I have determined that I am far too liberal for Alabama, yet too conservative for California_SFO.

The feedback loop of exclusion works for a lot of monocultures. They just have to be offensively fanatic about something, and the zeal will drive out anyone foolishly moderate enough to disagree.

If you wouldn't enjoy assigning the Christian apostles to football team positions, you will feel like an alien somewhere. If you think veganism is nonsense from both ethical and nutritional stances, you will feel like an alien somewhere.

The ideological monocultures have to be intentionally upset, or they progress into self-reinforcing shielded bubbles, that are even tougher to crack.

I'd like to be able to live somewhere that I might hear people discussing open borders at the gun range, or misogyny at the gym, or military budgets at the coffee shop. I'm sick of people suffering "downvoted for disagreement" in real life. It's like the awful clique-caste system from high school has metastasized into (un)civil adult society, and no one can eat at anyone else's lunch table anymore.

>I'd like to be able to live somewhere that I might hear people discussing open borders at the gun range, or misogyny at the gym, or military budgets at the coffee shop.

There's a gun range in the Santa Cruz mountains that's about a 20 minute drive from downtown Mountain View where I've had just those types of conversations. I had a discussion on military budgets, with sailors, in a bar in SF months back during Fleet Week. I literally had a conversation about misogyny at the gym with my friend today, because for once we were outnumbered by women there.

I think SF is an ideological monoculture in that you aren't really allowed to be racist or misogynistic or homophobic here, sure. But you're certainly allowed to be conservative in the "old" sense of the word. Tons of the new rich here are.

Problem is, relatively benign viewpoints are labelled as racist, misogynistic or homophobic when they aren't. And it's done in an effort to silence "undesirable" opinions.

What I've noticed the most about SF are it's inhabitants being shocked (shocked!) to learn that people have views different than them. It's as if their entire world ends at the city limits.

I think it's interesting to see all the people talking about the Bay Area here. I've never done anything but pass through California, and yet I tend to mostly share the views of these "liberal" Bay Area folks. I grew up in southern Virginia.

You should remember that we're not all from the Bay Area.

If you've "never done anything but pass through California" then you should probably refrain from saying that you share the Bay Area views.

For example many people in my workplace will genuinely call you racist if you say "employment decisions should not be made on the basis of race or gender." Threats of violence towards Trump voters varying degrees of subtlety are made on public channels with no apparent repercussions, and these were positively received by much of the company.

Are these views and behavior that you agree with? Sure most liberals probably agree with Bay area liberals on national issues, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Keep in mind that gun ranges are not at all representative of the average Bay area resident. Sure I met some conservatives at Los Altos rod and gun club.

I also dispute that people are free to be conservative in an "old" sense - whatever that is meant to mean. The majority of conservatives have and continue to believe in:

* Opposition to same sex marriage.

* Opposition to abortion.

* Support for more rigorous immigration enforcement.

* Oppose affirmative action.

Among other things. All of these things are things that would be socially unacceptable in much of the Bay Area, and employees are probably committing career suicide if they do espouse these views. Sure, people can rationalize this by saying that these political views are misogynistic or racist. But if a group constructs a definition of racism, homophobia, or misogyny that categorizes mainstream conservative views as such, then saying "you aren't allowed to be misogynistic or homophobic" is functionally the same thing as saying "you aren't allowed to be conservative."

All of these are traditionally conservative views. In fact today's conservatives are actually more accepting of gay marriage and other things than they were in the past, so I'm especially confused at what you meant by conservative "in the 'old' sense of the word."

This is one of my favorite things about living in a (literally) inside-the-Beltway suburb of DC. The local governments are far enough left that I'm afforded civil rights protections, but the overall culture is accepting of a range of viewpoints. It helps that most of the zealots (of all stripes) are inherently political transients here, who come and go with the electoral cycle.

I’m also inside the beltway, and indeed, my first reaction to that comment was “come to the DC area!”

As a bonus, a lot of the people are actually involved in the process somehow, so the discussion is a lot less abstract and theoretical than usual.

One of those books-that-would-be-a-fantastic-long-essay is "The Big Sort," it tackles this exact problem.

Modern life actually seems to be driving people into micro-cultures, rather than bringing people with different beliefs together.

You'd be fine in Southern California and any major city in Texas.

