What’s kinda funny about this is I’ve rubbed elbows with a LOT of liberals in Seattle. Many of them had a surface niceness, but it was a VERY thin shell. Some of these people truly were monstrous in their perspectives. But I suppose that is true of some “rank and file” conservatives.
I’ll say this: Though conservatives can use ad-hominem attacks from time to time, on the sites I frequent where both sides co-exist, it is the liberal MO. No question.
My brother-in-law is not into politics enough to say he’s a liberal, but he very much to the left when you start talking to him about economics etc.
At the same time, I don’t know of too many people on this earth that are as decent, hard-working, generous, and family-oriented as him.
Despite alot of his views, he is a stand-up guy and an absolute gem.
To be a leftist you must hate and make war on people, no matter. Also you must be an atheist who thinks he only is truly qualified in religious relations... or need to destroy the religious. Just like the Middle East peace process or Islam is peace, it is not about peace for arabs and jews, it is about that strange man walking on the hill and enforcing peace and Obamacare and what not. It is about him.
I was visiting my brother’s family in Seattle, a few weeks before the 2008 election. I was playing catch with my nephews, and their pals; one of them asked “you’re voting for Obama, right?”.”No, I don’t think so”, I replied. The older nephew said “My uncle and my grandmother are staunch Republicans”. The kids all stopped dead in their tracks, and looked at me like I was an escaped zoo animal ;)
The Left typically doesn’t have positions that stand up to true rigorous analysis and argumentation, so they have to fall back to ad hom. It’s all they have, at core, much of the time.
That has been my experience on numerous sites I use as well as in public discourse with them on the left around Puget Sound.