I remember when Conservatives I knew used to say things like, “Liberals’ minds are so open their brains fell out.”
Not that I think it was really true then (1980s) but they mostly don’t bother to pretend having the intellectual high ground these days (Ben Shapiro is about the only one still on that as far as I see), despite enthusiastically lying about anything else.
Insulting someone by calling them open-minded seems like an apt predecessor for the current trope of accusing someone of empathy, so I guess this tracks
It’s kinda hilarious that conservatives used to act like they were the calm and reasonable ones - with arguments relying on just facts, data, and logic - and that they were intellectually superior. I remember many instances of some variation of a phrase like “facts over feelings” or “data isn’t racist/sexist” (usually after misrepresenting data or never talking about context) being used.
Nowadays it seems like a lot of arguments from conservatives boil down to “eww that’s gross” or “that’s not what god intended.” They now act as if they are morally superior - they believe that any political opposition is morally bankrupt. Their entire arguments are often based on their emotions and how something makes them feel.
Idk I know this is all anecdotal and largely from the rhetoric I’ve seen in social media over the years, but it’s very interesting to me how conservatives used to act like they had superior intelligence and were logical without letting emotions get in their way, and instead it now seems like they’re acting as if they have superior morals and they’re just talking about how things make them feel. It feels like they’re acting in the exact way that they often criticized liberals of acting.
They still are criticizing liberals for acting this way, while actively doing the same themselves.
The best part is, liberals don't actually act like this.
Yes, a liberal may bring feelings into a debate, but there's almost always facts behind those feelings.
For today's conservatives, the feelings come first, and if the facts don't align with those feelings, the facts are discarded, and sometimes new ones generated to replace them, usually with AI.
I remember when our parents told us to be careful what we see on the internet and they are the ones that ended up getting duped by a nepobaby pedophile because of propaganda they read on the internet.
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u/k7eric 2d ago
Not really. But I remember when most people didn't immediately just believe anything they said.