Curious since I know many Dopers are blues living in red territory or vice versa.
Some differences would be:
[ul]
[li]On the basis of race, a white conservative (since the majority of conservatives are white) can easily blend in in a liberal region (i.e., urban city) without difficulty since being white doesn’t tell people much, if anything about you. But a racial-minority liberal could have it tough in a place like rural Alabama.[/li][li]On the other hand, liberals are likelier to defriend someone on social media over political views. [/li][li]Both sides get their bumper stickers or cars vandalized by the other side.[/li][li]Republicans in the San Francisco area have to behave like Democrats.[/li][/ul]
But anyway…I am asking more for anecdotal stuff. In general, is it harder being blue in a red region (or with red family/friends/bosses/coworkers,) or vice versa?
My father is very conservative, lives in a conservative area, hangs around other conservatives, and watches/reads only only conservative media - and is angrier and more bitter than ever.
Sad, since he’s fixed good for money and is otherwise healthy.
They did an experiment where they had a person walk around a liberal area with a conservative message on their T shirt and vice versa. The person with the conservative message on their shirt got much more verbal abuse. Conservatives are just more tolerant.
I’m certainly convinced by an uncited, third-hand anecdote about a single supposed experiment run by “they” involving what appears to be a grand total of two experimental subjects.
I think a liberal might find it easier because I feel a lot of conservative beliefs are based on stereotypes - and the conservatives who hold these beliefs also believe in exceptionalism.
So a conservative might believe that liberals in general are devil-worshipping gun-stealing communists who force underage children to have abortions and teach homosexuality in the school system. But they’ll also feel that their neighbor, a self-professed liberal, is okay; he’s one of the “good ones”.
Well, a lot of media is focused on riling one’s own voter base up, whether it be liberal or conservative. Funny that people have an insatiable appetite for being angered and provoked into anger, and having high blood pressure and queasy stomach - and then click on more of the same.
IMHO, most liberals don’t go around moralizing or villifying entire groups. If you work with a bunch of liberals, you probably don’t have to worry about what they will think once they find out you have a same-sex partner or a partner who is of a different race than you. And you don’t have to worry if you mention you are an atheist or Muslim. And if you are a member of a stigmatized racial minority group stuck in the midst of conservatives, I suspect you will experience more intense microaggressions. “You don’t support this stupid Black Lives Matter thing, do you? You don’t think racism is still a problem, do you?”
Liberals can be loud and obnoxious too. But overhearing coworkers bash the president for rolling back environmental regulations or separating families at the border is not the same experience as overhearing your coworkers cheer gleefully because now people like you can’t join the military or stay in the country legally. “Lazy welfare leeches taking muh money” is something you are more apt to hear from a conservative. Well, what if you are on welfare? What if you love someone who is on welfare? Are they talking about all entitlements or just certain ones?
This is invalidated by the experiment where they had a group of ten people wear conservative and liberals t-shirts in neighborhoods with opposing ideologies. The people wearing conservative t-shirts in liberal neighborhoods were given free beer and pizza. The people wearing liberal t-shirts in conservative neighborhoods were all murdered.
This post proves that liberals are better than conservatives.
Those are all voter blocs that trend liberal (atheists, Muslims, LGBT, etc). This is like saying, “If you work with a bunch of conservatives, you don’t have to worry about what they would think if they find out you are in the military, or evangelical, or homeschooled.”
Liberals aren’t advocating for legislation banning the military, evangelicals, or homeschooling. There are no mainstream liberal politicians who have publicly bashed these groups just for existing. Like by calling them “SOBs” and saying they should have their citizenship revoked.
Can you really say the same thing about conservatives with respect to sexual and religious minorities? Or people from certain countries? Or people choosing to kneel during the NA to protest police brutality?
Conservatives dish out a vast deal more actual violence than liberals. In that sense, it would be safer to be a lonely conservative.
On the other hand, in my experience, rural and uneducated white people are usually friendlier and more helpful than urban and educated white people, so there is that.
You seem to have taken a great many distasteful fringe beliefs, lumped all them together as being characteristic of conservatives, and proceeded from there. FTR, I believe it would be unpleasant to be a lone X among a group of fringe Y. If the Y group consists of typical only-slightly-to-one-side-or-the-other Americans, I don’t think there would be much to talk about here. My cite is daily life all across this country for the vast majority of its citizens. YMM, and I expect you will claim it does, V.
It really does depend on *which *conservatives and which liberals, doesn’t it.
Some conservatives and liberals have everything they want from society. They have a high income, live in a safe area, have the best medical care available, all the latest toys, and can afford for their kids to go to good colleges.
There’s no reason for them to go out and protest. They may voice their opinion on the internet occasionally but they don’t do anything else.
This is probably the “silent majority”. The people protesting against abortion or demanding white male rights, or the people protesting police shootings and demanding more rights for gays and the transgender are the minority.
With this said - are you going to be more safe as a minority in a conservative bar, or as a person wearing a MAGA T-shirt in a liberal bar?
I think you’re more likely to get your ass kicked by the conservative rednecks. You might be verbally assaulted by the liberals and thrown out by the bouncers but they probably wouldn’t actually beat you.
It needs said that there are assholes of all ideologies. And that encountering a group of these does not prove that everyone of that ideology is an asshole.
Also, people are more likely to be intolerant if they’ve lived their whole life among people who are just like them. Even if they’re not assholes.
I would seem to be a good test case for this question: I’ve usually been liberal on social issues, but more conservative on economics and national security. IME, my liberal friends are probably more tolerant of our disagreements than my conservative friends are. My atheism has definitely cost me more conservative friends than my hawkishness has cost me liberal ones.