Thanks for saving me the effort of pointing this out.
"Yeah, I don't agree with his racism, but I can't support post-partum abortions by feeding babies to coyotes so we can afford to pay for 25 billion illegals to stay in the Ritz Carlton like the Democrats do. #BothSides"
The thing is real fiscal conservatism relies on evidence. They just want to sell off the government so they can make a profit replacing it. A real fiscal conservative would have already passed universal education, universal healthcare, universal background checks, taken military procurement to task, and repealed half of the laws restricting unions.
The Republicans talk about laws that spend less and create more revenue, but they fight tooth and nail against ones that actually would do that.
no no, republicans don't want the govt to make revenue. tax cuts, ridiculously complicated tax code, gutting the IRS... all to let rich people keep as much money as possible.
Rich people making more money is true Republican goal and the reason for everything else. Co-opting the deranged fanatical Christian sector was just part of the strategy to achieve that.
Well the bar is six feet under when you compare Democrats to Republicans. Democrats appears leftwing simply because Republicans went further to the right on the spectrum unfortunately.
If you place Democrats in Canada or Western Europe, they would be considered a right wing government, or centrist if we stretch it.
So much this. The only thing that remedied US Democrats in this sense was their LGBT stances being more progressed than in many Western European countries. Otherwise they are in the right/far right/neoliberal spectrum by European standards.
At this point anybody can just download all the financial freedom they want, nobody is stopping us. So our votes only even matter for social issues anymore.
Fiscally conservative somehow means hoarding money under the mattress instead of investing in projects like infrastructure, an educated populace, a healthy populace, or an environment that is habitable.
Actual centrists recognize how extreme the right has gotten, and vote accordingly. Bothsiders are the brainless, egotistical tools of the far right, going along with normalizing fascism because they don't want to think too hard.
... and because they want slaves back. The right is focused on having women-slaves and immigrant-slaves. Take away rights, invent crimes, jail, enslave.
Anti-Authoritarians and Moderates view it as best to be seen as Anti-Authoritarians, Authoritarians view it best to be seen as Moderates.
They literally view opportunistic claiming of the center not just as a political tool but as a social survival tactic to not be ostracized for their bullshit.
How about a little compassion! That's a big jump between Sol and Rukbat. That there even is a pernese here is a testament to their enduring spirit. Aivas would be proud!
Exactly this. Many of them are concerned about how it might affect their work too and their families if they found out they're were horrible racist people.
yeah.. Here in Australia, they were also the only political party around who never removed their shitty signage after the election (and they legally have to). I'm surprised the Election council didn't do it for them and send them the bill. I think the problem with those wankers is that they constantly try to get away with dodgy actions, and they end up being successful so many times, that they just keep doing it
Everytime I have a discussion with someone who says “both sides are the same”, they always end up voting right. I ask if both sides are the same why not vote left?
I don't think that "both sides are the same", but there is a Venn Diagram of shared interests under the two party system; the overlap is fairly large (e.g., both parties are susceptible to lobbying, both parties fight to maintain first past the post voting, etc.)
It's weird how often people say they "Aren't for Right or the Left" and "Think BOTH parties are the problem", but only ever have negative things to say about the Left.
I actually got chills lately when Bill O'Reily came out and said Obama was the best president of his lifetime and he only talked shit on him because he got paid to.
How can you know something is wrong and do it anyway?
well the richest guy on the planet and the republican party candidate both are trying to portray kamala harris as a communist when she's possibly slightly to the right of nixon.
I do think the media needs to be broken up, the lack of competition for big media (including social media) has resulted in some level of complacency with unhinged conspiracies.
The whole world is inundated with news about the election, looking on in horror at the fact that Trump, in spite of everything has a 50/50 shot at the presidency. The fact that he remains viable is one of the worst enditements possible on the US government and people.
Well, yes…this instance and community are full of Americans, so that’s the viewpoint the comments will revolve around.
Please do offer your country’s difficulties with right wing politics instead of a sarcastic comment. The more we all know of nationalist, populist, and theocratic fascists trying to make inroads around the world the better.
I've had a guy tell me he votes for Trump because he's trying to take a balanced centrist view of things. But dude, if Trump is the center, wtf are your extremes?
It’s the media, not the people. If you read the same article from sources across the political spectrum, you’ll find the further right you go, the more information is omitted and the more opinionated the journalist becomes. So, someone who reads primarily right wing and centrist media will naturally have a right wing opinion when reading centrist articles.
Yeah, I’m not buying the “your opinions are just biases” argument. I don’t deny the influence of past experiences, I just believe humans are more nuanced than that.
Opinions are absolutely subjective, but the content they’re based on is also skewed.
If all of the news you consumed was curated through an engagement algorithm, it would change the way you see the world. Your opinions would be based on that perception.
Now you’re just describing human perception. That’s not really remarkable. And, still, there’s a lot more to it, such as the sum total of experiences a person has.
I still think this concept is being oversimplified quite a bit.
While this is true, people still bear responsibility for the media they choose to consume. People wake up every day and decide to get their information from liars and grifters, because they prefer the way lies feel. It isn't as if they don't have options. Now, media literacy is definitely a problem. But the only solution is education, and that's a silver bullet too slow to save us from all the extant ill-educated mooks.
I agree. Many people make the mistake of getting their news exclusively served through algorithms. They see a very skewed painting of the world based on what they’ve shown interest in previously.
Let's just start with the fact that American political system is super skewed to begin with and no actual left has any power.
Dems are highly pro-capitalist, moderately nationalist and merely call to strike a bit less horrible balance between the interests of people and businesses. This is not left, this is a bit better right.
This fallacy keeps people trapped in an idea that the only possible options are "good" ultra-capitalism and "greedy" ultra-capitalism, which is not true.
People that try to have "both sides heard" totally ignore that there are way more than two angles in this conversation and that Dems are not some sort of a political extreme. Reps, ironically, kinda are.
And Democrats often think they vote for something actually good, when it's actually just a lesser evil. Keep that in mind, no matter what you decide.
After the VP debate, I was stuck under two babies and couldn't get up before CBS did it's spin room coverage and fake analytics. During their focus group of 6 undecideds, I nearly fucking lost it when one said "I like that Vance said he's pro-family".
This shit repeated on my stream I was watching several times and I inevitably woke up my 8mo having to get to the computer before every last drop of my sanity was gone.
i mean, i dont think this is blatantly wrong i mean it's not correct either, i think the main failing in their viewpoint is that trump and the maga crowd are literally fucking insane.
But if we woke up tomorrow and trump didn't exist, they would all be gone.
I don't think all far lefties are fucking mental, but i've definitely met my fair share of tankies and people who pretend to know politics while being super fucking wrong. I've also met plenty of reasonable far lefties though so. Goes both ways.
The far right is insane, Similar to the opposing factions of the far left, though i think those are probably smaller. The MAGA right is literally just a deluded group of stupid people, it's just fascism doing fascism. The moderate right is probably not voting for trump, and if they are, they're just stupid. The rest are independents, from there you start getting into the moderate left, which is generally more "centrist" than the moderate right, so they're a lot more willing to reach across ideological differences if it aligns with their general understanding of the world. (the kamala harris campaign) past that idk, you get weird mixes of entrenched dems, and the fringe sub groups of socialists, anarchists, shit like that, though they will generally align with the broader left, i think. Past this you have the "far left" israel palestine types, tankies, uber socialists/communists, the diehards. People that don't care about anything other than the thing they espouse.
This has been my reading on the political sphere over the last few years or so.
Generally, i think the left, currently is a lot more cohesive than the right, the right seems to be undergoing an ideological fracture right now, which is interesting. I think the defining difference is the lack of a "blue MAGA" so to speak.
But if we woke up tomorrow and trump didn’t exist, they would all be gone
They existed before Trump with the tea party, they will exist after him. The far right also exists in other countries
the kamala harris campaign
Right, not centrist. They just aren’t as right as the competition
“far left” israel palestine types
Not a left or right issue, you will find people on both supporting both sides
Generally, i think the left, currently is a lot more cohesive than the right
This has never been the case, the lack of cohesion is why right wing governments are more popular despite not being popular in a population. People will just not vote because there is no coheson on the left. Meanwhile the right will always come out to vote, even when they don’t agree with their candidate
They existed before Trump with the tea party, they will exist after him. The far right also exists in other countries
it depends. I think MAGA as it is today, would stop existing if trump stopped existing, it would probably fracture into a few different camps, completely killing any momentum it has.
Right, not centrist. They just aren’t as right as the competition
you'll have to demonstrate this one "freedom and liberty" are some of the most right leaning things they talk about. The only thing they aren't doing is social progressivism, which from a federal perspective i think is relatively appropriate.
Not a left or right issue, you will find people on both supporting both sides
i don't fundamentally disagree here, but i'm talking about a specific camp of people, so it's relevant. Right leaning people are more likely to support israel, especially farther right people. Even moderately religious people will generally back israel. The primary camp of pro palestine is younger college aged people. There's a reason you don't see very many senior citizen homes protesting israel palestine.
