[VLM]

"Like many cults being required to believe something obviously wrong keeps the normies out and clearly defines who is in the 'in group' and who is in the 'out group'."

Its the same game played with politics instead of religion in academia, "coastal tech", soft sciences, mass media... Under static ruleset conditions, I donno, mid 60s to 2010 "boomer generation" lets say, its sort of an intelligence test to see if you're smart enough to observe others then play along, and whats more important than action is the social signalling to show you can be a trustable follower. If the players are willing intelligent players the game works really well and results will naturally be good. When people grow tired of the game or are too dumb to play or actively dislike the entrenched ruleset, you get periods of political turmoil, "populism" etc. People get very angry that their hard fought position in the game is wiped away with a new ruleset. "Polarization" especially politically is just the future being here but unevenly distributed, and the legacy ruleset isn't going to be deprecated or sunset quietly especially while those about to be obsolete still have a legacy voice.

"Obviously if I was gay I would have a different story."

The analogy with the above is white people starting to abandon the Democratic party, resulting in Trump, etc.

[kelukelugames]

lol, this is comical. White people are not persecuted by a major US political party run by and composed of mostly whites. Sure, some people perceive it so because they have a narrow...argh...different understanding of the world.