Before you say, “but what about but what about but what about Conservatives!??!”, don’t worry, child. You’ll get that one soon.
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What is a Liberal?
Fundamentally, a Liberal meets specific personality criteria. People do not choose political orientation. Rather, people settle into political orientation based on their personality1. Our personalities dictate how receptive we are to issues, ideas, and solutions.
The Five-Factor Model, or Big 5, is a framework used to understand peoples’ behavior, beliefs, and perceptions. The literature is clear.
Research shows a positive correlation between Openness and Liberalism2. Someone high in openness is:
open-minded / receptive to new ideas, feelings, and behaviors
imaginative / curious
artistic / a magical thinker / a fantasy thinker
Someone low in openness is practical and down-to-earth. They may be less curious about things and have less flexibility in thinking.
Research also shows a positive correlation between Neuroticism and Liberalism. Someone high in neuroticism is:
prone to negative emotions
anxious, angry, sad
People who are high in agreeableness will find themselves on either side of the political spectrum. Agreeableness refers to kindness and cooperativeness. But this study3 notes that agreeableness sub-traits, empathy and kindness, are determinants for Left or Right political orientation. Someone high in empathy will lean Left, whereas someone high in kindness will lean Right.
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The Exploited Liberal
The Liberal, prone to negative emotion, empathy, and fantasy thinking, are highly exploitable. Exploiters, such as media and politicians, are like lions circling a wounded animal. They surround the perimeter. They know the animal is weak. Feasting is inevitable. The lions will wait. They will eat.
People who have the awareness to understand humans and skills to frame issues, ideas, and solutions in a way that appeals to people based on their personality are able to exploit Liberals. Exploitation is inevitable because it is the way people get and maintain power.
Let’s look at how Liberals are exploited.
Exploiting Liberals’ Openness
Thinking is a dichotomy of fantasy and rational thinking. Thinking exists on a spectrum. Someone engaging in fantasy thinking has moved away from rational thought. They can still access rational thought, but their tendency is to engage in open-mindedness and fantasy. Fantasy thinking and an active imagination are good qualities to have, but they are highly exploitable. If an issue, idea, argument, or solution can be framed in a romantic, virtuous way, the Liberal will embrace it almost every single time. Interweaving justice, oppression, and morality into a poetic frame almost guarantees Liberal appeal.
An objective perception of reality reveals how often Liberals are hypocrites. They follow exploitation like ducklings following their mother. But Liberals only appear to be inconsistent. They are actually very consistent. They will embrace the narrative that is swaddled in virtue and righteousness. Their mantra and principles are always aligned with this concept. People often ask “what happened to ‘my body- choice’” after observing Liberals fight for autonomy over their own body, but assert expectations over everyone else’s. Don’t be captivated by mantra or words. Take note of the narrative and way its verbalized. The Liberal will adopt principles and mantras as they go, while dropping others, as they follow the enchanted narrative that’s been constructed just for them. The exploiters open the door and the Liberals walk in. Every time.
Exploiting Liberals’ Neuroticism
Everyone becomes less rationale when experiencing negative emotion. Negative emotion distorts our perception of reality. It impairs decision making. The ability to remain rationale and despite negative emotion is a skill in which most are ill-equipped. Therefore, experiencing negative emotion is a force pulling us away from rational thought. Negative emotion is a feature in the human experience that turns us into a version of ourselves that we do not want to be. We rarely notice when this happens.
Vulnerability to negative emotion is simple to exploit. Anything that triggers a strong emotional response can be used to turn up a Liberal’s negative emotion dial. Once the dial is located and turned up, the exploiter is able to guide them where they want them. There are videos of people getting killed by the police every single day, but you won’t see them every day. You only see them when exploiters need Liberals to see them. They push these videos to the public in order to crank up the neuroticism dial and cause people to abandon rational thought. They’ll add a romantic, virtuous narrative that pulls on their heart strings and guide the Liberal where they want them, like farmer herding cattle.
Susceptibility to negative emotion increases the likelihood of nervous system overload. Pavlov determined that overloading a subject’s nervous system with stress makes the subject programmable. Because Liberals are high in neuroticism, increasing their negative emotion for prolonged periods of time triggers this paradoxical and ultra-paradoxical phase of conditioning, which makes Liberals programmable4. They are eager to reduce the negative emotion, so they will embrace any message or narrative that they are told will make it stop. Consider what you saw unfold during the pandemic. Can you see any evidence of government, public health officials, and media increasing the public’s stress levels in order to move them toward nervous system overload?
Exploiting Liberal's’ Empathy
Liberal’s have high levels of empathy5, but you probably already knew that. They want to feel what others experience. I believe that the desire to understand others’ feelings and experiences spawns from an intrinsic, subconscious desire to strengthen a weak self-image, but I digress.
Being high in empathy has its benefits, but is someone whose capacity to understand the feelings and experiences of others able to consider human nature to the degree in which it should be considered? The greater one’s empathy, the more difficult it becomes to incorporate human nature and motivation into solutions.
Exploiters know this. They can present issues in ways which portrays others’ experiences as unfair, unjust, and immoral. It is because of this that Liberals do not take human nature and human motivation into account when creating and proposing solutions.
Notes & Other Observations
If you haven’t noticed this yet, you’ll note it moving forward:
Liberals create horrible systems and solutions.
Liberals’ solutions prevent them from getting the outcomes they want.
The nature and personality of a Liberal makes it difficult for them to create the world they want to live in. The systems they create and the solutions they propose are influenced by their high levels of imagination, empathy, and negative emotion. Therefore, the Liberal will propose or endorse solutions that won’t manufacture what they want. Hence the endless cycle of pointing identifying problems and failing to fix them. They tend to practice wishful thinking, but believe they are producing good systems and solutions. They struggle to differentiate between what is and what ought to be, or what is realistic and what is wishful thinking.
Liberals desire open boarders
Open borders, yes, but not what is typically thought of when it comes to borders. Liberals prefer loose borders for their country because it allows novel ideas, people, and resources into their country. But Liberals also prefer loose borders in their lives. They prefer their personal life and society blended together. They prefer their values exist beyond the confinement of their own home and family. They want their values, beliefs, ideas, and solutions to flow freely throughout society and be embraced by others. This stems from their desire for validation and positive self-image.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051010-111659
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43050088_Compassionate_Liberals_and_Polite_Conservatives_Associations_of_Agreeableness_With_Political_Ideology_and_Moral_Values
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43050088_Compassionate_Liberals_and_Polite_Conservatives_Associations_of_Agreeableness_With_Political_Ideology_and_Moral_Values
https://jasonandrews.coach/blog/pavlov-marxists-conversions-and-current-societal-messaging/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167218769867
This article is a complete waste of time. By the way, it’s spelled borders, not boarders. Unless you’re talking about surfers. That tells you everything you need to know about the academic substance.
Man vs. woman...