There’s a strange duality of living or coming from the South in the US, and presumably, other places with extreme prejudice. Words or phrases get used like water such that they are etched into your mind, causing an almost Pavlovian response mechanism to trigger, despite one’s true feelings.

It’s almost like a game Red light, Green light, but for awfulness. I haven’t lived in the South for decades, and on occasion, a hateful word will pop out of a dark hole in my head even though my real thoughts and actions run counter to it.

I can sort of understand his stance, but being aware of it is enough, at least to me, is more than enough to fix it. Anything other than that is intentional malice.

That’s not why they’re the way they are. I’ve expounded on the topic at length before on Lemmy. My family and people are tainted by The Bay of Pigs. They fled Fidel for the US and lost everything they owned in Cuba. That created the bitterness toward Communism and Socialism.

The Bay of Pigs created their hatred for the Dems. The brainwashing was a result of the freedom fighters having their US support removed last minute, leaving them to be killed or jailed. Congress voted to remove support after Kennedy promised it. The brainwashing was around Kennedy doing it intentionally when in reality it was the Republican led Congress and Senate.

I’m Canadian which has them called the conservative party of Canada, under the guise that they are fiscally conservative.

This is of course not the case but nonetheless it’s the name they chose. It does lead to some confusion much like the National Socialist German Workers’ Party did.

Existing hierarchies and power structures.

If you can force yourself to view everything through that lens, the actions of conservatives make a lot of sense, as do the things that make them angry.

It’s easy to forget that no one is the villain in their own book.

Incidentally, why I hate a lot of movies where the villain is Dr. Evil who is part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or something. Also why I think the Good / Evil alignment axis in D&D is bullshit.

ultra racist uncle as a man that’s simply absolutely frightened of change

Or just someone who grew up in a different time and was taught different things and doesn’t believe that what they were taught is out of date. Similarly, a kid might think they know everything but doesn’t have the wisdom and experience to know that things are more complicated than they seem on the surface. Both can be pretty obnoxious at a thanksgiving dinner table.

Take, for example, a discussion about how voting is done. The racist uncle might think that mail-in voting is a scam, and that the only way to vote should be in-person. He might not understand that poor people in cities sometimes have to wait in line for hours to vote, and that some might not be able to do that while holding down 2 jobs. He might not believe that the small number of polling places was a deliberate choice by a past government to discourage these people from voting.

But, at the same time, the kid might think that online voting is the obvious answer. The kid lives her entire life online and often votes on things. She knows a bit about encryption and has heard of blockchains and thinks that the only people against online voting are luddites who are afraid of technology. She might not understand the danger of being able to prove that you voted and who you voted for. She might not appreciate how sometimes low tech things are much harder to manipulate and fake.

So, there’s “cautious of change happening too quickly” vs. “too eager to embrace change without considering the consequences”. Everybody likes to think that they’re smack dab in the sweet spot between those two things, but everyone else is going to judge them as being too far to one side.