[TheOtherHobbes]

More than that, the thought leaders set the emotional tone of interaction with outsiders.

The problem is that the US is an aggressively authoritarian country, and the default tone is violent narcissistic bullying.

Unlike other authoritarian countries this isn't explicitly state sanctioned.

It's more of a continually dramatised and modelled mode of relationship which is so ingrained in so many public interactions - from school to work to "self help" to corporate culture to mainstream media to social media to large parts of elected government - that it sinks into the background as a kind of unavoidable noise.

It would be deafening if you'd never experienced it before. Because it's so common it's tuned out consciously, but still dominant unconsciously.

The "woke" part isn't the problem. It's the copying of the dominant emotional ideology that leads to both left and right extremism, and also justifies excess corporate power and other horrors.

It's all part of the same issue, but both left and right are only looking at small parts of it - and getting angry about those while missing the underlying issue.