9 ms·

I've observed this weird cognitive dissonance with outdoorsmen, since I am quite fond of fishing. They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't

by RajT88 2y ago

I've observed this weird cognitive dissonance with outdoorsmen, since I am quite fond of fishing. They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't like pollution because it messes up their sport. When you ask them about stuff like this (how can you support someone who pretty openly wants to mess up your pastime?), they get mad or change the subject. I get it - people are complicated and can care about many things at once. Nobody likes it when someone is seemingly poking at their belief systems. Still - you'd think it'd give them some kind of pause.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
It's almost like people are complicated and when you are forced to choose between two parties you almost always go for the stronger male person
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  People are complicated and their behavior can be predicted by a single variable?
  - fifilura 2y ago
    I thought the GP comment was interesting. The hypothesis that if the decision becomes too complicated you just give up and fallback to the strong male. Like the reptile brain gets enabled if you loose the overview.
    - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
      This is what I meant. Thanks for clarifying.
  - MonitorBird 2y ago
    Behaviour in a closed system choosing between the alpha, sound familiar to any animal behaviour? Oh, but we are so much more than that. We aren't animals, we are developed people. Fascinating behaviour isn't it, Muppet.
- hackyhacky 2y ago
  > It's almost like people are complicated and when you are forced to choose between two parties you almost always go for the stronger male person That seems like an unfair conclusion not rooted in empirical evidence. How do you explain the numerous democratically elected female heads of state? What does "strong" mean here? Do you think that current US leadership is "strong" or merely "loud"?
- kahrl 2y ago
  People are complicated.....they vote for the strongman. You realize how those two things you said are diametrically opposed???? Stupid.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I'm not sure that observations match this hypothesis, actually. But this > the stronger male person raises an interesting point (ignoring the "male" part) -- there isn't any real consensus on what attributes indicate "strength" (for instance, there are a lot of people who consider Trump strong, and a lot of people who equally consider him weak). So the hypothesis could be true, but not terribly enlightening.
- myvoiceismypass 2y ago
  Speaking for yourself buddy.
- watwut 2y ago
  That does not explain vote for Trump who is basically anti-masculine. He is basically walking stereotype of hysterical mind changing woman ... except in male shape.
  - dymk 2y ago
    No, it still explains it. Society does not treat men and women doing or saying the same things the same way. Men are “assertive”, women are “bossy”.
jvanderbot 2y ago
I've found so many of these contradictions in my own supporting of the household preferred political party that I've lost faith in parties altogether. They just lump too many issues together and expect you to accept them all.
amazingamazing 2y ago
I’ve observed that generalizations are usually wrong. There are plenty of MAGA people who care about the environment, and there are indeed MAGA people who couldn’t care less too. It’s also strange to single out MAGA on cognitive dissonance- everyone, regardless of political affiliation has it. At the end of the day blame the two party system. There are hundreds of thousands of people who voted for Obama and Trump, Biden and then Trump again. Let that sink in.
- RajT88 2y ago
  It's not much of a generalization if I'm talking about the people in my community. YMMV.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - amazingamazing 2y ago
    It’s still generalization even if it’s about people in your community… If I talk about people in Brooklyn broadly is it not a generalization because it’s my community? lol No wonder political discourse is completely broken.
    - RajT88 2y ago
      I'm not talking about my city - I'm talking about the people on my fishing forums, or who I meet down by the river. The talking point about Brooklyn is about as dumb a "Gotcha" as you'd expect in: > political discourse is completely broken.
- yCombLinks 2y ago
  MAGA is level 10 on it. They went from the hardcore Christian party to supporting the biggest crook American politics has ever seen, that isn't even capable of basic kindness. Same with veterans. A draft dodger, that has called our fallen soldiers losers, and skipped out on ceremonies honoring them, that presidents traditionally attend. MAGA jumped from deficit hawks, to supporting huge tax cuts that will explode the deficit. It's not even close who is worse here.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I think some of this is down to the inability of some folk (that to be clear, I think is stoked by the parties for marketing purposes) to differentiate between the beliefs of their party and their own personal beliefs. In this way, parties are not a matter of beliefs really as much as they're a matter of identity. I've witnessed this with my own family: my parents are and have always been Republican, and even though they hate Trump and virtually every policy he stands for, they still voted for him. When questioned why, you get various somewhat incoherent notions of hating Democrats. And... fair, as a Leftist, I also hate Democrats, haha. But I still voted Harris because as distasteful as I find the Dem establishment, they're closer to anything I want to see in the world than anything on offer on the other side.
- lapcat 2y ago
  This is basically it. When you define your identity by what you're against rather than what you're for then your own principles and beliefs are easily compromised. Partisans are blinded to inconsistency and corruption in their own party because the focus is always on "the other side", who are always considered worse, and thus anything is justified to fight the other side.
- mindslight 2y ago
  Take a step back and look at the information flows of democracy. One or two ballots per year, with a handful of questions on them. For the national races, that is maybe 3 bits/year on average? Compare with the constant stream of ads, speeches, news articles, etc. Then at the higher level it's not like adding repeated answers to the same question preserves much information (cf Central Limit Theorem). So really the information flows to the voters are the more significant part of this setup, with the act of choosing serving as a commitment to make you think you wanted everything you voted for.
moltude 2y ago
My brother wrote about this (and I won't pretend to understand the nuances). This project explores the changing meaning of hunting in American political and cultural life from 1945 to the present by mapping the evolution of the ideas, vocabulary, and values legible on the pages of nationally circulated outdoor magazines. These sources suggest that huntingÆs public significance transformed in both character and intensity over the second half of the twentieth century. In the immediate postwar decades, the political culture forged and propagated in these magazines reflected a faith in government, in collective engagement, and in public life. However, in the 1970s, the ideas and principles articulated by many hunters and outdoor writers increasingly privileged individual rights, questioned the utility of state action, and defended private prerogatives. Concurrently, the degree to which hunting gave shape to the identity of American sportsmen heightened dramatically during this pivotal decade. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4613/ https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4613/
