As a kid, I grew up in an area where there was KKK activity, and I remember 'cross burnings' being actually advertised ahead-of-time in the newspaper in the early 1960's.
Today, as the 'divisiveness' in our nation worsens, yet I do have some 'progressive' and/or 'liberal' friends, I realized I feel the same exact type of ill-at-ease sensation when I'm around them as I did back as a kid when I'd be around KKK members; you sensed an irrational hate that you were supposed to buy into, and if you didn't, they would treat you like you were part of the problem. In their eyes, 'the problem' was that society was degenerating and moral standards lowering and crime rising - all true - yet what they didn't see was that THEY were the problem, not the fact that the dude down the street had thick lips and dark skin.
At that time, as a kid, I didn't think too much about the 'politics' of the situation; I just wanted to hang out around my friends, without having to 'sort' them as to whether or not they were obsessed with race and division. All the KKK-kids I knew were from Democrat families, I later realized, and the irony of that political party pretending to want to 'help' blacks finally hit me in college as I became more politically aware. Then LBJ's comment leaked where he said something along the lines of "Give them ['n-word's] just enough to bait them, but never enough that they can become independent, and they'll be dependent on us for ever, and never vote Republican again..." It started to make sense.
I now feel that same ill-at-ease feeling when I'm around today's Democrats; they want to pull me into their race-obsession, and their materialism, and their acceptance of violence, all the while accusing anyone who disagrees with them of being 'racist' and 'greedy' and 'violent' - none of which apply to ANY of the 'conservative' people I hang around with. None of 'us' care what color a person's skin is, who they sleep with, or how wealthy they are; we simply expect them to be honest and hard-working, and contribute to the society in a positive way somehow.
Yet if around a 'liberal' nowadays, and a story comes on the news about a kitten stuck in a tree, I feel like if I don't start chanting about how it is Trump's fault, or due to 'climate change', or that more taxes and regulations would have prevented it, that they will get upset. So whenever I'm around Democrats, I try to steer clear of politics......but they politicize everything...
At least the Democrats who are my friends won't vandalize my vehicle, sabotage my business, or punch me in the face, like the ones who are strangers. What is weird is how at least the 'liberals' I know are actually genuinely NICE people, and do seem to have the best interest of society at heart. In some cases they do seem to measure a person's life and achievements not by what they contribute to society, but solely by their income, so those people get caught up in materialism and wealth-envy, wanting to pull down and destroy whoever has more 'stuff' than they do. In other cases they seem to actually believe that 'conservatives' are actually a bunch of violent and racist homophobes, despite it being so clear to anyone objective that such it not the case.
The double-standards are amazing - if video showed a ballot-counting center shutting down, then after observers left, dragging concealed ballots out from under tables, apparently counting them multiple times, and this coincided with a spike in Trump votes, moving him from behind, to winning, these Democrats would be demanding an investigation. In fact, instead of one demonstration infiltrated with agent provocateurs, with a few broken windows, we would have every major city on fire for weeks, with many businesses and lives lost. I'm not sure if the 'liberals' of today have enough self-awareness to realize just how out-of-touch they appear when they live in such bubbles of selective-information, but since one of their main 'tools' appears to be censorship, perhaps they actually believe there was no election fraud.
I know some 'rationalize' it by saying it happens all the time, and on both sides - such equivocating seems to me to be a form of virtue-signaling ("...I'm so morally superior I'm staying above the fray, and pointing out to you that 'my' side may be bad, but so is yours...") combined with the usual straw-man and deflection techniques someone losing an argument on a factual basis tends to resort to.
As one who 'fixes' things for a living, I'm always curious as to what causes a dysfunction, and so rather than just toss out the label 'Trump Derangement Syndrome', I try to dig deeper and see what really is going on. So far, I can't figure it out.....the big question is "do they actually believe things like 'Trump incited rioting', or are they so obsessed with the end-result of eliminating him that they are willing to lie and say something they know is not true...?" I honestly don't know - maybe it is a mix. There certainly are so many things that are clearly WRONG that they say they believe, that something is amiss; the contradictions and double-standards are legion.
Anyhow, I just find it interesting how similar my ill-at-ease feeling is now, around today's "progressives" as it was a long time ago around KKK members. Yet if you think about it, it shouldn't be that surprising - both groups thrive on division, classifying and ranking and judging people by superficial things (like skin color, sexual orientation, wealth, gender) instead of character, and believe in achieving change through force and violence instead of education and enlightenment. Both groups are prototypic post-JFK-Democrats, as well.
I'd rather hang around 'conservatives' - they are far more interested in REAL things in life, instead of obsessing over skin color, gender, and money. They are far more interested in "re-educating" their political opponents by providing information and facts, and having open and honest and reasonable dialogue than in "re-educating" their political enemies through the use of threats, censorship, and violence. Even the dreaded NRA simply wants to provide honest factual statistics and information to the gun-banners - not 'take away their children to re-education camps', like the attorney for NPR wants to do with their political adversaries...!
