Is the Left Wing more truthful than the Right Wing, and if so, why?

[isvicthere?]

In a very broad sense, yes. Because people on the "left" tend to base their views on analysis; people on the "right" tend to base their views on emotions.

If you base your views principally on emotions, you are more likely (I think) to believe things which are not true, but you would like to be true. For (anecdotal) example, in a recent converstaion with my DM-reading mother, she told me she believes in two-tier policing, because "Palestinians" are "allowed" to fly their flag, but "we" get arrested for flying "ours". When I pointed out that pro-Palestinians hadn´t rioted, hadn´t thrown bricks at the police, and hadn´t tried to set fire to asylum centres with people inside, as an explanation for "our" side getting banged up in increased numbers, it simply didn´t wash with her. "Well, that´s what I think," she concluded.

 

[PTK]

Is not the root of left-wing politics also emotion?
Is not caring about people being slaughtered in the Gaza Strip an expression of emotion?

 

[Serge Forward]

I don't think it's so much to do with emotion Vs reason, it's more a case of punching up Vs punching down. It's easier to get a message through to someone that the (slightly different) person in your street, at work, in the queue at the post office, etc is "the baddie" than it is to point at rich people that we're unlikely to ever meet or see. Hate thy neighbour is often easier than help thy neighbour under a system that encourages selfishness, rugged individualism, glamorises the rich and especially prizes the mythical 'self-made' person. It's harder to critique an over-reaching economic system. Pointing out that we need to smash the capitalist social and economic relations is always going to be a tough gig.

 

[dshl]

In a very broad sense, yes. Because people on the "left" tend to base their views on analysis; people on the "right" tend to base their views on emotions.

I wouldn't point to emotion as a fundamental distinction. All you have to do is watch the conservative popular youtube figures doing the rounds at college campuses like D'Souza, Shapiro, Knowles and many more, where one key aim is to show young 'lefties' behaving like overemotional mental cases and show themselves as cool, level-headed, logical and factual representatives of the right.

So in keeping with this vein (the 'very broad sense' as stated above) I always tend to think one main fundamental difference is that people on the right tend to see the world as starting with their immediate family, then their wider family and friends, then their neighbourhood, then maybe their church, their people/ethnicity/race, then their nation, then the whole world. Or something like that. From the centre going outwards, if you like. That's how their concerns and resources are generally distributed. When they get to the wider world and their responsibilities, they naturally have less concern and resources left - and thus more likely to say 'fuck em!'

In contrast, people who lean left are more likely to view themselves as a cog in a giant machine and therefore will feel the weight of responsibitlty for that whole monolyth that is humankind/the biosphere.

Anyway, I know these are extreme generalisations, but I believe the thread invited them. Although generalisations are going to be low resolution, I don't think they are purely useless.

 

[stethoscope]

In a very broad sense, yes. Because people on the "left" tend to base their views on analysis; people on the "right" tend to base their views on emotions.

Nah, plenty on the left base their view on emotion, and those on the right on analysis. What I find more amusing are those centrists that place themselves on a higher pedestal than both and constantly assert they're the ones who are really using facts, analysis, and experts to support their positions, when they they are just as likely to use emotion as well as analysis too.

 

[Pickman's model]

I wouldn't point to emotion as a fundamental distinction. All you have to do is watch the conservative popular youtube figures doing the rounds at college campuses like D'Souza, Shapiro, Knowles and many more, where one key aim is to show young 'lefties' behaving like overemotional mental cases and show themselves as cool, level-headed, logical and factual representatives of the right.

So in keeping with this vein (the 'very broad sense' as stated above) I always tend to think one main fundamental difference is that people on the right tend to see the world as starting with their immediate family, then their wider family and friends, then their neighbourhood, then maybe their church, their people/ethnicity/race, then their nation, then the whole world. Or something like that. From the centre going outwards, if you like. That's how their concerns and resources are generally distributed. When they get to the wider world and their responsibilities, they naturally have less concern and resources left - and thus more likely to say 'fuck em!'

In contrast, people who lean left are more likely to view themselves as a cog in a giant machine and therefore will feel the weight of responsibitlty for that whole monolyth that is humankind/the biosphere.

