Comment by gruez

5 days ago

except for during covid, where there was a weird reversal.

I don't even know if that was much of a "reversal".

Blue states were paternalistic over both your property (business and social gathering shutdowns) and your body (masking, social distancing enforcement), while red states (particularly Texas, Florida) were very laissez-faire for both.

What's perplexing about this is that research has generally correlated higher amygdala activity (fear/worry) with political conservatism, and lower amygdala activity with political progressivism, but in this case, the effect seemed almost inverted.

  • In that case, I imagine that the response of mask mandates wasn't out of fear but was done do to the obvious benefit in controlling a disaster. The anti-masking movement is also I suspect a fear response. People are afraid of change, especially extremely visible change

  • When progressives become the status quo, they turn into conservatives. There's a meme going around about a 1950s Soviet communist vs. a 2020s American communist, and their diametrically opposed views on things like LGBTQ and immigration.

  • Fear of infectious diseases is inversely correlated with testosterone levels, and so is liberalism.

The funny thing is the more this comment is downvoted, the more accurate you know it is.