When I hang out with a group of friends that's politically outspoken and conservative, I'll hear what I think lines up with liberal shit talking. Comments that would be outright insulting in the presence of the other party, refusal to actually consider the opposition's site, etc. I do think that rhetoric is harmful to democracy, and I am so very tired of liberals I agree with and conservatives I disagree with echoing jabs and talking points.

But it doesn't compare with the vitriol I heard when living in the deep south. I refuse to live in a place where it's okay for the stranger cutting your hair to drop a nasty racial slur during inane chit-chat. I don't know how the hell you woke embrace a group that has so much hate toward your party and your politicians.

If the social policy of the progressive left were capable of wrapping itself in the messaging of Family, Community, and Freedom for rural America - there would be an appetite. Remember that for a large swath of Trump voters, Bernie Sanders was their second choice candidate.

When your chief argument for your attaining political power is that you have been wrongly oppressed, you need need to identify the oppressors as a rallying point for would-be supporters. For Nazis, the Jews could be vilified as the cause of German suffering. For many progressives, that's "the deplorables" just as for conservatives it's the woke.

Of course, truth and the complexity of reality dilute and blunt the arguments of oppression which is precisely why you will never see your plan come to fruition. The world would be a nicer place, but those you need to act on your plan are the only ones that would be hurt by it.

That sounds not so much more “woke”, but more like classical left-liberalism, sticking up for the disempowered and disadvantaged, regardless of identity group membership.

It’s not that much flamebait imo. It’s not exactly a secret that the mainstream global left have been losing large amounts of voters to populist right. It’s driven by fear of scaring away voters with socialism (both Europe and US) and in the US in particular the Dems are a corporate center party which actively resists progressive policies and rhetoric that acknowledges the struggles of average people. See exhibit A: sidelining Bernie.

I think the left has been making these judgments in error: the risk of being labeled socialists didn’t stop Bernie from getting grass roots rural support, just as the risk of being called a totalitarian fascist didn’t stop Trump one bit. Now, the issue is even if the dems wake up, how are they gonna consolidate the direct conflict of interests with their corporate support? You can’t win a game of money in politics if you upset the money that fund both the entrenched political class and the campaigns. Right wing populism is easier that way. All they want from the corporations is cultural obedience like removing DEI, it doesn’t hurt their business one bit. Look at how quickly Meta etc turned coats.

The "deplorables" comment you refer to was doing exactly what you are asking for but you claim you heard it and knew she'd lose, so I guess it's a losing strategy you're proposing.

Not only did she say it, she said to to a crowd in New York at an LGBTQ fundraiser and still felt that Trump voters should be mentioned as worthy of compassion.

> Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

They absolutely should be doing this but they're never going to. For a huge number of people, this is Team Blue vs Team Red. Those born-drunk fuckup hick racists are Team Red so their role in the game is to be a verbal punching bag.

There's a very real chance that the Democrat demographic coalition collapses in our lifetime. The contempt so many commentators held for groups that "surprisingly" swung for Trump is pretty telling of how this is probably going to keep going.

It's a category error to think racists are ignorant people who don't know better and not people who actively enjoy their place in a racial hierarchy.

I think you don’t understand what DEI really is. In America the groups you talk about are not at a disadvantage when it comes to recruitment in the respective areas of the country. As such they aren’t part of DEI in corporate recruiting.

In education how would you make white Christians a greater part of the curriculum? Their history and contributions to society already dominate the curriculum.

I’m a woke liberal. You are right regarding your comments on Saudi and conservative Hindu culture. I do condemn idiotic beliefs no matter who has them. This includes condemning idiotic beliefs of white Southern culture. One such idiotic belief is the idea that including marginalized groups is an attack on white people.

> In America the groups you talk about are not at a disadvantage when it comes to recruitment in the respective areas of the country.

When I was in college in the late 1990s and early 2000s, people from the rural South were at times told they should lose the Southern accent because it would hurt their ability to get hired in jobs like finance and engineering especially in the Northeast. This was at a college in the Midwest.

If you go to New York, Boston, or Silicon Valley and try to break into a top-tier industry with a thick Southern accent and talk about how much you love to go deer hunting, this will absolutely put you at a disadvantage. I lived in Boston for five years and one thing I learned is that even being from a poor or "flyover" area of the country makes you a lower class of person. There's a very strong but quiet classism, especially in the Northeast, and the Northeast is the cultural heartland of American liberals. "Where did you go to school" is the biggest class marker, followed by where you're from.

Is it as big of a disadvantage as other things? Probably not, but "the oppression olympics" isn't a good take or a good strategy.

BTW -- every human culture has class markers and in-group out-group dynamics. It just seems like the US left is blind to the fact that they have these too, and no it's not all about rejecting Nazis and misogynists. Everyone from the rural South or Midwest is not a Nazi or a misogynist. Most are not.

Hence the “respective areas of the country” part of my comment.

DEI started due widespread systemic disadvantages certain groups have historically experienced. White Christians can’t reasonably claim to be part if this in the U.S.

The speech part of your comment is quite ironic given the vitriol hurled towards black English speakers by white southerners.

Also, asking for educated people with a soul for acceptance and understanding of clear idiocy, hate, bad faith in conversation, and just malice generally, is (ironically) asking Christ-like magnanimity of them.

Why should we accept people acting like assholes? If someone consistently acts like an asshole in your personal life, you cut them out. Tolerating nonsense just begets more nonsense.