> in close to a decade of living and about 6 years working in the Bay area I have met exactly one co-worker that openly expressed conservative views.

In my experience in the bay area, it's very rare for co-workers to express political views at all. In fact, I find the bay area to be very politically reserved compared to the open embrace of conservative viewpoints where I'm from (I probably lean more conservative than liberal, so I don't think I'm simply being more sensitive to it).

I have encountered people that aggressively espouse liberal positions every now and then, but in my experience, this makes most other people around them (including me) uncomfortable, and the conversation usually stops quickly. While it is maybe more rare for a conservative to do this, I find it to be met with the same response.

> I have encountered people that aggressively espouse liberal positions every now and then, but in my experience, this makes most other people around them (including me) uncomfortable, and the conversation usually stops quickly. While it is maybe more rare for a conservative to do this, I find it to be met with the same response.

I had the same experiences in Western Washington, but I get the feeling that much fewer people feel empowered to step in and stop the situation where people espouse controversial viewpoints in a manner denigrating to those that believe differently. So people who do aggressively espouse controversial viewpoints think this behavior is acceptable. This does have tangible impact beyond slack and email lists. Our company has made several decisions that many would regard unethical or at least unsavory, and I think there's a strong probability that if there was less of a mono culture someone would have pointed out that these things went beyond the realm of mainstream morals.

Granted, I'm totally complicit in this bystander effect. I don't want to risk any damage to career or network opportunities. The concerning takeaway, though, is that fact that this is an environment that engenders fear in people who try to

Honestly, Bay Area is like >50% recent immigrants. I think a lot of the problem arise because we ascribe the American label of "conservative" and "liberal" to a population who grew up in a very different society. A lot of behaviors that we assign to conservatives and liberals do not line up that way in other societies. For example, in Europe, the far right has very little interest in free markets, and has policy goals that are perhaps more common with the far left. In Asia, you will find deeply religious parties (e.g., BJP) who at the same time are pro-science and climate change. Also, a lot of recent immigrants in the Bay Area "escaped" deeply culturally conservative societies where freedom of sexuality is unheard of and really appreciate the tolerance that is in the fabric of Bay Area culture. So, in that sense, yes, it would seem to be a mono culture here of "liberals", but if you dig deeper the layers are not that simple.

BJP is pro science? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/indian-prime-m...

Sure Modi is just an individual, but the BJP elected him to office.

Nicky Case & Vi Hart have a model "Parable of the Polygons", which relates to what you're saying. https://ncase.me/polygons/

I hear what you're saying, and as a Texan, I feel like I understand your viewpoint. I've got thoughts on the issue too, having lived in the Bay area for a couple years now. Mostly they revolve around this point:

>half the country.

I disagree that half the country is conservative. I was put onto this idea by Michael Moore actually, who argued that if you run the surveys, turns out most Americans support liberal values. This article is a good summary: https://prospect.org/article/most-americans-are-liberal-even...

> 82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington.

> 59 percent favor raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.

> 78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

> 60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.”

> 60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”

> 58 percent of the public favors replacing Obamacare with “a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.”

> 63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.

> 76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change.

> 84 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.

> 60 percent of Americans believe the recent killings of black men by police are part of a broader pattern of how police treat black Americans (compared with 39 percent who believe they are isolated incidents).

I could go on. The point is, a true conservative is somewhat of a minority in America, and also, a "conservative" isn't what one might think. There are probably a lot of people in the Bay Area that believe they are liberals but are actually conservatives - tons of self-described libertarians here, for example, whose opinions on the invisible hand and free market I would argue are conservative.

Then, there's the "modern conservative" - the MAGA hat wearer that thinks Mexicans are taking their jobs, but are also somehow draining tax money by illegally being on welfare. The racists, the homophobes the ones that believe bullying is a valid "treatment" for the "disease" of transgenderism. The ones for whom "conservatism" isn't so much a political belief as an ethical one - "we need a conservative judge to prevent abortions, and if he's a misogynist so be it, it's for the Greater Good." These people aren't necessarily "alien," but their thought process in 2019 is, especially compared to the rest of the world.

I think the world as a whole is becoming more rational. I think more people are getting good educations. In a rational world, racism and homophobia and all the things that are "scarily conservative" just don't jive. There's no good arguments for it. It's the Mexicans are taking our jobs and our tax money at the same time thinking - totally irrational, totally incompatible.

