Interesting. I guess it’s about cultural conditioning. Growing up in Scandinavia the “both sides” and subjectivist approach was more common for leftists. Especially the “your terrorist is my freedom fighter”. In contrast rightists and liberals usually insisted on exactly this two-plus-two-is-four rhetoric. As analyzing American discourse from the outside I’m still not sure if the right wingers of my Nordic childhood was right anyway, or if American leftism has regressed horrendously
If we were talking about the normal version where one perspective does see 4 sides and the other 3, then I’d agree. But right wingers often completely ignore science and facts for what they feel is right - despite loudly claiming the opposite. They’re simply wrong about any number of things, from economics to gender studies to climate change, but they insist on their positions because of how they feel on a fundamental level - that all the common-sense folks around them think this way, their preacher thinks this way, and they don’t trust anyone they haven’t personally encountered long enough to understand. Time and time again, science has disproven explicitly conservative viewpoints, from race biology to Social Darwinism to climate change and so on. But they double down because to change their perspectives risks alienating their peers, or even worse, possibly damning them to Hell.
That’s why I said what I did. Liberals are a pain in the ass and generally incapable of accomplishing much of value, but at least they typically welcome new data that may contradict a previously-held position.
Interesting. I guess it’s about cultural conditioning. Growing up in Scandinavia the “both sides” and subjectivist approach was more common for leftists. Especially the “your terrorist is my freedom fighter”. In contrast rightists and liberals usually insisted on exactly this two-plus-two-is-four rhetoric. As analyzing American discourse from the outside I’m still not sure if the right wingers of my Nordic childhood was right anyway, or if American leftism has regressed horrendously
If we were talking about the normal version where one perspective does see 4 sides and the other 3, then I’d agree. But right wingers often completely ignore science and facts for what they feel is right - despite loudly claiming the opposite. They’re simply wrong about any number of things, from economics to gender studies to climate change, but they insist on their positions because of how they feel on a fundamental level - that all the common-sense folks around them think this way, their preacher thinks this way, and they don’t trust anyone they haven’t personally encountered long enough to understand. Time and time again, science has disproven explicitly conservative viewpoints, from race biology to Social Darwinism to climate change and so on. But they double down because to change their perspectives risks alienating their peers, or even worse, possibly damning them to Hell.
That’s why I said what I did. Liberals are a pain in the ass and generally incapable of accomplishing much of value, but at least they typically welcome new data that may contradict a previously-held position.