- pliesfan97 2y ago
  Randall Williams is your brother? He’s one of my favorites from the Meateater crew. Thanks for sharing his dissertation, I’ve been meaning to check it out at some point.
- chneu 2y ago
  I didn't read the paper, but this sounds very familiar and similar to the change in the NRA. Pre 1970s the NRA was very much a hobby gun club meant mostly to keep american boys/men using guns for war readiness, along with promoting hunting/outdoor recreation. Then, in the 1970s, the NRA changed tune. After a big leadership shakeup the organization became very proactive in promoting anti-government, 2nd amendment, and "patriot" ideals. This likely stems from the Nixon impeachment, wherein republicans felt "wronged" and actively started seeking out revenge. The federalist society was also born out of this same period and sentiment. The sentiment is that nixon's impeachment was a hit job. That's when we saw the advent of conservative media and the idea that "emotions are more important than fact" started to get some traction. There's a great This American Life episode on the NRA's transformation from a hobby group to a lobbying group. I think this is it, https://radiolab.org/podcast/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-gun-show https://radiolab.org/podcast/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-... . Great episode, highly recommend. It really puts the whole 2a movement into perspective.
vanattab 2y ago
I mean there is a LOT more to life then fishing and hunting that people might care about? And even if we want to restrict ourselves to fishing and hunting there are more issues then just polution that may sway peoples minds. Gun control? Most of the anti hunting groups and extreme environmental groups that want to shutdown any form of hunting are often composed of far left leaning people. But the biggest reason is probably these people tend to live in more republican leaning areas and care about the same issues their friends and neighbors do.
- mindslight 2y ago
  The same exact cognitive dissonance dynamic applies to "gun control". The murder of Breonna Taylor was a straightforward transgression of the 2nd amendment - direct summary execution by government agents for defending your family in your home at night (one of the exact touchstone scenarios for the "self defense" line of arguments). Yet "the right" fell in line behind the government authoritarian jackboots because their political machine told them to.
zmgsabst 2y ago
Why would it “give them pause”? Your question (as phrased here) is clearly provocative rather than curious and represents your biases (eg, “openly wants to mess up your pastime”). You don’t consider the two obvious answers, in that they see it differently or they have higher priorities, and are using extreme language. Are you really surprised people are annoyed by that behavior?
- redczar 2y ago
  It didn’t come across as provocative to me. It would be a snowflake reaction to get indignant at such a small amount of “provocative” language. The essence of the question is why do people who love the outdoors vote for politicians who want to repeal laws to protect the outdoors? I presume that a reasonable person can easily answer this question and defend their position. I can think of several reasonable explanations and I’m opposed to hunting and am in favor of strong environmental regulations.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    > The essence of the question is why do people who love the outdoors vote for politicians who want to repeal laws to protect the outdoors? Because they don't believe that most of those laws are having meaningful benefits. The law of diminishing returns applies to everything, including ever-increasing regulations.
    - chneu 2y ago
      I would actually wager that benefits dont matter to them anymore. If it's government, it's bad. Full stop. Conservatives don't really have any real stances. They are obstructionists at this point. They anti-. That's it. If someone proposes something they will obstruct and disagree because they didn't come up with it. There are clear benefits. They just refuse to see them. You can show a mountain of evidence based on peer reviewed research and they'll hand waive it away and say "Private enterprise could do it better" or some nonsense.
      - 2y ago
thrance 2y ago
Republicans have gone full doublethink. Remember when egg prices was the single most important issue of the election? Now when you ask those same people about rising inflation and the catastrophic economy they'll tell you to "get over it" or "stop being so materialist". The same people that described themselves as "hard-core free speech absolutists" are perfectly fine with innocent men getting deported to El Salvador with no due process, or foreign scientists getting detained at the border for having criticized the president on social media. This country is fucked, half of its inhabitants now live with Fox News induced cognitive dissonance and are literally "ride or die" with the GOP. There's nothing Trump or his administration could do that would make them reconsider their support.
- lapcat 2y ago
  > half of its inhabitants now live with Fox News induced cognitive dissonance and are literally "ride or die" with the GOP. This is a bit of an overstatement. In 2024, Trump received 49.8% of the vote on 64.1% turnout, which is only 31.9% of eligible voters and of course doesn't include millions of people who are ineligible to vote, mostly due to age. And some of Trump's total, relatively small yet crucial, consisted of nonpartisan "swing" voters who are not loyal to Trump or the GOP. The way our electoral system works, small differences are greatly magnified.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lapcat 2y ago
      > This is a non-sensical argument Please do not engage with me at all unless you're willing to respect the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > For example, here you seem to be assuming that registered voters who didn't vote don't support Trump. No, I'm simply assuming that if someone can't be bothered to vote at all, then they shouldn't be characterized as "ride or die" with the GOP. No voting, no riding. If you do not vote for Trump, or give money to Trump, what does "support" actually mean, in a practical sense? Moreover, your link focuses on registered voters, whereas I was talking about all eligible voters, registered or not. Most importantly, your link discusses how the ideology of the electorate has changed, e.g, "Politically disengaged voters have become much more Republican", implying that these people are not necessarily ride or die and could swing back to Democrats if they were offered a better narrative. Indeed, this is precisely the overarching point of your link! The commenter I replied to claimed, "The country is fucked", but the message of your link is the opposite of that. All of the survey data that I've seen, including the data in your linked article, shows that voters in 2024 cared most about the cost of living and inflation. Thus, if Trump's tariffs end up making things worse rather than better in this respect, support for Trump is likely to plummet among people who are not "ride or die". Congressional Republicans are clearly nervous about this, though typically hesitant to openly contradict or defy Trump.
wpietri 2y ago
I think everybody has this sort of cognitive dissonance, albeit perhaps in different amounts; we just allocate it differently. And I think society is set up to help that. For example, I like animals and I eat meat. Would I kill a cow? No, but I'm happy to eat a burger. I've worked to get relatively comfortable with unresolved cognitive dissonance, so I can at least recognize my hypocrisy here. But I think it's way easier for people to refuse to think about it. As with distributed systems, coherence is hard and expensive. Being rational about something, as opposed to just rationalizing, is long, slow work. We don't live in an age of patience. But perhaps one will come again, and until then we can at least try to be exceptions.
