Two words: identity politics. It’s like, instead of coming together, it’s like, if you don’t have SOME form of minority cred or whatever, you can’t speak for the little guy. Or something. It’s almost like segregation, but people are CHOOSING segregation now.
It’s despressing. 
Good post. The answer is political correctness happened. And political correctness is not about being nice. It’s about controlling language and by extension thought. It’s totalitarian and oppressive.
Whining about language and symbols is the new tactic of the left. Why do you think even advocating free speech is sometimes attacked as bigoted, privileged, racist etc by the left?
What part of the South are you from? 
Interesting how you seem to be unaware of the connection between those two excerpts.
Suppose your ideas allow you to attack your opponents in ways that, if you are attacked in the exact same way, you will condemn. Then you have ZERO moral infrastructure or whatever fine-sounding BS you expound.
That’s why Trump was elected.
Wait…WHY was Trump elected, now?
To the OP, I think you are conflating values of intellectual honesty, forthrightness, strength of character and rationality with political orientations. There are left leaning people who hold those values and there are right leaning people who also hold those values.
The same goes for intolerance to dissent, authoritarianism and the manipulation of empathy for political purposes, it’s not a Left thing, it’s not a Right thing, it’s a Human thing and people who think are above such things by choosing a side are only fooling themselves.
I blame Political Correctness.
When it first reared its head, where we over-corrected respect and consideration for others into a ridiculous extreme, it was immediately the subject of ridicule. Then it fell into an equilibrium and stopped being a buzzword for a while, and we kind of continued on with our lives with a new sensitivity. Meanwhile, bubbling under, the other extreme was still resentful of this “respect” and “consideration” which they sneered at with disgust. And the overly-sensitive, the helicopter parents, the hippy dippy “nice” people, were nothing but a floppy cotton-wool basket of weakness, with no backbone, whose principles were without strong foundations or direction. Complacency.
There’s a middle ground. I would like to think that’s where I am. I have principles, I try to back them up with strong motivations and facts. I have consideration and respect for others, though not blindly, as I reconsider my stance when new points of view are presented to me.
The extreme ends should be the rare outliers, not the majority. We have a divisive world right now, and it’s the extreme ends that are dominating. It’s the strong and angry versus the meek and ineffectual. The middle ground may be boring and safe, but it should be where the majority of us should be.
I hear you, but … since when have values been about being part of the “cool kids”? It’s about what you’ve thought through carefully, on your own, about what you think and believe and can defend, and are ready to stand up for whether it’s cool or not.
I know that’s not overly fair; I too was influenced by people I admired, as I developed my personal set of values. But at the end of the day, it was the way certain ideas resonated that mattered, not who was expressing them.
(Plus, we’re still cool 
)
Thinking as a geographer…perhaps in part it’s because, in the 1960s-1990s, the actions and attitudes lauded by the OP took place in the BIG CITIES, where an aggressive approach tends to be already part of the cultural mindset.
That battle was won (more or less). Then, in the 21st century, we move on to the suburbs, smaller towns and cities, and rural areas. Here, the vibe just tends to be “nicer” (or perhaps “weaker,” from the perspective of the OP’s goals, which I share). So, many liberals/progressives have had to adapt their strategies and styles – both in their own behavior, and in the more subtle behaviors they target in the ignorant (e.g., “microagressions,” which many progressives, to their credit, also catch themselves doing).
Wow, it’s interesting how perceptions are different. In my experience, the whiny, cry-babies of the internet are the men’s right/alt-right/nut-jobs types who seem to blubber about anything remotely deemed ‘peecee’ in society. In fact during the whole debate between DJT and HRC I couldn’t help, but see DJT as a pouting, cry baby.
Clearly others seem to take these same actions as… strong? I can’t see why.
My knee jerk stereotypical mental image of a “tough liberal” was some blue collar union dude. Nowadays the stereotype of a liberal guy is a hipster or nu-male who makes money working on computers all day or making coffee. Conservatives are tough guys because they work in resource extraction, agriculture, logging, law enforcement, the military, and similar fields. A lot more people are fat or out of shape nowadays too, so the total number of “tough guys” may have decreased.
It’s not a positive sense of strong. It’s aggression, and they currently have the upper hand so it’s bolstered by confidence.
Nice to see you stop by for a visit Nzinga.
We are in a weird time. I think of it as The Great Rebalancing. Since the beginning of the U.S.'s history, the White Male POV has dominated culture. To but a big number on it, let’s say 95% of the mainstream media had been from that POV.
Over the past few decades that has changed, and been accelerating recently. Now, let’s say that the White Male POV is maybe 75% and other POVs, Women, Race, LGBTQ, etc make up the rest.
So proponents of the Old POV see their world slipping away and are deeply resistant to change, and scared and angry. The Other POV’s feel like it is inevitable that this Rebalancing of POV’s will continue.
