davmat: Try to imagine that not everyone is the same among those who identify themselves as conservative.
M: This would be as obvious for liberals as conservatives.
d: Where does the line start that makes one conservative and then immediately subject to all of the accusations we read about here?
M: Obviously not any one liberal or conservative would qualify for all accusations directed at either so I will speak only for those accusations which, by the way, I call factual descriptions of conservatives, factual, that is, because they have been statistically verified by scientific research into liberal conservative differences. In the notion of statistical truth we find your problem.
You want to focus on and defend the anomaly. I want to express what is statistically different, and further, why it is not only different but dangerous.
d: Why do you think just because one is to the right of you, they have a mental illness?
M: When I see a group of people who identify themselves as Republican faced with say, a pending ecological disaster called Global Warming, stick their heads in the sand and show the world their assholes, I don't call them mentally ill, I call them insane. They inhabit a self created and self reinforced altered reality that does not exist, and because they have and want more and more political power, I see the extinction of everything of value and the deaths of millions and billions of future children. I hold such folk in complete, total, and utter contempt. For the sake of their ego gratification and emotional security, they will commit mass murder and genocide and deny it all the way.
There are a lot of people to the right of me who would not do this. And I am not engaged in a war between left and right. I am engaged right now with what is the real enemy, Republican denial of reality. The only reason to support liberal politicians is that they are more amenable to scientific data. No matter how deluded a liberal, statistically speaking, is, facts can change his or her mind. Factual data cannot affect the kinds of Republicans of which I speak. Are you one of those?
d: It just does not add up so easily. You seem to take the worst among the right, and apply that to everyone, which then provides your brain an easy and comfortable way to dismiss anything they say.
M: Statistically proven to be impervious to reality, sorry.
d: You are protecting some emotion inside yourself if you need such a crutch to handle so many tens of millions of people who happen to have a different world view, yet if you were to sit down and meet one or two of them, you would surely think they are very much like you with the same wants and needs in life.
M: I have said as much many many times. People project when they are not aware of what they are feeling, when what they really feel runs counter to their egotistically constructed self image, when they live in a state of repression and the feelings they deny seem to motivate other people they see. You may be doing this but I would bet I have been places in my unconscious that you can't imagine. I don't want to make that an absolute, and I'm indifferent to the truth of it because what I know was a gift for which I can take no personal credit. Let's just say I know what it is to uncork rage. Hehehehehe Very cathartic, I assure you, makes you giggle.
d: The struggle for these wants and needs and its commonality among the right and left is greater than any differences, wouldn't you agree?
M: The whole point is that is no longer true. The scientific evidence says otherwise. This is the cliffs of the story:
Conservatives practice 5 or 6 moral tonalities with only two in common with liberals. The two they share are individualistic the odd ones out are about in group stability and reinforcement. In short, conservatives have morality that make them powerful team players, with all the evolutionary benefits that implies, and conservatives and liberals work well together when faced with external threat, like the cold war. But without an external threat, this team mentality turns against liberals. The other half of the league of Americans becomes the enemy. This is madness and suicide.
d: If you were to take a typical liberal and a typical conservative and visit some tribe in Africa for a week, what differences do you think the tribe would find between the two?
M: They would send the liberal packing and eat the conservative.
d: And as always, I imagine you sometimes make the easy, and quite understandable, mistake of thinking the Republicans you see on TV or read about online are in any significant way representative of true conservatism.
M: No I read the scientific literature on brain differences between people who self report as conservative and liberal. I make the assumption that what a person says he or she is is what he or she is, that liberal and conservative are self definitions and that folk who self identify differently are in fact different according to the scientific data.
d: They are not, having whored themselves to the religious right. True conservatives don't even want religion in the same paragraph, let alone sentence, as religion.
M: Pardon me if I do not take my definition of conservative from just one conservative who wants to tell me what a conservative really is.
d: Of course I could be wrong, I don't pretend to know someone to such a high degree just because I read some of their posts online and thus think I am qualified to psychoanalyze an entire political leaning that comprises tens of millions of people. Now THAT... would be crazy and a sign of mental defect.
M: Indeed it would. But we are not talking about psychoanalysis, we are talking about neurological research that has been checked and verified. You can look at the brains of self reported conservatives and liberals and see the physical difference and note that where those differences lie, the function of the parts of the brain that are different, have implications that show up in questionnaires about how each group thinks. A simple example is that the right amigdala of conservatives in larger than in liberals and that is the part of the brain that generates fear. If you test liberals and conservatives with photographs of beauty and horror, the conservatives will spend more time examining the photos of horror. Coincidence? I think not.
d: In short, we are much more alike than different, way more than you would probably be comfortable admitting to.
M: What poster on this forum says over and over that we are all the same?
d: And I think if people could be honest about this, we could put aside this stupid sport of partisan bullshit and turn our eyes back to where they should be.... Washington DC.
M: No that is not where the problem is. The problem is that Republicans are destroying the nation because they are engaged in in-group building the Republican team by demonizing all who don't support their in-team thinking. Modern day Republicans have become dangerous to the nation and it is their demonization of others that is the problem. Lacking an external threat to focus their attention on, they have become monsters.
So while you are different from the total loons in your party, you are still not up to speed on the problem.
I would be most happy to discuss the issue rationally but at the moment I see no hope. The altered reality that is the present Republican party can't be penetrated by reason. The only solution that I can see is a stronger dose of the same medicine they dish, complete and utter contempt so long as they demonize others. The modern day Republican is a disease. You have to fight fire with fire and most liberals are fucking worthless at it. But since I'm a severely conservative liberal, it's easy for me. Liberals are revolted by the conservative morality but not me. I vow to save all conservative beings. Contempt for personal irresponsibility and tough love are my middle name, but you can call me Daddy.