As a right-leaning, generally-conservative guy, the most organized hate I've gotten on reddit is because I'm a right-leaning, generally-conservative guy rather than being a more-reddit-acceptable left-leaning Sanders-supporting liberal.
This mirrors my experience. I take my ideas from both right and left, but if I post any left-wing viewpoint on something (corporate taxation, say) the hard right might disagree but they keep it respectful. Whereas say anything even centrist and I get instant, vicious hate and bile from the left.
Fortunately those people have very poor impulse control and are prone to rage-blocking, so I never have to bother with them for long, but there's always more.
Describes my experiences as well, both online and off. People love to paint conservatives as dumb and intolerant, but like you I generally find the right to be willing to debate, whereas the left considers themselves right, end of discussion.
I don't think that it actually breaks down that way. In my experience both conservatives and liberals are composed 80% of people who can talk rationally with only their own side and 20% by who are prepared talk rationally with people from either side. You need to be a lot more knowledgeable about a subject to constructively discuss it with someone who disagrees with you.
A big part of the problem, then, is that if you are not paying close enough attention it looks like your side is 100% reasonable and the other side is mostly unreasonable, regardless of which side you are on.
Heh, not my experiences at all. Especially the right wingers in the comments section of my local paper--post anything about bikes, for example, and the folks with Reagan as their user icon immediately come out with stuff about how badly they'd like to run any cyclist down in their truck.
But, even given that, I'd hasten to put anything down as "those people are the real jerks," because I don't think anyone has a monopoly on being a jerk.
I have a mild suspicion that a lot of it comes down basically to what the cultural norm is for your area in terms of political leanings, as that's likely to rope in the most people who aren't really paying attention to what they think as much as what "their people" think -- and so they make politics into a team sport.
Honestly I think when communities become large, it's the moderates who lose. I'm regularly downvoted into oblivion and most of my opinions are moderate-left. It doesn't matter how much you support Sanders, try pointing out that just saying "Fukushima" a thousand times isn't justification for deriding nuclear energy and you'll quickly find your comment straddling the bottom of the page at -500.