- croes 2y ago
  If you won’t kill a cow but like eating burger that’s not cognitive dissonance.
  - ada1981 2y ago
    Sure it is.
    - elygre 2y ago
      I cannot kill a cow, but I’m happy there are people who can. I also cannot build trains or houses, but I am an ardent supporter of a rain-proof roof.
      - dagw 2y ago
        Those are two different uses of 'cannot'. I know how to kill a cow, but 'cannot' bring my self to do it. I 'cannot' build a train because I don't know how to, but if I did I would be happy to do so.
        mindslight 2y ago
        Do you know how to "kill" a cow in the sense of turning most of it into edible food rather than merely letting it go to waste? If not, then I'd call that a similar type of aversion.
kahrl 2y ago
The plastic lady on TV told them Obama was gonna raise egg prices more.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
There's a really interesting book that became about this because of an accident of timing and the author's research it's called Strangers in Their Own Land. The author was writing about a specific region of louisiana that is all three of farther right than the norm even for a US rural area, more polluted than almost anywhere, and having a local culture that prizes connection to the land and natural systems present there. It's very good! The author approaches these contradictions with more curiosity and care than you're going to find on HN even on its best days. https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land
- jebarker 2y ago
  I think about this book a lot. The point that stuck in my mind was that many of the folks living there were devout Christians. When one family was asked why they vote for the party that pollutes their land and waters they said that it's also the pro-life party and essentially nothing else matters if they don't vote pro life since they'll go to hell in the end.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Yes though iirc the author probed at that a bit and while not directly contradicting them points to this being more a matter of social cohesion, justified by that one specific policy when pressed in this instance. But others gave more prosaic answers about industry and employment. Re the christian thing though, it was unsettling to read about their understanding of right relationship between humans and creation being essentially (and uncharitably) "god put us in charge of it to do what we want with it." Which is maybe a natural extension of historical european/north american christian doctrine on the subject but that still I had never really heard a contemporary christian state clearly and proudly like that. I'm also christian and it's pretty foreign to my tradition.
  - Whoppertime 2y ago
    You could ask the same question to the people who think the environment is very important but don't seem to care about how their electric car or its Lithium ion batteries are mined or manufactured. So long as it's not in their back yard it is out of sight out of mind. And if they overload the regulations so that there is no local manufacturing and it's all imported from countries with poor environmental controls, they are effectively exporting all the pollution to poor people in China
skeeter2020 2y ago
Maybe it's because you're not really asking a question but making an insulting statement intended to ellict exactly this reaction. Even if this sort of "question" was genuine it's predicated on a huge set of assumptions and systems interactions that makes it worthless as a question, but great as a campaign gotcha! Also, fishing is most definitely not a "sport".
- rideontime 2y ago
  Fishing for non-commercial/sustenance purposes is quite literally referred to as "sport fishing." Perhaps you should save the condescending tone for topics you're more familiar with.
  - RajT88 2y ago
    Welcome to the fishing forum flame wars. Many divisive topics, such as catch and release or eating young fish ("bucket heads"), barbless hooks, etc. Hell, even fly fishermen get into internet slap fights over certain kinds of flies.
rayiner 2y ago
It's not just that people care about many things at once, but they have different assumptions about how much real-world output will result from a particular political input. For example, this article is about air pollution. Trump rolled back a number of Obama-era air pollution rules in 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/04/trump-emvironmental-rollback-epa-scrap-regulations https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/04/trump-em.... But there was no corresponding increase in air pollution in the subsequent six years: https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c22b170a699840ab96d19cc293c04951 https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c2.... So your friends simply don't believe that rolling back particular environmental regulations will meaningfully reduce the quality of the environment. It's similar to how liberals downplay how much reshoring of industry will result from the Trump administration's tariffs.
- supplied_demand 2y ago
  ==It's similar to how liberals downplay how much reshoring of industry will result from the Trump administration's tariffs.== I haven't seen a coherent explanation or estimate of impact made by the administration. If a strategy that estimates the amount of reshoring exists, I'd love to see it. The constant back-and-forth on tariffs makes it seems more like the whims of one individual rather than a coherent plan for "reshoring of industry." In your comments, you seem to continually give one side the benefit of the doubt, but use a completely different set of rules when discussing the other side. It even seems to come out in your analysis as your source shows that 2023 saw the most days of unhealthy PM2.5 levels since 2012. It went from 724 in 2017, to 822 in 2023. That is a 13.5% increase. It appears you might be falling into the same trap you warn everyone else about. Edited to add: On tariffs, Republican Senator Ron Johnson admits, “I still don’t know exactly what his total strategy is.” [0] Yet, you expect everyday liberals to have some nuanced view of the policy. [0] https://x.com/mkraju/status/1910078814975050012 https://x.com/mkraju/status/1910078814975050012
  - chneu 2y ago
    >In your comments, you seem to continually give one side the benefit of the doubt, but use a completely different set of rules when discussing the other side. One set of rules for thee, different set for everyone else.
SkyPuncher 2y ago
At the risk of being dismissive of people's interests, I've increasingly come to view many hunters and fishers are largely driven by the ego. They don't care if they can hunt or fish in 20 years as long as they can brag to their friend group that they bagged the biggest fish or game. In fact, it'd be better if they no one could hunt/fish in the future because that means they'd hold the "record" indefinitely. All those pesky rules and regulations are just getting in the way. Go sit in a bar in hunting country during deer season. You won't hear people talking about how peaceful, relaxing, or enjoyable it was. You either hear (1) them bragging about how big of deer they got (2) how big the deer was that "got away".
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Bar talk vs actual experience is a matter of ritual. I picked up hunting late in life, and everyone privately says they love getting out, walking the land, relaxing, etc. But at the 6-8 "happy hours" each night, it's a bragfest. It's just culture.
- anonfordays 2y ago
