“Our findings should not be interpreted as causal,” Hill added. “The veracity of our analyses is contingent upon replication in future studies. More research is needed to better understand why political conservatives have engaged in unhealthy pandemic lifestyles. It is also important for future research to pay attention to the ways in which political liberals continue to follow expired public health guidance (e.g., requiring masks and vaccines to attend school). How much of the pandemic behavior of political liberals was driven by ‘science’? How much was driven by ‘culture war’?”

Except liberals aren't doing this anymore. It makes a study like this seem odd. I suppose liberals are more likely to mask than conservatives, but neither group is masking very much at this point.

In politics, there are basically three sides—communist, liberal, and fascist. There are varieties within these groups (Trotskyists versus MLs for instance, or polite conservatives versus ravening Nazis), but this is basically the way it is. Fascism as we know it originates toward the end of the 19th century as a sort of revolutionary monarchism meant to more effectively take on rising communist movements, particularly as a mafia-driven reaction to unionization in Italy. It's a revolutionary conservatism with its roots in feudalism. I want to say that, once upon a time, it was easier to tell liberals and fascists apart—even though I'm well aware of how many liberals supported the Nazis until doing so became unfashionable—and that the contradictions of capitalism are forcing them together so that it's growing more difficult to tell one from the other. At the same time I'm aware that ever since capitalism began, it's had a liberal versus a fascist side, even if these terms themselves did not yet exist. The liberal side says that it's good for productivity to drive all these lazy peasants off their ancestral lands, and that if they work hard they can be landlords too one day; the fascist side is just driving these people off their land without any excuses and laughing gleefully if given the opportunity to slaughter anyone who resists.