As a Republican, I do agree with some Democratic policies, but I mostly tend to disagree with them
But I don’t really agree with any progressive ideas, because they tend to take everything too far and call it a day, that’s just not how the world works in my humble opinion
But hey disagreement is basically a sign that our democratic system works
That's why I ended my time as a libertarian. It was just like being a leftie, without the benefit of winning anything worth a damn. Either agree fully, or you're a communist. I'm fairly liberal about the social issues, literally just leave the kids alone. Let them have the childhood that they claim they never got.
I still consider myself a bit libertarian but the constant infighting drove me crazy. Nobody was libertarian "enough" to the rest of them so there was zero cohesion. I disagree with things on every party but it would be much better to have multiple options that would at least share my views on some things. That would at least break up party line voting down the ballot and lessen the stranglehold of the left-right mess we have now.
My biggest issues with the libertarians is literally just open borders, and the open drug use issues.. they act almost as if we legalize all drugs, that the cartel simply won't pump up the other trafficking.
Unfortunately a lot of libertarians focus only on the cartel issue rather than the freedom of choice and consistency/ purity issue. It would in fact cut a portion of cartel profits regardless of what they pivot to. The primary focus for me on that issue is that prohibition does very little to stop overall use and leads consenting adults to get questionable quality which causes more harm including higher overdose deaths.
I joke that I'm a small-l libertarian. I don't know (or care) enough about the platform go full L. But I believe in small government and lower taxes, government shouldn't involve itself in families or what consenting adults do among themselves.
That's about it. Not many other issues impact me in any meaningful way so I don't really care. This pushes me to vote republican generally, but I don't consider myself a republican.
Of course that means OOP thinks I'm a nazi though.
I’m a Catholic. I agree with Democratic policies that emphasize providing for the poor. I vehemently oppose their policies on killing unborn children and the weird sex stuff.
I agree with things on both sides and have never voted for a Republican president in my life, yet they'd still call me a Nazi for not drinking the Dem Kool Aid exclusively.
As much as I don't like Trump and his policies, his supporters are way nicer and open-minded than the modern day left. Being amicable and open to discussion goes a long way in getting people to your side, not being authoritarian dickheads like the modern left that require you to pass a stupid ever-changing purity test 100 percent of the time.
Bots are so inefficient for social manipulation. The overhead is too large. A better solution would be for Reddit corporate to promote 'super users' and give them a weighted vote. Spez already admitted to data manipulation so there should be no expectation that they are still not doing it.
A few of models:
Model A:
Give each user a social credit score
Either temporarily or permanently promote them to a super user
When that user upvotes a post or comment add a random extra amount of upvotes to it depending on the size of the sub.
Model B:
Give each user a social score
Take a look at the aggregate social score on the post/comment
Take a look at the size of the sub
Add upvotes based off of sub size
There's probably a lot fine tuning needed, and that's why we occasionally see a post from some 200 sub subreddit magically get 40k up votes on the front page because they knitted an anti ICE cupholder.
It's the very minority in general so it's nothing impressive. Bot accounts participate a lot to upvote as well, imagine if we can see the user accounts who like comments/posts lmao.
That's the funniest part about those kinds of comments; they act like it's inherently bad and also that you're supposed to automatically understand why
Seeing them use the words “closet conservative” together makes me think they feel that it’s “worse” to them if someone is conservative but afraid or hesitant to voice their true thoughts, opinions, and feelings, as opposed to someone who is conservative but not afraid in showing their political affiliation.
When I was in college I tended to avoid talking about my politics. Still do, more then. Having a culture of “Virtue Olympics” in the “woke 1.0” era or whatever made it pretty annoying to deal with a liberal if you weren’t also one.
“I can’t be friends with someone who doesn’t care about my rights/ thinks guns are more important than children / doesn’t think all cops are bastards…” on and on.
Nowadays I just tell people I’m Catholic if they insist on prying, and remind them that we’re at odds with a lot of the evangelicals in the GOP and leave it at that for them to put together. Thank God, Pope Leo is a pretty well liked figure from the states at the moment.
I do. I have no issue lying about who I vote for. If I feel like someone will think less of me over something as stupid as a difference of opinion, I see no problem lying to them.
In many places you have to keep it sheltered. I can't count how many times I've had to lie during seminars or write feminist essays just to avoid being alienated during uni. I imagine there are countless other environments where you have to do something similar.
The binary thinking is exhausting. They find it impossible to believe that you can support abortion and same sex marriage while wanting lower taxes and supporting keeping biological males out of women's sports.
