this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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This isn't just a liberal issue, it's a political climate issue that everyone plays a part in. Liberal 'smugness' is a reaction to conservative anti-intellectualism. When their feelings are as good as your facts, there is nothing left to debate.
No matter how simple liberals try to explain things, it doesnt matter. Conservativism has stopped having substance worth debating over when it is no longer about policy, but all about taking the opposite side of every liberal stance.
Liberals are not at fault for the willful ignorance of rural voters. No one starts off being smug and condescending to people. This happens after they've tried to explain with civility a thousand times and nothing worked. When ego and pride, not empathy and understanding, are the only things of value to conservatives, liberals resort to contempt. There is nothing left but to resent these people for being pigheaded and small minded. Their world views are set in stone by fox news, and any attempt you make at showing them the truth is deemed as a personal attack.
NOTE: I will be using the word "Liberal" as the US term for "left of center" since you seem to be doing that as well. As such, I'm including people who would not be internationally treated as "liberal". /disclaimer
I will suggest liberal smugness might be exaggerated. Not saying it never happens.
I've spent my entire life in farm towns... deep blue farm towns. I've also worked in Boston for most of my adult life. I have not once seen some so-called "smug liberal" have a problem with my rural roots, nor treat me or farm-town locals like we're idiots. At best, people thought I was crazy to drive 2 hours to work to avoid moving closer to the city.
Even when we talk about deep-red states, we're talking about the membership that empowers and reinforces that deep-red nature... and not every individual. As such, I really think "liberal smugness" is largely a fabrication of conservatives to make them hate and distrust liberals.
There are a few "Liberal" stances that are a bit problematic, you're not wrong. Gun control is substantially different to a person in a city than they are to me, when my hometown outsourced police to the next town over and had no animal control; 20-30 minute response times and police are not equipped to help with pest predators. Nobody looking to ban firearms is looking to create the infrastructure allowing people living in the middle of the woods to live without them. I've never seen a well-focused gun control bill that effectively took the tool-use of firearms in rural America into account. Or the fact that we have population control zones that include our own property, where people with guns need to be here, killing animals (whitetail deer in my area) to prevent a collapse of our local ecosystem.