Serious qestion: I feel like I'm being gaslit. Where does the perception of "Democratic elitism" come from?

[Sympthsical]

119. I'll give you one major example that I've heard a lot of

Not just during the election, but just over the past let's say four years. And I heard this from both Democrats and Republicans, white and non-white.

Racism. There is an assumption that anyone who is not with us politically is probably racist. In my experience, most people aren't. Read DU. Everyone who's not me is a racist. The end. No discussion. And you know what's devastating? White progressives think racism is a bigger problem than actual non-white people. How did we position ourselves as champions of a cause in ways the actual people concerned aren't asking for? Our rhetoric makes it sound like there are roving bands of millions of Klan members wandering the country, but if you poll racial minorities, you find they're just trying to get on with their lives and that they generally get along with those around them.

And if you talk to people, they're extremely sympathetic to, say, the effects of police brutality and holding them accountable. You can find a lot of support there for reforms, for progression. But then it gets lost in all the tangential ideological bullshit.

And because of a hyper-fixation on racial issues in all things, what happened? Here's one. People started having HR presentations given to them. And some of them are wild. I worked in HR for a few years. I gave some of these presentations. And a lot of it was "You're racist, even if you don't think you are. Not only that, your "whiteness" (which is a word that needs to be consigned to a bonfire somewhere) is problematic." At the end of the day, you have all these systems, cultural, corporate, and media that have nonstop telling white people what's wrong with them while telling racial minorities they are perpetual victims always and forever in all things even if they don't know it. Don't worry. White Savior Progressive is here to do what's best for you.

The shit. doesn't. play.

And it came from academia. Entire sociology and liberal arts departments are just riddled with these obsessions. I've taken courses in the past two years where it's "You're white? Yeah, you're fundamentally bad. You just are. Deal with it." Whiteness took the place of Original Sin in belief systems. Then you have students of this stuff graduate, go into positions of management, media, and culture, and spit that out at average people.

When Republicans grabbed onto Critical Race Theory, it resonated. It didn't matter that people had no idea what it actually was. What it did was give voice to what people were encountering in their lives. It put a word (no matter how inapplicable) to the shit that was being nonstop slung in their direction from the upper levels of society, from media and culture and corporate.

People just don't live their lives that way. White people don't like it. Nonwhite people don't like. People who spent a lot of time around colleges and then graduated into professions with shared ideological sensibilities love the shit.

It's out of touch. And it's forced from the top-down.

Elite isn't necessarily a class thing or a regional thing or an educational thing. I have multiple degrees. I promise, paying for a piece of paper is not evidence of intelligence. It's a cultural sensibility. When people say "the elites" what they're really saying is, "People who are completely out of touch with how I live my life trying to impose their ideologies and values on me." It's a posture and positioning that those with power will force foreign values on their lives, their families, their children, and their jobs.

Voters don't like this stuff. We love this stuff. Look at the reaction to the election. People can't figure out what's wrong because they can't conceive that something could be wrong with how they view the world.

Intelligent people should be able to do a deep rethink about how ideology has become a cultural divide and how the ideologies coming out of elite institutions are not where people are living. And if you tell enough of them they have to live the way you dictate or else there will be consequences, they'll eventually rebel.