One reason why so many are turning bigots, you expressed it yourself: your refusal to consider them on your same level, as intelligent and critical thinkers as you. Somehow everyone is stupid but you (and I don’t mean “you” specifically, rather everyone who approaches discourse in the same way).
Calling our opponents dumb is being polite, or maybe a psychological defense mechanism against the horror of the alternative.
If you are dumb it’s not your fault. You didn’t, know better. If you are ignorant you can learn.
If you are smart and you still made the choices knowing the outcomes, then we have to go to other explanations: greed is the next least bad, and certainly it plays a part, but honestly that doesn’t usually follow. The vast majority of conservative supporters have no chance to benefit from their policies, so we have to go further to find an explanation.
Cruelty. They want the suffering, the death, the destruction of human potential. Or maybe sadism. They enjoy inflicting pain and deprivation.
The mind recoils, so we call them dumb, because the world in which the ignorant masses are being misled by nafarious elites is less soul crushing to contemplate than the world where the masses act out of cruelty and sadism.
One reason why so many are turning bigots, you expressed it yourself: your refusal to consider them on your same level, as intelligent and critical thinkers as you. Somehow everyone is stupid but you (and I don’t mean “you” specifically, rather everyone who approaches discourse in the same way).
Calling our opponents dumb is being polite, or maybe a psychological defense mechanism against the horror of the alternative.
If you are dumb it’s not your fault. You didn’t, know better. If you are ignorant you can learn.
If you are smart and you still made the choices knowing the outcomes, then we have to go to other explanations: greed is the next least bad, and certainly it plays a part, but honestly that doesn’t usually follow. The vast majority of conservative supporters have no chance to benefit from their policies, so we have to go further to find an explanation.
Cruelty. They want the suffering, the death, the destruction of human potential. Or maybe sadism. They enjoy inflicting pain and deprivation.
The mind recoils, so we call them dumb, because the world in which the ignorant masses are being misled by nafarious elites is less soul crushing to contemplate than the world where the masses act out of cruelty and sadism.
This bias is real. Everyone thinks they’re the smart one. There also do exist huge differences in intelligence.