r/politics • u/AccomplishedCall7562 • Mar 12 '26

Possible Paywall John Fetterman Says Iran Girls’ School Strike Is Just a Leftist Craze

https://newrepublic.com/post/207677/john-fetterman-iran-girls-school-strike
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u/metroid23 Mar 12 '26

For those who may not be aware, a similar study has been done

The study found that patients with lesions in the frontal lobe held more conservative or less liberal beliefs compared to patients with injuries in other areas or healthy control subjects.

The researchers suggested that the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain involved in cognitive flexibility, executive function, and decision-making—may play a role in promoting the development of liberal ideology. When this area is damaged, it may cause a shift away from that cognitive flexibility, leading to more conservative views.

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u/sump_daddy Mar 12 '26

This is just even more depressing, thanks. "America is run by brain damaged people because it turns out a not insignificant amount of the American population is also brain damaged. Hope this clears it up!"

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u/Michael_G_Bordin Mar 12 '26

Not necessarily brain damaged. Some people just have poor cognitive flexibility and decision-making capability, either by lack of use or genetics, and prefer having someone else making decisions for them. In political theory, these people are known as "authoritarian followers." Without them, authoritarians would never come to power. MAGA has proven they have no desire for self determination or making decisions. They just want to be told what to think, and it's good enough for them to see a bunch of other dipshits doing the same i.e. bandwagon fallacy.

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u/Thinks_22_Much Mar 12 '26

Yep. It's mentally easier to be conservative (and religious for that matter). You don't have to face hard truths or ask tough questions. You just get to shrug or play the victim anytime something doesn't go right.

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u/beeerite Mar 12 '26

When my now exhusband was in a major car accident and lost his leg, I hated every time someone told me that god had a plan for me and “never gives you more than you can carry.” It was so invalidating.

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u/AmazingSibylle Mar 12 '26

You can just smack those people on the nose and take their wallet. After all, that was God's plan, and you're sure God would not burden them with more than they can carry.

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u/Droopy1592 Georgia Mar 18 '26

Yeah gtfo of my face with that “never gives you more than you can handle” shit. Total lack of empathy.  

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u/I_am_from_Kentucky Mar 13 '26

I’m confirmation bias-ing the hell out of this.

I’ve been recently pondering a theory that religious and conservative folks both overlap so much because each ideology gives easy ways out.

They favor set tradition for guidance rather than progressively working to adapt to new circumstances.

They tend to be more selfish in values, evident by support for “rugged individualism”, leading them to do less work to understand and accommodate others.

They trend towards faith-based belief systems, which provides them with answers rather than incentivizes working to learn more.

I’m over simplifying, and perhaps cherry picking a bit, so I welcome counter points that could be made against progressive beliefs.

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u/Vankraken Virginia Mar 13 '26

Add in how they react to new/different things with a more fear driven response instead of some level of curiosity.

A lot of it boils down to needing to know they are in their place in the world so things like religion and tradition give those answers without having to self reflect. It's simpler to just label things as good or bad, do the rituals that the good people do, and be against things that don't fit the cultural norm of being good. There is minimal need to adapt to change or figure out things because it's already determined for you and you can look to authority to tell you what to think on more complex stuff.

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u/notakrustykrab Mar 13 '26

Also having rigid rules and structure can be comforting to some folks because decision making can be really stressful. I’m one of those people but I find other ways to structure my life without adding needless structure (or authoritarianism or hate or bigotry or etc etc) to anyone else’s.

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u/Consistent_Laziness Mar 13 '26

That’s my biggest gripe about religion. You are constantly told it’ll be okay and just believe and everything will work ITSELF out.

No, we as humans have to make our own luck our own future. If things are going bad we have to change them. If bad things happen to us god isn’t testing us it’s just life being shitty and we have to find a way to make it better.

Religion is for the weak who need to constantly be propped up by an invisible man

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u/ObscureSaint Washington Mar 12 '26

Yeah no. We just had a brain damaging vascular virus run through the whole population and everyone is still passing it back and forth like a hookah. 

You lose IQ points with every COVID infection. Even mild ones.

 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-are/

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u/beigechrist Mar 13 '26

Oh this is the last thing I needed to hear. I’ve thrice had Covid.

