Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
Perhaps it's just that, being in North America, we have a far larger "rightist" population so there is statistically a greater chance that any particular loony is a fellow-traveller of that type. So the anti-GMO crowd, for example, is a lot smaller than the pro-militia crowd. Perhaps in Europe I'd think the ratio was more around 50/50.
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Maybe the reason I come into conflict with the left more often than the right these days is I don't consume American news media (posting in a thread about American politics is unusual for me). So the fact a bunch of nutjobs in Ohio or Kansas deny evolution and are arming themselves against the government is no more than a social curiosity to me. It doesn't affect me any more than the far right movement in France, or ultra-nationalists in Russia. Scary and weird, but not part of my political landscape.
In the social landscapes I do travel - forums like this, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the local music scene, forums dedicated to my hobbies of gaming and speculative fiction - I'm far more likely to come across left-wing zeal and dogma than right-wing. And the people who parrot the left-wing talking points seem even less self-reflective than their counterparts on the right. Maybe it's because they're younger, and because the mainstream media has adopted many of the shibboleths of the left, but many on the new left seem to have never had their beliefs challenged, or had to defend them with reason and empiricism. And the prospect of a whole generation that holds very strong opinions that are unchallenged and unexamined is troubling. So I don't hesitate to challenge and poke and question them, even though it often brings down a pack of righteous puritans on my head.