This has never been the case, the lack of cohesion is why right wing governments are more popular despite not being popular in a population. People will just not vote because there is no coheson on the left. Meanwhile the right will always come out to vote, even when they don’t agree with their candidate
it depends on how you view it. Ideologically the right tends to be more cohesive. Their views and ideas are more malleable. However the left is more socially cohesive, and given the current climate, i would expect the vast majority of the left to vote for kamala on the basis of it being "not trump" and also a pretty good shot at getting something other than an old white fuck into the government.
this was a weirdly bad faith interpretation of my comment, honestly.
you’ll have to demonstrate this one “freedom and liberty” are some of the most right leaning things they talk about. The only thing they aren’t doing is social progressivism, which from a federal perspective i think is relatively appropriate.
Just more Keynesian economics, privatize profits and socialize losses. Pro-globalization
Right leaning people are more likely to support israel, especially farther right people. Even moderately religious people will generally back israel.
Muslims tend to be against Israel
Ideologically the right tends to be more cohesive. Their views and ideas are more malleable.
There are some that don’t support trans-rights despite it being a conservative stance. Some believe the government should intervene to protect the climate while others think it should be on the companies. You’ll even find some that are socialists when it benefits them (Trump campaigns left of Harris economically occasionally even if he flips to the opposite side the next time he speaks). Others are straight up communists (libertarians/anarchists)
Just more Keynesian economics, privatize profits and socialize losses. Pro-globalization
Keynesian economics is broadly left leaning, the only thing more left leaning is literally socialism/communism. Idk what you mean about privatizing profits, profits are already privatized, it's the trump admin that wants to delete like 50% of the federal government, not the harris admin.
The biden admin literally introduced direct filing, idk what the status of that is but i heard it went over pretty well already so that may have been implemented.
As for pro globalization, that's a good thing. Anti-globalism is a right leaning talking point, literally only the trump admin wants to do this. Although generally every society wants to have some level of domestic production, as does the harris admin through things like the CHIPS act, and the home buyer/building policies as well. These are almost always met with globalism, rather than against it, as with trumps policy.
Globalism as already stated is good for the economy, it's good for the global economy, and it ensures more efficient and reliable production as well.
just as an aside here, right leaning economic theory literally just says "stop doing anything at all" which is worse than Keynesian economics.
Muslims tend to be against Israel
the US isn't broadly muslim? Or catholic/christian for that matter, it's broadly agnostic/atheistic. I don't even think muslims are a census break out yet either? If we're talking about the middle east, yeah muslims tend to be against most things that isn't directly in-line with their view points, that's sort of how they operate. As do most other people as well, to be fair.
There are some that don’t support trans-rights despite it being a conservative stance.
what? Are you saying that some lefties don't support trans rights? That's not a conservative stance, that's a stance that conservatives broadly adopt. Technically in isolation it could be considered conservative depending on their personal reasoning for holding that belief.
Some believe the government should intervene to protect the climate while others think it should be on the companies.
i think most people probably agree that it should be both.
Trump campaigns left of Harris economically occasionally even if he flips to the opposite side the next time he speaks
i don't think this is broadly true, though to be fair i don't watch much trump shit. 95% of his monetary policy is tarrifs and tax cuts, that's it, neither of those are really "economically left" as understood today. Outside of that he doesn't like globalism, which is broadly isolationist, which is broadly nationalist, which tends to be right leaning, he pretends to support blue collar workers, though im pretty sure every president does (except democrats who often have effects on them)
I think if we're talking about the makeup of the left, that it's important to remember tha maybe 10% of the left is communist/socialist, or even sympathetic to it. The vast majority of left leaning people would be more willing to vote for someone like this, as they're moderates, but are generally, more moderate, shocker. I think something like at least 50% probably closer to 70-80% of the left could be considered "moderate" I think there are very few "far left people" if you remove moderates/staunch dems into separate categories, it's probably like 40/30 or something. But those are still vastly more aligned than you would see on the right.
Whereas on the right i think you have probably about 10% far right neo nazi type people. 20-30% far right/maga people (broadly aligned) and then the rest is either staunch conservative or moderates. so probably about 20-30% staunch, and the remained being moderates, with the current political climate a lot of those staunch conservatives are either shifting more moderate, or are simply not going to vote. I don't think very many of them are going to vote for trump, and if they do, they're pretty much what would be expected out of the average "i vote" voter.
I think this time around, moderate republicans are swinging into the harris campaign (due to the moderate proposals and policy) which is going to bleed a lot of votes on the conservative side, and bolster a lot of broad left leaning support. Even if your farther left people aren't going to support kamala, they'll still likely vote for her anyway.
Interestingly enough I always did research on both candidates right up to Romney. And I always voted blue. There are people out there who don't like either party and aren't on the right.
"defining" doesn't lead to bias. you are left-leaning regardless of what you decide to call yourself. The important thing is recognizing and acknowledging your predisposition, which it seems you have.
what it protects against is group ideology. I don’t want to start thinking things simply because the political party I align most with thinks that, and unfortunately, identifying with a political group can make people start doing that. I do recognize my biases when making decisions, it's important to do so, I just find it becomes harder to do that when I start identifying with a group
People are prone to bias regardless of their political identification. Identifying as left-leaning provides no more protection against bias than any other political identification.
what it protects against is group ideology. I don't want to start thinking things simply because the political party I align most with thinks that, and unfortunately, identifying with a political group can make people start doing that.
The left isn't anymore a political group than leaning-left is. Political parties have positions on the political spectrum, but positions on the political spectrum are not inherently political parties. What left political party are you referring to?
I have had so many conversations from casual progressive conspiracy theorists about how they think all the Democrats get together and agree on the fall guy (most recently, Manchin) to keep issues on the table indefinitely. You see it constantly with these Jill Stein people. I've literally told them the only solution is to give liberal Democrats the majority, which they haven't had in my lifetime.
Those ones are constantly spreading idiotic takes. "The Dems and Repubs have a ratchet effect towards evil. Therefore we should let the Repubs in to advance the ratchet."
The things they cite as Dems holding the country back are like always direct results of Repub SCOTUSes, too.
Sure, drag agrees with the left on every issue and completely supports their policies. But drag thinks politics are like sports teams, and drag won't back a loser!
on reddit, there's a place that requires you to flair yourself with your political compass, flaired myself centrist (after someone said "FLAIR UP!!!!!"), someone said "NO YOU'RE NOT!!!", later took the political compass test, came out centrist.
guess what i am now, given where i currently am
As a centrist, I hate how I get smack from both sides. Rightwings hate me whenever I have leftwing opinions and leftwings hate me whenever I have rightwing opinions.
But hell, I'll bite. I've ranted about this before, and I know my views don't fully apply to Americans, but I truly believe that using left/right as labels is playing into the elite's hands. You ask a left-person or a right-person their opinions on the rich, and both of them will come to the same conclusion, but as soon as you mention either side, then they start fighting. Thus, the picture is ignored; it's about teams now, it's about cancelling and gotchas, no more about the imbalance of social power.
Honestly, how can anyone be so binary with their political beliefs in an age where we have functional neural networks, global interconnectivity and instant access to whatever we desire? Our water is so fucking clean that we shit in it. We have so much food that there's obesity in ourselves and in our pets. When a disaster happens, when the walls break down, are you really going to be so petty and pathetic as to worry about left or right? I don't reckon.
I refuse to use left/right since I don't even think it applies in my country. Allow me to explain. In Australia's system, we have two separate houses of Parliament, preferential voting, state, federal, and local elections, councils, a monarchy, and territories. Preferential voting ensures your vote is never wasted and goes exactly where you want it.
Where do I fit if I vote for Fusion first, Animal Justice second, Greens Third, Labor fourth, and Liberals fifth for Representatives? While also voting for UAP, One Nation, or Liberal for Senate? What if I throw independents into the mix? Shit, the way parliaments are designed is that parties have to come together to get bills and acts through.
Can you legitimately blanket all that with just one side? Not in Australia, at least. Only advice I have for Americans is to leave, find a better country, they'll be more than willing to take you in and as an American, you can certainly afford to leave to almost every other country.
Please describe someone who could be considered neither left nor right. Is it possible you are viewing the absence of left-wing qualities as being right-wing?
Exactly. So I am curious why OP considers it remarkable that "neither left nor right" is not what it seems.
As for me, I might consider someone from a different country with different politics, like Japan perhaps, to be neither. Or someone who lives under a rock and doesn't pay attention to the news.
Economically I'm leaning right - I want the state to provide free healthcare, schools, universities etc but founding a company has to be easier, we can't afford to keep pouring 1/3 of our yearly budget into pensions on top of the budget for pensions etc.
Socially I'm leaning left - I don't care at all if someone is trans, homosexual, whatever, and want men and women to have equal rights.
So I am neither left or right. And there also is a party that aligns with most of my beliefs (and is against some others but there never is a perfect party).
The issue is that internet politics are often viewed from a USA-centric standpoint. When I say I'm neither left nor right (because it depends on the topic, as explained above) I see memes like that come up. Although my economically right views for my country would be far left from an US-american standpoint anyway.
The issue is that internet politics are often viewed from a USA-centric standpoint. When I say l'm neither left nor right (because it depends on the topic, as explained above) see memes like that come up. Although my economically right views for my country would be far left from an US-american standpoint anyway.
(Self-quoting my comment you replied to)
I'm from Austria, we have a functional social system covering healthcare, schools, universities and similar, but due to decades of regulations it is now extremely complicated and needlessly inefficient and therefore expensive (my father is a doctor so I have quite a bit of insight in the inefficient system).
