Forgive the poor grammatical structure- I'm writing this while playing corhole (LOL).

But, I want to get along with the left better.

From my experience, as a child of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars until and meeting its cultural zenith during the second Obama term, it was very culturally salient and marketable to mock, and punch down on any person who held fairly innocuous right wing political sentiment and I can't the resentment I felt towards powerful media moguls and popular cultural icons maligning people cheaply or for what seemed to be self-righteous laughter (all the while the loosely defined "left" carried so much to most of the power of today's cultural institutions)- Usually to the backtrack of a roaring and laughing audience.

That's politics though. BUT- the left also went after places that are simply places I do not go- religious institutions, big families, the amish, religious business owners, and even making an attempt if not stopped by the courts to make religious institutions to internalize left wing values. You can pass this stuff politically without demanding people who aren't bothering you to accept them or else face social ostracization.

I recall by the middle of Pres. Obama's 2nd term a lot of the "right" was despairing of ever having a good faith representation of their actual grievances or values without them being portrayed as malicious as possible (or that was the paranoid, knee jerk reaction). I think that's unfortunate. These people aren't exactly in a position to popularize their values, or even hand them to their kids, and going after them on a political stage when all they're asking is to be left alone is cruel and a bit hypocritical- I always thought the left before the 2010s was about letting people live without interference. I'm open to hashing out what I mean by that if anybody feels like it. It's a feeling I've always noticed, and I'm sure this is a widespread phenomenon for any person. This isn't a statement of fact, just a little bit of how I tracked through the emotional trappings of politics until now. We keep weaponizing our cultures instead of... well, being grown ups and putting that stuff aside and get down to politics.

Please don't go into the obvious of how the right does this too, I know I know. But I'm curious if anybody else sort of noticed the cheapening of politics to staying cool and down with the latest cultural trends or what gets the biggest audience cheers and jeers? I think being the target of that stuff for so long (late night, daily show, colbert, hollywood, clingin to our bibles and guns) gave Trump this bizarre and cathartic nature that to me, seemed like a cultural reckoning.

I know this is short-sighted and doesn't capture the whole picture, but not everybody exists in the full picture. This was just what I felt like I was navigating through. Misalignment, and affluent people who proclaimed to be morally ahead of the times crapping on the communities, institutions, and people who meant the most to me. I would never dare do that to somebody. idk.