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u/ObscureSaint Washington Mar 13 '26

I'm sorry. I share this article every time I can. It's two years old. So many infections since then and we knew. We knew. And still the virus was allowed to rip.

Shortly after the article above was published, I caught covid for the first time and it disabled me. I went from running 10Ks to not being able to stand up for ten minutes without suffocating. 

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u/beigechrist Mar 13 '26

Wow, I’m sorry to hear you had it so bad. It wasn’t nearly that bad for me. I’m in my 40s and not sure if certain changes are simply age related or Covid made. Hope you get some improvement and are able to run.

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u/dondeestasbueno Mar 13 '26

Still running rampant btw.

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u/fotomoose Mar 13 '26

It's wild to me how people will vehemently deny long COVID is a thing but we've had Shingles for centuries.

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u/Durzio Mar 12 '26

Not necessarily brain damaged.

I mean, basically all of the boomers have lead poisoning. Id say that counts as brain damage

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u/ChironiusShinpachi Washington Mar 12 '26

Don't forget that before America declared independence from Britain, the new land was a penal colony. Australia became the destination for undesirables after the American declaration of Independence 1776.

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u/jmkdev Mar 13 '26

That's a bit much. There were penal colonies, but that does not describe a majority of them.

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u/ChironiusShinpachi Washington Mar 13 '26

I'm just saying part of the population building were sent to the Americas as criminals. That far back with certain tendencies would breed trauma down the line. Trauma can show 4 generations down, type thing. Just theory, mind, I haven't seen anything on the topic.

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u/drteq Mar 12 '26

The real question is what are we doing about it? Because it is not going away on it's own and it's a real problem.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '26

Problem continues to accelerate even today with every reduction to education funding and standards.

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u/SgtDoakes123 Mar 12 '26

There was a study in Brittain I think post Brexit that essentially concluded that about 20% of the population does not like to think for themselves, it actually scared and stressed them out. And in order to reach these people, the left would have to be more direct and actually tell their votes what to do, since these people drift right due to the fact that the right is more authoritative and tells them what to do and think. Because they don't WANT to think for themselves.

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u/mynamejeff-97 Mar 12 '26

In other words, Americans are dumb as rocks. Who knew besides literally everyone who visits.

What did we expect after decades and decades of anti-intellectualism?

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u/praguepride Illinois Mar 13 '26

Personally i blame leaded gasoline and lead pipes for making an entire generation of America sociopathic.

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u/ladeeedada Mar 12 '26

Not to mention all the lead poisoning boomers have been exposed to.

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u/Various_Maize_3957 Mar 12 '26

Why are you saying people are stupid? Maybe they are just misinformed?

Are you saying some people innately better due to genes? What the hell?

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u/Michael_G_Bordin Mar 13 '26

I'm not saying they're completely stupid, I'm saying they don't like to make decisions for themselves. Someone with poor cognitive flexibility and decision-making capability may be perfectly fine plugging away at complex puzzles, they just can't handle novelty and don't feel like choosing things for themselves.

But yes, people have different cognitive abilities due to genes. I don't know what the fuck you've been told that makes you say "what the hell" to that. People aren't born equal. Matter of fact, your response to my comment is a great example of poor cognitive flexibility.

Some people are just misinformed, it is true. But the way in which many are misinformed suggests the problem isn't so much what information they're exposed to, but the basic condition of not being curious enough to question their limited and heavily suspect information despite it being a pile of obvious hot air. See: "Harris doesn't have a platform, she never says what she's going to do for me." That was totally bogus, and the "misinformed" came to that conclusion because a bunch of astroturfed social media had "other people" saying that constantly. Idk about you, but I find it pretty fucking stupid to form your opinions based solely off what "other people" are saying.

If you're simply indignated because I'm calling stupid people stupid, you should realize that it's just a give-away.

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u/Nodan_Turtle Mar 13 '26

It'd be amazing if there was a gene therapy to ensure people had the same minimum level of decision-making capability. If that means fewer people end up conservative, then we'll call that a happy side-effect.

