Which is harder - being liberal and surrounded by conservatives, or vice versa

In My Humble Opinion
141

Here’s what you said:

And here’s what I actually posted:

You’re making quite a leap, wouldn’t you say? You’ve very much misrepresented what I posted. What “extremely hostile” slogan did I describe? Please, tell me.

I can’t answer your question because someone wearing a “fuck the police” t-shirt to a police officer’s home is not being hostile “in the same way” as someone wearing a garment that indicates that that someone is a conservative. Or a Republican.

Me, I wouldn’t permit someone to wear a “fuck the police” t-shirt in my home because my oldest child is learning to read, and that’s all I need, her picking up that word from someone’s t-shirt.

I’m not a conservative, and I don’t feel obligated to defend conservative positions which I do not share. I am, however, capable of discussing issues with conservatives in a productive manner, without an excess of self-righteousness.

My “refusal to answer”? Look, I don’t *owe *you an answer to anything, and in any event, I find it impossible to answer questions that are so loaded up with outrage (real or recreational) and misrepresentations of what I actually said.

I came into this thread to respond to the OP, which said:

In my region, which is pretty much entirely liberal (I mean, except for maybe Berkeley, California, is there a more liberal area than, say, Park Slope, Brooklyn?), I think it’s harder to be conservative. Most people around here hold conservatives in total contempt. Not that they actually know any conservatives. Or working-class people. Or would ever make any effort to get to know any.

You’d fit right in. And you seem to be personally offended by my (entirely accurate) description of the very neighborhood in which I live. Are you familiar with my neighborhood? Do you have any basis on which to claim I’m wrong?

I know my area pretty well, having lived here for decades (and in New York City all of my sixty years on this planet). In many (not all) neighborhoods of this city, conservatives are met with hostility and contempt, sometimes overt. Try wearing a MAGA hat while walking down Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. Walk past the Food Co-op. I would be surprised if someone doing that wasn’t actually assaulted, just for wearing a hat, by the liberal defenders of free speech. Seriously.

142

Sure they do; they are trying to burn the whole country down because they hate most of the people in it.

Conservatives are usually the* attackers.* They hurt other people.

143

Cite?

144

A tweet about Google searches certainly doesn’t disprove the idea that liberal contempt “helped propel” President Trump into office. Try harder with your “data”.

145

The news. History. Everything they do. Gay bashing, attacks on religious minorities, racial violence, pretty much every law they push for or pass.

Conservatism is nothing but an endless rampage of cruelty and hatred directed at the majority of humanity.

Of course; it’s like walking around wearing a swastika or KKK hood. It’s an announcement of bigotry and hatred, and responded to as such; and it’s usually worn to get exactly that reaction. It’s a implicit declaration of war against humanity.

146

Trump hadn’t won the primary yet at the time of that tweet. IMO the broad contempt and double standard we are talking about does not rationally justify those who supported him to that point. And it doesn’t really give an excuse to those who voted for him in November but when given binary options or the choice of sitting out, the counterproductive nature of someone like Pantastic expressing confidence the risk of LGBT-related bigoted violence only exists from the conservative areas becomes apparent. And as Ditka notes, the idea of that tweet disproving the assertion does not logically follow, as we’re only saying this helped Trump.

147

I don’t doubt that many conservatives/Trump supporters have the perception, successfully inculcated by Fox News and other infotainment sources, that liberals have contempt for rural people. I’m challenging two notions – that liberals actually have significantly more contempt for rural people than conservatives or any other group, and that this supposed contempt actually played a significant role in Trump’s election. I don’t buy either notion, and I haven’t seen any data that supports it.

148

Trump voters live in their own media/ideological bubble. It doesn’t matter whether or not other people show them “contempt”, they’ll only hear about how the evil liberals hate them and are all child molesting devil worshipers.