> I have met exactly one co-worker that openly expressed conservative views

If "conservative views" means "government should spend less," I think SF could use more people like that, for god's sake just look up the budget for Van Ness improvements. The existence of opposition would help cases like that.

But if "conservative views" means "gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry," fuck'm, why would you want someone like that around? How does that "help the public discourse?" How does exposure to that viewpoint help anyone? "Free speech?" I don't buy it.

You're essentially trying to say, "we're tolerant of all views except for those that are morally wrong." There's nothing tolerant about that. If that's your definition of tolerance, then Saudi Arabia and mainland China are tolerant countries - they just have different views of morality.

I never used the word tolerant but on that note, I don't think morally wrong views should be tolerated.

What are morals is the obvious counterpoint and that's fine - I'm not arguing people should be jailed for it, or physically harmed. I'm saying the worse that should happen to a racist is that they are ignored. We aren't China, in that sense.

Sounds to me that your views could be summed up most closely as "socially liberal, fiscally/economically conservative". This is a viewpoint I see most often among the oft-mocked libertarians.

This is probably the biggest problem with our two-party system: Most people land similarly to you and I, as shown by the specific-issue poll earlier, but neither of the two major parties really fall that way, making people choose based on the issue(s) they deem most important.

>This is probably the biggest problem with our two-party system: Most people land similarly to you and I,

According to most opinion polls I've seen that actually cluster people along these dimensions, about 3% of Americans are "socially liberal, fiscally conservative".

"In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I don't know what your message is meant to be in citing this, but this quote does not at all support rejecting and excluding people who espouse beliefs that one considers morally reprehensible - quite the opposite. From the page you linked:

> In a 1997 work, Michael Walzer asked, "Should we tolerate the intolerant?" He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue"

Substitute "religious group" with "political group", and the same applies. If you ostracize and reject people who hold views you find reprehensible then you're relinquishing your best opportunity to change them. If the surrounding community rejects them, then these rejected people will commiserate with like minded people and probably become more extreme and vengeful of society.

"Intolerant of intolerance" refers just as much to the intolerance for different worldviews and values that we harbor within ourselves as it does to the intolerance we sometimes witness in others.

that's a deceptive semantic conflation (i.e., poor logic; a bad idea). tolerance is for the person, not the idea (e.g., morals). ideas neither need nor deserve "tolerance". many ideas don't even deserve attention, let alone esteem or support.

for example: "i believe that wild bengal tiger will come lick my feet and cough up whole, live bunnies for me to cuddle." bad idea. doesn't deserve any tolerance whatsoever.

people, even those holding poor morals or beliefs, deserve tolerance, because they can change and adopt better morals or beliefs, particularly through experience.

> that's a deceptive semantic conflation (i.e., poor logic; a bad idea). tolerance is for the person, not the idea (e.g., morals). ideas neither need nor deserve "tolerance". many ideas don't even deserve attention, let alone esteem or support.

That's true, but then you need to set up judicable public standards for how to rule on which ideas are good and which are bad. Since most of "liberal" or "free" society is based on refusing to institutionalize morality outside fairly specific civil guidelines, this kind of society is, well, as many people have pointed out, largely incompatible with and unprepared for the challenge of systematically and publicly telling the difference between right and wrong.

it's understandable to want such a commonly-shared standard, but that's not necessary (i'd even contend it's not desirable, for a robust and resiliant society).

we already codify ideas, test them, rank them, and modify or discard them through academic, religious, political, commercial, and social organizations. it's a dynamic system, not a (slowly-built) static one.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". - MLK Jr. (paraphrasing theodore parker apparently, which i just learned =)

If you can't appeal to a codified standard, I see no reason you should be allowed to exercise authority over others.

I'm from the midwest, and the thread seemed consistently right-wing and reactionary to me. I don't encounter people with... let's be charitable and call it "controversial" politics like those of the typical Culture War Thread poster in my day-to-day life, so what exactly does Scott think is an appropriate contrast to the liberal bubble he thinks dominates west coast tech culture? East Texas? A Trump rally?

