there are definitely cringey liberal boomer memes, they’re all on Facebook.

So you feel alone because you want to make cringey boomer memes and send threatening emails to Churches? I’m confused.

There are militant left movements, but there are just fewer people who align themselves with those movements because Communism and Socialism were basically illegal to talk about for decades, and the conservative fascism is basically just our mainstream government ideology (D or R).

Conservatives are afraid. They (at least the professionals and the GOP as an organisation) are well aware that they are on course to get irrelevent in the future. Not only are their politicians getting older, their voter base is getting older and shrinking. So the try everything in the book to stay relevant: Gerrymandering, reducing access to the voting process fro people who are unlikely to vote for them, etc. And as we all know, fear, or worse, existencial dread, leads to hate for the other side, the group of people seen as their very threat to their existence.

They are basically cornered rats, clawing and biting the pest control man.

USA here. They’d likely consider this to be extremely patronizing, but I consider most conservative voters to be unaware of what it is they are actually preaching. It’s crazy but the more extreme their views get, the more I’m convinced they’re misinformed and misled. Some folks at the top of their pyramid I legitimately hate - I have no doubt they know exactly what they are doing.

So many of conservative beliefs just fly in the face of reality. I hate that they’re perpetuating the harm that the beliefs and resulting policies cause, but seeing as how they are mostly based on clear and obvious lies, I have to assume that most of the supporters just don’t realize they are being lied to and have invested emotionally in an identity that actively harms their own interests.

Well, well, well. Looks like we got ourselves a real thinker over here.

Let me grab my decoder ring and my degree in bullshit interpretation, ‘cause this shit needs unpackin’.

First off, ObliviousEnlightenment, huh? More like ObliviouslySpoutin’Nonsense.

Lemme tell ya, this whole liberal versus conservative hate thing is a load of horse shit.

Hate knows no political boundaries, kid.

It’s like ravioli—some folks love it, some folks hate it, but it don’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on, you still gotta respect the ravioli.

Now, as for this “us vs. them” mentality, that’s just human nature, plain and simple. We all got our gangs, our tribes, our little groups we run with.

But the problem ain’t the conservatives or the liberals, it’s the goddamn extremists on both sides stirrin’ the pot and throwin’ gasoline on the fire. They’re the ones spewing hate and takin’ things too damn far.

As for the whole muting and shamin’ thing, lemme break it down for ya: liberals tend to police their own when someone goes off the deep end, while the conservatives let their crazies run wild and pretend they don’t exist.

That’s why you see more visible hate from one side than the other. But make no mistake, there’s assholes on both teams. As for you feelin’ isolated, boohoo.

Welcome to the fuckin’ club. Life ain’t fair, and neither is politics. You wanna survive? Learn to navigate the crazy and find common ground.

Stop whinin’ and start thinkin’ for yourself. Don’t be another sheep bleatin’ out talking points.

That’s my two cents.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got a date with a meatball sub the size of my head.

Conservatism is the idea that people are basically bad and need to be controlled, liberalism is the Idea that people are basically good and deserve to be helped.

Disclaimer: I wondered the same, since 2014, and this is what I puzzled together for myself, read it with that in mind!

I believe a lot of it can be traced back to the wealthy and to conservative think tanks / media control by right wing moguls.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, conservatives were perceived as well-off business people trying to protect their own wealth (I’ve read that people used to say things like “I’m not rich enough to vote Republican” or children shouting “last one in the house is a dirty Republican”). You can even see old movies dunk on conservatives (i.e. take Stanley Kubrick’s “2010: The Year we Make Contact” (1984), at the beginning, with the satellite dish tower, the protagonist noses off about reactionaries being in control of congress, thus leading the country towards war).

This is the rather extreme election result from 1964:

Because liberals mostly were Democratic Party voters, Republicans and their wealthy donors tried to alter public perception of liberals (i.e. make it undesirable for their Republican indoctrinatees to be liberal). This included taking over the media (and Reagan conveniently cancelling the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which gave political bias in the media some guard rails), then painting liberals as all things undesirable: arrogant, weak, clueless, leeches, etc.

