I researched and partially wrote this sometime last year when pissed off about something, but shelved it when I figured I should probably just avoid humanity altogether and stick to writing about lifting. With the events of the last month and the incessant bleating by the bitchmade right, I figured it was time to drop this neutron bomb of knowledge so people can use it as a weapon in their own battles. It’s only a two parter, so don’t get your knickers in a fucking twist if you’re all aggro about reading about the events of the world in which you live.

And I cannot believe I am required to say this, but this article is one that uses a very broad and loose statistical and scientific analysis to debunk the long-held belief that the right is tough and competent and the left is weak, simple, and incapable. It is also meant in large part to offend the simpletons promulgating that tripe, as they are by and large weak, fearful, stupid people. That said, one’s political leanings are just a predictor of behavior and abilities, rather than a rule.

A common trope in memes and articles over the last idiotic and obese four American years surrounds the alleged toughness of the right versus the limp-wristedness of the left; the working-man, scuffed-knuckle badassery of the conservatives versus the effete, handbag-clutching fearfulness of the left; and the freedom-loving GOP versus the evil, authoritarian, New World Order-imposing left. These axioms are taken as truths without any examination, and given the ass whippings suffered by MAGA-hat-wearing, flag-waving, loudmouth conservatives Colby Covington and Chael Sonnen would seem to call into question some of those “truths.” Between that, the fact the Proud Boys can only win a fistfight if they outnumber their “soy boy” opponents 3-1, the endless fictions promulgated by the right about how tough they are, and the never-ending “threat” of a right-wing boogaloo that would instantly rid us of a particularly useless segment of the population (fat white white dudes with inoperative micropenises and an obsession with Airsoft aren’t exactly in high demand on the social circuit or in the workforce), it seemed like a good idea to examine the perception against the reality in which we live, using statistics, psychology, and medical data.

Frankly, I don’t buy the stereotypes and I think this past week has shown us it’s time to let factual reality disassemble the notions everyone holds about the right and the left. And I have actually already done this, about a decade ago, in an article series about the fat acceptance movement. It was entirely inadvertent- in an attempt to show that fat people were fat people they made terrible decisions, I correlated obesity with other personal failings, like stupidity, poor education, religiosity (nothing against regular religion, but more religion means more fundamentalists, and any kind of fundamentalist is an enemy of humanity), and shitty driving skills. As it happens, the shitty states were invariably red:

As that article series is one of the more mean-spirited things I’ve done, especially since I really don’t give two runny shits what other people do so long as they leave me the fuck out of it, know that when I wrote it there were a lot of extremely obese people screaming they were healthier than I, and better looking to boot. I might not be the best looking human being on Earth, but I dislike bold-faced lies and was living in Alabama, so I was up to my eyeballs in illiterate obese people screaming Bible scripture at all time. Should you decide to click these words and read it, please bear in mind you’re reading the words of a man being driven rapidly out of his mind by the deep South. Additionally, know that

I was at that point staunchly against being considered a liberal, because I thought it sounded “weak,” and because even when I’ve been broke I’ve never taken public assistance.

In the interim I’ve realized how abysmally stupid it was to hold that view (there is a hell of a lot more going on in the world than war and welfare), and I point it out to illustrate that the only thing dumber than doing it in the first place would be failing to explain it (in spite of what I assure you is crushing embarrassment) so that other people will hopefully avoid making the same mistakes I did- if you have to fudge your findings to fit your hypothesis, your hypothesis is wrong, not the results. Finding ways to justify being an anarcho-capitalist like the “cool” kids when you know even the founding fathers you quote fall to the left of the dividing line is ridiculous,

especially since Ben Franklin founded the first modern hospital in Philadelphia specifically to heal the poor for free.

So let’s all shut the fuck up about healthcare should be free, shall we? The founding fathers said YES pretty obviously in 1751. In fact, Big Ben even went so far as to write later in life, “I do not remember any of my political Manoeuvres, the Success of which gave me at the time more Pleasure” ABOUT THE FREE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM HE ESTABLISHED FOR THE POOR.

