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Out of curiosity, why does this have to be a left-leaning initiative? I personally don’t use these political labels as I’m often confused by how they are used.

by reval 1y ago

estebarb 1y ago
Conservative people tend to protect their believes, no matter how wrong they are based on new evidence. Humanity has many examples of this happening through millennia, it is widely documented...
- xkbarkar 1y ago
  right and so do libertans ,communists and socialists. Hanging on to false ideologies, no matter how disastrous, is not exclusive to right leaning its a human trait.
  - array_key_first 1y ago
    Conservatism as an ideology is intrisincally resistant to change. That's what makes it conservatism.
  - avmich 1y ago
    It surely seem like it's way more frequently the issue with right, rather than left. For example there are few if any examples of interfering with scientific work during the Baden administration, while there are many during the Trump one.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > Conservative people tend to protect their believes, no matter how wrong they are based on new evidence. You can replace the label "Conservative" there with just about any ideology or political leaning.
  - andrewflnr 1y ago
    Kind of, but also, I've been watching my mainstream liberal friends update their beliefs about stuff, while conservatives still seem stuck. Certainly the point of being "progressive" is about being open to new ideas, and they don't entirely fail at their title. At least in America at the moment, I think the conservatives have it worse.
    - steve_adams_86 1y ago
      I think this has happened at times to all groups as well. Right now the conservatives are 'stuck' at least partially because of the cognitive dissonance required to elect and support the current admin. I think people on the left arguably did the same with various social justice initiatives. Things got crazier by the month for a while until people were genuinely afraid to speak, people were being cancelled for dubious reasons, etc. I recall long periods of needing to be very careful about how (not just what) I said to peers and even some friends. This was a very left-driven phenomenon. While it was started with arguably good intentions, it got weird. The right has adopted this, ironically, though in a different way and for different reasons. In both cases it's about ideological purity and power, though
      - andrewflnr 1y ago
        Yeah, but part of what I'm seeing is exactly the left pulling their heads out of that mess, while the right is only digging in deeper, both on similar time scales.
        steve_adams_86 1y ago
        Interesting point. I've generally intuited that the left would have carried on down that road were they to win the last election, but I could be wrong. And there has been a bit of a recoil from that kind of behaviour, so you're right about that.
        andrewflnr 1y ago
- wqaatwt 1y ago
  > protect their believes Is there much left in there besides extreme hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance? Their beliefs seem to be highly fluid and aligned with whatever the dear leader is saying at any given movement. Daily radical swings are not that uncommon..
sumeno 1y ago
Because the right is trying to dismantle all those things
- steve_adams_86 1y ago
  I suspect it's a minority of people on the right, and frankly, I've known people on the left (in Canada, at least) who antagonize science and various institutions for no other reason than gut feelings. People on extreme ends of political spectrums are problematic, period. They've always been present, but the Internet amplifies their mania to all of us like never before
  - avmich 1y ago
    Yes, extremes are problematic - marxism as left-left or fascism as right-right. At the moment though USA surely has a problem with the latter.
cogman10 1y ago
It doesn't and yet it does. Primarily because big oil dumped a bunch of money into conservative media to demonize the EPA. The EPA was originally put into place by richard nixon as was championed in a bipartisan fashion.
rob74 1y ago
Because the current right-leaning US administration (ok, some would call it far right - or rather, if you would go by the standards of pretty much any other country, you'd have to classify it as far right) is so fond of conspiracy theories and rejects science? But yes, in principle I agree that accepting scientific consensus shouldn't be a partisan issue...
rsynnott 1y ago
In the context of the US in 2025 specifically, anything opposing Dear Leader's agenda will likely be tagged as left-wing, regardless of what it actually is. This is rather silly, but then it is a rather silly regime.

Out of curiosity, why does this have to be a left-leaning initiative? I personally don’t use these political labels as I’m often confused by how they are used.

by reval 1y ago

Out of curiosity, why does this have to be a left-leaning initiative? I personally don’t use these political labels as I’m often confused by how they are used.

estebarb 1y ago

Conservative people tend to protect their believes, no matter how wrong they are based on new evidence. Humanity has many examples of this happening through millennia, it is widely documented...

xkbarkar 1y ago
right and so do libertans ,communists and socialists. Hanging on to false ideologies, no matter how disastrous, is not exclusive to right leaning its a human trait.
- array_key_first 1y ago
  Conservatism as an ideology is intrisincally resistant to change. That's what makes it conservatism.
- avmich 1y ago
  It surely seem like it's way more frequently the issue with right, rather than left. For example there are few if any examples of interfering with scientific work during the Baden administration, while there are many during the Trump one.
lelanthran 1y ago
> Conservative people tend to protect their believes, no matter how wrong they are based on new evidence. You can replace the label "Conservative" there with just about any ideology or political leaning.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  Kind of, but also, I've been watching my mainstream liberal friends update their beliefs about stuff, while conservatives still seem stuck. Certainly the point of being "progressive" is about being open to new ideas, and they don't entirely fail at their title. At least in America at the moment, I think the conservatives have it worse.
  - steve_adams_86 1y ago
    I think this has happened at times to all groups as well. Right now the conservatives are 'stuck' at least partially because of the cognitive dissonance required to elect and support the current admin. I think people on the left arguably did the same with various social justice initiatives. Things got crazier by the month for a while until people were genuinely afraid to speak, people were being cancelled for dubious reasons, etc. I recall long periods of needing to be very careful about how (not just what) I said to peers and even some friends. This was a very left-driven phenomenon. While it was started with arguably good intentions, it got weird. The right has adopted this, ironically, though in a different way and for different reasons. In both cases it's about ideological purity and power, though
    - andrewflnr 1y ago
      Yeah, but part of what I'm seeing is exactly the left pulling their heads out of that mess, while the right is only digging in deeper, both on similar time scales.
      - steve_adams_86 1y ago
        Interesting point. I've generally intuited that the left would have carried on down that road were they to win the last election, but I could be wrong. And there has been a bit of a recoil from that kind of behaviour, so you're right about that.
        andrewflnr 1y ago
wqaatwt 1y ago
> protect their believes Is there much left in there besides extreme hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance? Their beliefs seem to be highly fluid and aligned with whatever the dear leader is saying at any given movement. Daily radical swings are not that uncommon..

sumeno 1y ago

Because the right is trying to dismantle all those things

steve_adams_86 1y ago
I suspect it's a minority of people on the right, and frankly, I've known people on the left (in Canada, at least) who antagonize science and various institutions for no other reason than gut feelings. People on extreme ends of political spectrums are problematic, period. They've always been present, but the Internet amplifies their mania to all of us like never before
- avmich 1y ago
  Yes, extremes are problematic - marxism as left-left or fascism as right-right. At the moment though USA surely has a problem with the latter.

cogman10 1y ago

It doesn't and yet it does. Primarily because big oil dumped a bunch of money into conservative media to demonize the EPA. The EPA was originally put into place by richard nixon as was championed in a bipartisan fashion.

rob74 1y ago

Because the current right-leaning US administration (ok, some would call it far right - or rather, if you would go by the standards of pretty much any other country, you'd have to classify it as far right) is so fond of conspiracy theories and rejects science? But yes, in principle I agree that accepting scientific consensus shouldn't be a partisan issue...

rsynnott 1y ago

In the context of the US in 2025 specifically, anything opposing Dear Leader's agenda will likely be tagged as left-wing, regardless of what it actually is. This is rather silly, but then it is a rather silly regime.