this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Hah! That's pretty much exactly what I've said to my (right wing) relatives on a number of occasions but it doesn't work. Does the author not realize that this perspective is very liberal?
Liberals and progressives are the folks with empathy that can't fathom how anyone could vote for Donald Trump; a well-known grifter, actual criminal, tax cheat, and total scumbag who cheated on all of his wives.
I have a ton of empathy yet I still don't understand conservatives. The only thing that makes sense to me is that they're authoritarian and their chosen authority tells them to hate certain people, that any given thing is a conspiracy, and that no government-run program is ever a good thing. But to tell them that to their faces is like telling them that they're stupid and suckers. To them it's incredibly insulting.
Yet when you try to figure out how they (someone who lives off Social Security) came to believe that, "Mexicans are stealing our jobs" it's the only thing that makes sense. They really are suckers. They may have been "smart" at some point in their life but not anymore. They choose how to vote based on anger at imaginary enemies and fake news.
They want Order. Specifically, an Order where everyone is put on the Proper Rung of Society and Keeps to Their Place. And of course their Place is above X (insert minority group here) because they are Special because of Y (insert ridiculous circular reasoning—usually racist—here).
These people literally believe that if Society becomes Unordered, it will collapse. And of course the only ones who can maintain that Order are the Great and Glorious White Men. The proof is that all the richest, most powerful people are White Men! (Any rich, powerful person who isn’t White and Male obviously got there through DEI action or cheating somehow.)
Innuendo Studios has a pretty good video on this in his Alt-Right Playbook series.
Yes, and my favorite example of metaphorically watching the same movie, but seeing a different story is the phrase, "law and order." Plenty of us see the word Order and think of civil order, of happy communities of people going about their business without danger or conflict. The right and alt-right hear Order as social hierarchy. Black Lives Matter is a threat to Order just by existing, as Black people trying to move up to a higher rung on the social ladder than they belong on.
Similarly, we hear Law as rules that everybody follows to ensure peaceful coexistence (order). They hear Law as in "the law," as in the exercise of power by authorities, either to maintain the hierarchy (the old right) or just 'cuz it's fun to hurt people (the alt-right).
Don’t try to equate liberals to understanding the empathy of progressives. Liberals are supporting a genocide as we speak. They’re rightwingers who believe themselves to be on the left. They are not.