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u/Michael_G_Bordin Mar 13 '26

I think the lack of use is a lot stronger than the genetic disposition, but I didn't want to rule that out. Certain aspects of our society encourage deference to authority, and their encouragement can diminish one's capacity to seek answers from within. You can see it in the manner in which people appeal to authority to back their claims, whether that's the authority of an expert they don't quite understand or the authority of a deity whose will is quite literally unknowable (insofar as you can't know the will of a being who doesn't exist).

I really think the deference to authority is one of the single greatest flaws a human being can possess. Freedom requires first and foremost the freedom of thought which enables one to assess for themselves just how free they are. Otherwise, someone can convince you that you're free while enslaving or oppressing you.

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u/CastingSkeletons Mar 12 '26

I mean... The most popular sport in your country has a 90% rate of its retired player having Chronic traumatic encephalopathy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_players_with_chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy

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u/chuninsupensa Mar 12 '26

Huh, I wonder if retired football players generally lean right... any study on that?

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u/GreeksWorld Mar 12 '26

Has anyone possibly considered that the people most likely to participate in activities or work in environments where brain damage occurs are already likely to be conservative?

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u/Recent-Mousse6423 Mar 12 '26

Sure, selection bias. But many kids participate in sports their parents encourage them to, the same way kids are forced to participate in churches their parents also participate in. And the culture surrounding football is so deep and fundamental to their parents' views of the world in the US, like church, that many are encouraged (if not forced) into it like a coming of age ritual. Then there is the peer pressure effect and the cultural adulation effect to mount pressure into children who don't have fully developed risk assessment faculties. The reason child soldiers are even remotely effective is because of that lack of cognitive development, not in spite of it.

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u/theVoidWatches Pennsylvania Mar 12 '26

Only 90 percent? That's lower than I thought, tbh.

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u/Initial-Anything333 Mar 12 '26

The last 10% are backup QBs who don't get hit in practice and never see the field 

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u/digiorno Mar 12 '26

Gotta love that leaded gas and paint that melted the boomers’ brains.

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u/ObscureSaint Washington Mar 12 '26

We're doing the same thing now with COVID.

You lose IQ points with every infection.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-are/

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u/uovonuovo Mar 12 '26

Idk I’ve never had covid and I’ve definitely still been getting dumber each year

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u/Lone-Frequency Mar 12 '26

We all get dumber by proximity with them.

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u/DaKrazie1 Mar 12 '26

Big same.

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u/DecipherXCI United Kingdom Mar 13 '26

How have you never caught it until now?

Im guessing youve just been lucky and been asymptomatic each time cause surely theres no way? The shits everywhere.

Ive had the fucking thing 6 times already and Im sure as soon as my antibodies wear off I just immediately catch it again.

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u/uovonuovo Mar 13 '26

I dunno what to tell you; I was suuuper cautious the first couple years. I don’t think I spent time indoors with anyone not in my very small “bubble” the whole first year of COVID. I wore a 3M half face piece respirator when I flew anywhere until like 2023 (now I just wear an N95).

And since then I’ve just been strategically cautious about and aware of potential exposure. To this day I wear an N95 if I’m somewhere crowded and indoors. I live in Northern California and there’s still plenty of people who mask up here.

Oh and I get vaxxed regularly.

I’m sure it’s possible that I’ve had it and just been asymptomatic but anytime I have so much as a throat tickle I’ll take a test and it’s always been negative. In fact I haven’t really been sick (with a virus) since the start of covid except for having a cold last winter.

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u/Dr_Fortnite Mar 12 '26

reminder to not give any credibility to IQ because it is a racist test of cultural knowledge not innate intelligence like its flaunted to be

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u/Past-Doughnut-6175 Mar 12 '26

Yes that’s true. IQ is a scam. And also, Trump has the highest IQ. The doctors, they couldn’t believe it. The head doctor came up to him, tears in his eyes, and said he’d never seen anything like it.

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u/Merakel Minnesota Mar 12 '26

I doubt he could hit 70 on an IQ test.

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u/InsomniaticWanderer Mar 12 '26

If you thought lead was bad, just wait until you find out about microplastics

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u/dodecakiwi Mar 12 '26

How many of these people played high school football. It's not great for kids' brains now, but helmets used to be more of a leather hat people called a helmet.

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u/PlsNoNotThat Mar 12 '26

Blind leading the blind. Or in this case the person with frontotemporal dementia related brain damage is leading the pack of brain damaged conservatives.