So the Old POV fans feel like a cornered, fighting minority when they still have a majority share of influence. And the other POVs think it’s all over except for getting the words and gestures right, when they really still have a minority share of influence.
Add the economic shifts that have moved jobs out of communities, add a provocative bully to flick the nose of the Progressives, and you end up tossing a match onto the national conversation.
Boy did we get that wrong.
My $.02
It goes both ways as someone else mentioned. The alt-Right/MRA types whine and bitch and moan because they are positioning themselves for a “but THEY started it” justification for when they do act out. As we have seen by their deeds they want to be rough and coarse in word and action without any adverse consequence and have the last word, and to claim that this is so because we recognize their rightness and strength and dare not challenge them.
I went to high school in the late 80s. Mostly it was the stereotypical hick jocks and cheerleaders who were the “cool” kids. The Liberals, atheists and progressives were mostly AV and theater kids.
But I don’t remember things being particularly political or as contentious as they are today.
90s I remember mostly a lot of ambivalence.
I don’t think there’s been a shift. It’s all in what you pay attention to and how you frame certain things. Like the election protesters - whiny sore losers or strong people sending a message to the opposing side? There are liberals who want safe spaces and conservatives who are offended by green Starbucks cups and people crying about things being too PC/not PC enough.
I was never a liberal back in my younger days, but I do know what the OP is talking about.
Back in college and high school (1987-1996), the liberals tended to have a more… combative bent. The ideals were the same- equality, environmentalism, etc… but there was a definite attitude of being willing to deliberately stick it to the Man, so to speak, and the consequences were seen as badges of honor, even by knucklehead high school kids who were only barely aware politically. They’d get in trouble for protesting various things, etc…
One of the people I respected most in college was a sort of professional protester/hippie, for lack of a better term. He would spend his summers doing various progressive things- spiking old-growth trees, protesting, getting thrown in jail, beat up by cops, etc… and would do his own brand of unapologetic proselytizing to the rest of us during the school year, along with whatever he could manage in our little university town. I didn’t (and still don’t) agree with everything he was pushing for, but I sure respected his willingness to put his money where his mouth is, and suffer for his principles. That takes a different sort of determination than just making blog posts, etc…
Fast forward a couple of decades, and it does seem like the Left is much more concerned with making sure everyone’s safe, happy and not threatened in the least bit, rather than sticking it to the establishment.
You could always try to join the alt-right. The race and gender thing are a pretty big hurdle in your case, but there are other inroads. How hirsute would you say your neck is, left unattended?
I think there’s been a shift on targets, before it was worthwhile causes, like pressing environmental issues or flagrant social injustices, today the “progressive” left is busying itself with frikking pronouns.
I have a theory, that what we see now (at least in developed countries) are allergic reactions, as in the theory that people who are brought up in sanitized environments have a greater chance of having autoimmune problems were a harmless stimulus triggers a reaction that is more damaging than the stimulus itself.
The social immune system of the last generation or two hasn’t had the exercise it needed, and now kids flip the fuck out with triffles.
For example, in years past Feminism had to deal with big hairy problems (:rolleyes:), getting the right to vote, getting the same rights as men, getting the same pay for the same work, etc… Significant issues that have been solved. Now a new generation comes along, they like the vicarious feeling of social struggle they get from seeing how the first and second generation of Feminism fought and want a piece of that action… but the targets are gone, yesterday they rose against being treated as property, today they get a Nobel laureate fired for a deliberately misinterpreted joke.
It’s like the story of Don Quixote, the man went insane reading fantastic knight tales of chivalry and adventure of days past, to the point he saw giants in windmills and charged at them; kind of funny but not to the miller that would had his means of livelihood ruined by a neurotic do-gooder that feels he has fought the good fight against evil as he rides away from the wreckage.
Labour parties turned their backs on workers and the poor and became right wing, pushing a message of compromise (in spite of ideals) and “working together” to “get things done”. The right-wing became even more right-wing, digging their heels in harder and harder for every progressive social issue lost, while secretly cheering for increasingly right-wing economic policies underhandedly slipped under the table by the “left”. The actual left split into smaller parties, becoming more and more marginalized, exacerbated by more and more people on both sides enjoying more comfortable lives in general, taking it as proof the system worked, and thus, instead of voting their conscience, continued propping up the status quo to “work within the system”, promoting “gradual change”. Meanwhile the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, corruption thrived and rights gradually degraded into where we’re at now.
Of course it’s more nuanced than this, but people have deluded themselves into believing there’s any difference between “legitimate” candidates other than how right-wing they are, while being convinced voting for their convictions and ideals is equal to “throwing away your vote”. I’m happy to throw away my vote every election. At least it’s an honest vote.
IMHO, from my scandinavian perspective.