I scanned the thread a bit and can second this. I am originally from Ohio the type and extremity of right wing ideas present there seemed far to the right of anything typical in the midwest. There are KKK types and similar in Ohio of course but they're pretty extreme outliers in most areas, especially anywhere near a city or a college.

I agree that SF is a special kind of bubble, but I do think there's been an explosion of shockingly extreme right-wing thinking on the Internet in recent years... really since about 2008-2012 as near as I can tell.

After reading a few of the articles in the new sub, if that is far-right then far-right has a very different definition to the one being popularized.

Take this one that has two relative high voted threads and was at the top for a while: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/at8cuq/the_orches...

The linked article can be summerized into a few word sentence: The p-value of a famous study, cited by researchers and media, is claimed to be 0.33.

I am completely amazed that from there you interpret biological determinism, leading to red pill, leading to nazi worship, and finally landing at the far-right. I guess that answer my question why people think it is far-right, while my own definition of far-right is no where near that.

On further thought I think it is this:

I question the motives of anyone who invests a lot of their time in the debate and discussion of the merits of various metrics for ranking the value of human beings unless they are on the skeptic side. Generally those who argue for even tangentially defend stereotypes or or metrics that can be used to a priori rank people by quality of meat are at the very least flirting with some kind of totalitarian elitism.

Perhaps this is hypersensitivity and overreaction, but I am not sure. I have studied human history. The instant the camel of a priori anonymous judgement of other people gets its nose under the tent, literal hell on Earth follows. Every single time.

I do not believe humans are all (physically) equal, but I do believe that it is important to treat people that way by default and to absolutely reject the aggregates-to-individuals fallacy here. That kind of reverse projection of statistics is always problematic or downright erroneous, but here it is also toxic and evil. Save biases from MTBF statistics for hard drives or other inanimate objects. (Even there it is problematic!)

Since you can't go from aggregate to individual with humans, what is the value of defending potential means of doing so?

There is so much to reply to in that comment.

Judging a community based on perceived motives rather than words and action is prime ground for problem. For example the Feminism movement is often being accused of misandry, while men's right movement is accused of misogyny. This make it is impossible for those two groups to have a conversation about eliminating stereotypes or that people should be treated as if all was equal, even if both groups share the exact same goal and only differ on how to reach it.

Going back to this study however, from a practical perspective all that a bad p value means is that there is a need to replicate the study if we still want to reference it. That is what the null hypothesis means. The data is indistinguishable from a random processes. The theory that blind auditioning is beneficial to women could still be valid, but this study doesn't really say anything to make it true or false.

If its not clear, I do very much believe that humans are all equal. Even from a gene perspective the difference are tiny and influence only a few minor traits. From listening to professors in neuro science and primatologists, it is a repeating pattern that where we thought there were biological difference between men and women that caused specific behavior, when tested it usually show that it almost always is caused by cultural factors. For example, men are not more prone to violence then women. Their higher physical strength and cultural preference to using their hands results in statistically higher damage, but the incident rates when studies tend to show identical numbers for men and women. While I have not seen a study to show it, I would expect to see the same result in regard to nursing and parenting. Breastfeeding causes a initial bias where women will statistically spend more time with the child, but beyond that it is all cultural.

I used to be far more optimistic about this issue and our ability to discuss it. Seeing the explosion of online fascist and racist rhetoric since 2015 or so, the mass conversion of huge numbers of my peers (the "hacker" community) into these belief systems, and things like the Charlottesville rally with men carrying tiki torches chanting "Jews will not replace us" has changed my mind completely.

I do believe that differences between groups of people and genders exist. The science is quite strong, though obviously there is quite a lot of debate possible around just how strong these effects are and how malleable these characteristics can be.

Unfortunately I have also come to believe (based on observing trends like those I listed above) that our society is absolutely not ready to discuss this openly. Not even close. Research in this area should be borderline encrypted in dense absolutely clinical and neutral rhetoric, should be discussed in private scientist-only forums, and should never be given a "pop science" treatment. (Most pop science gets everything wrong anyway regardless of the subject.) Any repeatable study reliably showing evidence for some systematic group difference among humans that has any strong social, political, or economic implication should be treated the way we treat exact buildable plans for a hydrogen bomb. Such things are classified for a reason. The destructive yield could be similar.