Anyway, I know these are extreme generalisations, but I believe the thread invited them. Although generalisations are going to be low resolution, I don't think they are purely useless.

after a post full of generalisations you'd be remarkably stupid if you opined otherwise

 

[dshl]

after a post full of generalisations you'd be remarkably stupid if you opined otherwise

Yes and so didn't. I guess we all find generalisations useful. Like when you glorified the one-eyed police killer for killing 2 police women. You found utility generalising all police as cunts, I guess - and deserving of murder.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes and so didn't. I guess we all find generalisations useful. Like when you glorified the one-eyed police killer for killing 2 police women. You found utility generalising all police as cunts, I guess - and deserving of murder.

You've been saving that beef up so long it's gone rotten. I don't have to wonder who the pettiest poster on urban is any longer - contrary to popular belief it's not teuchter.

 

[8ball]

You think it would be teuchter?

 

[_Russ_]

Oh the Irony

 

[redsquirrel]

In a very broad sense, yes. Because people on the "left" tend to base their views on analysis; people on the "right" tend to base their views on emotions.

For shits and giggles - is this opinion based on emotion or analysis?

 

[frogwoman]

Nah. there are loads of right wingers who claim the opposite is the case and that the left base their analysis on emotions and what they'd like to be true.

 

[isvicthere?]

I don't think it's so much to do with emotion Vs reason, it's more a case of punching up Vs punching down. It's easier to get a message through to someone that the (slightly different) person in your street, at work, in the queue at the post office, etc is "the baddie" than it is to point at rich people that we're unlikely to ever meet or see. Hate thy neighbour is often easier than help thy neighbour under a system that encourages selfishness, rugged individualism, glamorises the rich and especially prizes the mythical 'self-made' person. It's harder to critique an over-reaching economic system. Pointing out that we need to smash the capitalist social and economic relations is always going to be a tough gig.

Good point, although I would say "hating thy neighbour" because of their perceived undeserved advantages over you could be described as an "emotional" response; while constructing a narrative which confronts the underlying and real causes of the situation could be seen as more "reasoned". (Though also, as you coorrectly observe, a difficult thing.)

 

[kabbes]

There’s no such as objectively “reasoned” or “rational”. All rationality is the rationality of a particular form of logic, which always rests on particular axiomatic foundations. Rational from within one such system of logic is irrational from within another.

There’s a lot — and I mean a lot — of political psychological research into the difference between left-wing and right-wing beliefs, practices, ideologies, communities, you name it. None of it claims that the difference is some kind of “logic versus emotion”.

 

[AHunter3]

I think the left folks are more inclined to believe that what they say is the truth. Not by a huge margin, though. There's cynicism in all of politics, a belief that the average voter is stupid and that you need to campaign like an advertiser would, to con them into embracing your perspective, instead of actually explaining what you want to do and why.

If there's an overall difference in tone, it's less "who is more truthful" than it's that the right-wing folks love to oversimplify and colloquialize attitudes they claim are common-sense: "‘Aaah, I been jailed in Calcutta and beaten every day with hickory limbs, and climbed through miles of razor wire, attacked in alleys with broken bottles and got my nose hacked clean off, I drank methyl spirits off sterno and they had to cut out half my stomach, got my arm infected from dirty needles, got shot in the back once and left dyin’ of thirst, crawled through cockroach shit to the swamp and halfway drowned and then got malaria and they had to chop my foot off cuz of gangrene. You ain’t been through all that, so you don’t know shit!’” — followed by conclusions that the average 2nd grader could have come up with without having to climb through the razor wire, you know?

The left-wing folks have a tone that tends towards the whiny. "How much longer can we accept the horrific things being done to the vulnerable, the despicable exploitation of the powerless, the evil things done to the innocent, do you have no heart, this must end!"; and they can be very intolerant of people whose world-view doesn't juxtapose with theirs exactly: "You used a word that the colonialists use, so you're obviously a racist eugenicist or you'd know better! You have to apologize but that will not of course be sufficient".

There is, admittedly, a lot of exhaustion from having to explain and re-explain the same concepts to people when a significant portion of the folks are deliberately pretending they've never heard (or have refused to process) the previous explanations.

 

[krtek a houby]

Ten posts over twenty years and suddenly...