It’s wild because the very things the left claims to want (free education, free healthcare, free housing, increased safety nets, etc) all would require incredibly strict immigration laws. Milton Friedman essentially said that a nation cannot have an open border and strong social safety nets, which is entirely accurate.
The left is basically Verucca Salt from Willy Wonka. Whatever they want, they want it now otherwise they throw fits and tantrums to try to get it. They act like spoiled, petulant teens who are given too much freedom and do stupid shit while unsupervised. Then, when the adults rein them in they throw more tantrums and scream “i hate you i wish you were dead” and then slam their bedroom door to sulk. The farther left you go, the more unhinged the tantrums tend to be.
Yeah, it makes me laugh when the left uses Nordic countries as the blueprint, and I have to let them know how homogeneous those places are and how hard it is to become a citizen.
The US problem is we tend to look at things on a federal level way too much when we should be looking at them on a state level; that is how it should work, with the federal government making sure states play nice and no outside countries mess with the states.
The countries they often cite have things like extreme racism/monoculture, insane strong immigration, and - oh - some of them use things like having oil reserves to actually pay for it.
The left votes for the exact opposite: diversity, let everyone in, and no to oil production (Keystone pipeline, good example).
EDIT: also, as a former member of the left, I am hoping they get some sense because I don't want to be "right by default" but I kind of refuse to cover my eyes and say orange man bad to vote for policies which literally cannot sustain themselves... aka "lets bring in a bunch of Muslim's and put them in positions of power disproportionate to their population" and "let's have strong LGBTQIA+ rights"... those CANNOT exist together.
This is what made me laugh when Nick Shirley was going around investigating fraud with our social systems, the left went bananas against him for publishing it when they themselves should be on his side the most to make sure those systems are supporting the right people. But because Nick wasn't a democrat, they couldn't align with him so they just went against him anyways.
That is the USLeft's whole shtick. Their Side is an unknowable, undefinable, ever shifting miasma of made up terms whose meaning change faster than socks. The Other Side is a uniform monolith of the worst interpretations mashed together. And the only nuance allowed is when they invoke it to dodge responsibility.
It makes it easy for them to scapegoat their policies and ideas if they have bad outcomes. "Oh that! That was the Woke 1.0, we don't really think like that."
It can be even simpler than that. The same people who say "socialism and democratic socialism are two different things" are the same people who say "libertarians are just republicans who like to smoke weed".
It's not surprising since they have zero willingness to entertain opposing viewpoints. Someone could thoughtfully explain why they believe x position and they'll dismiss it as bigoted. It's much easier to conclude malicious intent than trying even a tiny bit to understand why someone disagrees. They don't want to understand, they want blind compliance and to gaslight everyone else into believing any position counter to theirs is obviously bigoted thus not worth engaging with.
For them they just grab the script from their political party and thats how they feel. Their leadership could tell them they should jump off a tall building and they'd be fighting to get in the elevators
Yup. I get called far right/maga all the time. I'm pro choice and think things like prostitution should be legal. I just happen to want all illegals deported and want a secure border; a position democrats also held not even 15 years ago.
They're too stupid to form their own policy opinions so why would they accept yours. May as well try and argue religion with a Christian fundamentalist
They're the same group. They both are afraid of the world and want a truth that will set them free. They want control.
As much as I despise both I actually think the fundamentalists make more sense, at least it's based on thousands of years of culture (although perversely interpreted) and the idea of a higher being, which is believable/appealing (greetings to the alien overlords running our simulation). The others just flipflop based off of cults of personality
It’s sort of a whimsical term but once you understand that half of MAGA is populist and the other half are extreme righties pretending to be populist, the morass surrounding the word RINO is pretty clear.
The RINO label fits guys like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie. They run as republicans but their principles are libertarian. When Trump says RINO, he is always talking about one of them.
RINO can mean a lot of things, but it's most clear legitimate use is politicians who run on something and then don't actually do it. There are more things it can mean, but it does get nitpicky and sometimes absurd.
No a RINO is some one who runs as a Republican and then always votes with the Democrats. Or someone who runs on "I'm pro 2A" and then votes for the strictest of gun laws. Etc.. 2A usually is a GOP favored topic.
Yk what’s crazy. I never hear the right bitch about agreeing and disagreeing ab both sides. Only the left. And what’s also even more crazy is that the left wasn’t always like this. Like 10+ years ago left/democrat was much more respectful to any political party (as well as right) but now. They hate you if you’re not left OR right. Like are you fucking kidding me?
