The conservative strategy has been to polarize politics in America in order to have a very aligned power. This means that if you aren’t 100% behind them, then you are an enemy to them.

It is only through this that the GOP can both say that they are protecting individual freedoms but limiting or taking them away (of course opponents to this will be quick to point out the one and only counter point which is fighting against restrictions of the 2nd Amendment and only that), say that they are for smaller government but yet want private companies to be regulated that attempt to censor hate and misinformation (which has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment when it comes to non-government entities) yet still say that they are for businesses to operate as unrestricted as possible. They are anti-union because they are corrupt and take away accountability yet strongly support the worst of the worst of unions – the police unions. The GOP constantly cries that there’s a nanny government, yet they push laws to restrict people’s choices, censor libraries and try to tear down citizen protections. The GOP cries that this country’s deficit is out of control but when they are in power, they over spend. They complain that public schools indoctrinate but at the local and state levels attempt to indoctrinate in public schools. They talk about needing to stay in power to turn America around, yet when empowered in all three federal branches fails to pass meaningful legislation and run the government that they are overseeing and yet blame the government because they will eat each other alive for their own individual gains.

There so much more but the GOP is a party of hypocrites. Without polarization mixed with some fear mongering their party would likely cease to exist with any real power because they do not stand for the ideals that their own voting base supports.

The GOP constantly tries to create an environment of being constantly under attack and spews hate. Their voter base is simply a product of that.

I honestly don’t think there’s much of a difference between these groups. Both have lots of people hating the guts of another group. And both are substantially radical in views. This all is just crazy

Joke: Why hate the disabled?

Because we have elderly people in our life that we care about and they weren’t monsters when we were young. Think of how much effort it would take you to objectively look at ideas your grandparents held/hold and what it says about them. I know I can’t do it. I can’t see my grandfather as a person who used to refer to homosexuals with a word I won’t repeat. The man who took me on so many hikes and fishing trips? No way.

Now extend it. Do you really want to go through your life thinking everyone passed a certain age is a terrible person? So evil becomes misguided.

The reverse of course isn’t true. No one gives a shit about a 30 year old. They ain’t cute and they are starting to run stuff.

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.

This is the broadest stroke I can make of it:

Conservatives decisions are based on instincts and lower brain functions like fear and hatred.

Liberals decisions are based on marginal benefit and rational decision making based on a combination of large and small scale unbiased data and historical outcomes.

There are tons of outliers and vocal minorities that break the rule.

Many many liberals were raised by conservatives.

Many many conservatives raised eventual liberals and are aghast.

I don’t need to camp out and bully conservatives. I spent enough of my childhood immersed in their insanity. I’m just done.

You and I are on different parts of the internet it seems. As a non American, your guys’ politics frighten and confuse me. The amount of hatred seems pretty damn comparable on both sides. Also neither of your partied are actually very different. Just different flavours of authoritarian.

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.

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.

Because liberals see “the world vs the ideal world” we see problems and we try to correct them.

Conservatives see “us vs them” and burning the world to the ground is fine as long as “The others” burn with it.

Just in my observation, people who lean more liberal are more emotionally regulated. If there’s anything to “hate” it’s ideas. Now, as a person I’m wary of conservatives because of those ideas. Whether it’s due to poor judgement or some other reason, if someone embraces social conservative ideas, I cannot tolerate them in my social circle.

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 “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) , 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).

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.

Hate comes from fear. All varieties of conservatives operate from a fundamental core of fear. They are often preyed upon in broken systems with limited education options and are often kept ignorant to so much of the world around them. Because they don’t know, they fear. Further, they can be limited by a heavy blanket of religious fundamentalism, more systematic fear.

“Liberals”, on the other hand, are often educated and taught to understand things and ask questions about things they don’t understand. As a result they are often aware of their surroundings, their neighbors and that exposure breeds empathy. That empathy is what kills fear which means they don’t generally hate.

The feeling towards conservatives for many “liberals” is likely more of a strong disappointment mixed with regret that, as individuals, they can’t really do more to help them out of the predatory cycle that conservative politicians keep them treading water in.

All this while the majority of both sides are actually struggling on the sane listing side in the same class war that has already taken the entire middle class as a casualty.