Having a “hate object” worked so well that they kept capitalizing on it. Much of it was/is just slinging sh*t against the wall and looking what sticks, but think tanks are indeed looking at what sticks, so successful patterns get repeated. Some of these successful patterns I can see are: installing a victim complex in conservatives (feeling their back against the wall, they lash out easier, ensuring anyone talking about conservatives is conditioned to use very soft gloves) and the two-year bogeyman, often trying to capture, redefine and vilify some prior existing concept (thus, when the campaign hits, indoctrinatees can find lots of “proof” online of this thing existing).

For example, social justice used to be universally agreed on as a good thing, woke used to mean remaining aware of systemic inequalities, now they make conservatives pop an artery. This has been going for a while (the “hate object” over time has been rock music, hippies, metal music, supposed satan worshippers, pen and paper games, paganism+atheism, video games, social justice activists, cancel culture, black lives matter, critical race theory, wokeness, …)

And I think, yes, your perception is spot on. This is, for example, what I get when I search for “anti-conservative t-shirts” (if it’s too tiny, try it yourself - they’re all anti-liberal):

TL;DR: conservatives are intentionally made and kept angry. It keeps them unified against a bigger enemy (see Genghis Gambit), drives them to go vote and prevents voters from switching sides even if they do not like some things the conservatives are doing. Add to that Russia amplifying this division like there’s no tomorrow. They’re installing this hate for liberals both in tankies and in far-right bigots (and, as far as I can tell, anti-liberal sentiment is pushed into Russian society, too).

Your entire description of what liberals dont do is nonsense. Lemmy is basically 80% cringe progressive memes that are mostly propaganda.

You agree with progressives so you don’t notice it as much.

Conservatives are typically motivated by anger and fear. They tend to be less educated and more superstitious. They can be easily swayed by appeals to their religious beliefs.

Those motivated by anger and fear are far more easily tricked and manipulated by others with nefarious intent. They can even be deceived into going against their own interests, as evident by Republican politicians and their opposition to democracy and freedom.

Liberals are typically motivated by humanism and live-and-let-live philosophy. They tend to be more educated and less superstitious.

Democrat politicians have a much harder time trying to browbeat liberal voters to do their will. They’re conflicted as they lose voters if they obey their rich donors, and they lose rich donors if they obey their voters.

ConservativesofTikTok hehe.

Okay first thing: there is no mainstream left in US politics. AOC and Bernie taper off at a hair left of center. I don’t even dislike them. And normally that would be fine, but the right does include flamboyant, very loud fascists. So the right has no counter weight, and what there is are Centrist Libs, who long for days of “reaching across the isle”, and “order,” and “civility” While people talk about Fascists projecting, the Libs are too; they think everyone approaches politics in good faith. They don’t realize the fascist uses their invitation to get in, and civility as a mask to play the game. The fascist uses any means they can to gain power, and then disposes of the libs when they don’t need them anymore. The libs are left, like Eddard Stark holding a piece of paper, with their dicks in the breeze.

This last piece of this is that there is an aspect of the left that matches what you say, the so called “dirt bag left,” streamers like Vaush and Hassan Abi, and Chapo Trap House. They are in fact quite controversy prone, and I don’t think they are good people, but I think they do match the general vibe of your statement.

Thats a loaded question if I’ve ever seen one.

I live in a heavily liberal city but have unhinged rightie friends in other states, including Texas amd Florida. The most unhinged ultra maga shit I see on their feed goes blow for blow with the brainless, bitter, amd sometimes hateful nonsense I see coming from my lefty friends feeds.

If one is a hateful loser of a certain ideology, they naturally blame the other side. It’s human nature.

Because the right doesn’t have a system of morals, just a list of justifications.

The center and left actually feel bad if they don’t live up to their own ideals and so try to avoid behaving in ways that run counter to those ideals unless it becomes absolutely necessary for them to do so, and even then they’ll still feel like shit for it.

See also, all those AITA posts where OP is very obviously in the right and just snapped after years of abuse, but has been gaslit hard enough to start doubting themselves because biting back just feels wrong to normal people.

ROFL!!! Spend another ten minutes on Lemmy before asking this question.

Because they’re mostly a group of people filled with hatred. That’s what’s uniting them. And the other side less so, so they don’t act that way.

I think there’s an equal amount of anger on both sides. Unfortunately.

There’s no longer room for actual, mature debate. Just mud-slinging and slurs. The fact is that most people are somewhere in the center politically, but the extremists are louder and get the attention because it’s entertaining and the media uses it to sell content. It sucks.

Liberals are conservatives, they hate leftists.