Although, I'm confused what you mean by making a business easier to create,
We have so many regulations for everything, it'd be great if we just were able to create a business online within like a day. Currently we're losing quite a few start up founders to other countries and our economy has entered recession.
and what that has to do with pensions and putting in more than 1/3 of a business' operating budget into pensions. Seems like an unrelated issue.
In our very recent election one of the main points of our strongest left wing party was that they want to further increase the budget for pensions ("if someone has worked their whole life they should be rewarded for it properly" - 60+ is by far the biggest voting group...), and it's pretty obvious that the current system doesn't work (that's why so much of our general budget has to be added every year, and more every year).
Our system works in a way where the working people pay for the people who are currently in retirement and when we are in retirement the new workers will pay for us. This system was established after ww2 when there were few old people and many young ones, so... 5? iirc working people were paying for one in retirement. Currently two are paying for one in retirement, and the trend is heading towards one paying for one in retirement.
We need a rework there to update it for today's societal structure instead of promising people to add even more of the general budget to pensions (...populism to get 60+ people to vote for them).
Agreed, outside of union employees (teachers, police, teamsters) what employer is paying into pensions still? Certainly no small businesses are, right? Pensions are largely dead. I don't know the numbers, but small business owners bigger costs are providing healthcare and other benefits, not pensions. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but this person sounds like they're a centrist democrat on both sides of the economic/social divide.
It’s funny you say that here, considering that in .ml and Hexbear, you’ll get banned for disagreeing with the hive. Don’t believe me? Check the mod logs. Look at how people who break no rules, still get banned simply for the reasons of being “liberal” and accused of trolling for offering a counter point to their bullshit.
At least you are able to disagree with people here, and that should tell you everything you need to know about who’s self-righteous.
What I like about lemmy so far is downvotes don't effectively censor people like they do on Reddit. Reddit collapses downvoted comments which I think is kinda fucked up
It's all about perspective, and some perspectives are more reasonable than others. Saudi Arabia likely views the US as having a left wing and a far left wing party.
I think it's reasonable to call Democrats centrists with a slight lean to the left, compared to parties globally.
I think this is a really neat insight into your psychology, that you can't fathom the idea of allying with someone who doesn't agree with you on every single point.
The only point being proven here is your complete lack of political education. I'm not American and it's crazy that you can look at the policies of your democratic party and call that left wing. You still have to go pretty far left from that to even hit something resembling centrist politics.
literally just watched a video where a guy starts off calling himself a "moderate" then proceeds to call himself a "maga patriot" The problem is the far right is never honest about who they are and what they want because they know it sucks.
Yeah. The issue with that is that there zero evidence to confirm that they’re correct in seeing things that way. Whereas there is ample proof virtually EVERYWHERE to illustrate how leftists incessantly bark about bOtH siDeS!
This is absolute hogwash. Actual centrists bring up some Republican talking points (at least, the valid ones) when talking to a Democrat, because democrats don't seem to understand them.
Surprise surprise, Republicans think centrists bring up Democratic talking points.
Centrists get the same bullshit demonization from both parties, because both parties are insanely convinced that getting rid of the dissenter makes the issue go away.
It would have been nice if he issue was just something simple, like a religion. But no, demonization is too convenient - an easy argument for pawns to make. Step on someone else, make yourself feel better. Classic.
This is absolute hogwash. Actual centrists bring up some Republican talking points (at least, the valid ones) when talking to a Democrat, because democrats don’t seem to understand them.
Surprise surprise, Republicans think centrists bring up Democratic talking points.
lmao even as you attempt to deny that centrists only spout republican talking points and take cheap shots at democrats you couldn't help but imply that democrats are too dumb to understand the other side's position while holding a neutral tone toward republicans in the very next sentence. Centrists can't even hide their disingenuous nonsense when they're trying to pass themselves off as the real victims. So just knock it off and climb down off your cross. Nobody's buying it.
I disagree with your main point. But the idiot reply you got does kind of support it. He literally did exactly what you said people do, and he didn't even realize it, and he got loads of upvotes.
My counter to your main point is: lemmy is not reality. Lemmy is full of morons. Also, the entire right wing is full of morons. There is, however, a decent fraction of Democrats who are not morons, and they can tell centrists from right wingers pretending to be centrists. Most centrists are either pretenders, or they're just woefully ignorant people. Sure you have the occasional true centrist who has actually throught about politics more than once in a blue moon (and it sounds like you're one of those) but most are not like that.
My experience with both parties (and centrists) is that there are some (more rare) people who have solid reasons for their positions, and that so very much of the rest is chaff and regurgitation.
And yes, Lemmy is not reality. But there is a decent fraction of Republicans who aren't morons, but Republicans are, by and large (with some notable exceptions), terrible at taking something they grasp intuitively, reasoning it out, and communicating that in a way that Democrats will understand.
I can get how people view this as being moronic. But the underlying intuitions are solid, and not prioritizing analytical thought over intuition allows them to hold to those intuitions well. Unfortunately, their entire party was hacked by mongers of Straussian philosophy. Strauss did a lot of "read between the lines and see the dark shit I'm actually saying", and honestly, both parties suck at handling that, but the Republicans are way more susceptible, because they depend on viable leadership. The Republican leadership is basically a Straussian cult at this point. So despite the underlying intuitions that drive the Republican party being pretty solid, they are not really capable of dealing with a hacked leadership. Disinfo from their leadership fucks them.
In any case, while Democrats have their own issues that I believe to be just as fundamental, I can't fault you for thinking Republicans are morons (though I strongly disagree).
I mean...you're kinda arguing that stupidity is just a different form of intelligence here imo. It gets a little epistemological, but I can't agree that "intuition" is a valid way for a sapient being to live their life.
You will never get an answer from them because the small nuggets of truth that exist in Republican talking points are then used to make batshit claims and then turned into a point of profit for some grifter somewhere.
its truthiness at work. This is why even the dumb economists are looking at the Trump Tax Cut Plan and sigh. Its just corporate power metasticizing over all 3 branches of government. When Vance talks about democrats stripping the country for parts thats literally his game plan. He knows its unpopular so he says its not him doing it despite that was his previous job as a venture capitalist
Hey! I'm way left of Democrats, so I really don't understand Republican talking points... Could you give an example of ones you would say are valid? It would do me some good to know they aren't just out to cause suffering.
The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are:
that borders do actually matter to the sovereignty of a country and that control over who and what crosses that border is a necessity,
countries need some kind of balanced budget to prevent hyperinflation and inevitable austerity,
the constitution should be protected and enforced equally for all amendments unless and until they are further amended or repealed, and
the Federal government should exist to provide for the defense of the country, protection of interstate and international commerce, and protection of the common good.
I happen to personally think that the best implementation for these points would be:
an overhaul of immigration policy is needed to increase legal immigration and decrease the time spent in that process to months or at least under 1-2 years with a pathway that allows current illegal immigrants to get in the back of that (actually useful and reasonably short) line,
countries cannot balance a budget like a household balances a checkbook because it doesn't work like that and anyone who says otherwise is either economic-illiterate or a con artist,
First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth amendments especially all need to be equally enforced and double especially on the police and the State (looking at you Civil Asset Forfiture, and your partner in crime Cash Bail), and
all of these functions would be best served with Universal Healthcare, Universal Education to an undergrad (Associates) level, Universal Basic Income replacing the existing welfare framework with no hoops or requirements or means testing, some form of Georgist land tax integration to help ensure the wealthy at least start to pay their fair share, and a heavy dose of monopoly busting and anti-trust enforcement to prevent billionaires from becoming a thing in the first place and prevent regulatory capture by capital at the very least.
Also religion has no business in government and fuck off with race/orientation/religious/etc discrimination. It is all class warfare from the elite and Reagan deregulation caused the death of the economy and the middle class.
This is why I consider myself a centrist, because the Right would have a conniption fit at most of those beliefs. The Left would have the same conniption fit that I also think that current border policies, the existence of sanctuary cities/states providing incentive, and worst of all the companies and people hiring and exploiting illegal labor due to insufficient availability, use, and enforcement of tools like e-verify (AKA the current status quo) is a shit show and the "left" shows too much weakness on this topic, I think the "open borders/a person cannot be illegal" crowd are dangerously misguided utopiasts, I support the personal right to keep and bear arms interpretation of 2A, support (not limited but also limited) Sates rights as useful ways to experiment with policy along with the original intention of the Senate and Electoral College, and think a decent amount of Left/Democrat ideology is unrealistic, counterproductive, or worse.
Really, it's not so much the current taking points that make sense - although there are underlying truths and values that are being denied, that show up in current taking points.
And honestly, although things will be okay, I don't have anything you'll like to hear about the current situation.
In general, the biggest issue with the Republican Party is that it depends on good leadership. Like a monarchy, that's great when you have a reasonable leader, and really shitty when you don't.
Currently, the Republican corpus is having to come to terms with the failure of it's leadership, and the loss of it's underlying moral fortitude. A very large part of this is because the party has been effectively hacked, and has become a Straussian cult. The Democratic party is not immune to the spread of the underlying ideology, nor of the cult itself, but is impacted in less obvious (but no less problematic) ways.