  This is an incredibly bad take. I can't think of a single hunter I've ran across that didn't talk about how peaceful, relaxing and enjoyable hunting is. I don't personally hunt, but all the big hunter personalities such as Joe Rogan, the Meateater crew, etc. constantly harp on the peacefulness of spending time in nature while hunting. My coworkers that hunt rarely talk/brag about what they shoot. Maybe they brag between themselves because the peacefulness and relaxation aspects are givens, everyone in the group understands that.
  - soco 2y ago
    I only know one active hunter and boy does he brag - if only given the occasion. So maybe the people you mention are just being afraid to be judged for their true ideas? Because either way, you can always go in the nature, and so many people go at least here in Switzerland, and just... go in the nature, spend time in that peaceful environment, period. You don't need a gun and a dead squirrel to be peaceful.
navane 2y ago
Hunting and fishing are one of those hobbies that don't work anymore if everyone wants to do it. There's not enough room. There's something in here about how low density people don't share values with high density people, because different situations cause problems.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  Most people are too lazy / busy to hunt or fish, so this will only become a problem if food becomes unaffordable compared to spending a weekend trying to track a wild boar or going fishing as a necessity.
- chneu 2y ago
  You're summing up most of the stuff rural americans get upset about. Rural americans have insanely high pollution rates per capita because most of their lifestyle is really resource intensive, which just doesn't scale. Not everyone can drive a ford f850 superduty deisel to go get groceries. Not everyone can eat beef 3x/day. Not everyone can live on a few acres. Not everyone can hunt. Not everyone can have livestock. Not everyone can have 5 kids. Etc, etc. A lot of rural americans just don't understand this, or don't care. To them it's "out of sight, out of mind". Then, once it comes to their back yard they lose their minds reacting to it because it finally affects them. When it happens to other people, those people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. When it happens to them, then it's a national emergency. I grew up in a rural area, hometown of 500 people. I grew up thinking this way. It's a pretty big mind shift.
apercu 2y ago
Yea, see, I always thought that "conservative" meant people wanted to keep things the same and that included natural resources, like wilderness. But instead, they want the '50's back. The 1850's. I'll leave it at that.
- Whoppertime 2y ago
  https://www.independent.org/article/2021/11/22/the-new-blue-confederacy/ https://www.independent.org/article/2021/11/22/the-new-blue-... You would find this article from Victor Davis Hanson interesting
  - apercu 2y ago
    Perhaps. It's an interesting (if very libertarian) perspective. It's somewhat factual but also blowing things out of proportion, exaggerating and with typical right wing "pearl-clutching" while being couched in academic language.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
As an outdoorsman, fisher, and hunter, I view the other party as at war my hobbies. California banned the diesel engines being used by the fishing boat I went out on. Without 300k to retrofit, the charter went out of business and everyone lost their jobs.
- dymk 2y ago
  Would you rather there be no outdoors for your grandchildren to hunt in? The “other party” isn’t at war with hunting, they just want a planet that’s livable for future generations.
  - brational 2y ago
    They don't care - you can see it clearly in the person you're responding to that they're just thinking about their own personal wants. It's pure selfishness.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    >Would you rather there be no outdoors for your grandchildren to hunt in? Of course not. Thats the kind of lack of nuance that I object to. I support high reward changes that protect or revitalize the environment. Banning several diesel boats instead of phasing them out at the end life/next upgrade isn't going to save the planet. It just makes the outdoors and environment inaccessible. There are so many thoughtless and net negative policies.
    - dymk 2y ago
      We don't have time to wait for a bunch of diesel engines to die of old age - as you know, they're quite long lived. And how long do you think is reasonable for diesel to be "phased out"? DEF became mandatory in the mid-2000s. It's been long enough. At some point you have to draw a line and say, we're not going to allow something that spits out this much pollution just to make catching fish as cheap as it used to be.
    - chneu 2y ago
      You view them as negative because you're only thinking about how it affects you. There are clear benefits to banning diesel engines in freshwater. That's why so many places are doing it. Lots of people support these measures because it's a very clear benefit. If a business can't afford to operate without being subsidized by the environment, they shouldn't be allowed to operate. When you use those diesel engines, you're taking out a loan using the environment. That loan needs to be repaid, and it gets repaid in the from of destruction rebuild costs. So when you complain about how "it would cost blah blah to do this safely", what you're really saying is "I want to destroy the environment for some cheap fun" which is deeply, deeply selfish. When you hear the total cost of disasters, think about it in the form of debt being repaid. That $1 billion because of so and so fire, that's the environment coming to collect the debt we racked up because we wanted cheap stuff and recreation. Remember, your freedom ends where mine begins.
potato3732842 2y ago
It's because they're too indoctrinated by modern culture to say "when it actually comes down to it I'd rather live in a prosperous but polluted society, at the end of the day like the necessity of making ends mmeet more than the luxury of bass fishing" which is basically what they're getting at with the sum of their beliefs but is an opinion that is fairly taboo to voice without a ton of beating around the bush.
klysm 2y ago
The problem is we have a strongly factional two party system where the most productive strategy is to reap hatred between the factions. This is mostly a consequence of our plurality voting system.
- 93po 2y ago
  We also have a political environment that tries to gloss over the ways the two parties are similarly problematic and damaging while championing the idea that "we're the party of all things good and right and the other people are responsible for all bad positions". Dems and Republicans alike support carbon emitting methods of power generating that result in over a million deaths a year worldwide. Voting for Trmp vs Bden probably doesn't have any real appreciable effect on worldwide pollution levels.
iteratethis 2y ago
I've always considered that it would make sense for there to be a "green right". When conservative and rural and rejecting (some) modernity, I would expect one to appreciate and want to conserve nature as well as a lifestyle close to nature. Also, from an economic point of view, the conversion to sustainability is massive employment opportunity. But no, the exact opposite is true.
damnesian 2y ago
Midwesterner here. Past generations of conservatives were also very conservation minded. They understood the lasting value of preserving our natural resources. Hell back in the 80s and 90s it was normal for Reagan Republicans to also be in the Sierra Club. That very reasonable centrist organization is now chastized as "radical left," that's how far down the slippery slope we are. They are due for a very rude awakening, but by the time they realize it, it will all be ruined. They don't care about anything if it doesn't affect them directly, the polar opposite of the story of the ancient middle eastern rabbi they name check as their god and savior.

