Re: POTUS 45.6 - Russia Is Just A Witch Hunt
The problem with the Eastern Liberals is they all act like their smartest person in the room and we should all be honored to hear their opinions. They also speak in absolutes (see: your contention that all misogynists are Republican) which leaves a lot of people out of their oversimplifying generalizations.
It is ironic that you use an absolute in decrying absolutes.
Again, I think
much (not all) of this is just how you hear it. I've been all over the country and there are people who think they're God's Gift everywhere, and there are people who are modest and circumspect everywhere.
Part of what the Midwest might view as arrogance is just the aggressiveness that Northeasterners need to get a word in edgewise. Regions have different speeds and different moods, and when people aren't in their element they can be misinterpreted.
Likewise there is parochialism and snobbery everywhere. There is no snobbery more absolute and judgmental than Country Snobbery, where if you haven't fixed a tractor manually to get the north forty in before sunset you're nothing. Everybody everywhere builds a medal stand where they just
happen to be at the top.
Country mouse / city mouse rivalry is probably as old as Uruk. I firmly believe the vast majority of instances in which each thinks the other is being obnoxious to them, it's just a misunderstanding. As a co-worker said to me after knowing me for 5 years, "we used to think you were putting on airs and being showy because of your vocabulary, but we finally figured out that's just the way you all talk."
The other thing is subtext and humor vary with region. So for example speaking in "absolutes" is very much a thing among people who I went to college with
because we all have a firm grounding that nothing is ever absolute and everything is various types of distribution. When you know the guy who is speaking is a natural statistician, when he says "x are A and y are B" you implicitly translate that to a statement about probabilities and tendencies. I'll give a related example: when I make a statement which upon later evidence turns out to be false, I encapsulate all that information with "I lied." I have actually had some of my local coworkers look at me aghast until they figure out that "I lied" means a string of implied statements that are roughly "at the time I based my working assumptions on this data, but later information has caused me to revise.... blah blah blah" I'm bored just thinking about it. So, "I lied."
We all use these idioms so naturally and unconsciously that when we are a fish out of water we have to be very careful. I almost got fired the first day at a new job because I jokingly said something like "well you think that because you're an idiot..." Again, where I come from that means "you're obviously very smart so the fact that you and I differ means we probably have some hitherto unidentified difference in basic assumptions or .... " again, blah blah blah.
I'm circling around with that last example to what I think is the thin-skinnedness of midwesterners sometimes. When for example I said "... an idiot" I didn't realize at the time I was the only college graduate in the room -- it just would never have occurred to me 15 years ago to even think about that. But they all sure did. So that seemed like an unbelievably jarring and obnoxious statement because it reinforced all their prejudices about me that I wasn't even aware they had. Now, 15 years on, I know to be very careful about hurting feelings and coming off wrong -- for example, I am very careful with vocabulary, I make sure I use the simplest accurate term, and I don't use word play or puns or other verbal games that are antenna touching where I come from but misunderstood where I work. That is an extra imposition on me due to the fact that these people are completely convinced that if somebody uses a word they don't know that's a calculated insult. That's on them,
but I want an effective and enjoyable work environment so I make the effort.
My advice is for
everyone to listen more, criticize less. My assumption when my feathers are ruffled is that it's a miscommunication. I give the benefit of the doubt until it just becomes impossible due to repeated enemy action. Only then do I, er, employ countermeasures.
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