 

[_Russ_]

One thing noticable about the what passes for the left in here is lack of tolerance, exemplified by the mods/admins actions more people have been banned from this place than any other forum I've encountered
(Mr/mrs/ms Houby no doubt had a hand in many of them but thats just his/hers/whatevers fucked up personality)

Shit I've even been banned from a thread I never even posted in

 

[krtek a houby]

One thing noticable about the what passes for the left in here is lack of tolerance, exemplified by the mods/admins actions more people have been banned from this place than any other forum I've encountered
(Mr/mrs/ms Houby no doubt had a hand in many of them but thats just his/hers/whatevers fucked up personality)

Shit I've even been banned from a thread I never even posted in

May the sound of tiny violins comfort you in your moment of need

 

[8ball]

Shit I've even been banned from a thread I never even posted in

That’s impressive!

 

[Serge Forward]

Shit I've even been banned from a thread I never even posted in

You're just showing off now.

 

[likesfish]

you can make excuses for everything see the " Chilean Miracle" apprantly Pinochet saved "chile".
Thing is running countries is Hard you've got about a decade as top dog and then your knackered look at blair before and after. Or Obama .
Proper systems limit terms and have ways for the "great leader" to step down and go windsurfing instead.
If you can't step down becuase there's no retiriment plan and you've made too many enemys your decisions just get worse and worse because the pressure never stops the problems continue to pile up you've killed off anyone whose a potential replacement and surrounded yourself with yesmen because nobody's going to go that's a terrible idea on pain of death. doesn't matter what ideology you start from the great leader starts young and dynamic does some good then runs out of steam and becomes a bloated monster.

 

[emanymton]

One thing noticable about the what passes for the left in here is lack of tolerance, exemplified by the mods/admins actions more people have been banned from this place than any other forum I've encountered
(Mr/mrs/ms Houby no doubt had a hand in many of them but thats just his/hers/whatevers fucked up personality)

Shit I've even been banned from a thread I never even posted in

This is just bullshit, moderation on here is very light touch these days.

 

[BigMoaner]

Shit I've even been banned from a thread I never even posted in

should be some sort of autogenerated award for that

 

[BigMoaner]

most human thinking is problematic, no matter waht side. all sorts of unintended consequences, for a start. i can get pissed off with both sides almost equally but there is definitely sociopathic elements to the right that gets my back up more than anything else.

 

[likesfish]

the left starts with good ideas that end badly
the right starts with bad ideas and gets worse

best we have is some sort of scandeavan fudge anyone who believes any ISM is going to solve all problems is either an Idiot or sociopath

stuff is complex you can't plan everything and even if you could you can't foresee everything shit happens. Like the NHS free TV's that cost an arm and a leg to use but everyone now has smart phones even they are essentialy redundant.

 

[krtek a houby]

anyone who believes any ISM is going to solve all problems is either an Idiot or sociopath

 

[Hotel Chocolate]

I wouldn't say the "Left” has a better record for not lying. - I mean claims of bumper crops and production records for making iron, The Eradication of Illiteracy, the elimination of poverty, plane crashes don't happen in the Soviet Union so and so forth lying was a major part of the whole Soviet Union's way of running a country. and all those other dubious claims made by countries like the Soviet Union and people's Republic of China and N Korea not only are they lies and not unbelievable. I have seen one video where the Chinese communists claimed they had been able to double/triple/quaduple their rice crop by planting the rice plants closer together so close in fact that you could stand on them and they even made a video, it's obvious nonsense even watching the video and ...

...besides that isn't there a strain of Marxism who's how idea is how to come to power by devious means IE Trotskyism?

Life would be easier if we could just divide people into the "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys", but real life is not like that.

Furthermore I would say left-wingers hate facts and figures that contradict their image of the world and refuse to acknowledge them. Dishonesty and self-deceit seems to be part of being left-wing. Most left-wingers live in a fantasy world and suffer from narcissistic personality disorder which is completely based on delusion/

 

[Santino]

Furthermore I would say left wingers hate facts and figures that contradict their image of the world and refuse to acknowledge them. Dishonesty and self-deceit seems to be part of being left-wing. Most left wingers live in a fantasy world and suffer from narcissistic personality disorder which is completely based on delusion/

You ok, hun?

 

[planetgeli]

Furthermore I would say left wingers hate facts and figures that contradict their image of the world and refuse to acknowledge them. Dishonesty and self-deceit seems to be part of being left-wing. Most left wingers live in a fantasy world and suffer from narcissistic personality disorder which is completely based on delusion/

You came back to say that?

Could be fun watching you justify the last sentence at least.

Tell me about my mental health...

 

[Hotel Chocolate]

Narcissistic and unpleasant maybe and a bit full of himself.