re: #126 EPR-radar

I’d be willing to bet that every single dedicated conservative in the US is a sociopath. How else can people be that happy about screwing others?

Really easily.

You can teach people who’s in-group and who’s out-group, and in turn they’ll be thrilled by the discomfort of the latter.

What unites the various sections of the GOP is a picture of “others”—the out-group—as qualitatively not of the same nature or substance as those of the in-group. For some this is a spiritual distinction, but for others it’s a racial or class-based one, and for some it’s a sort of Social Darwinist judgement of who’s a loser. Once you’re assigned to the out-group, you’re no longer as real or as human as if you were in the in-group, and it’s okay to be unsympathetic, or even cruel. The only good thing you can do for an out-group person is demand they comply with the in-group’s wishes…becoming acceptable, assimilated, but not truly afforded in-group status.