This is not about things like education or IQ levels, but rather about fundamental decision-making process. There can be people who make their decisions based on emotions but able to think of complex strategies to achieve their emotional goals. At the same time there can be people who base their decision on calculated self-interest but fail to see bigger picture and end up being taken for a ride.
Take for example socialists (modern 21st century Bookchin socialists rather than original 19th century ideology). No matter how much conservatives and liberals point out that socialism failed and their ideology is but a path for misery and pain, socialists are not swayed. That is because they do not make their decisions with their logic and reason but with their feelings instead. Most such socialists probably like Avatar movie and dream of a similar society that is aligned with nature, and fights technology. No matter how much you tell them it's impossible, they will not listen.
Socialists like to tout their education and think they are smarter than MAGA crowd, but no matter how complex and smart arguments they make for their causes, these causes are fundamentally emotional. There is nothing for average American to gain from feeding Africans, helping refugees and migrants. Cold facts of self-interests are simply against this. The only reason socialists care is because their emotions compel them to care, because they feel pity for these people and wish to help them. Other people do not feel any pity for them, so no matter what socialists, say the right will not be swayed. They just can't feel any pity for these people.
The same goes to the opposite side of the divide. No matter how much right cites the problems, refugees and migrants cause, the left is not swayed. That is because lefts sympathize with refugees. So, no matter how much problem, they cause, left is willing to forgive them. Left will go to the end of their wits in rationalizing and justifying their views in order to disguise emotional decisions as rational ones. They are like women who no matter how much she gets burned from going for the wrong man, will still keep repeating the same mistake over and over again. Because they cannot control who they love.
It would be a mistake to call this left emotionalism a compassion. Compassion on an emotional whim rather than on principle is not a compassion but a favoritism. While there are examples like a founder of Anabaptism who helped out even his enemies in times of need, they are few in between. Average leftist is not like that. They think yelling Black Lives Matter means they care, but they immediately turn hostile when someone says White Lives Matter. Even neutral Everyone's Lives Matter will provoke lefty emotional irrational ire. In their world, black people deserve help and others simply do not. No matter how much a Confederate Flag waving Redneck needs and deserves help a lot more than a criminal migrant, a lefty will not help them. Their emotions make them hate Rednecks so no help for them. One can only lament unfairness of the world, irrational emotions of the left favor those who do not deserve it over those who actually do.
Fundamentally however, leftist concern for black people or the needy is not altruism or compassion but mere selfishness. It's their selfish emotional whims that decide who gets help and who does not. They try to justify it by saying the guys they help suffer more and thus deserve more help, but all this is merely hiding their true emotional intentions behind fancy and sophisticated sophistic arguments. What really drives them is an emotion that make them feel like helping one but not another.
If they wished to eliminate all poverty and suffering, they would have given everyone in need, but they do not. What they really want is to create more misery and suffering, because struggling and suffering characters are more compelling and entertaining than those who are somewhat OK. That is why they give free food to starving overbreeding Africans that will use this food to breed more and there will be even more misery.
If instead these money were spent on American poor, then a lot of trailer trash people as well as homeless could have been lifted out of their misery and given dignified life. African population would have declined to sustainable levels and those who are left would have lived with more free space and dignity too. The very fact that left refuses to support that shows they do not want people to live in dignity but rather suffer. For locals to suffer from poverty and homelessness and for Africans to suffer from overpopulation and fight for food handouts.
Rational self-interest rightists have their own problems, that ironically sometimes make them act against their best interests. Many rightists are too narrowminded to see a bigger picture. For example, when in chess a pawn attacks bishop, you instinctually want to use bishop to take a pawn. It gives you the advantage, pawn attacked first and it's only fair to fight back. So far so good. However sometimes when you look at the bigger picture, you can notice a queen or a rook at the far end of the board, protecting the pawn. With this information in hand the rational changes, now if bishop takes pawn, the queen will take bishop next turn, making it a loss rather than gain. However, queen is on the far end of the board, and many do not notice her until it's too late. Of course, taking a pawn and then get bishop taken by a queen is still better than let pawn take the bishop because you are impressed with pawn's bravery like a leftie would, but a smart move here is to move bishop away, no matter how much you want to take that pawn.