by RajT88 2y ago

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

It's almost like people are complicated and when you are forced to choose between two parties you almost always go for the stronger male person

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
People are complicated and their behavior can be predicted by a single variable?
- fifilura 2y ago
  I thought the GP comment was interesting. The hypothesis that if the decision becomes too complicated you just give up and fallback to the strong male. Like the reptile brain gets enabled if you loose the overview.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    This is what I meant. Thanks for clarifying.
- MonitorBird 2y ago
  Behaviour in a closed system choosing between the alpha, sound familiar to any animal behaviour? Oh, but we are so much more than that. We aren't animals, we are developed people. Fascinating behaviour isn't it, Muppet.
hackyhacky 2y ago
> It's almost like people are complicated and when you are forced to choose between two parties you almost always go for the stronger male person That seems like an unfair conclusion not rooted in empirical evidence. How do you explain the numerous democratically elected female heads of state? What does "strong" mean here? Do you think that current US leadership is "strong" or merely "loud"?
kahrl 2y ago
People are complicated.....they vote for the strongman. You realize how those two things you said are diametrically opposed???? Stupid.
JohnFen 2y ago
I'm not sure that observations match this hypothesis, actually. But this > the stronger male person raises an interesting point (ignoring the "male" part) -- there isn't any real consensus on what attributes indicate "strength" (for instance, there are a lot of people who consider Trump strong, and a lot of people who equally consider him weak). So the hypothesis could be true, but not terribly enlightening.
myvoiceismypass 2y ago
Speaking for yourself buddy.
watwut 2y ago
That does not explain vote for Trump who is basically anti-masculine. He is basically walking stereotype of hysterical mind changing woman ... except in male shape.
- dymk 2y ago
  No, it still explains it. Society does not treat men and women doing or saying the same things the same way. Men are “assertive”, women are “bossy”.

jvanderbot 2y ago

I've found so many of these contradictions in my own supporting of the household preferred political party that I've lost faith in parties altogether. They just lump too many issues together and expect you to accept them all.

amazingamazing 2y ago

I’ve observed that generalizations are usually wrong. There are plenty of MAGA people who care about the environment, and there are indeed MAGA people who couldn’t care less too. It’s also strange to single out MAGA on cognitive dissonance- everyone, regardless of political affiliation has it. At the end of the day blame the two party system. There are hundreds of thousands of people who voted for Obama and Trump, Biden and then Trump again. Let that sink in.

RajT88 2y ago
It's not much of a generalization if I'm talking about the people in my community. YMMV.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  It’s still generalization even if it’s about people in your community… If I talk about people in Brooklyn broadly is it not a generalization because it’s my community? lol No wonder political discourse is completely broken.
  - RajT88 2y ago
    I'm not talking about my city - I'm talking about the people on my fishing forums, or who I meet down by the river. The talking point about Brooklyn is about as dumb a "Gotcha" as you'd expect in: > political discourse is completely broken.
yCombLinks 2y ago
MAGA is level 10 on it. They went from the hardcore Christian party to supporting the biggest crook American politics has ever seen, that isn't even capable of basic kindness. Same with veterans. A draft dodger, that has called our fallen soldiers losers, and skipped out on ceremonies honoring them, that presidents traditionally attend. MAGA jumped from deficit hawks, to supporting huge tax cuts that will explode the deficit. It's not even close who is worse here.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

I think some of this is down to the inability of some folk (that to be clear, I think is stoked by the parties for marketing purposes) to differentiate between the beliefs of their party and their own personal beliefs. In this way, parties are not a matter of beliefs really as much as they're a matter of identity. I've witnessed this with my own family: my parents are and have always been Republican, and even though they hate Trump and virtually every policy he stands for, they still voted for him. When questioned why, you get various somewhat incoherent notions of hating Democrats. And... fair, as a Leftist, I also hate Democrats, haha. But I still voted Harris because as distasteful as I find the Dem establishment, they're closer to anything I want to see in the world than anything on offer on the other side.

lapcat 2y ago
This is basically it. When you define your identity by what you're against rather than what you're for then your own principles and beliefs are easily compromised. Partisans are blinded to inconsistency and corruption in their own party because the focus is always on "the other side", who are always considered worse, and thus anything is justified to fight the other side.
mindslight 2y ago
Take a step back and look at the information flows of democracy. One or two ballots per year, with a handful of questions on them. For the national races, that is maybe 3 bits/year on average? Compare with the constant stream of ads, speeches, news articles, etc. Then at the higher level it's not like adding repeated answers to the same question preserves much information (cf Central Limit Theorem). So really the information flows to the voters are the more significant part of this setup, with the act of choosing serving as a commitment to make you think you wanted everything you voted for.

moltude 2y ago

My brother wrote about this (and I won't pretend to understand the nuances). This project explores the changing meaning of hunting in American political and cultural life from 1945 to the present by mapping the evolution of the ideas, vocabulary, and values legible on the pages of nationally circulated outdoor magazines. These sources suggest that huntingÆs public significance transformed in both character and intensity over the second half of the twentieth century. In the immediate postwar decades, the political culture forged and propagated in these magazines reflected a faith in government, in collective engagement, and in public life. However, in the 1970s, the ideas and principles articulated by many hunters and outdoor writers increasingly privileged individual rights, questioned the utility of state action, and defended private prerogatives. Concurrently, the degree to which hunting gave shape to the identity of American sportsmen heightened dramatically during this pivotal decade. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4613/ https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/4613/

pliesfan97 2y ago
Randall Williams is your brother? He’s one of my favorites from the Meateater crew. Thanks for sharing his dissertation, I’ve been meaning to check it out at some point.
chneu 2y ago
I didn't read the paper, but this sounds very familiar and similar to the change in the NRA. Pre 1970s the NRA was very much a hobby gun club meant mostly to keep american boys/men using guns for war readiness, along with promoting hunting/outdoor recreation. Then, in the 1970s, the NRA changed tune. After a big leadership shakeup the organization became very proactive in promoting anti-government, 2nd amendment, and "patriot" ideals. This likely stems from the Nixon impeachment, wherein republicans felt "wronged" and actively started seeking out revenge. The federalist society was also born out of this same period and sentiment. The sentiment is that nixon's impeachment was a hit job. That's when we saw the advent of conservative media and the idea that "emotions are more important than fact" started to get some traction. There's a great This American Life episode on the NRA's transformation from a hobby group to a lobbying group. I think this is it, https://radiolab.org/podcast/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-gun-show https://radiolab.org/podcast/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-... . Great episode, highly recommend. It really puts the whole 2a movement into perspective.