While Strauss himself may have had some reasonable ideals, the consequences of the intersection of his methodology of teaching and his ideologies, by nature, create a kind of "you get it or you don't" state of affairs, where much is implicit. He intentionally did this, because he wanted people to be capable of reading between the lines, and to be able to stand for true and valuable things that you can't fully justify or comprehend analytically. Although some things must be implicit and be stood for even if they cannot be articulated, the consequences of intentionally creating a scenario where much is left to subtext in an environment (politics) where power is a main focus creates a problematic circumstance that is malignant and difficult to pin down in real-world conflict.
Not only is this complex of interactions difficult to pin down in real-world interactions, it is difficult to pin down internally, once you've genuinely been impacted by it. And so it can spread. And it has spread, in the Republican leadership. And they spread the discordant mixture of implicit behaviors to their constituents.
All of this is to say:
Republicans depend on good leadership, and their leadership is fucked right now. But that doesn't mean the corpus of Republicans in general is actually fucky. They are being fucked too, and their fuckyness will right itself when a mentality comes about that is:
A: communicable implicitly and explicitly
B: capable if seeing through the morass of the Straussian cult.
Meanwhile, many of the things that the Republican corpus actually cares about manifest in problematic ways, because their needs are no longer met by their leadership.
So if you're looking to feel good about Republicans, don't look at their leadership, or the maga asshats. Look at the very large body of people who has lost representation, and never has been good at having a public voice. Look at the fundamental Republican philosophies, which are, by and large, good. When they act out, tie it back to those philosophies and beliefs, and try to understand how it led to this, now.
One of the primary things the Republican party doesn't do is look away from the fundamental necessity for power. This isn't (generally) out of a desire for power, though that may be what manifests. Instead, it's from a willingness to deal honestly in realities other people find distasteful. This is why they consider the Democratic corpus "weak" at times. But currently, that's kinda fucking them, because they also can't see an answer to the Straussian cult situation. They know, on some level, that something fundamentally important is being left out, but can't find a way to get back to the moral foundation they had - the power has them. Their leadership knows how to point that unease at the wrong things.
The good thing is - getting to know your local Republican, and sorting through the emotions it brings up in you can help, because the fundamental issue is deeply psychological.
The bad thing is, nobody wants to do that, because it's lots easier to just say "those guys suck" and "we'll best them at the polls". But unless the underlying issue is addressed, you'll lose again. And then time will pass, and you'll win, maybe, and then lose again. And each time, it will be shocking, and each time, a worse leader, and each time, the mentality and it's supporting antithetical mentalities spread.
But, once people realize they can't escape a thing, and it needs to be faced, they face it.
You could say this whole thing is a battle between (or a lack of capacity for mutual understanding by) the explicit and the implicit motivators.
The MAGA movement is a christo-fascist death cult. Conservative think tanks which may have been influenced by Strauss as much as Schmitt have influenced the MAGA movement with Project 2025 at the very least. However, it would be giving the MAGA movement and Strauss to much credit to say that the MAGA cult is exclusively a Straussian cult. Fascists movements share general attributes with each other, but cannot be accurately described as exclusively the embodiment of one philosopher's views.
Regardless, a no would have been sufficient to the asked question.
The good thing is - getting to know your local Republican, and sorting through the emotions it brings up in you can help, because the fundamental issue is deeply psychological.
The bad thing is, nobody wants to do that, because it’s lots easier to just say “those guys suck” and “we’ll best them at the polls”.
But, once people realize they can’t escape a thing, and it needs to be faced, they face it.
Climate change is the existential threat to life as we know it on the planet Earth. Republicans are the ones who need to learn to face this fact. No matter how much political victory they achieve the problem will remain unless we take action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
In the absence of Republicans accepting the body of research that has been done on climate science, it is up to the rest of us to out vote them. This is true of most positions that Republicans advocate for. They aren't based on evidence or on a desire to benefit the majority of the population. Republican positions are designed to benefit themselves and the owner class at the expense of everyone else.
Garnering the political will to out vote an over-represented minority every two years is neither easy nor based on emotion. It is a strategic decision based on evidence to prevent the destruction of the planet and our way of life. It is useful to out vote Republicans because preventing our destruction is a necessary step to improving our society.
As part of that, it is important to dismantle flawed arguments in favor of the Republicans. Such as a misattribution to psychological factors. Which at best is an unfounded attempt to vaguely refer to a reader's insecurities.
Republicans and many other people, regardless of their political leanings, have a tendency to moral reasoning. They attempt to reach a goal by following steps that are justified by subjective morality. Moral positions may inherently feel correct, but aren't inherently supported by any measurable metric. Despite this philosophers assert that morality should be used to dictate the actions of people. While this position may feel intuitively correct, it has a consistent issue.
People can state goals and then can designate a subjective moral position to those goals. However choosing actions to achieve those goals based on reasoning derived from the same subjective moral position is not guaranteed to achieve that stated goal. A way to resolve this is to evaluate actions based on their utility. Does a given action advance the stated goal? If so then it is a course of action worth considering. Rather than asking do the ends justify the means, we should ask do the means accomplish the ends. Thinking about actions in terms of their utility enable us to act in our self-interest. Moral reasoning denies us this as moral ideals demand an inhuman level of dedication to achieve. We are best able to pursue our ideals when we can do so in a way that is useful to that pursuit.
Fascism has taken hold of the Republican Party. Attempting to meet fascists in the middle does nothing to stop climate change. The fascists believe climate change does not exist and that no action is required. No matter how close to the fascists' position on climate change a person gets, that person will be unable to leverage the support of fascists. So while comprising may be a moral position that feels good and has been useful in certain cases such as infrastructure funding, using it is as a strategy is insufficient to accomplish the stated goal of preventing climate change. The position between systemic change and doing nothing will not make use of the limited time window we have to advert key tipping points in the planet's ecosystem.
Climate change seemed the most appropriate example given the statement in your argument of needing to face something that is inescapable. As Republicans are unwilling to act based on evidence on the majority of topics their support cannot be leveraged in a meaningful way for any of those topics. So in general, if a person wants to forward their political goals it is not useful to comprise on issues with a party whose only interest is ruling and not leading.
But unless the underlying issue is addressed, you’ll lose again. And then time will pass, and you’ll win, maybe, and then lose again.
Also, once the fascists take power we will lose our democracy. As our democracy is our most powerful tool to enact systemic change and wealth redistribution we have a vested interest in protecting our democracy from fascist takeovers. edit: typo
Alex Jones literally did exactly this, proclaiming himself above left/right politics while consistently presenting far right views to a largely far right audience.
Your first mistake was trying to inject logic and reason into a conversation controlled by two opposing factions of hyper-fanatic zealots. Your second mistake was assuming that people who willingly sign up to become mindless drones of the party are capable of higher level thought. Nice try tho, I respect the effort.
I have yet to see the trucks with an idolized Kamala Harris holding an American flag on them or even a single article of cultwear pushed out like the MAGA hat, so the Democrats are really slacking in their zealotry.
#BothSiders often end up repeating Republican talking points
Of course the both sides argument comes from the right because America has no left
Not with any sort of majority aspirations, that's for sure.
Found one!
and I woulda gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling kids
Often? I’ve never seen it NOT that way, and I’m a huge fan of nuance. With them, I just can’t see any justification for that argument.
Thanks for saving me the effort of pointing this out.
"Yeah, I don't agree with his racism, but I can't support post-partum abortions by feeding babies to coyotes so we can afford to pay for 25 billion illegals to stay in the Ritz Carlton like the Democrats do. #BothSides"
Oh this is the classic : "I'm socially progressive, but fiscally conservative" LOL
The thing is real fiscal conservatism relies on evidence. They just want to sell off the government so they can make a profit replacing it. A real fiscal conservative would have already passed universal education, universal healthcare, universal background checks, taken military procurement to task, and repealed half of the laws restricting unions.
The Republicans talk about laws that spend less and create more revenue, but they fight tooth and nail against ones that actually would do that.
no no, republicans don't want the govt to make revenue. tax cuts, ridiculously complicated tax code, gutting the IRS... all to let rich people keep as much money as possible.
Or as they say, "make government small... Enough to drown in a bath tub"
The US government is so small it already fits in an uterus!
Rich people making more money is true Republican goal and the reason for everything else. Co-opting the deranged fanatical Christian sector was just part of the strategy to achieve that.
So, a Democrat?
Well the bar is six feet under when you compare Democrats to Republicans. Democrats appears leftwing simply because Republicans went further to the right on the spectrum unfortunately. If you place Democrats in Canada or Western Europe, they would be considered a right wing government, or centrist if we stretch it.
So much this. The only thing that remedied US Democrats in this sense was their LGBT stances being more progressed than in many Western European countries. Otherwise they are in the right/far right/neoliberal spectrum by European standards.
At this point anybody can just download all the financial freedom they want, nobody is stopping us. So our votes only even matter for social issues anymore.
Code for "I'm conservative but know a gay person and/or once smoked a marijuana."
"I want to smoke weed and not pay taxes and I lack basic empathy for anyone with problems worse than my own."
Fiscally conservative somehow means hoarding money under the mattress instead of investing in projects like infrastructure, an educated populace, a healthy populace, or an environment that is habitable.