As I said I was once more optimistic. Recent trends (and not just in the United States) have changed my mind. Some individual people can face these things and discuss them rationally, but society as a whole is not ready and exposing everyone to this discussion is tantamount to posting a simple recipe for a biological WMD to Facebook. That too would be just fine if we as a human race were much saner, wiser, and more mature.

I think the ultimate reason this issue is so hard is that inequality is in my opinion the darkest aspect of the human condition. Inequality is worse than death. Death is something we all face and it only happens once, but the inequality is by definition unequal and those cursed by a bad hand from the genetic lottery die every day. The placement of sentient consciousness by nature into unequal vessels is such a horror that it triggers us all and inspires every kind of defensive emotional reaction, including of course a desire to hate and discriminate against those that might seem less fit than ourselves to hide from ourselves knowledge of the bad cards in our own genetic poker hand. The majority of the human race can face death, but it seems that the majority of the human race is not emotionally ready to face the greater horror of inequality.

> unless they are on the skeptic side.

...Consider that the orchestra post that triggered these last couple replies is the skeptic side.

> Since you can't go from aggregate to individual with humans, what is the value of defending potential means of doing so?

I'm not sure this is going to follow, since I'm not sure this more-general question is still based on the orchestra study, but if so: That's not the point of focusing on stuff like it. The point is specifically to debunk claims of institutionalized sexism/etc that get taken at face value.

You seem to be entrenched in the position that the only possible reason why someone would want to study population level differences is to justify some sort of racist or otherwise evil agenda. There are plenty of reasons to do so, and more broadly I take issue with the notion that there needs to be any justification for expanding our understanding of the universe.

Take for example the disparity in prison populations between women and men. If we believe that there are no differences in behavior or tendencies between the sexes (and a large number of people do), then it would be fair to conclude that our justice system is exhibiting blatant sexism against men. Around 80-90% of prisoners are men. This is very far from equality of outcome; one sex is around an order of magnitude more likely to be a prisoner.

But there is a strong body of evidence to suggest that even absent any discrimination differences such as these will likely exist. Men exhibit higher levels of aggression and risk tolerance. These patterns exhibit themselves relatively uniformly throughout all societies regardless of development levels, cultural trends, etc. If we did not perform this kind of population level analysis then society may have tried to balance our prison population with bad policy that tries to engineer an equality of outcome when there is no reason to expect equality of outcome.

Is the above "flirting with some idea of totalitarian elitism"? Are we "ranking the value of human beings" by concluding that men are more likely to get incarcerated even in non-discriminatory systems? I think it'd be ridiculous to say yes. And if using population level analysis to justify a 10 to one disparity in prisoners is justified, then it's also justified to use population level analysis to reach the conclusion that, say, a 5 to 1 disparity in tech jobs can be reached without discrimination.

On the note of "ranking the value of human beings", plenty of people in my workplace would agree with your statements. But then they'd turn around and engage in the very practice you describe. For instance, at our recruiting events we give each candidate a star if they're black, Hispanic, or female. If they're an Asian male they get an "ND" which stands for "negative diversity". Whether a resume has two, one, zero starts, or an "ND" is used when determining which to include in our candidate search. We're ranking the value of human beings explicitly, on the basis of our own political ideology.

I think the key thing people aren't accounting for is the displacement of conversations. There's probably a highly elevated rate of conversations about topics people can't express in person.

Regardless of people's opinions of the threads, there's still the discrepancy between most people characterizing the thread as right wing when in reality the majority of participants were left leaning.

There's studies that show that people on either extremes of the political spectrum are more likely to see centrist or even moderates on the same side as being on the opposite side of the political spectrum. I see a lot of that happening in the Bay Area. Things like setting up more restrictive hiring flows for white and Asian men is taken for granted in much of the Bay Area when such policies are pretty controversial in much of the country. On the flip side, mainstream conservative views like support for restrictions on abortion is essentially unheard of.

I'm sure there are conservative places that are analogues to the Bay area on the other end of the political scale. But that doesn't make it any less of a concern to me.

>I agree that SF is a special kind of bubble, but I do think there's been an explosion of shockingly extreme right-wing thinking on the Internet in recent years... really since about 2008-2012 as near as I can tell.