vanattab 2y ago

I mean there is a LOT more to life then fishing and hunting that people might care about? And even if we want to restrict ourselves to fishing and hunting there are more issues then just polution that may sway peoples minds. Gun control? Most of the anti hunting groups and extreme environmental groups that want to shutdown any form of hunting are often composed of far left leaning people. But the biggest reason is probably these people tend to live in more republican leaning areas and care about the same issues their friends and neighbors do.

mindslight 2y ago
The same exact cognitive dissonance dynamic applies to "gun control". The murder of Breonna Taylor was a straightforward transgression of the 2nd amendment - direct summary execution by government agents for defending your family in your home at night (one of the exact touchstone scenarios for the "self defense" line of arguments). Yet "the right" fell in line behind the government authoritarian jackboots because their political machine told them to.

zmgsabst 2y ago

Why would it “give them pause”? Your question (as phrased here) is clearly provocative rather than curious and represents your biases (eg, “openly wants to mess up your pastime”). You don’t consider the two obvious answers, in that they see it differently or they have higher priorities, and are using extreme language. Are you really surprised people are annoyed by that behavior?

redczar 2y ago
It didn’t come across as provocative to me. It would be a snowflake reaction to get indignant at such a small amount of “provocative” language. The essence of the question is why do people who love the outdoors vote for politicians who want to repeal laws to protect the outdoors? I presume that a reasonable person can easily answer this question and defend their position. I can think of several reasonable explanations and I’m opposed to hunting and am in favor of strong environmental regulations.
- rayiner 2y ago
  > The essence of the question is why do people who love the outdoors vote for politicians who want to repeal laws to protect the outdoors? Because they don't believe that most of those laws are having meaningful benefits. The law of diminishing returns applies to everything, including ever-increasing regulations.
  - chneu 2y ago
    I would actually wager that benefits dont matter to them anymore. If it's government, it's bad. Full stop. Conservatives don't really have any real stances. They are obstructionists at this point. They anti-. That's it. If someone proposes something they will obstruct and disagree because they didn't come up with it. There are clear benefits. They just refuse to see them. You can show a mountain of evidence based on peer reviewed research and they'll hand waive it away and say "Private enterprise could do it better" or some nonsense.
    - 2y ago

thrance 2y ago

Republicans have gone full doublethink. Remember when egg prices was the single most important issue of the election? Now when you ask those same people about rising inflation and the catastrophic economy they'll tell you to "get over it" or "stop being so materialist". The same people that described themselves as "hard-core free speech absolutists" are perfectly fine with innocent men getting deported to El Salvador with no due process, or foreign scientists getting detained at the border for having criticized the president on social media. This country is fucked, half of its inhabitants now live with Fox News induced cognitive dissonance and are literally "ride or die" with the GOP. There's nothing Trump or his administration could do that would make them reconsider their support.

lapcat 2y ago
> half of its inhabitants now live with Fox News induced cognitive dissonance and are literally "ride or die" with the GOP. This is a bit of an overstatement. In 2024, Trump received 49.8% of the vote on 64.1% turnout, which is only 31.9% of eligible voters and of course doesn't include millions of people who are ineligible to vote, mostly due to age. And some of Trump's total, relatively small yet crucial, consisted of nonpartisan "swing" voters who are not loyal to Trump or the GOP. The way our electoral system works, small differences are greatly magnified.
- rayiner 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lapcat 2y ago
    > This is a non-sensical argument Please do not engage with me at all unless you're willing to respect the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > For example, here you seem to be assuming that registered voters who didn't vote don't support Trump. No, I'm simply assuming that if someone can't be bothered to vote at all, then they shouldn't be characterized as "ride or die" with the GOP. No voting, no riding. If you do not vote for Trump, or give money to Trump, what does "support" actually mean, in a practical sense? Moreover, your link focuses on registered voters, whereas I was talking about all eligible voters, registered or not. Most importantly, your link discusses how the ideology of the electorate has changed, e.g, "Politically disengaged voters have become much more Republican", implying that these people are not necessarily ride or die and could swing back to Democrats if they were offered a better narrative. Indeed, this is precisely the overarching point of your link! The commenter I replied to claimed, "The country is fucked", but the message of your link is the opposite of that. All of the survey data that I've seen, including the data in your linked article, shows that voters in 2024 cared most about the cost of living and inflation. Thus, if Trump's tariffs end up making things worse rather than better in this respect, support for Trump is likely to plummet among people who are not "ride or die". Congressional Republicans are clearly nervous about this, though typically hesitant to openly contradict or defy Trump.

wpietri 2y ago

I think everybody has this sort of cognitive dissonance, albeit perhaps in different amounts; we just allocate it differently. And I think society is set up to help that. For example, I like animals and I eat meat. Would I kill a cow? No, but I'm happy to eat a burger. I've worked to get relatively comfortable with unresolved cognitive dissonance, so I can at least recognize my hypocrisy here. But I think it's way easier for people to refuse to think about it. As with distributed systems, coherence is hard and expensive. Being rational about something, as opposed to just rationalizing, is long, slow work. We don't live in an age of patience. But perhaps one will come again, and until then we can at least try to be exceptions.