Actual centrists recognize how extreme the right has gotten, and vote accordingly. Bothsiders are the brainless, egotistical tools of the far right, going along with normalizing fascism because they don't want to think too hard.
... and because they want slaves back. The right is focused on having women-slaves and immigrant-slaves. Take away rights, invent crimes, jail, enslave.
That's because slavery is great for the
economycapital-hoarding class.It's because they identify 100% with the party but don't want the negative flack it rightfully deserves, so they pretend to be centrist.
This has actually been studied
Anti-Authoritarians and Moderates view it as best to be seen as Anti-Authoritarians, Authoritarians view it best to be seen as Moderates.
They literally view opportunistic claiming of the center not just as a political tool but as a social survival tactic to not be ostracized for their bullshit.
Drag would like to have a link to a study so drag can cite it in the future
What makes you qualified to speak for the entire drag community?
Drag is not a community, drag is a dragon rider.
Go back to Pern where you came from
Never thought I'd see anti-immigrant sentiment on here
How about a little compassion! That's a big jump between Sol and Rukbat. That there even is a pernese here is a testament to their enduring spirit. Aivas would be proud!
"Rider"* whether thon ride dragons or "rider" is thon's nickname is unclear.
Drag rides dragons and also "rides" dragons
Bad dragon. Be clear.
Exactly this. Many of them are concerned about how it might affect their work too and their families if they found out they're were horrible racist people.
It's part of the reason why the KKK wore clokes
It used to be libertarians that did this shit. Too afraid to commit to the bit, but still want to appear as if they’re the good guys.
yeah.. Here in Australia, they were also the only political party around who never removed their shitty signage after the election (and they legally have to). I'm surprised the Election council didn't do it for them and send them the bill. I think the problem with those wankers is that they constantly try to get away with dodgy actions, and they end up being successful so many times, that they just keep doing it
Everytime I have a discussion with someone who says “both sides are the same”, they always end up voting right. I ask if both sides are the same why not vote left?
I don't think that "both sides are the same", but there is a Venn Diagram of shared interests under the two party system; the overlap is fairly large (e.g., both parties are susceptible to lobbying, both parties fight to maintain first past the post voting, etc.)
Everybody votes right-wing in usa. There are no left-wing candidates just liberals.
Cool!
Deep.
It's weird how often people say they "Aren't for Right or the Left" and "Think BOTH parties are the problem", but only ever have negative things to say about the Left.
Concern Trolls are not your friends
I actually got chills lately when Bill O'Reily came out and said Obama was the best president of his lifetime and he only talked shit on him because he got paid to.
How can you know something is wrong and do it anyway?
It's weird how people think usa has a left-wing party.
well the richest guy on the planet and the republican party candidate both are trying to portray kamala harris as a communist when she's possibly slightly to the right of nixon.
I do think the media needs to be broken up, the lack of competition for big media (including social media) has resulted in some level of complacency with unhinged conspiracies.
It's weird how you made it your personal mission is to correct "other people's wrong opinions".
Get over yourself 💁
Anyone claiming to be undecided on Trump and the GOP in 2024 is full of shit.
I'm undecided on Trump and the GOP in 2024, I can't tell if they're brutally evil or evilly brutal.
I am a centrist as well and therefore usually undecided. But these rights make it really easy to decide who not to be undecided about.
same, but i am go between "he can't be that stupid, he must know he is lying" and "oh, he is that stupid, he might believe the nonsense he says"
When the whole world is USA!
The whole world is inundated with news about the election, looking on in horror at the fact that Trump, in spite of everything has a 50/50 shot at the presidency. The fact that he remains viable is one of the worst enditements possible on the US government and people.
Yeah - we see you guys, and we've decided.
Worst indictments
I dunno. English...
Oof - yep - I was way off on that one - thanks.
I'll leave that as-is though.
MTG would have called it an indication.
But as a northern neighbor to this clown party, I cannot agree more.
Stop fucking around, the USA! You're supposed to model this shit for everyone! You want some other countries' movies to get more popular than yours?!
i mean, statistically trump has never won the popular vote... So...
You mean other people outside the US can’t educate themselves, if they care to, about trump?
No its fine! But the whole world has left and right in their political spectrum, yet every comment in here is about USA (and one(?) about France)
Well, yes…this instance and community are full of Americans, so that’s the viewpoint the comments will revolve around.
Please do offer your country’s difficulties with right wing politics instead of a sarcastic comment. The more we all know of nationalist, populist, and theocratic fascists trying to make inroads around the world the better.
I've had a guy tell me he votes for Trump because he's trying to take a balanced centrist view of things. But dude, if Trump is the center, wtf are your extremes?
It's so funny to see Alex Jones present himself as above left-right politics despite constantly spewing far right BS.
It’s the media, not the people. If you read the same article from sources across the political spectrum, you’ll find the further right you go, the more information is omitted and the more opinionated the journalist becomes. So, someone who reads primarily right wing and centrist media will naturally have a right wing opinion when reading centrist articles.
Yeah, I’m not buying the “your opinions are just biases” argument. I don’t deny the influence of past experiences, I just believe humans are more nuanced than that.
Opinions are absolutely subjective, but the content they’re based on is also skewed.
If all of the news you consumed was curated through an engagement algorithm, it would change the way you see the world. Your opinions would be based on that perception.
Now you’re just describing human perception. That’s not really remarkable. And, still, there’s a lot more to it, such as the sum total of experiences a person has.
I still think this concept is being oversimplified quite a bit.
While this is true, people still bear responsibility for the media they choose to consume. People wake up every day and decide to get their information from liars and grifters, because they prefer the way lies feel. It isn't as if they don't have options. Now, media literacy is definitely a problem. But the only solution is education, and that's a silver bullet too slow to save us from all the extant ill-educated mooks.
I agree. Many people make the mistake of getting their news exclusively served through algorithms. They see a very skewed painting of the world based on what they’ve shown interest in previously.
Let's just start with the fact that American political system is super skewed to begin with and no actual left has any power.
Dems are highly pro-capitalist, moderately nationalist and merely call to strike a bit less horrible balance between the interests of people and businesses. This is not left, this is a bit better right.
This fallacy keeps people trapped in an idea that the only possible options are "good" ultra-capitalism and "greedy" ultra-capitalism, which is not true.
People that try to have "both sides heard" totally ignore that there are way more than two angles in this conversation and that Dems are not some sort of a political extreme. Reps, ironically, kinda are.
And Democrats often think they vote for something actually good, when it's actually just a lesser evil. Keep that in mind, no matter what you decide.
well i mean to be clear, not voting for a literal fascist, is a pretty good vote.
The post brought to you by Emmanuel Macron
The extreme center, no political ideology, only opportunism!
A banker is true neutral, he follows the money.
#Switzerland #NaziGold
tbf we all should have known the moment he said he was going to rule like a Graeco-Roman god.
Did anybody ever think once that this dude was left-wing?
No but he did protest very loudly that he was "neither left nor right" during his first election which of course really meant "neither left nor left"
Why don't you tell us more (nvm, you have lmao)
After the VP debate, I was stuck under two babies and couldn't get up before CBS did it's spin room coverage and fake analytics. During their focus group of 6 undecideds, I nearly fucking lost it when one said "I like that Vance said he's pro-family".
This shit repeated on my stream I was watching several times and I inevitably woke up my 8mo having to get to the computer before every last drop of my sanity was gone.
"pro family" and "family values" might be the most vomit inducing dogwhistle in politics.
"As an independent gay black man..."
"I'm no Trump supporter, but..." is the new "I'm no racist, but...".
Saw this gem today and it reminded me of this post
What an utterly bizarre view they have.
It’s a shame they lack the critical thinking to realize they lack critical thinking
i mean, i dont think this is blatantly wrong i mean it's not correct either, i think the main failing in their viewpoint is that trump and the maga crowd are literally fucking insane.
But if we woke up tomorrow and trump didn't exist, they would all be gone.
I don't think all far lefties are fucking mental, but i've definitely met my fair share of tankies and people who pretend to know politics while being super fucking wrong. I've also met plenty of reasonable far lefties though so. Goes both ways.
The far right is insane, Similar to the opposing factions of the far left, though i think those are probably smaller. The MAGA right is literally just a deluded group of stupid people, it's just fascism doing fascism. The moderate right is probably not voting for trump, and if they are, they're just stupid. The rest are independents, from there you start getting into the moderate left, which is generally more "centrist" than the moderate right, so they're a lot more willing to reach across ideological differences if it aligns with their general understanding of the world. (the kamala harris campaign) past that idk, you get weird mixes of entrenched dems, and the fringe sub groups of socialists, anarchists, shit like that, though they will generally align with the broader left, i think. Past this you have the "far left" israel palestine types, tankies, uber socialists/communists, the diehards. People that don't care about anything other than the thing they espouse.
This has been my reading on the political sphere over the last few years or so.
Generally, i think the left, currently is a lot more cohesive than the right, the right seems to be undergoing an ideological fracture right now, which is interesting. I think the defining difference is the lack of a "blue MAGA" so to speak.
