"The place where I come from is a small town..."

[OrwellwasRight]

67. No question.

But again, I think this requires a thoughtful response. For some of us empathy is a fairly normal response. For others, they can have it, but it emerges slowly and only in response to the right stimuli. For some, we naturally interact with others who are quite different than we are, and we learn from that. Others live in insular communities and have little experience of the "other." Some can quite easily extrapolate information to the real world after reading, viewing, etc., so we don't have to see an incidence of police brutality or a person being denied a job opportunity on the basis of race to get that it is actually real. Others, it takes them a while to learn. So what are we doing about those who so easily write off bigotry as "no big deal"? Leaving them to their own devices doesn't help. And neither does insulting them.

Politics is about power. And for the less powerful to gain power requires work. Too many on the left don't want to work. We want to preach to the choir and call anyone who isn't in the choir a "white supremacist." That won't cut it. We need to teach people why it is in their interest not to elect a bigot. So far, I think we have not done that.