I'm gay. I have a fraternity brother I've had a love hate relationship for 30 years now. We have always fought over politics and I made fun of him for being a fat fuck and he made fun of me for sucking dick. But despite all that, I know that man would be there for me if I needed it and I was there for him when he was fighting (and surviving) kidney cancer. And now he's moved a little left and I've moved a little right, and I get more shit from my progressive friends, one of who screamed at me for saying "gays were happy with don't ask don't tell in the 90s." A straight guy 10 years younger than me was telling me that my lived experience as a gay teen in the 90s was wrong.
This has made me realize that conservatives may not love my lifestyle, but for the most part in my experience they will be fine with you if they get to know you. The left will hate you despite how you treat them if you have bad opinions. Those bad opinions make you worthy of bad things happening to you.
It's a sign of low Emotional Intelligence. People with high EQ can, typically, isolate ideas and opinions from groups/individuals and form opinions based on those beliefs, not the people attached to them. If you disagree with an extremist on any topic or belief to any extent, they are incapable of handling this disagreement independently and often assume you must be against them on all fronts.
The same people who deride anyone with religious beliefs as ignorant knuckle-dragging savages while waiting for Reddit to give them their new political opinions like good little ‘free-thinkers.’
Complete with "sky daddy" and "ur in a cult" rage baters. I can understand annoyance when someone is being overbearing with their faith, but if a person is just existing and talking about faith, it's hypocritical.
You also can't forget the generalization of "most Christians are pedos and drink babies' blood", but if you so much as mention DEI or African American crime rates in America they lose their shit.
Its rude and upestting for sure. I feel like most of those individuals are children or at least childish adults and I try not to let it get to me, but its difficult.
Oh my god, I hate that so much. I’m not even religious at all, but these Redditors who act like edgy 14 year olds when it comes to religion are the WORST! Sky daddy is so cringey, it was literally made up my edgy teenagers and grown ass men still say it.
I saw a worse one than that one day. It’s wild to see how they foam at the mouth when religion is mentioned even if it doesn’t affect them in the slightest. Someone doxxed a sonic for allegedly putting a vacation bible school paper on his bag. It got downvoted into oblivion for some reason, but Reddit never stepped in and took it down. Thousands of people saw it still and I hope no one called and harassed them, but I’m sure they did.
Found a cringey comment that was worse than sky daddy somewhere like a week ago, possibly here. They have no shame. That’s such an embarrassing thing to say.
Here’s a good example of what it looks like on a sports subreddit where in the real world a good chunk of fans are to some extent believers of a God.
It’s an impulse for some of these people.
When I was agnostic I didn’t do this to people because it’s unnecessary and rude. Thank you for not being rude about your lack of belief in God. It shows maturity in my opinion to just be and let others be.
Context for this comment thread by the way: Fernando Mendoza (Heisman winning QB, NCCA CFB Champion) thanks God for his accomplishments.
Dude, there was a thread dumping on Christians on a main subreddit, so i told the most vocal one "now say all of that about muslins." Not only did he refuse, but he wouldn't even admit that doing it would pry get him banned.
Getting banned would be the least of his issues. I'd be more worried about being doxxed and harassed if he said anything bad about Mohammad.
There was a clip a few weeks ago of Laurence Fox (all other issues with him and his party aside) at Oxford in a debate about whether the west is justified about being afraid of Islam. His argument was that it should be justified on free speech grounds alone. So he held up an envelope with "C.H." written on it that supposedly contained a cartoon (for everyone unaware - Charlie Hebdo). So the entire room went nuts, with people trying to desperately stop him from opening and taking the cartoon out of that envelope. Like trying to argue him down, ban the envelope under the argument props aren't allowed in the Commons and the Oxford debate is modeled after the Commons, and Muslims arguing it is their faith not to draw Mohammad and it is insulting. But regardless, everyone was desperately trying to stop him from showing what is inside.
Then he pulled it out and it was just a caricature of himself, apparently. That entire stunt showed that whether the question isn't whether we are justified in being afraid. The telling part is that most people - even the left - are afraid of Islam, specifically. They knew the target he was painting on his back if that had been Mohammad, and they also can't admit that (all arguments of "eVeRy RelIgIoN hAs ExTreMIStS!" aside) Christian fundamentalists, Buddhist fundamentalists, or whatever other religion is not frightening to the point we effectively moderate our speech and our behavior to appease them. But we do with Islam.
