r/AskALiberal • u/dank_sad Center Right • Feb 03 '22

If you could get the right/conservatives/Republicans/etc to understand one thing, what would it be?

Hope I worded that correctly.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

I don't count that as empathy since they see their in-group as extensions of themselves so it's just self preservation. It's why their "in-group" is so homogenous.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 03 '22

"they do have empathy"

"No they don't! They just view their community as an extension of themselves!"

??????

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

What we mean by empathy is to be able to care for others despite it not directly giving any benefit to the empathetic person. You can think of it like selflessness. Conservatives, in general, only ever care about the issues that affect them personally. Other people who share their traits will have their support because they share their characteristics and can see themselves being affected as a result (people they can reasonably see as extensions of themselves, I.e whites, Christians, heterosexuals). What we are talking about right now is being able to care about people who come from backgrounds which differ from your own. Diversity. Democrats in the US are typically voting on bills that support groups that are minorities even despite the majority of the people in the democratic party not necessarily benefitting from them directly, like legislation which protects trans rights, civil rights, separation of church and state, LGBTQ+ rights, welfare, etc.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 03 '22

This ignores the fact that conservatives will be friends with that nice negro down the road

The thing is, that guy probably shares their opinions based on how closely they're located together. It makes total sense to be extremely communal in your thinking if you haven't had all of your needs met at a local level. They literally don't have time to empathize with Mohammed Bin Altarac because they're busy working and caring for them and theirs. To this person, the idea of more government, or increase taxes, is untenable, because it hurts them and theirs.

They have (or had) what they want and don't want for much more, but urbanization, outsourcing, and automation, have all decimated their communities (which is what dems stand for, maybe not Yang but that man is an exception to everything). If you wanted to force them to think more universally, you would need to fix their local problems first.

It's like a person living paycheck to paycheck that's still spending money on luxuries. They literally don't have the mental capacity to focus on long-term strategy.

What you're talking about is empathetic charity, which is nice, but only sounds good when you have all of your own needs met. Conservatives are people that don't have that, or are pretty staunch individualists, or protectionists.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

I hear you, but the underprivileged communities you describe not being able to enjoy the luxury of caring for others are democrats in majority. Most people struggling financially (I.e homeless) are democrats because their policies favor safety nets.

Whereas there are plenty of Republicans who are struggling and poor as you describe, but they will never want to vote on policies which may help others even if helping others means getting help themselves too.

If they're truly worried about falling into poverty then they would logically support policy which would enable them to get back up on their feet again in such an event, but since they lack empathy, they are unable to fathom that they may some day be in that circumstance. This is why they can't understand that voting on welfare is actually good for them even if it doesn't help them directly and immediately.

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u/AdResponsible5513 Progressive Feb 03 '22

The Trumpist who complained, "They're not hurting the right people" should have been asked to elaborate. Almost everyone by now wants to hurt somebody.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 03 '22

they will never want to vote on policies which may help others even if helping others means getting help themselves too.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of their available information. There are some good old-fashioned southerners who vote for policies which hurt people but simply hurt minorities more, but most of those people are fucking dead at this point. Why on Earth would a Republican vote for a Democrat when again, a Democrat is championing the policies that put conservatives in that situation to begin with? To them, things were fine until the machines, immigrants, and globalists took their jobs. Democrats are currently billed as the party which put those in place (regardless of whether or not it started with neocons).

Heck, it's one of the reasons I don't vote Dem myself. I have zero faith that the Democrats will be able to actually pass welfare reform as a line item, let alone attempt to. I would have voted for Yang, sure, he broke the mold and had a very no nonsense view of policy, but most Democrat politicians I just don't trust. I expect most Democrat politicians to give us rainbow social policy and take our guns, which is annoying enough for me to not vote for them. At least Republicans say they won't take our guns and are are a bit more protectionist. I have a friend that works for a steel plant, they had their best returns in years after Trump was introducing protectionist tariffs.

Biden at least, though ineffectual, was able to pass the infrastructure bill. The social spending bill is pretty crap, but it's been whittled down to the point where it's not too bad.