A real-life example of such a proverbial pawn, that always takes right for a ride is taxes that pay for welfare of the lazy. As much as it seems that welfare only helps lefties, that is far from the truth. Meet your local unfriendly neighbourhood Redneck, the one that drives a huge Chevy truck, lives in a trailer, and has confederate flags and KKK symbols all over the place. He looks like the last person to vote democrat, but that is misleading. Reality is that such people are the biggest welfare beneficiaries and if a right-wing candidate says something about taking these benefits away, these guys will not hesitate to vote Dems. When Romney lost to Obama, that was due to that simple fact. That is also why Donald Trump never says anything about taking any welfare benefits away.
Reason why otherwise right-wing redneck will vote for Dems is the same simple self-interest that drives the tax whiners, but in reverse. Just as much as they do not like to lose their hard-earned money in favor of someone who does not work, the redneck too does not want to lose his unearned money, no matter how immoral or unethical it is to live off others. Both making their decisions based on self-interest, difference is that from a different point of view what is this self-interest is changes. Like 6 can look like 9 if you look at it from the opposite side. For a taxpayer self-interest cutting taxes, for welfare recipient its increasing taxes and increasing their welfare benefits. All talk about ethics and moral will sway neither one, not the other. As much as taxpayer was not swayed by arguments that welfare helps those in need, the welfare recipient will not be swayed by arguments like they did not earn these money.
Fundamentally however, both rightist ethics and morals, as well as leftist compassion is not the bona fide good qualities, but mere disguise behind which right hides their self-interest and left hides their favoritism and emotions. Both are selfish in their own specific way; they just hide it under layers of some more benign substance to fool people around them into thinking they are better than what they claim to be.
However, back to original topic. Different methods of thinking. After all, why so many people can all agree on the same thing and band in groups to pursue their vision they all agree on? That is because they all think in fundamentally the same way. That is why they all arrived at the same conclusions and then united in pursuit of these aspirations.
However, why then there are rival groups who disagree with the first group and oppose them. That is because rival groups are formed by people with fundamentally different way of thinking. People who incapable of feeling or thinking the same way as the first group does, so from perspective of the second group, the first one is senseless, and both their arguments, premises and objectives are fundamentally wrong so should be opposed.
These fundamentally different ways of thinking, ability or inability to feel is what divides people into different groups. That is why we have different political parties, different hobbies, different music tastes, different everything. These differences are the reason why you either can talk people to your point of view or not. If their methods of thinking are the same as yours, they can be talked over to your point of view within 5 minutes or so. If not, then no matter what they say, it will all be for naught, for they will never agree to any of your arguments as you come from completely different assumptions and methods of thinking. That is why right talks taxes and such ad infinite and left similarly prats about hunger in Africa and discrimination.
There are many things that all prove that different people do have fundamentally different ways of thinking. Astrology has 12 signs, subdivided into 4 elements and 3 modalities. Psychology similarly has 16 personalities (Myer-Briggs), also subdivided into 4 core groups. Understanding within same element or same group is possible. Earth type can get another earth type; analyst can get another analyst. However, between different elements and groups understanding is difficult and you can more or less expect them to disagree with everything you personally consider a basic human character that all people share.
It works with countries too. People say Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are similar and came from same East Slavic branch. Yet despite, or perhaps because of that, Russia and Ukraine do not see eye to an eye so much, that it led to completely senseless war. The war continuously shows people of both countries that they disagree on everything and can never be one country, yet both siders persist in their futile attempts to convince the other side they are right. If you analyse Russian demands, they are not about territory or anything of substance, they are a purely moral argument over who is morally right and who is morally wrong.
It's the same in other parts of the world, the three East Asian countries of China, Japan and Korea are exactly the same way. China and Japan hate each other over few sensitive cultural issues that provoke fierce national fervor in both countries.
You can even say that is a basic human nature to divide itself into different entities based on such disagreement. It's similar how human cells occasionally divide themselves into two different cells. Just as out cells do, we too divide ourselves based on our values and worldview. This is a natural thing, and we should encourage such divisions, not oppose them like Russia does.
Implications of this fact are clear. Instead of trying to constantly argue with each other over everything we should just accept reality that people are fundamentally different and will never be on the same page. From there on we should just divide society into groups and get out of each other's way. Otherwise, we will argue forever and will never reach any agreement.
As someone who wasted countless hours arguing with my parents and never managing to convince them of anything, no matter how reasonable and blatantly obvious it was in my own eyes, I know this better than most. Arguments with wrong kind of people are futile, you should just avoid them as they will never be on the same page as you are
We are too different from each other to get along; we should not interact with each other. One should stick with people who think alike.