They existed before Trump with the tea party, they will exist after him. The far right also exists in other countries
Right, not centrist. They just aren’t as right as the competition
Not a left or right issue, you will find people on both supporting both sides
This has never been the case, the lack of cohesion is why right wing governments are more popular despite not being popular in a population. People will just not vote because there is no coheson on the left. Meanwhile the right will always come out to vote, even when they don’t agree with their candidate
it depends. I think MAGA as it is today, would stop existing if trump stopped existing, it would probably fracture into a few different camps, completely killing any momentum it has.
you'll have to demonstrate this one "freedom and liberty" are some of the most right leaning things they talk about. The only thing they aren't doing is social progressivism, which from a federal perspective i think is relatively appropriate.
i don't fundamentally disagree here, but i'm talking about a specific camp of people, so it's relevant. Right leaning people are more likely to support israel, especially farther right people. Even moderately religious people will generally back israel. The primary camp of pro palestine is younger college aged people. There's a reason you don't see very many senior citizen homes protesting israel palestine.
it depends on how you view it. Ideologically the right tends to be more cohesive. Their views and ideas are more malleable. However the left is more socially cohesive, and given the current climate, i would expect the vast majority of the left to vote for kamala on the basis of it being "not trump" and also a pretty good shot at getting something other than an old white fuck into the government.
this was a weirdly bad faith interpretation of my comment, honestly.
Sorry, I don’t have time to fully respond yet
dw about it, shit on the internet is generally not transient, it'll be here later lol
Just more Keynesian economics, privatize profits and socialize losses. Pro-globalization
Muslims tend to be against Israel
There are some that don’t support trans-rights despite it being a conservative stance. Some believe the government should intervene to protect the climate while others think it should be on the companies. You’ll even find some that are socialists when it benefits them (Trump campaigns left of Harris economically occasionally even if he flips to the opposite side the next time he speaks). Others are straight up communists (libertarians/anarchists)
Keynesian economics is broadly left leaning, the only thing more left leaning is literally socialism/communism. Idk what you mean about privatizing profits, profits are already privatized, it's the trump admin that wants to delete like 50% of the federal government, not the harris admin.
The biden admin literally introduced direct filing, idk what the status of that is but i heard it went over pretty well already so that may have been implemented.
As for pro globalization, that's a good thing. Anti-globalism is a right leaning talking point, literally only the trump admin wants to do this. Although generally every society wants to have some level of domestic production, as does the harris admin through things like the CHIPS act, and the home buyer/building policies as well. These are almost always met with globalism, rather than against it, as with trumps policy.
Globalism as already stated is good for the economy, it's good for the global economy, and it ensures more efficient and reliable production as well.
just as an aside here, right leaning economic theory literally just says "stop doing anything at all" which is worse than Keynesian economics.
the US isn't broadly muslim? Or catholic/christian for that matter, it's broadly agnostic/atheistic. I don't even think muslims are a census break out yet either? If we're talking about the middle east, yeah muslims tend to be against most things that isn't directly in-line with their view points, that's sort of how they operate. As do most other people as well, to be fair.
what? Are you saying that some lefties don't support trans rights? That's not a conservative stance, that's a stance that conservatives broadly adopt. Technically in isolation it could be considered conservative depending on their personal reasoning for holding that belief.
i think most people probably agree that it should be both.
i don't think this is broadly true, though to be fair i don't watch much trump shit. 95% of his monetary policy is tarrifs and tax cuts, that's it, neither of those are really "economically left" as understood today. Outside of that he doesn't like globalism, which is broadly isolationist, which is broadly nationalist, which tends to be right leaning, he pretends to support blue collar workers, though im pretty sure every president does (except democrats who often have effects on them)
I think if we're talking about the makeup of the left, that it's important to remember tha maybe 10% of the left is communist/socialist, or even sympathetic to it. The vast majority of left leaning people would be more willing to vote for someone like this, as they're moderates, but are generally, more moderate, shocker. I think something like at least 50% probably closer to 70-80% of the left could be considered "moderate" I think there are very few "far left people" if you remove moderates/staunch dems into separate categories, it's probably like 40/30 or something. But those are still vastly more aligned than you would see on the right.
Whereas on the right i think you have probably about 10% far right neo nazi type people. 20-30% far right/maga people (broadly aligned) and then the rest is either staunch conservative or moderates. so probably about 20-30% staunch, and the remained being moderates, with the current political climate a lot of those staunch conservatives are either shifting more moderate, or are simply not going to vote. I don't think very many of them are going to vote for trump, and if they do, they're pretty much what would be expected out of the average "i vote" voter.
I think this time around, moderate republicans are swinging into the harris campaign (due to the moderate proposals and policy) which is going to bleed a lot of votes on the conservative side, and bolster a lot of broad left leaning support. Even if your farther left people aren't going to support kamala, they'll still likely vote for her anyway.
If your response to a call to ethnic clensing is ''well... let's meet them half way'' you aren't a moderate centrist.
I feel like it's much more often someone being called left when they're really a liberal, fash, red fash, etc.
Interestingly enough I always did research on both candidates right up to Romney. And I always voted blue. There are people out there who don't like either party and aren't on the right.
That doesn't mean you're neither left nor right
You're correct, I'm on the left.
Damn this hits. I've worked with a lot of guys who "don't vote, don't pay attention" that are defacto conservative in their beliefs.
Because if you don't pay attention you simply are ok with the status quo which is inherently conservative.
I have yet to meet a right wing surfer, admittedly I haven't been surfing for long, so I'm sure it will happen.
I'm left leaning but don't like to define myself as left because that can lead to bias
"defining" doesn't lead to bias. you are left-leaning regardless of what you decide to call yourself. The important thing is recognizing and acknowledging your predisposition, which it seems you have.
what it protects against is group ideology. I don’t want to start thinking things simply because the political party I align most with thinks that, and unfortunately, identifying with a political group can make people start doing that. I do recognize my biases when making decisions, it's important to do so, I just find it becomes harder to do that when I start identifying with a group
People are prone to bias regardless of their political identification. Identifying as left-leaning provides no more protection against bias than any other political identification.
what it protects against is group ideology. I don't want to start thinking things simply because the political party I align most with thinks that, and unfortunately, identifying with a political group can make people start doing that.
The left isn't anymore a political group than leaning-left is. Political parties have positions on the political spectrum, but positions on the political spectrum are not inherently political parties. What left political party are you referring to?
So what? Is it your responsibility to lead someone away from bias because you simply state you are on the left on the political spectrum?
no, I'm trying to keep MYSELF away from bias
Good luck. If you lean one way or another you are already biased. Inescapable.
95% of my values HEAVILY align with the left, but they also
a) are vaguely lazy and I don't identify with that
b) go way too far on issues I've done zero research on
c) never pass legislation due to never having enough political power
So I can't support them.
I should've added a /s.
Well these things sure seem like they could be related...
I have had so many conversations from casual progressive conspiracy theorists about how they think all the Democrats get together and agree on the fall guy (most recently, Manchin) to keep issues on the table indefinitely. You see it constantly with these Jill Stein people. I've literally told them the only solution is to give liberal Democrats the majority, which they haven't had in my lifetime.
Those ones are constantly spreading idiotic takes. "The Dems and Repubs have a ratchet effect towards evil. Therefore we should let the Repubs in to advance the ratchet."
The things they cite as Dems holding the country back are like always direct results of Repub SCOTUSes, too.
Sure, drag agrees with the left on every issue and completely supports their policies. But drag thinks politics are like sports teams, and drag won't back a loser!
/s
Jinkies!
Most of the time this exact meme is reposted by a red fascist zealot though
on reddit, there's a place that requires you to flair yourself with your political compass, flaired myself centrist (after someone said "FLAIR UP!!!!!"), someone said "NO YOU'RE NOT!!!", later took the political compass test, came out centrist.
guess what i am now, given where i currently am
Anything but far-right, or as the Reddit PCM community would say, [insert series of slurs here]
Apolitical: far right/fascist Liberal: right Moderate: right “Democrat”(USA): right leaning moderate.
As a centrist, I hate how I get smack from both sides. Rightwings hate me whenever I have leftwing opinions and leftwings hate me whenever I have rightwing opinions.
ah, americans. you guys love your team sport don't ya
But hell, I'll bite. I've ranted about this before, and I know my views don't fully apply to Americans, but I truly believe that using left/right as labels is playing into the elite's hands. You ask a left-person or a right-person their opinions on the rich, and both of them will come to the same conclusion, but as soon as you mention either side, then they start fighting. Thus, the picture is ignored; it's about teams now, it's about cancelling and gotchas, no more about the imbalance of social power.
Honestly, how can anyone be so binary with their political beliefs in an age where we have functional neural networks, global interconnectivity and instant access to whatever we desire? Our water is so fucking clean that we shit in it. We have so much food that there's obesity in ourselves and in our pets. When a disaster happens, when the walls break down, are you really going to be so petty and pathetic as to worry about left or right? I don't reckon.
I refuse to use left/right since I don't even think it applies in my country. Allow me to explain. In Australia's system, we have two separate houses of Parliament, preferential voting, state, federal, and local elections, councils, a monarchy, and territories. Preferential voting ensures your vote is never wasted and goes exactly where you want it.
Where do I fit if I vote for Fusion first, Animal Justice second, Greens Third, Labor fourth, and Liberals fifth for Representatives? While also voting for UAP, One Nation, or Liberal for Senate? What if I throw independents into the mix? Shit, the way parliaments are designed is that parties have to come together to get bills and acts through.
