Why Are Republicans So Unlikable?

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"Openness" is very conveniently defined by liberal left-wing types. I am underwhelmed.

Openness = willing to tax (i.e. steal) for the sake of the poor, the miserable, the incompetent and the lazy.

ruveyn

Why don't you read how "openness" is actually defined?

I think it's because they come off as kind of heartless. Most of them don't really care about the environment, they're into revenge rather than forgiveness, overly focused on money, warlike, etc.

Though honestly the Democratic Party are just GOP-lite. This whole country's system is skewed way to the right because the people here are socially kind of old school, like people in say the Middle East or Southeast Asia are.

Am I a cultural snob? Probably.
I would like to be in the same league with the late, great Charles Bukowski, who also didn't have a pot to piss in for most of is life, but looked down his nose at willful ignorance, regardless if it came from the very poor, or the very rich.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Let me ask you - are you a social and economic snob?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

The irony is that you aren't taking a complex or nuanced approach to something as complex as how the brain pertains to political views, you are just confirming your own bias. Also last time I checked, the studies were saying conservatives are on average less comfortable with nuance, complexity and uncertainty not right wingers so they could've easily taken a cluster sample of some partisan drones.


http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... hite-.html

I'm pretty skeptical of the studies you are talking about. The articles I've read about it hasn't said anything about how the research was conducted. Besides the fact that fear isn't the only function of the amygdala, notice how they say conservatives have bigger amygdalas rather than saying they experience more baseline activity. I think that's pretty dishonest because I'm sure the topic of homosexuality conjuring images of gayness running wild in society would make a social conservative's limbic systems go apeshit like the topic of guns would conjure images of the wild wild west in an anti-gun liberal. If we were to draw such vague correlations, I guess the more conservative you are the bigger your social network or the stronger your response to sexually arousing images and pictures of happy faces.

One thing I'd like to bring up is a study conducted (or cited?) by Drew Westen that shows that when both conservatives and liberals were asked political questions both of their limbic systems went apeshit and their prefrontal cortexes were hardly showing any activity. They both swore up and down that they were being rational, but in fact they were merely emotionally processing.

It gets on my nerves when people perceive all data to confirm one angle rather than trying to see one piece of data from all possible angles.

Here in the US the differentiation between the average conservative and the average right-winger is mostly a matter of semantics. The vast majority of right-wing voters in the US would identify themselves as conservatives in any such study.

I suppose but it is still a massive sweeping statement to say right wingers on average have those traits. Even saying conservatives on average is a sweeping statement, but right wing is a lot more inclusive. Besides that, the studies themselves leave a lot to be desired and I don't think you should jump the gun, especially when there is a non-partisan study that shows both sides have their limbic systems going nuts with little activity going on in their prefrontal cortexes when it comes to political questions that provoke this appeal to emotion.

I'll repeat my theory from last time this was discussed; Republican currently own the worst set of stereotypes.

You are referring to a completely different study on a completely unrelated subject. I would never defend a study that claimed consevatives were more emotional and less rational. This conclusion is not related to the concept of openness.

All of the reasons you list for not liking Repub's are good ones. I could add a few to the list, but I think this quote sum's it up:



I'm a liberal, therefore I find conservatives to be very "unlikable."

Pretty much, most of them Republican's stand for the exact opposite of what I do.

Every single one of my friends is a Democrat while I am in the Green Party. In their eyes, the Republicans want to "shove their lifestyles down their throat and drag the country to a Christian dystopia". But Democrats want to shove their agenda too. Their agenda just doesn't cause the same amount of personal resentment. And these are only my personal observations.

I guess the Republicans tend to involve themselves in social issues (what people can and cannot do), and people tend to resent that. When Democrats involve themselves, they tend to ignore legislating people's behavior and go after those who are the most successful (which I don't agree with).

I guess the people who are attracted to the Republican party scare many Americans. The extremely right-wing Christians seem to get far ahead in politics. They are absolutists who want to dominate all other people instead of embracing diversity. It makes me scramble for the Democrat every time when I would have otherwise voted Republican.

I refer to them as the Christian Taliban. Honestly I don't feel like they are any less extreme than the Taliban in their views, they are just balanced out by relative moderates in their party. If the religious far right took control of America, I could easily see them building death camps for gay people and illegal immigrants and punishing the non-Christians by stripping away many of their rights.

A lot of the Christianity in America is essentially mirror to the Wahabi Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia - it's very militant and patriarchal yet also materialistic.

I'm aware of that but it is relevant to the whole theme of anti-intellectualism since the studies about them having a bigger amygdala would imply that they only function in their limbic systems and are therefore less intellectual. I do agree that social conservatism is inherently anti-intellectual but fiscal conservatism is a more of a "It depends" thing.