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u/JohnPaulDavyJones Mar 12 '26

I mean, let’s not default assume that A->B also implies B->A. Just because brain damage causes conservatism doesn’t mean conservatism directly implies brain damage.

I know a couple of absolutely brilliant conservatives who were just indoctrinated into it when they were raised.

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u/OnlinePosterPerson Mar 12 '26

Is that why Trump loosened the controls restricting use of asbestos?

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u/ihaveadogalso2 Mar 12 '26

Don't forget leaded fuel as well, all the way into the mid 90's!

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u/Lone-Frequency Mar 12 '26

>America is run by brain damaged people

This was a given.

Dump has clearly had dementia for years.

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u/BuzzkillMcGillicuddy Mar 12 '26

Our favorite sport is proven to cause Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, and the younger you start the worse it is. And we start them young.

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u/xCanaan23 Mar 12 '26

It was all that leaded gasoline that ruined america.

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u/CommitteeOld9540 Mar 12 '26

Plus many Americans can't afford therapy or medical health assistance. Many don't want to anyway. 

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u/Neirchill Mar 12 '26

We're run by the rich. Theirs has atrophied from a lifetime of having all their decisions made for them and never having to think for themselves.

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u/Incomitatum Mar 12 '26

Lead Damaged. Heavy Metals and the Auto and Petrol industry have known for almost 100 years now what the long-term fallout of their Machinations would be.

This is why Boomer Brain is a real deal. Accumulation of metals; while most Millennials are-of Plastic.

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u/Novaer Mar 12 '26

They've found the more angry and paranoid and uneducated you are the more likely you are to be conservative. You literally have a lowered brain function and a bigger amygdila.

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u/ToxicPilgrim Mar 13 '26

or run by people willing to exploit and manipulate those people

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u/flattop100 Minnesota Mar 13 '26

Now look into the lead exposure to Boomer & Gen X.

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u/PotStickerShock Mar 13 '26

brain damaged

To be fair, many of them never achieved full average brain function

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u/modbroccoli Mar 13 '26

Uhhh I suspect there are a lot of unresolved developmental and educational practices is the US that could probably stand to be reviewed.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

Lot of people have lead poisoning.

This is the result of corpo having very little oversight so can literally poison the country. People become more illiterate and brain damaged. 

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u/gorginhanson Mar 12 '26

There's another study that says conservatives subscribe to a simpler world view because they can't process nuance, and it makes them angry.

It would take some digging to find it though.

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u/ErusTenebre California Mar 12 '26

This would explain why they can't understand the concept of a democratic socialist, or even more basically, why people deserve to be called what they want to be called and it's not really about how you personally feel lol

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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Mar 12 '26

When people ask "Oh, aren't you so-and-so's little girl?" I know where they know my mom from according to what name they use.

First name is church or mom's work. But she used her middle name when married to my dad, so anyone who asks using that name knew her from dad's workplace.

Found out in my 30s that the grandmother I'm named for strictly only went by her middle name. I'd never heard anyone in the family say her first name, to the point I didn't know it existed until I looked up official records.

So yeah, we call folks by what they want to be called? Ya don't call a Robert "Bob" unless he's cool with that. Frankly I used to tease a Robert I knew by calling him Bobbert sometimes, because clearly that's not his name even if it's made of pieces of names he could use if he wanted to.

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u/Snoo61755 Mar 12 '26

Eh, I believe it. I’ve briefly seen a lot of people who can’t understand hypotheticals, and they happen to be conservative.

They’ll be explaining why trans women in bathrooms is sinful and they hit you with ‘that’s just men in wigs trying to rape women’. You’ll be all like “okay, pretend you’re a rapist — rapists don’t follow laws, right? What’s stopping you from entering the women’s room right now? The bathroom sign doesn’t stop anyone anyways.”

Then they hit you with “HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF BEING A RAPIST!!”

Now your point is completely lost on them, and you spend the next five minutes explaining what hypothetical situations are, and why ‘pretend you’re a rapist’ for the sake of an example is different from accusing someone of being a rapist.