Can you legitimately blanket all that with just one side? Not in Australia, at least. Only advice I have for Americans is to leave, find a better country, they'll be more than willing to take you in and as an American, you can certainly afford to leave to almost every other country.
hey it's @[email protected]
Please describe someone who could be considered neither left nor right. Is it possible you are viewing the absence of left-wing qualities as being right-wing?
that's like asking for any media that is not political
Exactly. So I am curious why OP considers it remarkable that "neither left nor right" is not what it seems.
As for me, I might consider someone from a different country with different politics, like Japan perhaps, to be neither. Or someone who lives under a rock and doesn't pay attention to the news.
Economically I'm leaning right - I want the state to provide free healthcare, schools, universities etc but founding a company has to be easier, we can't afford to keep pouring 1/3 of our yearly budget into pensions on top of the budget for pensions etc.
Socially I'm leaning left - I don't care at all if someone is trans, homosexual, whatever, and want men and women to have equal rights.
So I am neither left or right. And there also is a party that aligns with most of my beliefs (and is against some others but there never is a perfect party).
The issue is that internet politics are often viewed from a USA-centric standpoint. When I say I'm neither left nor right (because it depends on the topic, as explained above) I see memes like that come up. Although my economically right views for my country would be far left from an US-american standpoint anyway.
(Self-quoting my comment you replied to)
I'm from Austria, we have a functional social system covering healthcare, schools, universities and similar, but due to decades of regulations it is now extremely complicated and needlessly inefficient and therefore expensive (my father is a doctor so I have quite a bit of insight in the inefficient system).
We have so many regulations for everything, it'd be great if we just were able to create a business online within like a day. Currently we're losing quite a few start up founders to other countries and our economy has entered recession.
In our very recent election one of the main points of our strongest left wing party was that they want to further increase the budget for pensions ("if someone has worked their whole life they should be rewarded for it properly" - 60+ is by far the biggest voting group...), and it's pretty obvious that the current system doesn't work (that's why so much of our general budget has to be added every year, and more every year).
Our system works in a way where the working people pay for the people who are currently in retirement and when we are in retirement the new workers will pay for us. This system was established after ww2 when there were few old people and many young ones, so... 5? iirc working people were paying for one in retirement. Currently two are paying for one in retirement, and the trend is heading towards one paying for one in retirement.
We need a rework there to update it for today's societal structure instead of promising people to add even more of the general budget to pensions (...populism to get 60+ people to vote for them).
Agreed, outside of union employees (teachers, police, teamsters) what employer is paying into pensions still? Certainly no small businesses are, right? Pensions are largely dead. I don't know the numbers, but small business owners bigger costs are providing healthcare and other benefits, not pensions. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but this person sounds like they're a centrist democrat on both sides of the economic/social divide.
state education and healthcare while a centrist idea in the 60s is now "communism"
You're right wing. Just not a bigot.
Oh, it's about the American political system. Well it's broken anyways, so that explains the many comments lacking any nuances.
Is the political system broken, or are the citizens on the hook for electing genociders?
You only get to choose one, I'm afraid.
What a freaking circle jerk this comment section is. Could you be more self-righteous?
It’s funny you say that here, considering that in .ml and Hexbear, you’ll get banned for disagreeing with the hive. Don’t believe me? Check the mod logs. Look at how people who break no rules, still get banned simply for the reasons of being “liberal” and accused of trolling for offering a counter point to their bullshit.
At least you are able to disagree with people here, and that should tell you everything you need to know about who’s self-righteous.
What I like about lemmy so far is downvotes don't effectively censor people like they do on Reddit. Reddit collapses downvoted comments which I think is kinda fucked up
Agreed.
This perfectly describes how the Far Left sees everyone else.
Not sure who you're taking about, America has a right wing party and a far right wing party.
"From MY point of view the Jedi are evil!"
It's all about perspective, and some perspectives are more reasonable than others. Saudi Arabia likely views the US as having a left wing and a far left wing party.
I think it's reasonable to call Democrats centrists with a slight lean to the left, compared to parties globally.
[X] doubt
They wouldn't have given Jared Kushner 2 billion dollars or financed Musk's takeover of Twitter if they weren't ideologically aligned.
I think this is a really neat insight into your psychology, that you can't fathom the idea of allying with someone who doesn't agree with you on every single point.
Everything is relative.
Thanks for proving my point.
The only point being proven here is your complete lack of political education. I'm not American and it's crazy that you can look at the policies of your democratic party and call that left wing. You still have to go pretty far left from that to even hit something resembling centrist politics.
literally just watched a video where a guy starts off calling himself a "moderate" then proceeds to call himself a "maga patriot" The problem is the far right is never honest about who they are and what they want because they know it sucks.
Agreed. Doesn't negate my point though. Extremists usually view those closer to the center as on the other side of it.
I don't think most leftists see themselves as centrists. In fact, I can't even think of an example to fit that case.
Yeah. The issue with that is that there zero evidence to confirm that they’re correct in seeing things that way. Whereas there is ample proof virtually EVERYWHERE to illustrate how leftists incessantly bark about bOtH siDeS!
This is absolute hogwash. Actual centrists bring up some Republican talking points (at least, the valid ones) when talking to a Democrat, because democrats don't seem to understand them.
Surprise surprise, Republicans think centrists bring up Democratic talking points.
Centrists get the same bullshit demonization from both parties, because both parties are insanely convinced that getting rid of the dissenter makes the issue go away.
It would have been nice if he issue was just something simple, like a religion. But no, demonization is too convenient - an easy argument for pawns to make. Step on someone else, make yourself feel better. Classic.
lmao even as you attempt to deny that centrists only spout republican talking points and take cheap shots at democrats you couldn't help but imply that democrats are too dumb to understand the other side's position while holding a neutral tone toward republicans in the very next sentence. Centrists can't even hide their disingenuous nonsense when they're trying to pass themselves off as the real victims. So just knock it off and climb down off your cross. Nobody's buying it.
Surprise surprise, the Democrat thinks I was being neutral to the Republicans.
Buried in extremism.
I disagree with your main point. But the idiot reply you got does kind of support it. He literally did exactly what you said people do, and he didn't even realize it, and he got loads of upvotes.
My counter to your main point is: lemmy is not reality. Lemmy is full of morons. Also, the entire right wing is full of morons. There is, however, a decent fraction of Democrats who are not morons, and they can tell centrists from right wingers pretending to be centrists. Most centrists are either pretenders, or they're just woefully ignorant people. Sure you have the occasional true centrist who has actually throught about politics more than once in a blue moon (and it sounds like you're one of those) but most are not like that.
My experience with both parties (and centrists) is that there are some (more rare) people who have solid reasons for their positions, and that so very much of the rest is chaff and regurgitation.
And yes, Lemmy is not reality. But there is a decent fraction of Republicans who aren't morons, but Republicans are, by and large (with some notable exceptions), terrible at taking something they grasp intuitively, reasoning it out, and communicating that in a way that Democrats will understand.
I can get how people view this as being moronic. But the underlying intuitions are solid, and not prioritizing analytical thought over intuition allows them to hold to those intuitions well. Unfortunately, their entire party was hacked by mongers of Straussian philosophy. Strauss did a lot of "read between the lines and see the dark shit I'm actually saying", and honestly, both parties suck at handling that, but the Republicans are way more susceptible, because they depend on viable leadership. The Republican leadership is basically a Straussian cult at this point. So despite the underlying intuitions that drive the Republican party being pretty solid, they are not really capable of dealing with a hacked leadership. Disinfo from their leadership fucks them.
In any case, while Democrats have their own issues that I believe to be just as fundamental, I can't fault you for thinking Republicans are morons (though I strongly disagree).
I mean...you're kinda arguing that stupidity is just a different form of intelligence here imo. It gets a little epistemological, but I can't agree that "intuition" is a valid way for a sapient being to live their life.
Fair enough. Expect those folks to put up a fight.
what are the “valid republican talking points” that you’re referring to?
You will never get an answer from them because the small nuggets of truth that exist in Republican talking points are then used to make batshit claims and then turned into a point of profit for some grifter somewhere.
its truthiness at work. This is why even the dumb economists are looking at the Trump Tax Cut Plan and sigh. Its just corporate power metasticizing over all 3 branches of government. When Vance talks about democrats stripping the country for parts thats literally his game plan. He knows its unpopular so he says its not him doing it despite that was his previous job as a venture capitalist
Hey! I'm way left of Democrats, so I really don't understand Republican talking points... Could you give an example of ones you would say are valid? It would do me some good to know they aren't just out to cause suffering.
The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are:
that borders do actually matter to the sovereignty of a country and that control over who and what crosses that border is a necessity,
countries need some kind of balanced budget to prevent hyperinflation and inevitable austerity,
the constitution should be protected and enforced equally for all amendments unless and until they are further amended or repealed, and
the Federal government should exist to provide for the defense of the country, protection of interstate and international commerce, and protection of the common good.