I am barely out of the gate and already looking for some goddamn hypertension pills, so buckle up, buttercup- it’s about to get statistical.

Conservative-Liberal Distribution in America

First off, it stands to reason that we identify the conservative places in America- it’s not just in book and university deserts, but basically everywhere outside of places with significant non-white populations intermingling with white ones (i.e. the major cities) it’s a relative certainty you can find white folks with red baseball caps and a lot of small holes in their linens so they can see when wearing them. To make things a bit more easy to see, I have included this chart of conservatism in the US, which Gallup posted last year. You can use this as a reference when consulting the rest of the article, in the event you’re unsure which states are more red or blue (the only state that I can recall being brutally one or the other is the former territorial concentration camp for Native peoples, Oklahoma, which until recently was redder than the shirt of an Air Force veteran seconds after she busted down the chamber door to the House).

Now, although I’ve explained the city vs rural dichotomy in terms of simple math, it’s easier to envision when looking at a state like Pennsylvania- the liberals are where the people live, and the conservatives live in the areas people use to make movies about catastrophes, zombie apocalypses, and hillbilly rape. IE- they’re not places any thinking person would want to live, and they might shed some light on why conservatives are as generally unpleasant as they’ve decided they’re going to advertise themselves.

Conservatives Say They’re Fit and Healthy, Because Their Spirit of Individualism Means They Take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for Their Health. Reality Looks Much More Fat.

There’s a 2019 study conservatives like to trot out about this, and they used to cite it with pretty serious regularity because none of them ever read the goddamned thing. As you’ll come to find later in the article, conservatives aren’t exactly well educated late in life or born with the mental faculties to become so, so it should come as no surprise that they cite a self-reporting study about their health that they don’t understand a word of. According to the study:

“people with conservative political attitudes tend to have better health than their liberal counterparts because of the former place greater value on personal responsibility” (McReal)

To do so,

“The author defined personal responsibility as the extent to which people regard themselves, rather than forces outside themselves, as being in charge of what they do. To test this, the author performed three studies assessing how liberal or conservative someone was, how much they value personal responsibility, and some aspect of health or health-related behavior” (Ibid).

The problem with Chan’s first study was that it was correlational and everything was self-reported, Redditors were based to self-evaluate their level of conservativism vs liberalism (neither of which are static definitions or ) and their level of health as a single metric. The dogmatic belief in the total and complete myth of self sufficiency in the modern world is one that libertarians in particular love, and I know this because I used to call myself one- nevermind the fact that modern society is so inextricably interconnected that self sufficiency is not only an idiotic ideal but an entirely fanciful one, unless you plan on becoming a hermit living in a cabin on federal lands (in which case hurry up and fuck off, dunce). For instance, that spirit

It makes more sense, then, to examine actual factual data on who the fitter people are in the political spectrum- the rootin’, tootin’, always shootin’, fast-food gobbling, hunter camo wearing right, or the bitch-made, v-neck sweater, vegan left. The perception is that jocks are right wingers and the nerdy pussies are on the left, but the study conservatives always cite really doesn’t shed any light on reality, and the fact that libertarians and many independents don’t fit neatly on the right-left spectrum and no one self-identifies well means that study is worth about as much as a wet PPE mask in the gutter.

As you can see above, when red staters talk about how they give more than they take, they’re lying to your fucking face. Their states are a black hole of federal dollars, and conservatives rail against the left even as we feed their kids and keep their fucking lights on, calling the poor in our areas the “real leeches” ostensibly in an effort to take the spotlight off themselves. And it’s not as if they’re all that charitable, either. What donations they give go to churches, buying another Bentley for their megachurch pastor who steps over prostrate homeless people to scream at fags for kissing in public but never does a goddamn thing to help his fellow man. Hell, that’s damn near the best case scenario, because many of the donations appear to be hat is called consumption charity, a type of charity rad rich people set up to generate cash or other benefits for themselves (Levine).

