Many academics I see online are leftist whereas many laypeople I see online are right wing.

  • Kennystillalive@feddit.org
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    10 days ago

    IMO:There are 3 type of “right wingers”:

    • The sheeps (the majority about 90%) they are less educated, easy to manipulate & very reactionary.
    • The shepherds (the minority about 1%) they are highly educated, come from generational wealth & want to defend & multiply their wealth by influenving the sheeps.
    • The sheep dogs (about 9%) they are highly educated & very oportunistic. They don’t come from wealth and dream of wealth. Their only goal in life is to be shepherds one day. (Most likely they won’t achieve it maybe one will make it to be uaed a champion that it’s possible) but they will do everything to achieve it and thus work overtime for the shepherds & influence the sheeps as much aa poaaible.

    So yeah, about 10% of the right wingers are educated. The majority still is less educazed and easy to manipulatw.

    • Pudutr0n@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Believe it or not, there are well educated, intelligent and well intended people in the right wing. Not the majority, by any chance, but I’ve met these people. I’m not saying they’re right, but assuming the only possible causes for their beliefs are either ignorance or ill will/greed just feeds the polarization that’s currently destroying western civilization.

      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        What is their answer to “people are hungry and die of starvation or not being able to afford needs, while others have more money than what’s possible to spend in hundreds of lifetimes of extreme luxury, what should be done about that?”? Because I can’t imagine an educated, well intentioned answer to it, either you’re too dumb to understand reality or you’re okay with people suffering and dying.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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          10 days ago

          Good video on the topic. TL;DR: They believe it’s inevitable and not something you can just fix/that you can only fix very slowly. It’s a fucking stupid worldview, but not an impossible one, though it’s not hard to see why such worldviews tend to come from positions of privilege.

          • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
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            10 days ago

            Common subsets of this category (cynics) I’ve seen or met include those who are (A) opportunists working the corporate funding angle who are allowed or even encouraged to do so by their departments/institutions, and (B) obligate centrists who are so reticent to be identified as leaning in any particular direction politically that they effectively accept or even endorse any and every systemic injustice.

            Subgroup A are quite prevalent in journals yet tend to have markedly low-quality contributions comparatively, leading me think they are over-represented in peer review especially, easily a symptom of corruption inherent to private journals.

            Subgroup B are IMO the academic version of MLK’s “white moderate” who are simply self-interested careerists. I would say these are by far the most common by number. They aren’t working for the Right directly like subgroup A, but they won’t lift a finger to help if it might jeopardize their position. That is to say, cowards.

        • Pudutr0n@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          I don’t know what all of their answers are, but as a latin american I can offer you my perspective of hunger and starvation not being exclusive to the right wing and extreme luxury being something many left wing politicians will happily indulge in once elected, while their populace live in misery.

          Many of them do believe in different forms of redistribution too. Right wing political stances do not equate to “give every last penny to the rich and private sector”. Political perspectives have nuance.

          • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            I’m also a latin american, I’m not saying corruption doesn’t exist on the left wing, or that they’re not assholes who will go crazy with power. Also I’m not saying voting right wing is always the wrong thing to do, for me authoritarian/democratic is much more important than left/right, so if my choices are authoritarian left vs democratic right, I’ll vote right.

            But fundamentally when asked about inequality the right wing answer is always along the lines of “it is what it is” or “it will be solved very slowly over the next hundreds of years by not doing anything”, both of which are either ignorant or evil, and of you’re talking about an educated person one of those should be off the table.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          10 days ago

          It varies.

          If it’s someone who is, themselves, very well-off, it goes one of two ways. Either a deontological “property is inviolable and so it doesn’t matter”, or “this money is fair compensation for just how awesome I am”. The latter of which implies they’ve already done enough for their lessers, so shut up.

          “Only Americans are human, so yes, I guess we should help the American poor” is basically the MAGA answer. That also used to be the German answer. Some grifters also use the same logic, but with an even smaller group of people they care about, like just their own family.

          Somebody else mentioned “it’s the way it’s always been/inevitable”, but if you’re educated at all, you’ll know better, because nothing is like it was in 1700. So, that’s not an answer to your question.

          (You’ll notice a common strain, that people tend to pick a worldview that’s convenient for them, personally. That actually goes for the left wing, as well)

        • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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          10 days ago

          Intelligent people have an easier time convincing themselves of falsehoods because they can produce more complex rationalizations.

          • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            Jef bezos net worth is 284 billion, a very bad investment yields 4% annually, that roughly translates to 11.4 billion per year, or around a billion per month, or around 31 million per day, 1.3 million per hour, or 22 thousand per minute.

            In the time it took me to write this, of Jeff Bezos is stupid (which he’s not) and does very bad and safe investments he already earned over 100 thousand. The time it takes you to think on an innovative idea to spend money they already earned more than what you would spend, and the time it takes to do anything they already earned more. Think about this, of they wanted to buy a million dollar house on a different country that would take them 12h to reach by private jet, they literally lost no money buying the house and traveling there to sign the papers and fly back.

            I dare you to tell me something that would actually lose them more money than what they would earn in the time it takes to enjoy it.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        10 days ago

        Well-intended, sure. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story.

        Intelligent, maybe, although that’s always going to push a person towards something a bit more nuanced. Other personality defects have to pick up the slack.

        Educated, well, that depends on what they studied. Engineers and doctors don’t really learn much that prevents you from being a bad person. It’s hard to imagine a (modern) anthropologist buying into whatever fascist nonsense, though.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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            10 days ago

            It’s true.

            The version that’s going around right now is more like that, though. Reagan is very dead. Free markets are out, blood and soil is in.

            • Pudutr0n@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              The current US right wing leader is destroying any possibility the sensible right wing concerns get any attention, but just because something took a turn to the dark side doesn’t mean there was nothing worthwhile in it to begin with.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      10 days ago

      Do you have some examples of sheep dogs? The movement, as I’ve seen it, seems like a pretty straight continuum from sheep to shepherd. Either you’re successfully grifting, a sucker, or both.

      • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        I think they meant to call the unsuccessful grifting suckers sheep dogs. In Andrew Tate world, the word for it is “sigma male”.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          10 days ago

          It seems possible OP is actually classifying the shepherds/grifters as sheepdogs, and imagining a separate group at the top that doesn’t exist.

          Andrew Tate is a great example. Obviously, most of his whole persona is fake, and obviously, he made a good deal of money from it, but his background is relatively ordinary. Lots of people in the White House are only marginally different from that.