I find the concept of a left-wing ideological bubble really strange. All of us have worked for right-wing bosses or have right-wing neighbors or encounter right-wing folks in grocery stores, restaurants, parks, libraries. For white folks, we often have a lot of right-wing family.

While we might not know the nitty gritty of every right-wing conspiracy theory, we know the broad strokes of how right-wing folks think. We know they get their information from conservative media, church, and suspect sources on social media.

If you're white, you especially know what right-wing folks say behind closed doors. You know that their concerns about the economy and socialism are really panic that Black and brown people are going to get a piece of THEIR pie, move into THEIR neighborhoods, and take THEIR jobs.

If you're not white, you STILL know what right-wing folks say behind closed doors, because racists aren't subtle and BIPOC have been living despite white people's hatred for centuries.

The left isn't in an ideological bubble. There are too many white people in too many places with too much power to avoid being exposed.

When I say the Trump right is a bunch of racists, I'm talking about my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, the folks I grew up with.

I'm not calling them racist because I'm an elite who doesn't know what they REALLY think. I say this because I'm from a rural white community in the Bible Belt. Because I see the shit they post on Facebook. Because I've been arguing with them since I was 8 years old.

What I can tell you, though, is that folks on the right? They DO live in a bubble. They live in rural communities where the vast majority of people are white, attend 1 of the 3 churches, never live anywhere else and have had family living in the same community for generations.

What news they consume comes exclusively from right-wing sources and increasingly comes not from any even remotely reputable journalistic organization but from memes posted to social media from accounts run by god knows who.

I try to have a conversation with my family members on the right, and they are SO disconnected from reality. 90% of it is me going, "That never happened," and "That's not a thing," and "Where did you hear that?" and "That's not a credible source of information."

And like, they know ME, but I'm just that one CUH-RAZY LIBRUL living in Austin. As far as they're concerned, I'm an idiot who got too much book learning and therefore know nothing about the real world, which to them, extends to their city limits signs and Facebook account.

There is no world for them outside of rural America. When 70% of your community thinks the same way you do, and you NEVER leave your community, not even online, you hear your own beliefs repeated back to you at work, at school, at church, at high school ball games, at Walmart.

You never meet new people or are exposed to new ideas or have your misconceptions challenged. What's more, there's a deep suspicion of everyone outside your community--even people who live just a few miles down the road--so new people and information are rejected out of hand.

My parents grew up in two small towns in rural Texas about 5 miles apart. I was born and lived in a small city about 20 miles from both of them. Then when I was 4, my mom got a teaching job in another small town 13 and 15 miles from where my folks grew up.

I went to school in that small town from kindergarten to 12th grade and lived there from 6-18. My mom was a teacher. My dad worked at the same major employer that 75% of the other kids' parents worked at.

I never stopped being an outsider there.

The insularity is just bananas.

And it's like for conservatives all over the country. Even conservatives from more suburban areas tend to live in majority white neighborhoods and attend majority white churches and send their kids to majority white schools.

Hardly anyone on the left is able to avoid people like this, whether because they're white and grew up in communities where conservatism was the norm OR because they're BIPOC who have always had to interact with white folks to live.

Conservatives live in a bubble, and what's more, they CHOOSE to live in a bubble. They don't want out, and they certainly don't want to let other people in. They don't want to be around Those People, and they don't want to hear about Radical Ideas.

The folks on the left don't live in a bubble. That doesn't mean, of course, that there's not plenty of racism and bigotry to go around on this side of the diving line. But we simply CAN'T live in a world free of right-wing folks.

They work very hard to live free of us, though.

And while conservatives "living free" of white folks on the left largely means just ignoring and dismissing us, their desire and efforts to live free of BIPOC--except as a servant class--has been a 400-year-long project of violence and cruelty.

Focus on THAT bubble.