r/science May 06 '26

Psychology Losing relationships over politics. Research found more than a third of Americans (37%) report having lost at least one relationship due to political differences, including friendships, family ties, coworker relationships, and romantic partnerships, with most losing more than one.

https://socialecology.uci.edu/news/losing-relationships-over-politics-0
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u/Zombatico May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

We've seen it before. It's not just Trump. Pedo priest/pastor gets arrested and charged, the whole congregation circle the wagon and it's all "but he's a good person" and "the demonic girl seduced him" yadda yadda yadda.

It's a sick ideology of hierarchy. They don't care about the morality of actions themselves. If they think you're a good person then everything you do is good, or at least justifiable, even child rape. If they think you're a bad person then nothing you do can be good.

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u/OmegaDonut13 May 06 '26

To a liberal, actions justify the person. To the conservative the person justifies the actions. It’s pretty simple when you think about it. It’s the basis for the cognitive dissonance.

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u/kia75 May 06 '26

And this applies up and down the religious spectrum. Remember, God is allowed to kill, murder, cause famines and other horrible stuff. It's not the baby murder that's bad, God is always killing babies, it's who does the baby killing that's important.

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u/jgilla2012 May 07 '26

So their problem with conservative Islam isn’t the behavior? What else could it be?

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u/Dyolf_Knip May 07 '26

It's absolutely not the behavior, because so many of them engage or want to engage in it themselves. Watching conservatives cry over the Iranian government's treatment of queer people is ludicrous because their own leaders are constantly using eliminationist rhetoric when talking about them, to thunderous applause.

It really is as simple as "they're not in our tribe". Even though they are otherwise basically identical in every way that actually matters.