# The US is different: The D vs R divide **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 1, 2018, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246 "2018-10-01T07:55:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2018, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246/101 "2018-10-05T15:28:29Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I’m discussing both historical and modern conservatives. And conservatives have targeted entire groups for oppression. Jim Crow would be a good example of this. > > Also how do conservatives feel when their rules directed at out groups are applied to them? Conservatives like to discuss freedom when it is in groups (whites, christians, men, native born Americans, heterosexuals) denying opportunities and priviledge to out groups (anyone not an in group). How do they feel when an out group treats them the way they treat the out groups? > > Muslims demand that the police, military and intelligence agencies crack down on white men, since white men are a major source of domestic terrorism? > > Women demand that the police heavily police men, since men commit 95% of all serious crimes? > > Women promote laws restricting men’s reproductive choices and rights, perhaps laws restricting vasectomies, condom purchases and viagra. > > Muslim bakeries refuse to bake cakes for christian weddings. > > LGBT groups promote laws restricting the ability of christians to marry or adopt children. > > You mention how minorities make up a disproportionate number of gang members. Which is true. But christian white men with conservative politics make up a disproportionate number of domestic terrorists and neo-fascism supporters. Would conservatives support stricter intelligence and police surveillance of all christian white male conservatives due to their higher risk of terrorism and fascism? You bring up some good points, but I think that we do see that sometimes they do. Women vs. men is a great example. Men are incarcerated at extremely high rates and white men are incarcerated at far greater rates than any demographic group of women. They are far more likely to be victims of police violence or stop and frisk policies than women and largely speaking, conservatives don’t particularly care. Similarly, they frequently do argue that all businesses have a right of refusal and that all religious liberties must be protected. For instance, the Alliance Defending Freedom (an ultra-conservative law group) defended Muslim prisoners’ right to grow a beard in prison in Holt v Hobbs. As a whole, they aren’t against police surveillance of white nationalist groups. They also aren’t usually against birth control, they are against having to pay for it and would likely argue that they wouldn’t expect the government to pay for their condoms either. Keeping in mind that there are subsets of the right that don’t follow those general guidelines, but the majority of the right does. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246/102 "2018-10-05T15:40:44Z")
> [@Surreal](#): > > It’s actually quite rare for a person you meet in real life in the US to discuss politics at all, as most people here are bored to death by political debates. I have met a few people who could steer just about any innocuous conversation into a heated political discussion, but these individuals clearly didn’t have much going for them in life. Perhaps they were trying to find someone else to blame for all of their personal failings in life, and political conspiracy theories serve that need. > > By contrast, people who are mentally healthy and have successful careers/friendships/finances/relationships don’t seem all that interested in politics. They have better things to do with their time. Speak for yourself, mentally healthy expert on everyone they don’t know. I am not “bored to death” by politics, and neither is anyone else I know personally. We are terrified and despairing. We see our country ruled with triumph by the utterly despicable. How is that boring? How is it boring to watch what we have been so accustomed to believing as the greatest bastion of democracy and progress in the world plummet toward fascism? If you are bored, you are clearly one of the very people who are part of the reason we despair. And if you think it is a small minority of fringe people who are despairing, furious, grieving, you simply could not be more wrong. If you want data, or photographs, just say so. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2018, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246/103 "2018-10-05T16:49:11Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > They may claim they support equality One might say the kind of equality that bars sleeping under bridges to both the rich and the poor … ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2018, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246/104 "2018-10-05T18:04:01Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Firstly, I’m not defending anything. I’m not conservative and have not voted for a Republican for more than a local election since 1996. I’m attempting to explain the difference in mindset. You are denying the reality that the law I cited was designed to, and does, specifically target minorities for disenfranchisement. It’s documented in email and ruled on by a court that that is what happened. You are, in fact, defending an explicitly racist law by claiming that it is not racially motivated, and that it has something to do instead with a collective vs individual viewpoint. You also made the false claim that conservatives do not tolerate laws that target minorities specifically, which is a defense of their position. But contrary to your assertion, I provided a clear, well-documented example that such laws are, in fact, tolerated and cheered by Republicans. > [@](#): > > Let’s go back to the basketball analogy. In 1944, goaltending was introduced into the game (Goaltending is when you block a shot when it’s on its downward trajectory so above the rim, but on its way down.) It was introduced specifically because of a man named George Mikan who was exceptionally tall and had an exceptionally high jump and so was able to defend by sitting at the rim. Not a good analogy. To be analagous with the law I mentioned, you’d need to have a situation where multiple people were able to defend by sitting at the rim with a variety of techniques, and the rule makers made a documented request for information about the races of which people use which technique for sitting at the rim, then issued a rule that only blocked the methods typically used for sitting at the rim by black people and allowed the ways typically used by white people, even though the way used by white people had more issues. If you just block a particular technique that’s not in widespread use that you don’t want to see, like in your example, there’s clearly a non-racially-targetted explanation for it. But it’s different if you block only the techniques used predominately by blacks and not the ones used primarily by whites even though the one used primarily by whites has the causes the most trouble that you claim you’re trying to fix with the rule. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2018, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246/105 "2018-10-06T13:11:54Z")
> [@EscAlaMike](#): > > I don’t know. I think a man putting on a dress and walking into a “redneck bar” is a pretty strong political/cultural statement. […] For some men, a dress is the clothing they feel right in. I get to wear clothing that feels correct to me, so why shouldn’t the hypothetical person in this example be allowed to? OK, so, this person exists someplace, they are dressed in the way they find appropriate. Are they not allowed to simply exist in a “redneck bar”? Maybe a person making a “pretty strong political/cultural statement” is committing themselves to having to handle whatever reaction they provoke. But our hypothetical person here hasn’t said a word, they have merely walked in. I think your post describes a place where certain people just aren’t allowed to exist. Minoritized people often experience this, from “driving while black” to hostile work environments to “why do they have to shove it in our faces”. Part of the right-left divide is seeing this situation differently. Literally, about our hypothetical person - why is simply existing in a location a pretty strong statement? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246/106 "2018-10-10T07:12:06Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > The political divide in the U.S. is an urban-rural divide. That’s the biggest factor to determining whether you’re on the left or right. If you are from a rural area or your personality is deeply rooted in rural culture, then it’s very likely you’re on the right. The political system has from the very beginning given rural people disproportionate power in the country, and they’re fighting to keep it. While this has always been more or less true, it was much less so in the beginning, because the population distribution wasn’t nearly so uneven as it is today. The entire country was rural and nearly everyone worked at farming. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246/107 "2018-10-10T07:27:35Z")
One problem I see with the left is that its “official” media outlets, e.g. _Democracy Now_ are too often covering our foreign policy gaffes and interminable wars on the other side of the world, albeit justly, when at times like this I think they should concentrate on what’s happening right here. There’s nothing wrong with protesting the war, but it does little for the people at home who will be directly harmed by the loss of access to healthcare, effective unions, environmental protections, net neutrality, etc., etc., etc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-us-is-different-the-d-vs-r-divide/822246.md?page=5)