It’s an interesting question, and the definition of “harder” is wide open.
Seems to me (based on social media, mostly) that right-wingers’ blood pressure elevates at the mere existence of “Libtards,” and they live their lives in a constant state of furious rage at all the immigrants coming to kill them and all the poor people stealing their tax money to buy food. That can’t be easy.
On the other hand, certain demographics which tend to skew liberal are also demographics more likely to be harmed by actual state and local legislation against the LGBT community, non-Christian religious freedom, reproductive rights, etc., which is still all too common in many red states.
The pro-choice people avoided the laws against it when it was illegal and got abortions in backalley clinics.
Nevertheless, did the pro choice people take up arms or use bombs to kill any pro-life politicians or any members of the police trying to enforce the law?
I do know the pro-life people have done this repeatedly, over and over. They’ve killed women seeking abortions, doctors, bombed clinics, and so on and so forth.
Similarly, with discrimination. Did the anti-discrimination people go to KKK meetings and slaughter the white robed racists in a mass shooting? Did they snipe the police who were using firehoses and dogs against people peacefully protesting?
I don’t recall that in the history books, while obviously the pro-discrimination conservatives did lots of this.
Remember when San Francisco passed Jim Crow laws against conservatives making it impossible for conservatives to vote, serve on juries, hold political office, serve as law enforcement officers, receive police protection from crimes committed by liberals, testify in court, etc?
Me neither.
I’m a white male hetero liberal. I don’t have it ‘that bad’ in conservative areas. But I wouldn’t want to be a black person or a gay person there, especially in the past.
Liberals have gotten a lot more angry in the age of Trump though.
Leftist radicals who committed mindless violence ca. the 1960s (Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Panthers, Weathermen) would probably have described themselves as “anti-discrimination”.
Fair enough. Though SLA apparently killed…a couple people. Literally two. A superintendent and they accidentally killed someone during a bank robbery. Barely a footnote. Black Panthers apparently did some damage, and the Weathermen’s run of terrorism ended with “no civilians were killed in any of the terrorist attacks”…
So far it seems like even the worst liberal terrorists weren’t that bad…
This is that rare instance of the post being the cite, isn’t it? I’m privileged to have been here.
To return to the OP, I’m not sure this one is solvable. It’s never fun being the odd one out. Conversely, it’s almost always possible to find some common ground. Context matters, not all lib-cons, etc, etc.
From a statistical standpoint, right-wingers probably have a higher death toll. But does this make a difference on the everyday life of most liberals in red America? Do they fear being shot or blown up while living or going about in rural Kansas or Montana?
The symmetry you’re expecting does not exist. People who are surrounded by a large number of liberals tend to be liberal. People who are surrounded by a large number of conservatives also tend to be liberal. The people who tend to be conservatives are those who are not surrounded by other people at all. By way of example, the county I live in is both the most liberal and the most conservative in my state: There are more Trump voters here than in any other county, and we have the highest proportion of Clinton voters. On the other end of the scale, the county with the highest proportion of Trump voters has the lowest total number of them.
I would draw a different conclusion from that. I used to wear a hat with a lot of buttons on it. One of the buttons read “Doing my part to piss off the Religious Right”. A lot of people, on seeing my hat, would stop to read the buttons. Those people all laughed at that button and agreed with it. And a lot of people never bothered to read any of the buttons. Those people, needless to say, never commented on any of them. In other words, the reason why conservatives don’t react to liberal messages is that conservatives don’t read.
There is considerable difference in size of text between T-shirt messaging and hat-button messaging. If you wore a T-shirt with large letters saying “Doing my part to piss off the religious Right” it would for sure be noticed. There might not be a reaction, but it would be noticed.
Off the top of my head I would say its easier for a Liberal than a Conservative. We tend to be more vocal and insistent and once we lock on that someone is Conservative we tend to target and single out that person for abuse. And when we have the numbers on our side, we’re like sharks with blood in the water.
Not easy to define unless you’re really into the Koolaid on left or right, in which case the answer is: “obviously those right/left winger give us progressives/conservatives a harder time than vice versa because we’re nicer and better people than they are, as everyone knows”.
In reality like a lot of other things about ‘left/right’ it also has to do with class and region.
For example on the first one, if you are treated differently because of your (apparent) ‘race’ that would seem to be just racism, so back to the obsession of this board (reflecting a lot of US society) with racism, and the general judgement that conservatives are more racist. Which I don’t see a point in rehashing for the millionth time. IOW if it’s easier for a Latino conservative to blend in in a liberal than conservative area, then it’s pretty clearly not about left/right per se.
On the second it’s definitely more of a current concept on the left to shun as morally inferior people who don’t agree with you politically. Because concepts on the left tend to be more centered around morality, the policies which are ‘the right thing to do’. Moral emphasis is not unknown on the right obviously, depending on the person and issue*, but conservatives more often argue in favor of what they think is ‘practical’, ‘consistent with human nature’, ‘has worked traditionally’ and those are inherently less moral and more pragmatic arguments. Note that isn’t a comprehensive judgment on who gives who a harder time, it’s just that people on the left are more likely IMO to believe people on the right are in the moral wrong. I suppose many on this board would say ‘that’s because they are’, but that’s not exactly contradicting the point.
Putting bumper stickers on your car which oppose the general local opinion, especially in a non-upper middle class area but anywhere really, is just not a good idea. I never mess up my cars with stickers and never would even if gteed it wouldn’t attract vandals.
White middle class Republicans in blue coastal areas ‘act like [white middle] Democrats’ in part because they have a lot in common with them culturally. Same with Democrats in red areas. Unless you’re talking about one cultural group v another in the same area, then politics might be as much an expression of that cultural difference as anything else.
And all this depends what you really think is ‘hard’ or what kinds of stuff happens to ideological outliers. Do you lead with your chin (outright foolishly IMO) by publicly emphasizing your political views to strangers when they haven’t asked? Is it the propensity of strangers to ask (again local culture factors in here, in some places it’s ‘friendly’ to have pretty personal conversations with near-strangers, other places it’s weird)? Is it how you deal with friends?
I live in a very liberal area, I’m not at all. I have to do some quick maneuvering out of particular conversations at parties sometimes to avoid offending people if I said what I wanted to. But I’m not all that social, and not at odds with my close family on politics. I don’t go looking for trouble with signs and stickers. So ‘hard’ as in people hassling me, no. Hard as in actual local/state public policies I don’t like and sometimes make me think of moving, yes to some degree. But obviously other people can vote for the policies they want, and I could always move, insofar as local/state policies. Which is a reason IMO both sides should agree to decide things at the lowest level of govt possible, though some things really can’t be done that way.
*abortion though at this point being the major exception. The battle over gay rights is largely over, trans rights while it’s not a non-issue is never going to be a comparable issue to abortion or even gay rights.
Except to the people they killed and the families their victims left behind…and non-civilians aren’t even people, right? What is the magic number of killings where they would go from “weren’t that bad” to “they were bad, too?”
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