I constantly see angry mobs of people decrying “woke”, “critical race theory”, ““grooming””, and whatever other nonsense they made up this week. They march around with guns, constantly appending lib as a prefix to any word they can use to denigrate. They actively plot violence and spew hatred in the open.
You never see the inverse. There is no ConservativesofTiktok getting churches harassed into shutting down for the day or calling in threats. You don’t see cringey boomer memes on the left. And whenever I openly express those feelings, try to create that sentiment; I get shut down. Noone agrees, I’m often shamed and muted. I just don’t understand why that parity exists, it’s extremely isolating to feel so alone in this
Liberals are dismissive of conservatives. You can only hate people so much when you infantilize them.
The right is too angry to listen, and the left is too arrogant to listen.
This is how democracy dies.
Hey we wouldn’t be nearly as smug if these fuckers weren’t throwing their votes at a known grifter and a dog murderer. Back when it was W in charge we could actually talk about issues - now these fuckers jumped the shark.
Arrogant, interesting.
See, the issue to me is that one side comes up with real tangible solutions to problems, while the other side is busy smearing shit on the walls, getting red in the face screaming about deep state this or jew lasers that, and then people like you tell me we should engage those people and treat their ideas with respect and equal levels of severity.
See the issue here?
To listen to what?
Not to the racism and idiocy but to the underlying issues that fuel that anger.
Those underlying issues are what left-wing people are trying to resolve already, though - wealth inequality, poor mental health, too much power in the hands of corporations and the mega-rich, removing outrage politics, etc.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, except maybe we should switch to show not tell. I understand that it’s not as easy as that but over the last let’s say 30 years, how much has the left really improved life for the rural population? And by comparison how much do we preach to them that they’re backwards and their world view is invalid?
It’s exactly as you say, the working class should be an easy win for us on policy, but it hasn’t turned out that way.
You can just say “well they’re stupid that’s what you get” or you can ask yourself why aren’t we getting these people on board while some greasy billionaire can?
I don’t necessarily like to just dismiss people as stupid, but a lack of education and the ability to understand complex issues is both a big issue for these people and a reason why the greasy billionaires can get them on board. Convincing someone that them paying some of their money into a union will actually result in better working conditions and more money for them - rather than just being poorer - is a lot harder and takes more understanding on their part than someone convincing them there’s less money to go around because there are more immigrants, for instance.
On top of that, people like to be able to absolve themselves of personal responsibility if they are given the option to. That’s not exclusive to right-wing people, but when that’s coupled with people wanting simple “explanations” because they don’t understand more complex systems with all their consequences, knock-on effects, etc, it makes it easy for right-wing politicians and media to offer simple scapegoats and get people on board.
To use the immigrants example again: not only is it not your average right-wing voter’s fault in any way - it’s the immigrants’ fault - but also, they don’t personally need to do anything to fix the issue, they just need to let the right-wing politicians get into power and it’ll all be solved for them. It’s all very comforting for them - much more so than being told it’s going to take ten years and some work on their part to improve things.
The ACTUAL left (unlike the arrogant center right to right wing corporate stooges in control of the Dem party falsely claiming to be on the left) SHARE that same anger.
We just don’t blame minorities, secularism, the concept of objective knowledge and a lack of bigotry for what is clearly the fault of mainly rich and powerful white conservative and centrist people.
Fox News and AM Radio
To add to this, the opposite of love is not hate, but ignore.
Giving your energy and attention to hating something typically means that they occupy enough mental real estate in your day to day life that you feel the need to broadcast it on a regular basis.
The liberals I know tend to spend the majority of their free time focusing on improving themselves and the world around them rather than simply target blame somewhere else.