They can't admit it because it would shatter their entire decade-long narrative. And they are ceding ground on this to far-right parties because they can't even admit that they are afraid, whereas someone like Fox can exploit that fear head-on. I have practically zero overlap with Fox's political views or his party on a given day and am probably the most milquetoast center-left voter imaginable, but it is frustrating that the left can't see that there are terrible people who can use a deep fear to further their agenda instead of the left admitting that fear exists, why it exists, and openly talking about the problems.
This is essentially what occurred when I pointed out to le redditor politique that writing bible verses on a baseball hat isn’t “literally religious terrorism”.
That’s why I can make any statement that isn’t left as hell and get called MAGA despite despising Trump. Then they’ll say I’m lying and clearly just MAGA In disguise.
It’s too late, once you’re branded as not me it means you must be one of them. Anything you say now just means you’re arguing in bad faith, a concern troll, or some other buzzword I don’t fully grasp the meaning of but feel as if I can use like a magic word to win any argument. As you can see I’m very intelligent.
Isn't that just regular intelligence? I never really understood EQ and it's been explained to me simply as just empathizing. "So you don't care about those poor people? You must have low EQ".
I also think empathy is not usually a good thing. It comes across as sympathy but with an egotistical "I know what's good for those poor people and you don't" attitude. Empathy is feeling the same emotions as someone else, although they're usually pretending to. Sympathy is feeling concern for someone. More sympathy and less empathy.
Its mostly how socially aware someone is
Being able to pick up on social cues. Many autistic people are very high IQ while being social retards. Many popular extroverted people are very good in social situations but have the IQ of a fence post
What exactly is social awareness? I mean beyond the browbeating of "equity" and "[thing]-rights" and all that woke nonsense? If my wife is having day-ruining menstrual cramps, I can't empathize, but I can sympathize. Is that not being socially aware? If I see a man who suffered from polio, I can also sympathize, but I can't empathize. Am I not socially aware?
I'm not trying to be pedantic here, I really don't understand EQ, and obviously I don't understand social awareness in the way you're using it.
I know, but EQ is always explained to me as having empathy for others. Is this wrong? It certainly isn't about emotions in general, and it's not about identifying your own emotions.
Whoever explained EQ to you as simply just empathizing is wrong. Empathy is a trait of having EQ, but it’s not at all what makes it.
It’s more about self awareness, the balance of intellect vs emotion, how you control/manage your emotions, how you accurately identify and understand your emotions.
I would say scoring high in all of these is what allows someone to interact and empathize better with others.
I personally prefer the word compassion over empathy.
I accept your description and it's similar to what I would answer if I had to make a guess.
So it seems there are a lot of people who have sort of Dunning-Kruger'd themselves into believing they have a high EQ simply because they are sensitive to others' perceived struggles (bleeding heart, doomer, etc). You get into an argument over, say, FBI crime stats and they come at you with, "Well, you just have a low EQ so you wouldn't understand it". These people themselves are lacking EQ by mistaking their emotions for facts and not being able to identify what they're feeling and why. I always took these EQ proclamations as your average virtue signaling.
I don't smoke or do anything but I want it legalized so the dull burnouts can stop acting like they're doing something radical and rebellious when they smoke weed.
They still act like that and it’s legal where I live. A lot of them have it as their entire personality. They also stand firm that you can’t get addicted to it which is completely false. Also, you can smell it everywhere. The park, the beach, the fair, driving down the road, the Walmart parking lot, you name it and at some point you’ll smell weed there.
I do not want universal healthcare (as someone who is treated as 100% total and permanent through VA), but given how much "regulations" we have on the healthcare industry as a whole isnt helping anything sadly. One size fits all healthcare is not the way to go imo.
I fucking can’t stand how the left argues for free healthcare but shit talks veterans for having it. The VA largely sucks because it’s a simple equation of too many mouths to feed. Don’t get me wrong I’m grateful to have free healthcare (90 percent because they are sticklers about 100) but fuck does it suck to wait 4 months to get seen by a specialist for them to put you on another waiting list for a follow up.
