The Alt-Right Playboook: Always A Bigger Fish explains that conservatives have a strong preference of hierarchy and order. They have this preference even if they are low on the hierarchy. They reason that maybe they themselves didn’t work hard enough, weren’t smart enough, or whatever, so don’t deserve to be higher up. They gain a sort of comfort from “knowing their place.” Those lower than them on the hierarchy deserve even less.

I think this explanation is spot-on, and is more or less true for every “conservative” I’ve known. I suppose fascism also has this love of hierarchy, which is what the Republican party really is now (or, at least, very similar to it).

Right wing ideologies depend on distractions from real problems.

My brother’s a CEO of a hospital. He makes over $400,000 a year. He told me that he votes for whatever candidate lowers his taxes. He cares about nothing else. Which is strange considering he’s in the healthcare industry. But, he broke down the numbers for me and he voted for Trump over less than $10,000 a year. That’s how much less tax is he pays. Like I said he cares about nothing else. He has a trans son, who he supports, however he will vote against his interest for under $10,000 a year. Year. I don’t know that this is the answer you were looking for it is just the personal experience. Edit: for typos

It’s really just exclusive-validity identity politics, which has roots DEEP in many mammal-species…

Here https://www.amazon.com/Immunity-Change-Potential-Organization-Leadership-ebook/dp/B004OEILH2/ you can read the beginning of a book which explains how our unconscious-minds fight off any growing-up, fighting-off change…

In it, it describes 3 unconscious-mind-development-stages, which I call Kegan3, Kegan4, & Kegan5, simply because there are SO many different systems-of-stages-or-dimensions to keep mindful-of, like Kahneman+Tversky-1 & Kahneman+Tversky-2 ( imprint->reaction system, lower-forebrain, the ideology/prejudice/trained-expertise system, vs considered-reasoning, upper-forebrain, much exercised in programming )

… that it’s idiocy to NOT index all such things, now…

Here, if you scroll down a little, you can see a table describing the different unconscious-mind-development stages, ALL of them, that their-kind know about ( the stage after Kegan5 is the self-conquering-stage, which they never saw or identified, because our world’s process sabotages/prevents it )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#The_Evolving_Self

Now think about herdbeasts, which don’t have Kegan5’s systems-of-systems stage…

They do have Kegan3, which is the upper-limit that cows are allowed to, by bulls, & they have Kegan4, which the bulls level-off in…

Kegan3 is wanting to be liked, it is associating-with validity ( hence the power of “influencers”, among the younger humans in any time ), it is, fundamentally, ( & I’m not certain that Robert Kegan understood this ) the absorbing experience stage of one’s life, living more in feelings & social-“reality”…

Kegan4, on the other hand, is what I call “BullingBOSS mode”, where validity is zero-sum game: it is exclusive and that is exactly the way bulls work: it is limbic-brain, in basis, so it should hold throughout most mammals!

Now, IF one’s identity & validity are rooted in zero-sum game, then anyone else having any validity reduces one’s own validity!!

Narcissism also works this way, you’ll notice, so now there are 2 fundamental-causes for such instinct, in-play…

Here you will find a book which explains the 5 LEVELS of culture-process, from competitive-nihilism’s culture-level-1, to LIVING IS SELF-INHERENTLY AWESOME!!'s culture-level-5: https://www.amazon.com/Tribal-Leadership-Revised-Leveraging-Organization-ebook/dp/B006IDG1K6/

Here is the dumbed-down TED Talk about their years-of-research: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_tribal_leadership

Culture-level-2 produces conspiricism! Subject-to-narcissism is therefore strategically-cancerous!

Now, what happens if your culture glorifies exclusive-validity identity, and, in so doing, produces a glass-ceiling on one’s culture, which prevents culture-level-4 & culture-level-5…??

One ends-up devaluing, dehumanizing, others, & wanting them butchered, in order to validate one’s culturally-grown prejudice!

IOW, it isn’t just-the-Republicans, the nazis did it, I’m certain that much of the time the Romans did it, different Chinese cultures have done it, same with the Japanese, etc…

It expresses different ways, depending on the identity-anchors of the “valid”, vs the “nonvalid”…

As Logan, King, & Fischer-Wright noticed, you can walk into ANY hospital in North America, with the exception of 1, which outgrew that cultural-glass-ceiling, & if you walk-in looking both professional & self-confident, the junior staff won’t meet your eyes, because the narcissism-culture of the doctors has destroyed their human-validity.

THAT is evidence-based knowing!!

The vignette that Logan gives, in that TED Talk is on that specific section of their book, but doesn’t give enough of it.