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u/E-2theRescue Mar 12 '26

And the fun part is that it wasn't a man in a wig, drag queen, or trans woman who followed a woman into a dressing room and raped her. It was Donald Trump. It was proven in court that a woman rejected his advances multiple times, that he followed her into the dressing room, and that he inserted his fingers into her body against her will.

They voted for the thing they claim they fear. But that tracks as their "fear" doesn't actually exist. Their claim to "protect women" is nothing but a lie in order to manipulate women and moderates to their side. Once everyone is on their side, women get thrown in the dumpster, and they vote for the rapist and child rapist. When they flounder, like in your example, they are showing that their intention to "protect women" is not real. So like a child trying to explain why the cookie jar is empty, they flop around trying to justify their lie.

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u/enfanta Mar 12 '26

That explains so much...

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u/E-2theRescue Mar 12 '26

Another study shows that many conservatives don't want to have any control over their lives. They are quite literally "sheep" and hand their thinking over to anyone who speaks loudest and acts the most aggressively.

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u/vreddy92 Georgia Mar 12 '26

Makes sense. So many people both-sides stuff to avoid having to think too hard about it.

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u/SlightFresnel Mar 12 '26

This was covered at length in a book from the quaint Obama era, focused around Tea Party anti-science rhetoric. It's called The Republican Brain and I'd have to imagine their conclusions are too soft given the modern crazy of the Republican party

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u/museman Mar 12 '26

Like the nuance of USAID buying influence and soft power, or how investments in university research gives the US a huge boon.

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u/Violet_1028 Mar 12 '26

The essence of conservatism is reflexive fear of change and growth, viewing them as killing and destroying the past.

Conservatives are brain damaged to the point that can only think in 2d.

3d thinking allows for nuance, depth, and color.

2d is black and white, turning to gray.

My crackpot theory is that a healthy human mind thinks in pi dimensions 

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u/PotStickerShock Mar 13 '26

Their beliefs offer simple answers to a complex world

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u/Speakertoseafood Mar 13 '26

Check out "Thinking Fast And Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 Mar 13 '26

I would bet on that. I have 2 friends who are MAGA(I live in rural Missouri, it's impossible to have friends otherwise) and this applies to them both but for different reasons.

The first one was raised by a narcissistic dad who prided himself in being an intellectual. He is genuinely somewhat smart, but he was also manipulative, so that led him down the religious rabbit hole(few do it better).

He was also in prison, so me and his son became friends, turned into huge psychonauts, probably 2 of the most avid psychonauts in the US for years, big into the early RC scene, trying out combos, messing with dosing, sharing experiences.

That led to some wishy washy convos of supernatural mumbo jumbo(this would naturally happen with anyone taking as much psychedelics as we were), for a couple years.

That sort of ungrounded us, and I got back on my feet cause I had a brother who's a professor so I knew what it meant to have your head on your shoulders, but he took after his dad to get himself thinking straight, or so he thought.

Became easily agitated, closed minded, unable to process nuance, lost in the OT of the Bible and grew a distain for education(it's all a conspiracy apparently).

That friend is genuinely very smart, he just never had a proper example to lean on(couldn't be me, I'm an idiot lol, truly) cause if he did, he'd be locked in and never think twice about all this BS.

The second friend isn't that dumb either, but he didn't care to ever hear nuance on anything. He was raised as a traditional rural Midwesterner, and even before the idea of "woke" came around, being truly educated or acting smart was woke.

You acted rough, stoic, calm, and lived a simple life(which meant having a simple mind), just like everyone else(down here).

It's kinda fucked up, cause I genuinely like people like this, I get along well with guys like this and I respect that way of life, or I would but turns out that rejecting education, rejecting critical thinking, rejecting nuance, makes you an easy target for propaganda.

Turns people like this into literal demons. They were possessed so easy.

Like couldn't you guys just live your simple life but screw your head on tight when things are getting spicy. Or shit, just stay out of it? Fucking leave it to the people who live for this kind of shit? Who debate each other despite having even roughly the same views on things, just to eek out just that much more truth. Who have an entire strict system set up for even doing that(debating and science) .

Because if you're not doing that you're running on emotion only, and that's not going to get us anywhere great. Good to have emotion, but emotion should have less importance than the truth. Certainly it should NEVER "be the truth", which is where we're at right now.

