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Comment by justinzollars | Hacker News Reader

Having lived in Ohio, the far right is exactly the same as the far left here in San Francisco. What is funny is they do not realize this. So I think its more a personality type selection than actual thought process or belief.

The result of believing the other side is evil, is no one is willing to work together so we all lose.

I think this could be a function of things we've built on the internet such as the ability to "hide" or "block" - even moderators are bad I, an elected DNC delegate is banned from the DailyKos because I disagreed with the Democrats proxy war policy on Syria.

We are in trouble.

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> So I think its more a personality type selection than actual thought process or belief.

Yep, I think that's an important insight. I know a few people who grew up in very evangelical/conservative Christian communities who later dropped that ideology for left-wing ones (e.g. feminism). Their attitudes and behaviors are almost exactly the same, except that the content of their ideas has been swapped out.

Why the downvotes? Seems like a relevant anecdote.

because the idea that women should get to work and vote isn't a far-left idea

That's a pretty disingenuous comment: First, your characterization is probably accurate if restricted to the "first wave" feminism (of a century ago), but, IIRC, I think we're on the "third wave" now. Second, in the American political context, feminism is highly correlated with progressives/left-wing, and the specific people I was talking about are very left-wing. Thirdly, my comment wasn't even about feminism at all, but about how people can change beliefs without changing a lot of things one might naively assume would change with them.

You brought up the broad concept of 'feminism' as an example and your comment was about people who go to either extreme, so I think I took your comment as being more anti-feminism then you meant it (no ingenuous meant to be dis'ed). I agree with your idea of how some people change beliefs but still keep the same extreme attitude.

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