I think you and I are mostly on the same page here. I’m going to take your advice and put more thought into the perspectives of others. Thank you!

I am not a political scientist. I’m merely someone who reads a fair bit and tries, in my own fallible way, to get to the truth of things. Certainly this study is not the final word on the matter, and I certainly do not think that all conservatives are gullible simpletons. Just that there are more of them than non-conservatives. And maybe these are just the extremists (e.g. the gullible MAGA republicans who believed Trump’s rhetoric that the election was stolen and attacked the Capitol), but there are not such extremists on the other side.

I would be happy to read about gullible non-conservatives. I’m sure there are some!

I agree we should not look down on conservative viewpoints. But I have struggled to reason with proponents of those viewpoints rooted in gullibility. “America should not help Ukraine because it is full of Nazis”, for example, textbook Russian propaganda. I asked my brother for proof of his outrageous statement, and he sent me a photoshopped picture of Biden with his hand on Zelensky’s ass. OK, it was funny. But irrelevant. It’s not just the gullibility, they are either unable or too stubborn to reason with. I think they are unable to accept they are wrong, and yes, populists pointing out to them that we point this out somehow confirms that they are right.

Thank you for replying to my comment. Happy to read any further thoughts you might have.

While technically true that “People are gullible, not just right-wingers.”, this is misleading in this context. Studies have been done! For example: https://academic.oup.com/poq/article/87/2/267/7147091

Some quotes from the study: “Accordingly, a surplus of pro-conservative misinformation may indicate, simply, that conservatives are more gullible. This logic is illustrated by the story of Macedonian teenagers who converged to producing false stories catering to Trump supporters, rather than Bernie Sanders supporters, because it worked better.” “…misinformation catered more to conservatives, and this contributes to them being on average more likely to believe false information.”

This is such bullshit. The EU is supposed to be encouraging EV adoption. There’s a market NOW for affordable EVs it will take years for European car companies to get into. The EU needs to help these companies produce affordable EVs faster, not block Chinese companies from providing a solution in the meantime. Climate change is already a crisis. We need to be doing everything possible to reduce its escalating effects.

Oh yeah? Who?

He needs some exercise, it’ll be good for him. Send him out to pick up trash in a disadvantaged neighborhood.

The reality is that either Trump or Biden will win and if you’re not voting for either of them then, practically speaking, you might as well not vote at all. Third party candidates only ever get a tiny fraction of the overall vote and that’s not going to change this time.

I have had several nightmares where I lost my phone and embarked on progressively hellish journeys to get it back. The details of these nightmares are hazy in my memory now, I only really remember feeling lost and afraid, and enormously relieved when I woke up.

Thank you Joshua, I’d like that very much

The answer is “vote for Joe despite him not doing more to aid Gaza, because the only alternative is far, far worse”.

Trump is himself a heel

It just comes in a box, they’re not going to drink it from the box! I’m sure they’ll pour it into a mug first.

We already have a raping, pillaging, murdering force rolling west. It’s called Russia. It’s not unstoppable though. The Ukrainians have proved that. Let’s give them more aid. Lots and lots of aid.

The ACA was an attempt to make the current health system a little better. Sure Biden promotes it, but that doesn’t mean he’s championing the health system overall. You probably already know that the ACA was originally based on a Republican health plan. Obama went with this rather than Medicare-for-all because he thought it was the only way he could get Republican buy-in to pass any kind of health improvements for citizens. But even so the Republicans demanded all kinds of concessions and watered it down so it ended up being way less effective than intended. The bottom line here? Health care affordability problems are because Republicans don’t want to fix them.