I’ve long wondered why so many family and friends fall into this category. We grew up in the same homes, went to the same grade schools as kids, had the same parents, attended (as kids) the same churches. To engage in the hate that they do, Progressives must often run counter to the values held by their parents -- and they know it.  It takes a lot to abandon the values of one’s parents and one’s culture.  Why do it?

Is it a logically and carefully considered and weighed repudiation of the values long honored by their parents and ancestors?  Their culture? Their country?  I’ve come to realize, not even close.  Most couldn’t reason their way out of porta potty.   What I realized is that it’s the same impulses that ruled their lives since they were six.  Fitting in!

The Trump revolution is a revolution against America’s left-wing elites, be they in universities, mainstream media, Hollywood, or the tech nouveau riche. But to very many in America, those elites are not to be opposed, but rather espoused.  If your kids come back from college and rant against Trump and maybe God, and you want oh-so-dearly to be relevant to your kids, you become woke.  If the ladies in your book club think a border wall is horrid, and you can’t bear to be the outcast, you hate that wall too.  If your country club bridge group, or your golf buddies think the Orange Man is insufferable, so do you.  And down deep!  You don’t just go along here. Oh no, you’re a True Believer.  You’re not just leery of watching Fox or OAN  by virtue of being found out.  Oh no, you wouldn’t be caught dead watching anything other than CNN, PBS, or MSNBC.  After all, that’s what your tennis partner-sociology professor watches, and you wouldn’t even think of doing differently. 

Where is this phenomenon the strongest?  It is, of course, in the “new money” suburbs of America, where fitting in, social climbing, and dying to be relevant is the new religion.  These are people who don’t believe what their parents believed because they secretly (or openly) loathed the lower middle-class backgrounds of those parents, and that includes of course everything about those backgrounds.  Ask yourself another thing -- are these people quiet about their left-wing wokeness or are they in-your-face about it?  My (strong) guess is the latter, because as committed acolytes of their new religion, they need you (and those whose acceptance they crave) to know how woke they are and how decisively they’ve broken with their (parents’) past.  And like true novo-religionists, they don’t tolerate dissent.  Ironically while they deride religion (openly or secretly), they are blazingly aware of heresy and they don’t like it one bit.  As a small test, express just a tiny measure of doubt about global warming, and watch the fireworks.

So, if you feel alienated in your extended family or social circle, just be aware that you are experiencing the same cliquishness that you so loved in grade-school and middle-school. And like then, it’s rooted not in the realm of ideas and concepts, but in the lowest psychological and social impulses of the human spirit.