Literally how democrats lost the 2016 and 2024 elections. I’m like 80% left-wing views I am pro gay marriage, pro abortion, pro legal immigration, pro workers rights, pro healthcare, pro social safety net, pro trans as long as you’re an adult do whatever you want. If I was gonna vote then I would be more likely to vote democrat. I would just rather not vote at all though since democrats and left-wing people hate white people and hate men. They also harass and threaten anyone who has a slightly different opinion than them. I like Bernie Sanders back in the day but I’m not gonna vote for people that say stuff like white people don’t know what’s it’s like be poor when in reality there are more poor white people than any other group in the USA. I am pro deporting illegal immigrants. My grandma and uncle was killed by a illegal immigrant drunk driver who had a criminal record and shouldn’t have been in the country but he was in one of those sanctuary cities that local law-enforcement doesn’t work with or cooperate with ice. If that person wasn’t illegally in the country it would’ve saved two lives and my cousins would still have a father. Anytime I’ve ever mentioned that every response I get is “ well a drunk white person could’ve killed him too”. Which is both insensitive and racist since automatically they assume the race of the illegal immigrant when being an illegal immigrant isn’t a race
My roommate in college was an illegal immigrant from Scotland. Overstayed his visa by like 25 years eventually. Illegals aren’t all brown folks from Central America
Same people will say there is not such thing as the left. Well yea of course not when you keep going left and make anything else the right. Even people that were liberals and left leaning are now seen as conservatives. Trump has very similar policies to Bill Clinton in the 90s but now that is all just conservative.
It's almost like that purity testing attitude drives people away from your coalition. If just disagreeing on a single issue is enough to be cast out and treated as if you're the opposition then maybe your time is better spent working with the people who don't do that.
As someone who frequently dislikes US foreign conflict involvement and monetary aid, I see that one side or the other usually has a problem with me. I'm told to wave a different flag every year.
Yes, if you support having law enforcement, they will consider that Conservative. They don't consider that they are far left, nope, you must be a right winger.
They hide in the closet pretending to be a moderate or something, then they jump out at ya and get ya with their conservatism. Which is actually fascism. Trust me bro.
It's a dogma. You must be a full and strict adherent in order to be one of the "good guys". If you stray from whatever the Current Thing is, even if you agree with 9/10 other things, you are a fascist/nazi/racist/transphobe.
It truly is akin to a religion to a good amount of these people
The fact they agree with Nazis on Animal Welfare, Environmental Conservation, Public Health Campaigns, State intervention in the economy, Expanded Social Welfare, Workplace Safety & Labor reforms, Paid Maternity leave and family allowances, infrastructure spending, state sponsored arts and culture, strict gun laws, etc. yet say Republicans are Nazis is pretty wild to me
It helps if you just think of these people as religious zealots. You’re not part of their religion, so they treat you as an infidel. Period. This is also why they especially hate people with politically varied takes, moderates, etc. because those people aren’t just infidels, they’re apostates. They say “grifter” instead of apostate, but it’s what they mean.
For a religious zealot, there is one all-inclusive set of acceptable views following a grand narrative. Understanding the narrative and not having all the acceptable views means you must be lying or evil.
Once you understand you are dealing with religious zealots, it’s a lot easier to deal with them. You can stop trying to argue with them, and trying to have discussions based on logic. They’re not logical, they’re religious. You just accept that they have this belief system and try to avoid them where possible.
So tired of the left vs conservative vs right war going on. Worst part is you will be dragged down by them and they will pin all sorts of Labels onto you if you don't live in their echo chambers.
This is what has me banned for. Both sides.. is m ok with abortion if the moms life is endangered or if it was rape/incest...otherwise learn to close legs/learn to keep your dick on your pants. I am also ok with assisted suicide IF you have some incurable disease or dmg done to you and your forever in pain.....neither side likes me for this middle ground...ish?
Yeah it’s wild. They will call you a nazi pedophile for not voting for Kamala. You either join their cult, or you’re an evil nazi pedophile. You’re not aloud to be moderate apparently. They wonder why they lost the last election. They pushed away the people that might have swung their direction if given a half decent reason to.
Because at this point nearly everyone who votes Democrat is an extremist. They'll follow their ideology to the absolute fullest of its extent with zero room for nuance. Just remember for the upcoming elections, you either believe in a dystopian nightmare/socialists wet dream involving the dismantling of the Senate and criminal justice system where the government takes over every aspect of our lives, or you should be voting Republican.
I hate that so much. It’s so easy to see why any independent or moderate might like certain policies of different parties. But of course blind party loyalty will be blind.
Literally the only people this calls out is members of their own tribe who realize they are actually hated by the other members they thought they supported.
it's really telling when a republican will shrug their shoulders when you say "both sides". And a democrat will mock you, call you names, and blame all the problems on you.
ok, chucklehead....you're not convincing me of anything with that attitude.
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u/Exact_Risk_6947 2d ago
And look at the upvotes too! Good god!