And in reality the problem for decades now is that conservatives have been coddled and treated with constant deference, not with “contempt”. They didn’t vote for Trump because their feelings were hurt, they voted for Trump because they are bigots who hate most of humanity and want to punish the rest of us for existing no matter the cost to themselves.

149

It appears that Scumpup was spot on when he asked '… does “data” mean, in this context, that your opinion differs?"

150

LOL, alrighty then. :rolleyes:

151

Der Trihs, have you ever considered the possibility that…maybe *you’re *the one who’s in a “bubble?”

152

Moderator Note

Der Trihs, a reminder that this thread is supposed to be anecdotes about being a member of Group X surrounded by people of Group Y. Your purpose in this thread seems to be to talk about how terrible you think a certain group is. You are in the wrong thread for that, and it’s only serving as a hijack. Take it elsewhere.

153

Moderator Note

The note above also applies to anyone else who is just interested in ranting about the other side, rather than addressing the OP.

154

You said he wore a ‘conservative’ slogan. Whatever the slogan is, he is identifying himself with outward towards LGBT people, hostility towards poor people, hostility towards women, hostility towards science, and hostility towards the actual planet and future survival of the human race. This isn’t a caricature, as I listed before this is literally what conservatives are pushing for in 2019.

Without knowing the exact slogan, I obviously can’t pick something exactly the same on an ‘offensiveness scale’, so I went for the safe option and picked something significantly less hostile to the group than affiliation with modern conservative policies is to minorities. People with ‘fuck the police’ shirts aren’t actually using institutional power to destroy the lives of law enforcement officers, it’s just blowhard rhetoric. (Hostility towards law enforcement isn’t even a left-right issue, as shown by Jerry Reed’s 1970 non-controversial comedy song about a redneck swamp-dweller killing a cop or the NRA’s comments about ‘jack-booted thugs’ in the 1990s, but it’s something specific).

Then you’re " a jerk and a bully", “kind of a jerk.” and only want to be “friends with people just like” yourself by your own standards, and should put your own house in order before throwing stones at your neighbors for doing what you condemn. From your response to the ‘fuck the police’ shirt, it’s clear that you’re fine in principle with people refusing to do business with or allow into their homes people that are expressing an actively offensive or hostile sentiment on their clothing. It’s just that you find a swear word more offensive than ‘these people should not be treated as fully human,’ or ‘actual science should be forbidden’, I’m guessing because you see that category of people as ‘other’ and so view it as an abstract political position and not an attack on the person.

This seems to be a common thread of discussion from conservatives lately - outrage that people are responding to their incredibly hostile positions by treating them as someone being incredibly hostile. But I don’t see why I should pretend that something like “We need to defend traditional marriage” means anything different than “We want those faggots to stop trying to act like they’re actual people” when that is the real message, or why I should be OK with it.

155

For the last time (really, I hope it’s the last time):

I am not a conservative. I am very, very far from being a conservative.

I do not defend “traditional marriage.” Well, actually, I have nothing whatsoever against traditional marriage (being a man married to a woman myself), but I do not defend, and have never defended, the position that marriage should be restricted to opposite-sex couples.

I do not use the word “faggot” to describe gay people. Or anyone who falls into whatever is included in “LGBTQ.” Ever.

You are building an enormous straw man. Please stop. I responded to the OP quite reasonably, with anecdotal (as requested) evidence that being a conservative where I live could be quite difficult. I stand by that position. Really, what’s so controversial about that? You haven’t even tried to refute that claim, you’ve just gone on and on about how (if I understand you, which admittedly is difficult, and I’m not sure I do) conservatives *deserve *to be treated badly. And that might be an interesting topic for another thread, and please, go start that thread. We might have an interesting conversation.

But the venom you’ve directed at me for observing (accurately) that conservatives are treated rudely in my neighborhood (a neighborhood I’m pretty sure you know nothing about) is utterly unwarranted.

156

Easier for conservatives. Their political discussions can have a foundation of emotion as opposed to logic.