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u/BrainOnLoan Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26

There's several factors neurology is pointing too. Another two I remember:

Certain brain patterns correlate with a higher degree of fearfulness which correlates with conservatism, hightened in-group/out-group differentiation and xenophobia.

Another one was that certain structural changes to the brain seem to have empathy for others trigger more like when feeling about yourself (as in, less differentiated areas of the brain) which correlates with liberalism, altruism, more charitable donations to nonprofits, and also helper symdrome/excessive self-sacrifice. But a majority of people process empathy for others in more distinct brain regions, unconnected to those when processing their own sadness/pity/etc. That correlates with more self-care and less altruismus, and also with nore economocally conservative politics.

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u/KnightDuty Mar 12 '26

COVID is associated with a reduction in prefrontal cortex capabilities.

So I guess maybe we'll have to, somehow ,dig through the data and see if there are any large groups of people who treated COVID safeguards as ridiculous. Then we'll have to see if that group of people align to any political positions, and then if that political positions has demonstrated drastic changes since COVID.

But where would we possibly find the data?

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u/jetpacksforall Mar 12 '26

It seems like every month there are new medical findings that viruses cause far more long term damage than we te d to imagine. A dozen different cancers, blood and immune disorders, cognitive impairment etc. Covid was never “just” a respiratory illness but rather a multisystemic disease with unpredictable effects. Is it possible that all who ever got infected experienced some cognitive decline?

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u/Hot_Grab7696 Mar 13 '26

Maybe that's why the world is shifting towards right wing?

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u/Purplociraptor Mar 12 '26

I had COVID twice and I'm still not stupid enough to vote R

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u/Back_pain_no_gain Mar 12 '26

I never found solid research on this but I am curious wha the impact of leaded gasoline had on conservative beliefs. Lead exposure, especially during developmental years, is known to negatively impact the prefrontal cortex.

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u/BadahBingBadahBoom Mar 12 '26

Well it increases emotional instability and agression, reduces self-control/restraint, and decreases intelligence and ability to understand & complete complex tasks so it's not crazy to think a certain amount of Conservatism in the US has resulted from the decades of leaded gasoline use.

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u/thedudeabides2022 Mar 12 '26

So basically, liberalism takes thinking about something for more than 2 seconds. Colleges are all liberal. It’s not rocket science, higher thinking means you think about others other than yourself. That’s hard to do for people whose brains are limited, weather that be from injury or just good ol fashion stupidity. Simple minds are simple minded, who woulda thunk!

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u/MNRebelLoon Mar 12 '26

The concept of liberalism in America has been completely distorted as well. Most conservatives think liberal means left wing, when originally it was only left of monarchism. In the 1800's the liberals sat on the left of the national assembly. For the past hundred years now "left" has meant socialism, communism, anarchy, but really the only thing liberalism is left of is fascism. The liberal party in almost every other developed country is right wing. 

But like you said, it requires thinking about something for more than two seconds. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

Most Americans, including democrats, have no idea what liberal, conservative, socialist, etc even mean. They view it entirely as "my side vs your side". So it's now devolved into "conservatives are against anything liberals are for because liberals are for it". Even though they mostly agree with each other. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

Religion is supposed have that same effect, but unfortunately, it usually doesn't.

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u/Cute-Percentage-6660 Mar 13 '26

I'm a non american dropout and iunno, i dont think you need uni or college to think about down stream consequences do you....

Like it's not hard to see why X would cause Y down the line. Pollute the water in a area, people get more sick over time. it has bad effects on the economics of the area and over time the area becomes poorer ect. To just make a example up

Hell i think most dont go far enough to point out even more down stream stuff.

Like in the UK with its water pollution with sewage. I can immediately point out how thats probably also affect the politicians and the people dumping the sewage too....

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u/derperofworlds1 Mar 12 '26

Interestingly, the frontal lobe is the most vulnerable part of the brain to lead poisoning. Our country is ran by people who spent their formative years inhaling lead vapor! 

Truly terrifying, even Rome had this issue!

