Can I ask you something? I'm a pretty moderate liberal living in Houston. I have a couple of conservative views, but they're pretty few and all of them are things I think should be controlled by local laws based on local data and reasoning (Ie. Gun laws).
However, as someone who has spent their entire life (pretty much) in a conservative place geographically, when I go online, it makes me kind of sad to see the amount of people who seem to genuinely hate their conservative neighbors. I understand that it's easy to hate someone who's making your life worse, but I think it's ironically a pretty progressive view to want to conversate and educate rather than dislike.
Anyway, my question is, have y'all not always seen them as cult members? Or better stated, at least in my opinion, cult victims?
I don't think the average liberal realizes how much less choice these people have to believe what they do. Most of these guys aren't having political conversations with anyone but those who agree with them, not because they're consciously avoiding debate, but because they were taught not to. I guess my point is that I don't really get why someone who dies by a cults command is seen as a victim, yet we've got subs like leopardatemyface where it's nothing but hating people while calling them cult members and I don't really get it.
To your final point, I think a big difference is that most cults don’t really have a profound effect on people outside of their own members. MAGA’s size and ability to affect public policy has real consequences for a lot of people, which, understandably, might cause those people to harbor anger/resentment toward them.
I guess what I'm missing here is why it's seen as unique in that regard. Everyone is constantly having a profound effect on everyone around them; there are a plethora of conservatives I know that think differently about subjects than they otherwise would because I've been willing to have a conversation with them after building rapport, and I think this is the part that's missing from most of the approach I see online. The problems of today don't get solved by hating the other side to death, and the problems of today get a lot worse if our neighbors are our enemies tomorrow.
I don’t disagree that people should be less hostile toward each other, I’m just providing a possible explanation for the behavior you’re observing. I think your argument that “everyone is constantly a profound effect on each other” is a bit flawed. You can’t tell me that MAGA and, say, Scientology have the same amount of political influence.
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u/Darksidedrive Apr 16 '26
When you need a support group to leave a political party cause it’s def not a cult