My personal journey in “libertarianism” was really one in which I was simply embarrassed to state that I sided firmly with liberals on social issues, because I don’t want Bible-thumping loudmouths who refute the most basic facts or our geological and cosmological history dictating my behavior to me by reading from a history and legal text compiled from the ancient oral histories of a long-dead people reviled by their contemporaries for being intolerable dickheads. I’d never been much for bring forced to help others, but any and every any group project I’ve ever been involved in was at least 75% me, and unless I’m teamed up with my wife I am assured of being let down horrifically by my partner on any project almost before we start. When I realized that, I realized I’m going to end up doing most or all of the work regardless of my compensation, and the people who bitch about the unfairly high costs of their participation almost always are the laziest cocksuckers on planet Earth- much like how red staters bitch about the cost of those “city n***ers on welfare” when it’s the white trash in their shitty states who soak up all that dough.

As if that relative truism about effort vs bitching weren’t enough, I find myself doing far more work for far less monetary benefit while compensating for the ridiculous shortcomings of everyone around me, which means the introduction of socialism would at least bring the pay of the generally useless down in my mind. Not that that is my goal or the goal of any prominent politician in the US, but I’m not going to jam a dissertation on economic theory into this- just know that the former chairman of the Fed stated very explicitly that Bernie Sanders is a social democrat in the Nordic model, which means our most socialist politician is at most a Diet Socialist. Everyone can calm down about the Brave New World shit and the libertarian shit, because one’s never going to happen in the Western World (that sort of a social boogeyman will always be avoided) and the other has already been tried and failed miserably (the late 19th-first third of the 20th Century were a absolute horror that matches Somalia in the late 90s).

With all of that in mind, here is US News and World Report’s list of

The Ten Healthiest US States

1. California- Blue
2. New York- Blue
3. New Jersey- Blue
4. Hawaii- Blue
5. Massachusetts- Blue
6. Connecticut. Blue
7. Minnesota- Split
8. Colorado- Blue
9. Washington- Blue
10. Utah red

Score: 8-1-1 BLUE (Leins)

The Most and Least Fit States in the US

The following are the states with the lowest percentage of obesity and the highest number of fitness centers in the country… otherwise known as the fittest states.

1. Colorado- Blue
2. Connecticut- Blue
3. New Hampshire- Blue
4. Rhode Island- Blue
5. Minnesota- Blue
6. Massachusetts- Blue
7. Hawaii- Blue
8. Montana- Red 
9. Wisconsin- Red
10. Idaho- Red

Score: 7-3 BLUE

The least fit states by the above metrics of were all identified in my 2012 chart, but the updated numbers are as follows:

1. Arkansas- Red
2. West Virginia- Red
3. Mississippi- Red
4. North Carolina- Red
5. Oklahoma- Red
6. Kentucky- Red
7. Tennessee- Red
8. Texas- Red
9. Alabama- Red
10. Michigan- Blue

Score: 9-1 RED (Fittest)

And let’s not get too excited about their fight skills, either- bear in mind that the vast majority of fighters are social liberals (even the guys from the Stans are progressive for their environment). The reason both conservatives and liberals hold these erroneous beliefs about the physical prowess of the right and left is due to a phenomenon known as confimation bias, which is “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories” according to the Oxford dictionary. Thus, we throw out obvious shit, like the fact that The Rock is a Democrat, Batista stumped for Biden, Arnold married into the Kennedies, Steeve Reeves spent all of his free time in that stories LA fuckshop of a gas station everyone used in the 60s, and we ignore the relative paucity of decent conservative fighters (it’s pretty much just Brock Lesnar at this point, since the rest are retired and we can only hope Chael Sonnen shoots his dick off in an upcoming halfwit boogaloo).

Instead, live in the real world where political conservatives are exactly what you would expect people who ascribe to a weak, fearful, backward-looking political philosophy dedicated to naught but giving rich people more money.

Conservatives are fat, weak, stupid, selfish, fearful people. If they weren’t, they’d be liberals.

