The world is full of people raised in loving, kind, caring homes that go on to become rapists, murderers, child molesters, and regular old assholes. There are also people raised in abusive, neglectful, violent, bigoted homes that go on to become decent, kind, generous people (albeit probably carrying some trauma).

Very, very few people are raised in such isolation they don’t have some exposure to society. Even the Amish know and understand there’s a whole diverse world out there. We grant teenagers the benefit of inexperience as they develop and explore their personal identities, sometimes guided with love but still rebellious, sometimes an effort to escape abuse but still labeled rebellious. But eventually we expect individuals to be accountable for their own choices, actions, and beliefs.

Bigots might have networked on social media, and those platform’s owners might have seen an opportunity for profit and power, but they remain angry because their digital bubble gets popped everytime they go out in public and are reminded that real society is not reflective of that. “Woke” is just a by-word for everything outside their worldview. The world’s always been woke because no two people share exactly the same beliefs, some of us just know how to navigate life among others. Propaganda only works if you want to believe it despite a lived experience that says otherwise every single day.

How one was raised and the values impressed on them at an early age might give some indicator of the kind of adult they will become, but time and again we see that it’s no guarantee. We’re more than lived experience, we’re also how we reacted and survived those experiences, how we organize our thoughts and feelings and choose to go forward (or not), whether we stick with the family we were born into or abandon them for peers, and sometimes our genetics and brain chemistry. It’s the double-edged sword of why liberalism can’t eradicate conservatism and conservatism can’t eradicate liberalism; people have free will. They choose what they want to believe and the only universal truth is that people will continue to choose what they want to believe even if every fact, logic, reason, and experience says “you’re wrong”.

We’re at a cultural tipping point because for the past 250yrs in America the white Christian patriarchy has been losing the status they enjoyed as a majority and they’re making a desperate last stand to reclaim it. Most of them know they’re not in the same class as the oligarchs, but money talks and the middle class patriarchy will accept being second rate if their leaders will force everyone else to recognize the hierarchy. They can make the world a miserable place but can’t ever lock it in perpetually. Look at how many Boomers tried to indoctrinate their Gen X and Millenial kids into their bigotry, and how many now have adult children who despise them and don’t allow them to spread their toxicity to their grandkids.

Hold individuals accountable for their own beliefs and actions, otherwise we’re treading dangerous waters pawning off responsibility on phantoms and boogeymen. Blaming social media is like blaming Goebbels for the complicity of the German populace even if they didn’t personally commit an atrocity. You really think they couldn’t see what was going on around them? Those who support it, those who endorse it, those who fail to do even the simplest act and speak out against it, they’re just as responsible as the ones they empowered to do it for them.