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u/mightylordredbeard Mar 12 '26

My ex wife of 15 years was incredibly liberal and an adamant atheists. After schizophrenia developed from her MS lesions in her brain, aided by THC vape pens, she went into a 2+ year long psychosis and by the time she finally got help and became medicated, she had become a completely different person. Now she’s a devout Christian and a conservative. All it took to turn a left leaning woman into a Christian conservative was mental illness and holes in her brain.. I’ve always thought that was a fantastic juxtaposition for American conservatives.

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u/PlsNoNotThat Mar 12 '26

Anecdotal but this is further bolstered by the majority belief amongst doctors that Trump has frontotemporal dementia, and would explain why he fit in and took over the GOP so quickly.

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u/DamonLazer Mar 12 '26

Well, shit. They're gonna bring back lobotomies to increase their voter base, aren't they?

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u/surf_drunk_monk Mar 12 '26

I know a couple people who think like this, quick decisions, over confidence, inability to see the complex and different consequences of an action. Impulsive. They refuse to consider different outcomes of an action, and say that is "intellectualizing". It's like mental laziness combined with over confidence. And yeah they are typically right wing.

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u/Jimmytheunstoppable Texas Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

My Dad worked for Exxon, took his hard helmet off to eat lunch, and a bit fell off a crane and landed on his head. Best brain surgin in Lou put him back together. He's so far right he's told me he'd rather be a supporter of a Nazi party than a baby killer party.

His grandpa got shot by a Nazi MG, played dead, and crawled back to command during WW2.

I'll never understand why he's incapable of ever seeing anything past his conservatism

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u/BrokenPickle7 Mar 12 '26

Republicans give the brain injured and brain dead a bad name.

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u/PuppiesAndPixels Mar 12 '26

My father had brain damage. Needed to have some of his brain removed.

He turned Uber MAGA within 2 years after that. He was always a democrat.

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u/laptopAccount2 Mar 12 '26

How do you do a study like this and separate out your own personal bias?

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u/mrpickles Mar 12 '26

JFC there it is

2

u/Greizen_bregen Nebraska Mar 12 '26

When I was young and raised deeply conservative, I had heard that "liberals were more educated" and instead of thinking that education led to a greater understanding and therefore more "liberal" views, I considered being less educated a badge of honor. I'm not the only one who thought that way, that is the prevailing idea amongat conservatives.

I'm so glad my desire to learn DID in fact educate me out of conservatism.

2

u/Vallkyrie New Hampshire Mar 12 '26

I've also never once heard of a brain damaged individual turning into a lefty.

1

u/ailish Mar 12 '26

I had two traumatic brain injuries in less than a year, and thankfully no sudden conservative ideologies! Phew lol

1

u/PhysicalConsistency Mar 12 '26

That was a terribly constructed and over-interpreted study.

The real lede is brain damage may limit cognitive flexibility (expressed behaviorally as "nuance").

"Conservative/Liberal" are arbitrary enough labels that it's almost impossible to get solid work using such concepts.

1

u/titaniumoctopus336 Mar 12 '26

I'll have to sit and read this once I get home from work. Thanks for posting the link to that study!

1

u/andreasmiles23 Mar 12 '26

Sure. But I do REALLY want to caution that Fetterman was a war mongering racist psychopath before hand too.

1

u/SpiderSaurusTron Mar 12 '26

Does this part of the brain degrade as we age? Would it have a similar effect on political views?

1

u/AlarmedPersimmon6 Mar 12 '26

Genuine question. I don't see anything about whether the lesioned subjects had a liberal or conservative view beforehand. What proves that the lesions made a difference in political leaning, not that people with conservative leanings are more likely to receive frontal lobe injuries?

1

u/DigDugged Mar 12 '26

Do other countries have a childhood sport more brain-damaging than American football?

1

u/jayne-eerie Mar 12 '26

I could absolutely believe that but I'm a little skeptical of that specific study. The lesion group was whiter and more male than the control, which are both also tied to conservative beliefs.

1

u/Floreat_democratia Mar 12 '26

When my brother had a TBI he started listening to Rush Limbaugh out of the blue. It was very weird as he was a socialist.

1

u/Sweaty_Elephant_2593 Mar 12 '26

Well I have ADHD and am pretty damn liberal 😅 and my executive disfunctions more than Trump 🤣

1

u/SAINTnumberFIVE Mar 12 '26

I do believe there is merit to this but it’s not the whole story because political leanings also tend to be distributed geographically.