157

Ng. While the modern Republican Party has a strong basis in FUD-based reasoning, I hesitate to claim that the majority of left-wingers are primarily logic-driven either. That said, the illogic of the left tends to be less hurtful overall than the illogic of the right (at least until you get to the extremist fringes, where they’re both dangerously crazy).

158

I generally take issue with the framing here. I think it’s entirely probable that the average* conservative in a liberal area will get more shit than the average* liberal in a conservative area. But… here’s the thing. There’s a reason for that. The current republican party is… well, crazy. Think about the kind of political opinions each party could hold that could lead to someone disowning someone else. With the democrats, there’s… what, abortion? For the republicans, there’s anti-gay discrimination, transphobic discrimination, rampant racism, separating families and throwing children in cages, denying and exacerbating global warming (an ongoing catastrophe), and… I’m just gonna go ahead and say basically anything involving the Trump administration. He just fired his DHS secretary for not being extreme enough for him because she wouldn’t follow his orders when it broke the law, and she was extreme enough to separate families and throw children in cages!

The average republican is forced to deny or excuse atrocities on a daily basis, and having a conversation with them about those atrocities is made almost impossible by the toxic miasma of propaganda and lies that the right-wing media pushes. There is no analogue on the left to any of this.

How would you expect this social dynamic to play out? Say what you will about Obama, but he never pulled a “both sides” on neo-nazis. The Obama O symbol is not an international signal of white supremacy and far-right extremism - the MAGA hat is.

Why would my conservative grandmother want to exclude me from her social circle? I haven’t done anything wrong or evil. But I want her gone from my social circle, because she voted for a president who wants to disenfranchise, delegitimize, and discriminate against me and a great many of my friends.

That’s what’s missing from this dynamic.

And of course, this only applies to things like social violence and shunning. There’s a fair number of liberals who will give you shit over wearing a MAGA hat. Maybe the more extreme ones will try to take it off your head. Y’know what they don’t usually do? Shoot up a predominately white church. Almost all domestic terrorism in 2018 was from far-right groups. If all you care about is “who’s meaner to their neighbors”, you miss this context as well - the other thing that’s happening on the far right is a pipeline of radicalization that pushes individuals within the movement further and further right, towards extremism, violence, and hatred, one that we ignore at our peril. That also seems relevant to this question.

But to come back to what I said at first… I think it’s entirely probable that the average* conservative in a liberal area will get more shit than the average* liberal in a conservative area. Let’s unpack that asterisk, shall we?

*Straight, white, christian, cisgendered.

This dynamic definitely doesn’t apply to LGBT people. This dynamic is drastically reduced and likely to change when dealing with atheists, muslims, or other religious minorities. This dynamic can get really nasty when dealing with non-white people, particularly muslim refugees.

I hope by now we’re all quite aware of the horror stories of people who aren’t like what we envision as the “typical American” living in conservative areas; if not, you should consider reading up on the Anoka-Hennepin school district, or looking into what happens when atheists stand up for their first amendment rights in conservative areas, or the discrimination and violence faced by muslims in conservative communities.

And yes, this is part of the same dynamic! Conservatives often place a high premium on politeness… towards their community. The thing is, if you don’t conform to what they expect - if you’re not white, if you’re gendernonconforming, if you’re a muslim… You’re not part of the community. You’re not welcome in the community. We see this time and time again. We saw it literally tear a community apart in Anoka-Hennepin. Compared to what happened there, getting the cold shoulder from someone who (justifiably) sees your MAGA hat as you supporting international white supremacist movements is nothing.

159

Wow! Isnt this true!. What makes us this way? It’s like we are genetically driven to take the bait when we get trolled. Happens to me all the time, and it offends my god-fearing liberal soul to be such a patsy.

Anybody found a cure?

160

Uh huh. And do you know what that is mostly the result of? Betchya don’t!