>>521338006
Born in Florida, raised in Texas. Empathy just isn't something he's ever encountered in his life.
Not that he isn't a lot more rational and reasonable than most right-wing commentators - I actually agree with him a lot - but every so often he says something that reminds me the culture he comes from is just... well, trash.
I mean, I wish I could find a better way to describe it but Florida just seems to churn out deeply materialistic, shallow, and self-centred people. Texas is a little better in that they actually seem to put some stock in conservative values like self-reliance and community but overall I'd say the defining feature of the state is empty machismo. Like, fat white guys living in suburban Houston with a gun collection worth over $20k who are convinced that niggers are going to break in to rape and murder their family any day now even though they live in the safest, whitest neighbourhood imaginable. And would probably shoot themselves in the leg if anyone ever actually did break into their home anyway. Out in the boondocks the machismo is a little less empty but they're so pig ignorant that joining the Marines to serve America's corporate overlords is about all they're good for.
Take a quiet, intelligent, not particularly athletic boy who, if he'd been born in a Northern state, would have had a friend group of other quiet, intelligent boys and gone on to study engineering or something and have a normal middle class life. Then dump him into what is essentially a trailer park with delusions of grandeur, where football is king and casual cruelty and bullying is not just accepted but encouraged, and this what you get: an alienated shut in who plays video games all day because he can't relate to the toxic people around him, but who's still been exposed to them enough that he perpetuates some aspects of their shitty worldview.