croes 2y ago
If you won’t kill a cow but like eating burger that’s not cognitive dissonance.
- ada1981 2y ago
  Sure it is.
  - elygre 2y ago
    I cannot kill a cow, but I’m happy there are people who can. I also cannot build trains or houses, but I am an ardent supporter of a rain-proof roof.
    - dagw 2y ago
      Those are two different uses of 'cannot'. I know how to kill a cow, but 'cannot' bring my self to do it. I 'cannot' build a train because I don't know how to, but if I did I would be happy to do so.
      - mindslight 2y ago
        Do you know how to "kill" a cow in the sense of turning most of it into edible food rather than merely letting it go to waste? If not, then I'd call that a similar type of aversion.

kahrl 2y ago

The plastic lady on TV told them Obama was gonna raise egg prices more.

giraffe_lady 2y ago

There's a really interesting book that became about this because of an accident of timing and the author's research it's called Strangers in Their Own Land. The author was writing about a specific region of louisiana that is all three of farther right than the norm even for a US rural area, more polluted than almost anywhere, and having a local culture that prizes connection to the land and natural systems present there. It's very good! The author approaches these contradictions with more curiosity and care than you're going to find on HN even on its best days. https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land

jebarker 2y ago
I think about this book a lot. The point that stuck in my mind was that many of the folks living there were devout Christians. When one family was asked why they vote for the party that pollutes their land and waters they said that it's also the pro-life party and essentially nothing else matters if they don't vote pro life since they'll go to hell in the end.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Yes though iirc the author probed at that a bit and while not directly contradicting them points to this being more a matter of social cohesion, justified by that one specific policy when pressed in this instance. But others gave more prosaic answers about industry and employment. Re the christian thing though, it was unsettling to read about their understanding of right relationship between humans and creation being essentially (and uncharitably) "god put us in charge of it to do what we want with it." Which is maybe a natural extension of historical european/north american christian doctrine on the subject but that still I had never really heard a contemporary christian state clearly and proudly like that. I'm also christian and it's pretty foreign to my tradition.
- Whoppertime 2y ago
  You could ask the same question to the people who think the environment is very important but don't seem to care about how their electric car or its Lithium ion batteries are mined or manufactured. So long as it's not in their back yard it is out of sight out of mind. And if they overload the regulations so that there is no local manufacturing and it's all imported from countries with poor environmental controls, they are effectively exporting all the pollution to poor people in China

skeeter2020 2y ago

Maybe it's because you're not really asking a question but making an insulting statement intended to ellict exactly this reaction. Even if this sort of "question" was genuine it's predicated on a huge set of assumptions and systems interactions that makes it worthless as a question, but great as a campaign gotcha! Also, fishing is most definitely not a "sport".

rideontime 2y ago
Fishing for non-commercial/sustenance purposes is quite literally referred to as "sport fishing." Perhaps you should save the condescending tone for topics you're more familiar with.
- RajT88 2y ago
  Welcome to the fishing forum flame wars. Many divisive topics, such as catch and release or eating young fish ("bucket heads"), barbless hooks, etc. Hell, even fly fishermen get into internet slap fights over certain kinds of flies.

rayiner 2y ago

It's not just that people care about many things at once, but they have different assumptions about how much real-world output will result from a particular political input. For example, this article is about air pollution. Trump rolled back a number of Obama-era air pollution rules in 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/04/trump-emvironmental-rollback-epa-scrap-regulations https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/04/trump-em.... But there was no corresponding increase in air pollution in the subsequent six years: https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c22b170a699840ab96d19cc293c04951 https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c2.... So your friends simply don't believe that rolling back particular environmental regulations will meaningfully reduce the quality of the environment. It's similar to how liberals downplay how much reshoring of industry will result from the Trump administration's tariffs.

supplied_demand 2y ago
==It's similar to how liberals downplay how much reshoring of industry will result from the Trump administration's tariffs.== I haven't seen a coherent explanation or estimate of impact made by the administration. If a strategy that estimates the amount of reshoring exists, I'd love to see it. The constant back-and-forth on tariffs makes it seems more like the whims of one individual rather than a coherent plan for "reshoring of industry." In your comments, you seem to continually give one side the benefit of the doubt, but use a completely different set of rules when discussing the other side. It even seems to come out in your analysis as your source shows that 2023 saw the most days of unhealthy PM2.5 levels since 2012. It went from 724 in 2017, to 822 in 2023. That is a 13.5% increase. It appears you might be falling into the same trap you warn everyone else about. Edited to add: On tariffs, Republican Senator Ron Johnson admits, “I still don’t know exactly what his total strategy is.” [0] Yet, you expect everyday liberals to have some nuanced view of the policy. [0] https://x.com/mkraju/status/1910078814975050012 https://x.com/mkraju/status/1910078814975050012
- chneu 2y ago
  >In your comments, you seem to continually give one side the benefit of the doubt, but use a completely different set of rules when discussing the other side. One set of rules for thee, different set for everyone else.

SkyPuncher 2y ago

At the risk of being dismissive of people's interests, I've increasingly come to view many hunters and fishers are largely driven by the ego. They don't care if they can hunt or fish in 20 years as long as they can brag to their friend group that they bagged the biggest fish or game. In fact, it'd be better if they no one could hunt/fish in the future because that means they'd hold the "record" indefinitely. All those pesky rules and regulations are just getting in the way. Go sit in a bar in hunting country during deer season. You won't hear people talking about how peaceful, relaxing, or enjoyable it was. You either hear (1) them bragging about how big of deer they got (2) how big the deer was that "got away".

jvanderbot 2y ago
Bar talk vs actual experience is a matter of ritual. I picked up hunting late in life, and everyone privately says they love getting out, walking the land, relaxing, etc. But at the 6-8 "happy hours" each night, it's a bragfest. It's just culture.
anonfordays 2y ago
This is an incredibly bad take. I can't think of a single hunter I've ran across that didn't talk about how peaceful, relaxing and enjoyable hunting is. I don't personally hunt, but all the big hunter personalities such as Joe Rogan, the Meateater crew, etc. constantly harp on the peacefulness of spending time in nature while hunting. My coworkers that hunt rarely talk/brag about what they shoot. Maybe they brag between themselves because the peacefulness and relaxation aspects are givens, everyone in the group understands that.
- soco 2y ago
  I only know one active hunter and boy does he brag - if only given the occasion. So maybe the people you mention are just being afraid to be judged for their true ideas? Because either way, you can always go in the nature, and so many people go at least here in Switzerland, and just... go in the nature, spend time in that peaceful environment, period. You don't need a gun and a dead squirrel to be peaceful.

