I think I wasn't so much thinking of "words" vs. "deeds," although perhaps you have a point there. Thinking about this to myself while walking somewhere yesterday I thought perhaps it could be phrased more that on the east coast there's more of an "us vs. them" mentality, which means some people get treated like "them" but some people get treated like "us," while on the west coast they don't make anyone "them" and what they've lost is that people don't really become an "us." So oddly being more inclusive leads to everyone just being an "I".

When I think about this I'm also often remind of 25th hour, and the rant in the bathroom and how his friends did what he needed them to do when he asked them to.

But this situation at the party really jumped out at me because it was so much like Laura's opinions on a lot of disagreements (with me and others), where what everyone would have thought was really rude would be anyone pointing out that anyone else was being awful and thus breaking the important illusion that we were all nice and friendly.