It's not even "places" -- not any more. It's driven by the extremely online. Twitter, in particular, is a bazaar of echo-chambers, and most of them push their own political and social agendas. (Left and right, the mechanism is the same.)
People get caught up in it, and then think that those opinions are normal. There is no "normative" frame of reference.
This has, of course, infected politics itself over the past 10 years.
In the late 2000s/early 2010s, the left came up with "social justice warrior", and by 2015 it got turned into an insult by just about everyone online who knew the term (non-extreme-left, middle, and right). Shortly afterwards the left adopted "woke" to replace it, and even quicker than before everyone else turned it into an insult as well. DEI was, sort of, supposed to be the third replacement, and it's taken longer for this one to turn negative but it's well on its way now.
Yea definitely a little bit of that from a labeling and demonizing perspective.
I rarely hear moderate or more traditionally Republican/Conservative types rant about wokeness. It's the ones doused in right-wing propaganda.
I'm generally of the opinion most people are decent. We might have differences on things but most people can compromise and find a middle position. Our media and politicians thrive on polarization tho and it's utterly killing our ability to function as a democracy.
This is an increasing problem throughout the west. I was listening to a UK ex-politician (Phillip Hammond), who was the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary in the past.
His view, which I broadly agree with, is that the membership of a party (Tory, Labour, etc) are further from the mainstream "centre ground" than the general population, and that's a bad thing. His solution was the leadership of the party should come from the elected representatives (the MPs) and not the 100,000 "enthusiastic" members -- in the past the parties (Tory and Labour specifically) had massive membership, but now it's just a small number. It's relatively easy for a specific group to actually take over a party.
However I don't think that the small number of votes is the only problem -- the US doesn't have that problem for example, are driven by the views of millions and still come out with the less centrist options
The main criticism I’ve always had about it is this: that it’s fake.
Take San Francisco as a prime example. It’s a place full of people who style themselves as progressive or “woke” or whatever but a starter home is unachievable to anyone without an exit event or a $400k salary. It has one of the widest rich/poor divisions of anywhere I’ve ever seen in the USA. Major industries include mass surveillance and addictive forms of media, and I have no idea how anyone who isn’t in a high six figure job can live well there let alone raise a family.
I think the arrow of causation goes both ways. Cities tend to be blue. Places with a lot of knowledge work or academia tend to be blue, have higher salaries, and thus have runaway housing costs due to the fact that America has chronically under built housing for over 30 years.
Still I don’t think that lets them totally off the hook since they obviously don’t care that much, otherwise they would advocate for better housing and zoning policies to make housing more affordable.
So I do think this issue points to a fundamental un-seriousness in the supposed commitment to equity.
The right is not necessarily better, e.g. blaming housing costs on immigration instead of underbuilding. But they are not the ones posturing as deeply concerned about equity.
Some red areas do accidentally have better housing policies because they tend to be pro development, but this isn’t because they care about the poor. It’s because they are okay with building and that has a side effect of controlling prices. Example: Texas.
Summary: both sides suck, but blue areas are also hypocrites.
You really only need to go about 30-40min inland from some of these places to see how normal/centrist most places are.