navane 2y ago

Hunting and fishing are one of those hobbies that don't work anymore if everyone wants to do it. There's not enough room. There's something in here about how low density people don't share values with high density people, because different situations cause problems.

givemeethekeys 2y ago
Most people are too lazy / busy to hunt or fish, so this will only become a problem if food becomes unaffordable compared to spending a weekend trying to track a wild boar or going fishing as a necessity.
chneu 2y ago
You're summing up most of the stuff rural americans get upset about. Rural americans have insanely high pollution rates per capita because most of their lifestyle is really resource intensive, which just doesn't scale. Not everyone can drive a ford f850 superduty deisel to go get groceries. Not everyone can eat beef 3x/day. Not everyone can live on a few acres. Not everyone can hunt. Not everyone can have livestock. Not everyone can have 5 kids. Etc, etc. A lot of rural americans just don't understand this, or don't care. To them it's "out of sight, out of mind". Then, once it comes to their back yard they lose their minds reacting to it because it finally affects them. When it happens to other people, those people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. When it happens to them, then it's a national emergency. I grew up in a rural area, hometown of 500 people. I grew up thinking this way. It's a pretty big mind shift.

apercu 2y ago

Yea, see, I always thought that "conservative" meant people wanted to keep things the same and that included natural resources, like wilderness. But instead, they want the '50's back. The 1850's. I'll leave it at that.

Whoppertime 2y ago
https://www.independent.org/article/2021/11/22/the-new-blue-confederacy/ https://www.independent.org/article/2021/11/22/the-new-blue-... You would find this article from Victor Davis Hanson interesting
- apercu 2y ago
  Perhaps. It's an interesting (if very libertarian) perspective. It's somewhat factual but also blowing things out of proportion, exaggerating and with typical right wing "pearl-clutching" while being couched in academic language.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

As an outdoorsman, fisher, and hunter, I view the other party as at war my hobbies. California banned the diesel engines being used by the fishing boat I went out on. Without 300k to retrofit, the charter went out of business and everyone lost their jobs.

dymk 2y ago
Would you rather there be no outdoors for your grandchildren to hunt in? The “other party” isn’t at war with hunting, they just want a planet that’s livable for future generations.
- brational 2y ago
  They don't care - you can see it clearly in the person you're responding to that they're just thinking about their own personal wants. It's pure selfishness.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  >Would you rather there be no outdoors for your grandchildren to hunt in? Of course not. Thats the kind of lack of nuance that I object to. I support high reward changes that protect or revitalize the environment. Banning several diesel boats instead of phasing them out at the end life/next upgrade isn't going to save the planet. It just makes the outdoors and environment inaccessible. There are so many thoughtless and net negative policies.
  - dymk 2y ago
    We don't have time to wait for a bunch of diesel engines to die of old age - as you know, they're quite long lived. And how long do you think is reasonable for diesel to be "phased out"? DEF became mandatory in the mid-2000s. It's been long enough. At some point you have to draw a line and say, we're not going to allow something that spits out this much pollution just to make catching fish as cheap as it used to be.
  - chneu 2y ago
    You view them as negative because you're only thinking about how it affects you. There are clear benefits to banning diesel engines in freshwater. That's why so many places are doing it. Lots of people support these measures because it's a very clear benefit. If a business can't afford to operate without being subsidized by the environment, they shouldn't be allowed to operate. When you use those diesel engines, you're taking out a loan using the environment. That loan needs to be repaid, and it gets repaid in the from of destruction rebuild costs. So when you complain about how "it would cost blah blah to do this safely", what you're really saying is "I want to destroy the environment for some cheap fun" which is deeply, deeply selfish. When you hear the total cost of disasters, think about it in the form of debt being repaid. That $1 billion because of so and so fire, that's the environment coming to collect the debt we racked up because we wanted cheap stuff and recreation. Remember, your freedom ends where mine begins.

potato3732842 2y ago

It's because they're too indoctrinated by modern culture to say "when it actually comes down to it I'd rather live in a prosperous but polluted society, at the end of the day like the necessity of making ends mmeet more than the luxury of bass fishing" which is basically what they're getting at with the sum of their beliefs but is an opinion that is fairly taboo to voice without a ton of beating around the bush.

klysm 2y ago

The problem is we have a strongly factional two party system where the most productive strategy is to reap hatred between the factions. This is mostly a consequence of our plurality voting system.

93po 2y ago
We also have a political environment that tries to gloss over the ways the two parties are similarly problematic and damaging while championing the idea that "we're the party of all things good and right and the other people are responsible for all bad positions". Dems and Republicans alike support carbon emitting methods of power generating that result in over a million deaths a year worldwide. Voting for Trmp vs Bden probably doesn't have any real appreciable effect on worldwide pollution levels.

iteratethis 2y ago

I've always considered that it would make sense for there to be a "green right". When conservative and rural and rejecting (some) modernity, I would expect one to appreciate and want to conserve nature as well as a lifestyle close to nature. Also, from an economic point of view, the conversion to sustainability is massive employment opportunity. But no, the exact opposite is true.

damnesian 2y ago

Midwesterner here. Past generations of conservatives were also very conservation minded. They understood the lasting value of preserving our natural resources. Hell back in the 80s and 90s it was normal for Reagan Republicans to also be in the Sierra Club. That very reasonable centrist organization is now chastized as "radical left," that's how far down the slippery slope we are. They are due for a very rude awakening, but by the time they realize it, it will all be ruined. They don't care about anything if it doesn't affect them directly, the polar opposite of the story of the ancient middle eastern rabbi they name check as their god and savior.