If I see any emotion out of liberals and so-called "progressives" lately, it's disdain and utter contempt for the rubes that dare to disagree with them. Sheer, unadulterated arrogance. It's why the gun debate, for instance, is only partially about guns. It's also part of a Kulturkampf where every aspect of conservative or working-class values is to be branded as an expression of ignorance or moral deficiency which needs to be reformed. Which is a brand of bigotry that dares not speak its name when the other side is arguing things like "minorities can't be racists because they're oppressed." Rather than engage with the arguments against their position, much of the Left reflexively assumes that these arguments come from insecurities, mental deficiencies, and so on. If gun owners are just insecure people with anger issues and small penises, their opinions don't matter. If devoutly religious people don't want to bake a wedding cake, they're just slaves to a regressive fairy tale Mommy and Daddy told them, so their opinions don't matter. Honest patriotism is mocked as "'Murica!" You can't possibly have an opinion worth including in the discussion unless you make the right choices at Whole Foods.
This doesn't mean that all of the ideas of the modern Left are invalid, but they've been implemented in a way that is leaving broad swaths of society feeling pissed off, marginalized, and condescended to. And then when they vote in a manner that expresses that anger, they get told that they have no right to feel the way they feel, and that doing so is wrong. You think this is supposed to persuade people? Hell no, it's just going to piss them off even more.
