I probably see more "liberal" bashing and people using terms like "leftie", "socialist" as dirty words more than anything TBH.
In my experience the Conservative/Republican crowd has generally appeared slightly more aggressive in vilification of the opposition than their Liberal/Democratic counterparts. I was pretty tempted to vote "both as bad as each other" at first, and would add that I find the demonization to be needlessly petty, nasty, ignorant and condemnable. It's also one among several reasons I choose not to volunteer much with the local branch of the Democratic Party.
Both are as bad to each other, calling the other party either 'democrap' or 'republitard', those being the nicest names they use to slander each other. I don't belong into either camp, thank goodness.
Demonizing and bashing are two different things but both fall on the left more. They are far more guilty.
Definitely Republicans. To them, they see a country becoming more socialist, gay marriage laws being passed, Christianity becoming less relevant, etc. Even though they have valid points on certain issues, they're scared (*)(*)(*)(*)less, and therefore they come off as more abrasive and aggressive.
A more pertinent question might be....who deserves to be demonized the most? When you have a party that pushes for socialism/communism/marxism progressivism and communism, and one that agrees with our enemies that America is bad in so many ways, and that criticizes our capitalist run society, our military, our successful businesses and businessmen and advocates for open borders, touchy-feely amnesty and the mass slaughter of our unborn....I think then your question of who demonizes more becomes moot.
On these forums, about the same. Out in the real world including including the political arena the Dems are a lay down mazaire
Well, I think you're pretty close to having the answer there. People who have strong authoritarian tendencies tend to be more prejudiced, aggressive in attacking out-groups, and are more willing to sort people into starkly opposing categories of good/evil, superior/inferior, right/wrong, and so on than people who have weak authoritarian tendencies. Both sides have many people who fall into both of those groupings but studies suggest the people who comprise former group are more likely to identify as "conservative" than "liberal." Being conservative or Republican does not imply authoritarianism, however, nor does being liberal, a Democrat, or even a self-described Libertarian imply anti-authoritarianism. There are likely other factors at work here as well. To use them as an example, partisan hacks are abundant, after all! The poll options here do not provide a set of choices going to the heart of who does the most or least political vilification.
A bully is just a bully as you will have no weight on the other side, influense the people on your side. Isn't time for reasonable people on both sides to solve problems.
Liberals at the moment are monopolizing both the government and media with their attempts to demonize conservatives. DHS has made extreme efforts since 08 to add 'right wing extremists' as potential terrorists, then nudged that to include the Tea Party. At the same time liberal extremists and miscreants from OWS were terrorizing communities and getting a free pass from the administration and the media. When an act of Islamic terrorism occurred in this country the media and this administration had no problem tossing out the potential for 'right wing extremists' to be responsible. I don't recall the last time a conservative administration took pains to paint the opposition as enemies of the state, not like this liberal administration is doing...
It doesn't matter who is at fault. It should be obvious to all of us regardless of political orientation that no polity can survive this level of corrosive internal hostility. America's political culture has become an acid bath, and that's not going to change. We all can sense that this will not turn out well.
Agreed. The people are far too divided to come together now. Maybe that will turn out to be a good thing in the long run.
