Were social justice warriors responsible for the election outcome?

[Crossless2.0]

I can't help but look at the election results and think, in hindsight, I can't be too surprised.  

Since about 2012 or so, the SJW's have been on the rise; the jerks who use progressive sounding, virtuous buzzwords to justify being jerks.  Before, they were always on the fringe for everyone to laugh at their absurdity.  You can go to Tumblr and find them all over the place and they're increasingly getting more influential on twitter.  But lately, they've been getting more noticed, especially on college campuses.  

It feels like suicide for the democrats and even for the reasonable republicans.  I mean, seriously: white people, like it or not, are the majority here, but in this election cycle, these people turned "white male" into an insult in the name of progressivism.  I don't know how they think a democracy works, but you don't win elections by insulting the majority.  Not to mention, there's the boy-who-cried-wolf effect: we've gotten so used to bratty college kids calling everything racism that when Trump is saying or doing things that are genuinely racist, we ignore it.  Racism is a term that's so over-used that it lost its meaning, opening the doors for legitimate, serious racism.

And the kicker?  Hillary focused on them but ignored the rust belt states that used to be the backbone of the democratic party.  Yeah, the middle class factory workers in Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  Their jobs are suddenly being outsourced to Asian sweatshops and they aren't exactly trained to work the jobs that are replacing them.  Yet, instead of talking about those issues, progressives are dismissing them because they're "white males."  Instead of listening to their concerns, their worries, their issues, they're being chastised for not memorizing a 19-year-old's ten sylable gender identity that he just came up with last week.  Trump, to his credit, actually showed concern for them, claiming he'll back out of Nafta and bring manufacturing back from China (I don't think he'll actually be able to do either, but at least he's showing concern).  You want to flip this election around, have Hillary address labor issues, manufacturing jobs, things like that, and don't just cater to a bunch of spoiled college kids.

The thing SJWs don't seem to get is that the sort of change they wish to effect does not and will not come around by braying in the streets and demonizing everyone who isn't immediately on board with their agendas. Look at what happened in the case of gay marriage. This wasn't directly the result of street protests but came about with a sea change in public attitudes when a significant number of straight people realized that they had loved ones, neighbors, and colleagues for whom this was an important issue. The battle was won in the courts, but the ground had been prepared in countless living rooms and dining room tables throughout the country.

I completely agree that the Democratic party, which used to be the bread-and-butter issues party, has become unmoored. Today they are the party of corporate and banking concerns that dabbles in identity politics to shore up their 'progressive' bona fides. The only real difference between them and the Republicans seems to be which group of intolerant jerks they pander to at election time. PC intolerance is just as obnoxious and poisonous, in my opinion, as right-wing intolerance.

Sadly, I don't know what can be done about the marginalized workers in the rust belt. That horse left the barn a long time ago, and both parties are to blame.