Both my parents were medical-professionals, Dad was a medical researcher and doctor, and that researcher bit was significant … because the narcissism-culture of White medicine definitely saturated them both, but his science-culture overrode that, intellectually … for which there ought be no limit to my gratitude, for that gift…

( doesn’t mean I didn’t go no-contact with both of them, though: the narcissism, the exclusive validity that doesn’t include me is toxicity/cancer, in any “family” or “community” )

( btw, the personal-stuff is only so that you understand the experience-induced-understanding: it isn’t just theory, it’s earned understanding. There’s no reason to care about it, otherwise: it’s just context/perspective, so leave me out from any “care” or “concern”. )

Now when you’ve made your culture narcissistic, AND you’re glorifying Kegan4’s BullingBOSS mode…

…AND you add-in non-accountable authority’s rule … then sociopathy’s the result, isn’t it?

It is produced by this configuration of culture-forces!!

( definitions: psychopathy means incapable of empathy, because one’s mirror-neuron-system, or something, just doesn’t function, so other-lives are just meat-marionettes…

sociopathy isn’t brain-intrinsic, it is psychologically-produced analogue-of-psychopathy, through systematic imprinting ( that Kahneman1 imprint->reaction system ), until the programming produced it. )

So, anybody here who wants to read just how evil “normal” can be, please read some of Angela Davis’s “Women, Race, & Class” book … https://www.amazon.com/Women-Race-Class-Angela-Davis-ebook/dp/B0054KKRKY

& you will begin understanding just how spectacularly wrong our assumptions are, re human-culture-produced-outright-evil, from the utterly stomach-turning historical-facts she’s putting into that…

& then you will begin understanding that when prejudice is the ruling-religion, then the nazis were normal, in evil.

So, really it all comes down to specific identity-forces:

• Kegan4, unconscious validity-narcissistic BullingBOSS-mode, being glorified,
• culture being ruled by narcissism, systematically, with an invisible “glass ceiling” preventing culture-level-4 from being known within their culture, &
• nonaccountable-authority garrotting evolution
• our unconscious-mind’s innate mechanisms for preventing growing-up, fighting growing-up off, as “Immunity to Change” identifies, & it gives us simple methods, that work, for getting past the unconsciously-manufactured-obstacles we grow, to block our evolution.
• entirely possibly more, that I’m not aware-of, or not remembering now…

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Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, eh?

_ /\ _

I’ve been trying to find an answer on that question myself for years. A lot of the other comments so a good job of scratching the surface but there just isn’t enough text to really explain the full concept completely. If you really want to really dig deeper, here are some books that might help. They helped me. Bottom line is it’s smart for conservatives to do this based on their end goals because it’s effective.

The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant! by George Lakoff, covers the strong father theory which is much of what’s described in other comments.

The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, talks about the principles of authoritarianism and helps understand how the authoritarian structure in nearly every major company has lead to this.

The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama, explains why stability at the cost of equality is what political machines often evolve into.

The Revenge of Power by Moisés Naím, explains how authoritarianism works and why it needs us vs them to thrive.

Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, a good view of blame based politics, why and how it works.

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Tavris & Aronson, helps explain why people are attracted to the conservative message.

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti, explains how capitalists exploit the view that poverty is a personal falling so they can continue wage theft and rent seeking.

The Coddling of the American Mind by Haidt & Lukianoff, a deep dive of the modern conservative mindset and helps answer how and why we got here.

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, shows how this has been going on for longer than we’ve been alive along with the attack on education and sort of shows why that’s effective.

The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook, helps explain why “the sky is falling” narrative conservatives like to use is attractive to us.

It’s less “hate the poor” and more “being good dogs for their wealthy masters”

My ex MIL is great in a lot of ways but I think a good example of a middle income conservative person with a disdain for the poor. She personally used welfare to go to school and become a nurse but in her mind this was exceptional - welfare she thinks holds people back (just not her, somehow). She doesn’t hate the poor, she just thinks they are doing it to themselves. Because she managed to make it.

I think that’s the fundamental difference between conservative and progressive, honestly. She thinks she personally should get whatever advantage, but if someone else gets it that’s cheating, basically. Even though she was IN that situation she blames others who are.

For me (and I think most people) the life experience of being poor and homeless gave me perspective and empathy for those who are in that situation now, and I’d like them to get more than I did so they can get established.

In order to truly understand this, you have to tear yourself away from the Republicans and start looking at conservative ideology itself.

