>>>>>>pro-brexit MUST be racist
It's amazing how complex issues like this can be boiled down into one simple little label. Racist! Obviously if you support Brexit, it's purely because you hate immigrants and are a racist, if you oppose the democrats you're a racist, or certain people getting harassed because they're white and this means they're the oppressors, the bully, and it's okay, and if you think it's not then poor straight white man boohoohoo.
Sometimes, I have a tendency to give ground to avoid annoying people by disagreeing too thoroughly but I want to stick to my guns this time. I hate this. I believe that the best way to learn and for politics to progress is to actually listen to people, legitimately weigh their thoughts, and discuss -- I've learned lots of things in conversation with my fellow students, some of whom were very liberal, and whose thoughts and beliefs helped expose me to something outside of my circle and greatly helped me progress with my political thought. I look back on these conversations very, very fondly, the highlight of my week sometimes.
So seeing all this dismissiveness does a fair bit to sadden and disappoint me, as well as infuriate me. When people decide that they can stop listening or taking people with seriousness because oh, their side has the moral superiority, oh, the other side's a bunch of racists, it shuts down any sort of meaningful discussion and turns into simply feeing smugly superior. And then when some people shut down complaint about THAT with mocking condescension for the straight white man, all it is is an expression of that imagined total moral superiority.
I'll be plenty honest with you, I am pretty privileged myself, I've had the luck to grow up on a household that has reached what could probably be called upper-income recently. But there are plenty of people for whom this sure as hell isn't the case. My father, for example, before he got where he is today, grew up as a dirt-poor rural kid. Literally had to eat trash. And people in those sorts of conditions live in the US today. So when this wall of condescension rolls in with "yeah poor white straight man riiiight" sort of stuff or the endless shutting down of conversation by just labeling the other side racist and shooing them away, it doesn't accomplish anything except let people on the Internet feel all tingly and moral. The people on the receiving end go "well fuck you then, damn liberals, trump's gonna put you in your place" and all that results is polarization and people tucking nicely into their respective echo chambers.
You can probably point to similar behavior among conservatives, sure, but considering my demographic (freshman college student who frequents the Internet) I see a whole hell of a lot more of this behavior from liberals. And I have to be careful to specify the Internet here. Out in the real world, the vast majority of my discussions with people on the other side of the political aisle have been thoughtful and civil, and even if not people were usually willing to listen without dismissing. But here on the Internet, or other media circles, that rejection and superiority routine can go on a whole lot easier, because you can just shame people out of a thread, make remarks about oh why don't they just go on down to 4chan/le leddit, and keep the atmosphere as conducive to ones own political beliefs, ultimately driving useful, thought-provoking discussion out. Shades of that appear here sometimes, and as can be evidenced from this post I'm a little tired of it.