Liberals are eggheads, Conservatives are assholes.

So, I use an app called Zite. For those who don't know it, it's like Pandora for news. You tell it a category, and it aggregates articles that you can then 'like' or 'dislike' to further acclimate your magazine to your needs. I chose Politics as one of my sections, but didn't specify anything beyond that. Not liberal or conservative, didn't blacklist any outlets or pick any favorites. Because of that, I get equal portions from sources like huffpo and addictinginfo.org, but also from redstate, drudgereport, and brietbart nation. After reading/skimming these with equal weight over the past month, I have come to the following conclusions.

Both sides are obviously biased. No secret but the blatantness of their bias is so overt only the dumbest would mistake them for non partisan. The really interesting part is How these biases are manifested, and what it says about the personalities that are attracted to either end of the political spectrum. 

Liberals are consistently outraged and shocked at the behavior of conservatives. They honestly cannot understand what they perceive to be ignorance, cruelty and hypocrisy. They start from the position of intellectual superiority, and however justified that position might be, it leads to a pretty thinly veiled smugness that does a fantastic job of destroying any chance they have of changing anyone's mind.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are most always meaner towards liberals. They are the ones to resort first to insults and sarcasm to prove their points, and to use those tactics even louder when they have points that can't actually Be proven. When a counter argument is presented, the conservative tends to react more like a schoolyard bully then an educated pundit, using name calling and demeaning word play to distract the reader from any logic the liberal side may have.

While both sides can be obnoxious, the argument that both sides are equally counterproductive to any kind of discourse is total bullshit. A popular political comedian once said, "I'm not saying all Republicans are racists but, in this age, if you Are a racist, you're probably a Republican." And I don't think anyone would disagree with that. But that template holds true for a lot of things, because our two party system has been distilled enough that (D) consistently gathers one set of personality traits while (R) consistently gathers another set. "I'm not saying all Democrats donate to PETA but, in this age, if you donate to PETA, you're probably a Democrat" 

You get what I mean. And those A types, the super driven, pull up your bootstraps, I got mine so Fuck you, win whatever it takes, there's no prize for second place.... those type of people, what party do you think they identify more with? I'll give you a hint, it's not the party that wants universal health care for all people at taxpayer expense. 

So no, because of who's at the wheel it's not an equal proportion of partisan distortion. The Right naturally attracts more people who want to win, no matter what. They honestly believe their argument is best but, unlike Liberals, they feel no need to convince others, not when it's faster just to beat them and do what they want. So they do whatever is necessary to win. And liberals can't do that, they aren't wired that way. 

Which is something I suppose I've known, but this month long experiment in non partisan news browsing has certainly proved it to me beyond any shred of doubt.