[voidfunc]

This mostly. A handful of very specific liberal and coastal areas drive this narrative... which guess where most media is generated?

You really only need to go about 30-40min inland from some of these places to see how normal/centrist most places are.

[A_D_E_P_T]

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.

[balls187]

I live in a liberal coastal area, and I can assure you it’s not woke.

There are/were attempts, such as thanking the Indians who lands we stole before every Kraken game.

[FrustratedMonky]

And the 'Right'.

I don't think I had ever heard of woke before the non-stop talking points from the 'Right'.

It always seemed like a drummed up issue to rile up their, Christian/Holocaust Denier/Civil War Loving, base.

[Izkata]

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.

[voidfunc]

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.

[linotype]

How many traditional Conservatives in the US remain? Maybe 10-20%?

[ta1243]

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