Why is the right at war with cyclists? We’re not ‘wokerati’ – we’re just trying to get around | Zoe Williams - eviltoast
  • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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    8 months ago

    Yes, a friend clued me in years ago that the key to understanding the conservative mindset is their deep shame and self-hatred. A lot of people say it’s fear, but that’s only partly true. Everybody is motivated by fear; liberals just fear other things.

    But for conservatives, it’s fear that they’re worthless and inferior. That’s why so much of their ideology concerns groups that they denigrate and oppress in order to feel superior. This is why they have bicyclists in their crosshairs recently.

    And not just bicyclists. It’s not enough just to have a car. Oh no! They have to have a truck. And not just a truck, but a grotesquely enormous truck, with a grill that juts 6 feet straight into the air, perhaps with a lift kit, too. That way, they can roll coal on and intimidate drivers of smaller, weaker vehicles, like Prius drivers.

    It’s a performative doubling-down on the behavior that they subconsciously feel others are judging them for, in order to redirect the shame and self-hatred outward as anger at others.

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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        8 months ago

        It soundy similar to how some straight people act as though homosexual people are a threat to their particular sexuality. Of course we all know that they are 0% correct, unless, unless… you think you should be examining your own sexuality? Like maybe you suspect there is something that could be awakened there…?

        Then the lashing out makes sense.


        Also patriarchy and control, but it can be multiple things.

    • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Followed by the culture of you aren’t a real man if you don’t go into debt to drive a massive truck which the bed will be empty 99% of the time and you can barely afford to put gas in it (but its the carbon tax bankrupting them they’ll claim).