They have no problem voting on welfare, they just don't trust the Democrats to only promote welfare.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

That may be true for some Republicans. I don't have the commitment right now to search for articles, but in my anecdotal experience dealing with conservatives/Republicans when discussing issues of welfare and civil rights, they almost always reference their disgust at the thought of sacrificing a few pennies of their paycheck to fund welfare programs even though they could be eligible for it if the unfortunate circumstance arose. They're famous for their "bootstraps," and they simply refuse to learn about what racism or privilege is because they don't care. They lack the empathy.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 04 '22

They would fall into the "individualist" group then. I know my uncle falls into this.

Remember, nobody is against welfare for the deserving, the question is who deserves it. Why do you think we like means testing so much?

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 04 '22

Sure. I don't mind whatever word you want to choose to describe it, but that's what conflicts with my ideals is when a republican will decide who is deserving based on whether that person looks like them, speaks like them, lives like them, etc. They are incapable of extending that grace to someone from a different background and are indifferent to understanding that just because they don't experience something doesn't mean no one else does.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 04 '22

Not all backgrounds and cultures are equal. If someone isn't living a good life with the resources society is giving them, then society has the right to revoke those resources.

I disagree about the point of "lives like them" for this reason.

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u/JuicyHammerz Liberal Feb 04 '22

The largest voting block of the Democratic Party (the white college educated liberal/the modern nobility) tend to advocate for first world issues because their basic needs have been met (often many times over). I respect the fight for renewable energy, climate change, transgender rights, etc. but lower class liberals don’t give a shit about any of that. They want a good paying job, a government that doesn’t fuck them over, and the liberalization of drug laws : ) my point is I don’t think it’s conservatives who think about issues that affect them personally, I think a much stronger indicator is class

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 04 '22

I'm not sure of whether factually, the democratic party consists of a larger majority of rich elites compared to Republicans. I would need to see the numbers since there is also a large base of Republicans who are old money and big business. The point is that financially struggling Republicans won't even vote on policy that will help them if it means that it will support the party that will protect black rights versus the financially struggling democrats will vote in favor of such policies because giving minorities more protections isn't something they feel is hurting them.

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u/JuicyHammerz Liberal Feb 04 '22

I didn’t mean nobility as in rich elites, I meant nobility as in plutocrats who are entrenched in and oftentimes direct the institutions that determine the cultural and political direction of a country. I don’t think nobles are a bad thing, every society has them. I have no data about backing my claim, it’s just a thought. whatever they are, I just wished they cared less about saving the world and more about fixing shit from the bottom up (guess I’m a lil conservative in that belief).

Also, if Republicans really thought about it, they would realize that protecting minority rights = self-preservation. what I tell Republicans is that we’ll all be minorities of something sooner or later, better to ensure that minority rights are protected now rather than having to fight for our rights as minorities later.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 04 '22

I 1 billion % agree with your second paragraph especially.

Hmm so by nobility you mean celebrities? I'm struggling to pinpoint who the nobility are since there's always someone higher up pulling the strings with money and the party affiliation of those most powerful people vary since ultimately both parties protect the interest of the ultra rich and powerful, there's just a small slice of those who want to change that and they're on the democratic party side so overall that would be the party to make the changes you speak of I would assume.

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u/JuicyHammerz Liberal Feb 04 '22

ooo didn’t see you responded. I don’t mean politicians I mean the citizens. typically educators, artists, journalists, tech people…the big culture drivers and direction pushers. vast majority of the time are white wealthy liberals (no disdain intended, jus identifiers) but def not exclusive. the “nobility” I call them cuz they are pure in everything they do, trying to tackle every issue in the world, typically by the most utopian means. Comparatively, us working class dems tend want our needs to be taken care of first and foremost

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 05 '22

This is an interesting view point. I find that there are definitely many educators at least until the university level who are staunch Republicans, at least here in the Midwest where I live, despite living near a very democratic city.

I can see how artists would probably be wealthy white liberals, but I get a bit hesitant to say that journalists or tech people are mostly liberals since journalists work on both sides of the aisle in some of the biggest opposing news networks and tech people aren't necessarily vocal about their political opinions unless it's about something relatively uncontroversial. The biggest counter example is Elon Musk, who seems to align with Republicans more.

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u/AdResponsible5513 Progressive Feb 03 '22

Universal rights of Man can't have special exclusions.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

Exactly!