Conservatives are Only About Freedom and Independence on Opposite Day

This I just added because it was pretty funny. In a 2019 study by conservative researchers seeking to prove that conservatives were more responsible than liberals, study participants were primed with words intended to evoke conservativism or liberalism, then to ask questions about ceasing their smoking habit.

“To prime conservatism, words such as ‘traditional’ and ‘conventional’ were used; to prime liberalism, words such as ‘free’ and ‘left-wing’ were used” (McGreal).

Clearly, according to scientists, freedom is the antithesis of conservativism, which calls for a return to a a far less free time rife with slavery, indentured servitude, and a hard, unpleasant life on a farm bereft of technology. If you find that surprising, brace yourself- conservatives are hardly the independent free thinkers they weirdly claim to be, in spite of their very title being one that connotes people who live in mortal terror of social and governmental change. Though the studies are all about self-identification, which is problematic as fuck for a bunch of people who live in bunkers to fend off the evil immigrants and think they’re Rambo in spite of the fact they’re limp-dicked weaklings with an obnoxious pickup, no friends, and a desire to shoot up high schools and non-white churches but think they’re some kind of magical combination of Arnold, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and Nathan Bedford Forrest who flies the flag of an anti-American military organization in an effort to show their alleged patriotism. These are not people capable of accurate self-evaluation. Regardless, they do like telling people that they prefer not to enjoy freedom, as it’s the purview of the distasteful liberals they’re forever babbling about.

“Previous research has found that people who self-identify as conservatives tend to be somewhat higher on the personality trait of conscientiousness than those identifying as liberals (Fatke, 2017). This relationship tends to be stronger for social conservatism but also applies to some extent to economic conservatism. Conscientiousness is related to the extent to which one tends to follow socially prescribed norms concerning impulse control, follow rules, be self-disciplined and task-focused, plan ahead, and be willing to delay gratification” (McGreal).

Far from the free-thinking, mask-eschewing champions of freedom they claim to be, conservatives generally do as they’re told by someone who presumably has less education than they do, lest anyone get uppity and used a word containing more than two syllables.

Social conservatives tend to doggedly follow “socially prescribed norms concerning impulse control and following rules” (McGreal).

What’s more, the right exhibits the same behavior during a crisis that prey animals do- they either hide or lash out indiscriminately, but they don’t provide for the mutual defense or the mutual benefit of their social group. You know who does? Predators. Lions raise their cubs communally and food is shared between them to ensure the sick, injured, nursing, or otherwise incapable of hunting don’t starve. The females provide for the mutual defense of their cubs in a way that makes them look as socialist as Hellen Keller, and they would have the same dim view of the stampeding Republicans frothing at the mouth about stolen elections we do.

In part two, you’ll discover the factual basis for the belief that Republicans must be low intellect as hell. Whether they have an allergy to learning or they just believe it’s their god-given right to be ignorant on more subjects than any person living or dead, the Republicans are not a bright bunch… which might be why they’re such fat, unfit, miserable fucks.

Click these words to jump to part two

Sources:

El-Kholy T, Elsayed E. Association of physical activity and health status with intelligence quotient of high school students in Jeddah.  J Phys Ther Sci. 2015 Jul; 27(7): 2039–2043.

Leins, Casey.  The ten healthiest states.  US News and World Report.  20 May 2019.  Web.  22 Oct 2019.  https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/the-10-healthiest-states-in-the-us

Levine, Martin.  Republicans give more money to charity than Democrats, but there’s a bigger story here.  Non-Profit Quarterly.  5 Nov 2018.  Web.  10 Jan 2020.  https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-charity-than-democrats-but-theres-a-bigger-story-here/

McReal, Scott.  Are conservatives healthier than liberals?  Psychology Today.  28 Fed 2019.  Web.  23 Jul 2020.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201902/are-conservatives-healthier-liberals

The Ten Fittest States in America.  Exercise.  Web.  22 Oct 2019.  https://www.exercise.com/learn/ten-fittest-states-in-the-us/

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