Given the disparity in culture in the various US states, it's entirely possible for people living in one place to encounter typical attitudes which are vastly d

Given the disparity in culture in the various US states, it's entirely possible for people living in one place to encounter typical attitudes which are vastly different from people living in another place, despite both belonging to the same country. There will always be a filter bubble effect around anecdotal experience. To get around this, one can just monitor the conversations taking place in the national news media and other popular media like late night comedy or some of the more reputable newspapers. You can also expand this to include the A-list "influencer" category of social media users - popular musicians and movie stars. All of these sources mirror the policy positions of the Democratic party. The overall picture is one of a grand moral struggle between good and evil, with all the heroes on the side of one party. In these echo chambers you will frequently find that many of the extreme interpretations of Republican party policies are highly amplified. The recent verdict against the fraudster Jussie Smollett is also proof of how slanted and devoid of rationality these spaces have become, where major media institutions and powerful individuals could not, or perhaps more insidiously, did not, perform the requisite critical thinking to be skeptical of the alleged crime, despite the extremely dubious fact pattern. Contemporaneous early accounts from more neutral observers were able to quickly deduce and point of the large number of improbable claims in the alleged assault. The prevalence of innuendo and rhetoric over facts and reason is common in political discourse, but it is unprecedented to see the vastly different standards applied for fact-checking and misinformation based on the partisan nature of the topic at hand. For young people who are new to these types of conversations, it's very easy to get caught up in this imbalance. There was an incident where a woman in a Gorilla mask threw an egg at the black candidate who was a frontrunner for the Republicans in the California Governor election. Contrasting the conversation around this incident with the former one is quite revealing about the way newcomers to these conversations will perceive the status quo - one that aggressively amplifies hate crimes with dubious claims, and apparently ignores hate crimes with clear and apparent evidence.