As far as I can tell, the explosion in extreme right-wing ideology on the internet has come from the "special kind of bubble". The San Francisco Bay and the Boston activist-academic sphere breed ultra-reactionaries like pretty much nothing else, because they teach you to take Poe's Law as a standard of politics: no matter how much it sounds like a parody by the enemy tribe, you really can find someone purporting to be at the ideological vanguard of your tribe going to exactly the extremes you think would be a step too far.

In a related matter, as a matter of fact, today the noted Marxist journal Teen Vogue printed an article explaining that Bernie Sanders is overtly reactionary on identity politics, including an accusation that Sanders supports "settler-colonialism" (it's a tweet, of course), and Vox pulled a damn similar move on Elizabeth Warren a week or two ago.

The far-right bases itself on agreeing to many of the most toxic frames the far-left has, and then taking the other side. The far-left does exactly the inverse. It mostly just depends which side has "their" mainstream party in office at the moment -- the one out of power, builds a new extremist ideology based on their opposite. It would be easy to say, oh, that's ridiculous, I reject those premises and those frames, but then you find your own fellow-travelers affirming them.

I actually mentioned the Klan in my comment above too, originally, but removed it for fear the mods would consider it flamebait. However, I'm not sure folks here on HN are really aware of exactly how unpalatable (to most people) the contents of the Culture War Thread often were.

I'm pretty lefty. There are certainly some commenters who are aggressively towards the alt-right. There is a much larger groups that is more conservative than most people I know personally. There are a lot of people who I would call liberal. And a few who comment mostly from a social justice perspective.

If you don't normally talk to very right wing folks in your normal life (I certainly don't), you are going to read things you would consider shocking. They don't appear to me to be anywhere near a majority.

For those who would like to form their own opinion, here is a link to the current thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/artngn/culture_wa...

> I agree that SF is a special kind of bubble, but I do think there's been an explosion of shockingly extreme right-wing thinking on the Internet in recent years... really since about 2008-2012 as near as I can tell.

I think you can attribute that seeming explosion (at least in part) to people suppressing moderate conservatives, who then have a choice between becoming enlightened classical liberals and bearing the cost of that path in social isolation, or joining the more extreme people where they've been banished to (which, for its moral hazards, is a hell of a lot more fun, and a lot less depressing).

These people are not beyond help, but if you keep suppressing them, they will become more entrenched in the underground and the fringes, and they will become as fragile and bigoted as the academic marxists and intersectionalists who inhabit the same sorts of places on the far left.

The high road takes a lot of fortitude when you are a social progressive who is seen as willing to hear and integrate good conservative arguments. Libel, vandalism, and assault are rampant against people visibly associated with conservatives, at least, they have been where I've lived (in southern Ontario).

I haven't seen a lot of active suppression of right wing views other than the more numerous liberals having more bodies to throw at arguments. If the tables were turned and liberal ideas were less popular than conservative ideas then by human nature we'd likely see the same kinds and amount of individual attacks.

It already happens in right wing enclaves. I've been banned from multiple conservative subreddits for making reasonable centrist arguments that conservatives historically agreed with or asking questions that stir the pot in a gentle way. On Facebook and Twitter I get people responding with ad hominems to arguments which are not liberal but which do not toe the current Republican party line. Also, someone was arrested the other day for seriously plotting to murder a bunch of popular Democratic politicians. The grass is not greener, in other words.

I have not attempted to engage on many other forums but it seems to me that arguing outside the local groupthink is what makes people angry, more than any particular ideology being the driver. Angry people do stupid things. If you're in the minority party locally, you might feel oppressed even if you could go to the next town over and feel right at home.

Yeah in my experience it is more conservatives (mostly fundamentalists) who have a persecution complex about it. Which is very differently from those who are or were persecuted.

One brings it out and up everywhere as self-justification as they aren't actually being persecuted haven't tweaked their behaviors from even negative receptions. One may call them drama llamas trenchantly but more charitably it is identity based instead of experience based.

The other is met with far more guarded pessimism and even with angry backlash tends to be in "friendlier" spaces or stressed. It is more confided than presented usually, more angry than righteous. Actually some degree of trauma territory.

These are individual situations based on experiences fundamentally. Ironic inversions of the typical and coexistence of "real" and "fake" persecution behaviors are possible.

I really, really wish I got a penny every time I get accused of wanting to censor conservatives simply because I criticized them.