At the core of conservative ideology is the very American idea of “pulling oneself up by their own bootstraps.” This is essentially the idea that, no matter the circumstances of one’s birth, one can achieve anything. Historically, this was a rebellion against the classism of old Europe, which was structured around a class system. So, in that context, it was a very liberal idea. The problem comes in when you start to recognize that people are not actual born on a level playing field, financially, culturally, educationally, etc. Today, the idea that everyone can “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps,” foments the lie that we are all born into equal opportunities in life, which is demonstrably false.

So, the core of conservative ideology is based on an untruth, and it has never reconciled this. Conservatives thus blame disparities in achievement in society on lack of individual effort, and don’t take into account differences in opportunity by birth circumstances. As such, when they see people who haven’t done as well as others, they attribute that to personal failings rather than circumstantial inequalities. When you see all outcomes as a result of personal effort, you can dismiss bad outcomes as the result of a lack of effort, and thereby justify denying the less fortunate help under the notion that it is unfair to the more prosperous because it rewards those who didn’t try as hard with the same outcomes who had to work for them.

Conservative ideology is simply outdated and uninformed by modern sociological research.

Capitalism is built on the notion that wealth is virtue.

If you are rich, you made good decisions and the invisible hand has guided money to your pockets. You’ve created things that contribute to the comfort/progress of society as a whole, and your reward for it is to be held above others.

If you are poor, you have not been actively contributing to society. You have instead been a drain, and the invisible hand is punishing you got this. Your inability to find meaningful ways to contribute is a vice, which should be looked down on. Ultimately, if you cannot afford to live, that is survival of the fittest, and the world is better off without you.

If you believe any of the above to be true, you are delusional scum of the earth, and you are the reason everything sucks. You’d also feel right at home with the right-wing chuds currently undoing decades of progress.

Because generally, they don’t vote. And additionally, they make a good boogeyman to blame for all the shit they’re doing themselves.

You can’t hoard wealth and distribute it too.

The average republican is not super wealthy, of course, but they are manipulated and controlled by those who are.

I agree with most comments when applied to Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires.

I think the ruling class (aka the rock that does not need this cope) needs the threat of homelessness (aka the hard place) to squeeze the proletariat against.

I see a lot of people answering what the Republican leadership seems to believe and do. This is very different from what the average Republican voter believes.

Let me cover just a couple issues that drive an otherwise functional person to vote Republican:

1. abortion. There are a shocking (and tragic) number of otherwise reasonable people who get a strong ick response to the idea of abortion. They rarely research the issue. This is an opinion so immediately visceral that they believe it is a moral law (and there are many communities that strongly reinforce this belief). I know of many folks who see the Republican corruption and the damage it’s doing, but can’t get through their anti-choice gut feeling to vote blue.

2. economic interest. There are a nontrivial number of people who could lose a lot of money depending on how democratic policies are implemented. The left is a fractured mess, so no particular implementation is guaranteed. But if you keep the system around, historically you won’t get harmed specifically (we all get leeched to death slowly instead). Think rent control for a family whose retirement depends on 3 rental properties. The grandkids will vote Republican to, they believe, keep Grandma solvent. (This wouldn’t be an issue if large sweeping reforms were on the table. They aren’t. Also these calculations are often vibes based, because who has this kind of data.) See all the incentives around NIMBY Democrats. Some previously union areas fall under this; globalization policies felt like they destroyed their communities.

There are more. And polling will tell you about them. No need to ask other leftists (we call this an echo chamber).

Why do Republicans hate the poor so much?

For the rich: money reduces empathy. There a a few funny studies on the matter, including one on lottery winners. Plus the very wealthy live in their own bubble.

For the poor: propaganda. Lack of education in logic, sociology, macroeconomics, human relationships. A complete education is not all math and literature and hard science.

trying everything they can to harm people who need any sort of assistance?

The power-hungry want power, control, coercion. Through media power, cronyism they allied with the ultra rich who have power and want docile workers.

The dominated Republicans are fighting the ghost of people abusing the system, afraid of change, hiding in conservatism, backing into 1930s racism. They didn’t think the powerful Republicans would cut their help, only do something about their fears.

Pretend I am rich? Like how much money am I getting back by Republicans kicking men off healthcare or destroying insurance for those who need it most. It must be alot right?

It’s not about economics: healthcare and general welfare have a net positive impact, up to the point of housing homeless people costs globally less than having them on the street.

Personal gain is really at stake only when said service is repurchased by friends of the government, e.g. medical research, police, military, roads anything can go. Helping the poor can’t really be sold. Policing them, yes.

I heard they love the poor when they vote against their own interests.