Rebecca Watson from Skepchick just posted a video about a study into how people determine what kinds of protests are they consider “extreme:”
I don’t believe conservatives hide in fear all the time, but I agree there is an element of fear when I hear conservatives talk or read their writings. Like how a new tax will ruin the economy, or how granting a “special right” will harm heterosexual whites, or how atheism will destroy society. What they fear evolves over time, but there is always that element of fear in their beliefs.
Thoughts?
I had some cranky analysis of the subject on my bloge some time ago. https://proxy.freethought.online/gas/2018/04/12/conservativism-cowardice-and-greed/ Not the most thoughtful take, but I do what I do.
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When people say these things as arguments against gay marriage, greater gender equality, etc. proposed legal and social changes, I usually assume that these are exaggerations and bad “slippery slope” arguments. But if people seriously anticipate all these disasters ad fear that they might actually happen, then they must be living in a lot of fear.
I’d say it’s less “fear of” things, than generalized fear; that one of the results of having a narcissistic, selfish, absolute self-primacy mindset is that you have to define yourself by what’s excluded. It is literally impossible for them to live in peace because being at peace would erase the lines between themselves and other things. Whatever target that fear gets directed at any given time is arbitrary; if they succeeded in destroying everything that they fear, today, they’d just find new things to fear, until they’ve destroyed all of existence.
Existence is looking pretty suspicious tho, RP. Somebody oughtta pass a law against it.
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