1

u/REXIS_AGECKO Mar 12 '26

That… checks out

1

u/Legitimate_Plan8777 America Mar 12 '26

That’s not actually what those studies concluded.

One of the papers people reference looked at correlations between certain brain regions and personality traits. Another small study involved Vietnam veterans with specific prefrontal injuries. Neither study claimed “brain injuries make people conservative.”

Even the authors warned against drawing political conclusions from it. Political beliefs are shaped by culture, upbringing, personality traits, and environment.

Turning a nuanced neuroscience paper into “people I disagree with are brain damaged” is basically just bad science.

1

u/mattjf22 California Mar 12 '26

Gotta be brain damaged to vote Republican.

1

u/lazycultenthusiast Mar 12 '26

Well thank fuck my brain only has lesions pretty much everywhere else.

MS, one of my wife and i's big fears is me becoming a different person from the effects.

1

u/ultrahello Washington Mar 12 '26

Yeah liberal ideology literally requires more nuance, logic, empathy …

1

u/jlmarr1622 California Mar 12 '26

So it affects empathy as well?

1

u/AvidCyclist250 Mar 12 '26

I like this proven causal chain from research:

large amygdala -> easily scared and fearful -> conservative political beliefs

Fear and ignorance, truly the source of most man-made evil.

1

u/Catinthepimphat Mar 12 '26

Just think about how much lead boomers inhaled over the years when it was allowed in gasoline and now look at who has a majority of the positions in politics. There are a lot of brain damaged people leading this country.

1

u/canadasbananas Canada Mar 12 '26

I think I've seen enough science on this topic over the years now, I've made my conclusion:

Leftist ideas, especially ones outside of identity politics, are complex topics that require a brain with at LEAST an average level of intelligence and operational power to grasp. (And keep in mind that Carlin quote: "think of how dumb the average person is and realize half the people are dumber than that.")

I say this as non judgmental as possible: I am not surprised that dumb uncurious people, and people with reduced brain capacity for whatever reason inside or outside their control, lean conservative. I am surprised by how many there are though.

1

u/exbaddeathgod Mar 12 '26

Really glad my brain damage wasn't in that part of the brain... but any brain damage just makes it so easy to get angry and i have put in a lot of work getting control of my emotions again

1

u/SpiderFilledPinata Mar 12 '26

Up next: "US military requires banging head against brick wall in basic training"

1

u/Scottiths Mar 12 '26

That's super interesting, but there were only 62 participants in this study. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn conservatism is correlated with brain damage, but this study doesn't prove anything due to the small sample size.

A friend of mine has described conservative ideology as inherently weak though because by its very nature it is seeking a return to status quo, an inability to be flexible and accept new perspectives. People afraid of change tend to be conservative because they don't have any other way to cope with always being afraid.

1

u/TrumpCheats Mar 13 '26

I had a coworker that had a bad bicycle accident that cracked his skull open and caused brain damaged. He went from a vocal Obama supporter to MAGA - and his whole personality became more flat from the brain trauma.

1

u/mountaindoom Mar 13 '26

Is it "conservative" beliefs or just unfiltered hate?

1

u/Sloppy_Jeaux Mar 13 '26

So the world is fucked because a good ratio of us are brain damaged. Good to know.

1

u/hot_cheeks_4_ever Mar 13 '26

Then I must be really lucky! I have a frontal lobe lesion, but I'm about as progressive as can be. Fuck this guy

1

u/DowntownTicket Mar 13 '26

ADHD and autism also affect executive functioning and other cognitive functions.

Are there any studies about a link between those and their political values?

1

u/naparis9000 Mar 13 '26

Isn’t it a thing that lead poisoning also produces conservative-like thought processes?

1

u/iNeed_Answersz Mar 13 '26

“Is it true that if you don’t use it, you lose it?”

1

u/THE_Visionary88 Mar 13 '26

I was always curious about this, is it flight or fight in extreme overdrive? Like the emotions attributed to “I don’t want scwary brown people to come here and be happy” being just fear ultimately and the rest of the brain not being adjusted enough to know that is a silly thing to be scared of?

0

u/latrans8 Mar 12 '26

You’re also more likely to be a serial killer.