I happen to personally think that the best implementation for these points would be:
an overhaul of immigration policy is needed to increase legal immigration and decrease the time spent in that process to months or at least under 1-2 years with a pathway that allows current illegal immigrants to get in the back of that (actually useful and reasonably short) line,
countries cannot balance a budget like a household balances a checkbook because it doesn't work like that and anyone who says otherwise is either economic-illiterate or a con artist,
First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth amendments especially all need to be equally enforced and double especially on the police and the State (looking at you Civil Asset Forfiture, and your partner in crime Cash Bail), and
all of these functions would be best served with Universal Healthcare, Universal Education to an undergrad (Associates) level, Universal Basic Income replacing the existing welfare framework with no hoops or requirements or means testing, some form of Georgist land tax integration to help ensure the wealthy at least start to pay their fair share, and a heavy dose of monopoly busting and anti-trust enforcement to prevent billionaires from becoming a thing in the first place and prevent regulatory capture by capital at the very least.
Also religion has no business in government and fuck off with race/orientation/religious/etc discrimination. It is all class warfare from the elite and Reagan deregulation caused the death of the economy and the middle class.
This is why I consider myself a centrist, because the Right would have a conniption fit at most of those beliefs. The Left would have the same conniption fit that I also think that current border policies, the existence of sanctuary cities/states providing incentive, and worst of all the companies and people hiring and exploiting illegal labor due to insufficient availability, use, and enforcement of tools like e-verify (AKA the current status quo) is a shit show and the "left" shows too much weakness on this topic, I think the "open borders/a person cannot be illegal" crowd are dangerously misguided utopiasts, I support the personal right to keep and bear arms interpretation of 2A, support (not limited but also limited) Sates rights as useful ways to experiment with policy along with the original intention of the Senate and Electoral College, and think a decent amount of Left/Democrat ideology is unrealistic, counterproductive, or worse.
Huh, you really are an honest to goodness centrist, though a left leaning one, from what you've said.
Really, it's not so much the current taking points that make sense - although there are underlying truths and values that are being denied, that show up in current taking points.
And honestly, although things will be okay, I don't have anything you'll like to hear about the current situation.
In general, the biggest issue with the Republican Party is that it depends on good leadership. Like a monarchy, that's great when you have a reasonable leader, and really shitty when you don't.
Currently, the Republican corpus is having to come to terms with the failure of it's leadership, and the loss of it's underlying moral fortitude. A very large part of this is because the party has been effectively hacked, and has become a Straussian cult. The Democratic party is not immune to the spread of the underlying ideology, nor of the cult itself, but is impacted in less obvious (but no less problematic) ways.
While Strauss himself may have had some reasonable ideals, the consequences of the intersection of his methodology of teaching and his ideologies, by nature, create a kind of "you get it or you don't" state of affairs, where much is implicit. He intentionally did this, because he wanted people to be capable of reading between the lines, and to be able to stand for true and valuable things that you can't fully justify or comprehend analytically. Although some things must be implicit and be stood for even if they cannot be articulated, the consequences of intentionally creating a scenario where much is left to subtext in an environment (politics) where power is a main focus creates a problematic circumstance that is malignant and difficult to pin down in real-world conflict.
Not only is this complex of interactions difficult to pin down in real-world interactions, it is difficult to pin down internally, once you've genuinely been impacted by it. And so it can spread. And it has spread, in the Republican leadership. And they spread the discordant mixture of implicit behaviors to their constituents.
All of this is to say:
Republicans depend on good leadership, and their leadership is fucked right now. But that doesn't mean the corpus of Republicans in general is actually fucky. They are being fucked too, and their fuckyness will right itself when a mentality comes about that is:
A: communicable implicitly and explicitly B: capable if seeing through the morass of the Straussian cult.
Meanwhile, many of the things that the Republican corpus actually cares about manifest in problematic ways, because their needs are no longer met by their leadership.
So if you're looking to feel good about Republicans, don't look at their leadership, or the maga asshats. Look at the very large body of people who has lost representation, and never has been good at having a public voice. Look at the fundamental Republican philosophies, which are, by and large, good. When they act out, tie it back to those philosophies and beliefs, and try to understand how it led to this, now.
One of the primary things the Republican party doesn't do is look away from the fundamental necessity for power. This isn't (generally) out of a desire for power, though that may be what manifests. Instead, it's from a willingness to deal honestly in realities other people find distasteful. This is why they consider the Democratic corpus "weak" at times. But currently, that's kinda fucking them, because they also can't see an answer to the Straussian cult situation. They know, on some level, that something fundamentally important is being left out, but can't find a way to get back to the moral foundation they had - the power has them. Their leadership knows how to point that unease at the wrong things.
The good thing is - getting to know your local Republican, and sorting through the emotions it brings up in you can help, because the fundamental issue is deeply psychological.
The bad thing is, nobody wants to do that, because it's lots easier to just say "those guys suck" and "we'll best them at the polls". But unless the underlying issue is addressed, you'll lose again. And then time will pass, and you'll win, maybe, and then lose again. And each time, it will be shocking, and each time, a worse leader, and each time, the mentality and it's supporting antithetical mentalities spread.
But, once people realize they can't escape a thing, and it needs to be faced, they face it.
You could say this whole thing is a battle between (or a lack of capacity for mutual understanding by) the explicit and the implicit motivators.
The MAGA movement is a christo-fascist death cult. Conservative think tanks which may have been influenced by Strauss as much as Schmitt have influenced the MAGA movement with Project 2025 at the very least. However, it would be giving the MAGA movement and Strauss to much credit to say that the MAGA cult is exclusively a Straussian cult. Fascists movements share general attributes with each other, but cannot be accurately described as exclusively the embodiment of one philosopher's views.
Regardless, a no would have been sufficient to the asked question.
Climate change is the existential threat to life as we know it on the planet Earth. Republicans are the ones who need to learn to face this fact. No matter how much political victory they achieve the problem will remain unless we take action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
In the absence of Republicans accepting the body of research that has been done on climate science, it is up to the rest of us to out vote them. This is true of most positions that Republicans advocate for. They aren't based on evidence or on a desire to benefit the majority of the population. Republican positions are designed to benefit themselves and the owner class at the expense of everyone else.
Garnering the political will to out vote an over-represented minority every two years is neither easy nor based on emotion. It is a strategic decision based on evidence to prevent the destruction of the planet and our way of life. It is useful to out vote Republicans because preventing our destruction is a necessary step to improving our society.
As part of that, it is important to dismantle flawed arguments in favor of the Republicans. Such as a misattribution to psychological factors. Which at best is an unfounded attempt to vaguely refer to a reader's insecurities.
Republicans and many other people, regardless of their political leanings, have a tendency to moral reasoning. They attempt to reach a goal by following steps that are justified by subjective morality. Moral positions may inherently feel correct, but aren't inherently supported by any measurable metric. Despite this philosophers assert that morality should be used to dictate the actions of people. While this position may feel intuitively correct, it has a consistent issue.
People can state goals and then can designate a subjective moral position to those goals. However choosing actions to achieve those goals based on reasoning derived from the same subjective moral position is not guaranteed to achieve that stated goal. A way to resolve this is to evaluate actions based on their utility. Does a given action advance the stated goal? If so then it is a course of action worth considering. Rather than asking do the ends justify the means, we should ask do the means accomplish the ends. Thinking about actions in terms of their utility enable us to act in our self-interest. Moral reasoning denies us this as moral ideals demand an inhuman level of dedication to achieve. We are best able to pursue our ideals when we can do so in a way that is useful to that pursuit.
Fascism has taken hold of the Republican Party. Attempting to meet fascists in the middle does nothing to stop climate change. The fascists believe climate change does not exist and that no action is required. No matter how close to the fascists' position on climate change a person gets, that person will be unable to leverage the support of fascists. So while comprising may be a moral position that feels good and has been useful in certain cases such as infrastructure funding, using it is as a strategy is insufficient to accomplish the stated goal of preventing climate change. The position between systemic change and doing nothing will not make use of the limited time window we have to advert key tipping points in the planet's ecosystem.
Climate change seemed the most appropriate example given the statement in your argument of needing to face something that is inescapable. As Republicans are unwilling to act based on evidence on the majority of topics their support cannot be leveraged in a meaningful way for any of those topics. So in general, if a person wants to forward their political goals it is not useful to comprise on issues with a party whose only interest is ruling and not leading.
Also, once the fascists take power we will lose our democracy. As our democracy is our most powerful tool to enact systemic change and wealth redistribution we have a vested interest in protecting our democracy from fascist takeovers. edit: typo
Alex Jones literally did exactly this, proclaiming himself above left/right politics while consistently presenting far right views to a largely far right audience.
Sure, there are shills for both parties all over.
You're dead on but this place is an echo chamber.
Yeah, it's a terrible mentality.
"If you aren't completely on my side, you're on the other side."
It is possible to be on neither side...
It's almost as if being so single-minded makes them incredibly manipulable.
It's the kind of thinking that turned Anakin into Darth Vader
Yeah. Stories exist for a reason, but people can be like "this is my favorite story!" while straight up missing the cues.
I wouldn't be surprised if one day democracy actually dies with the thunderous applause of those who enjoyed those amazing prequels
Your first mistake was trying to inject logic and reason into a conversation controlled by two opposing factions of hyper-fanatic zealots. Your second mistake was assuming that people who willingly sign up to become mindless drones of the party are capable of higher level thought. Nice try tho, I respect the effort.
I have yet to see the trucks with an idolized Kamala Harris holding an American flag on them or even a single article of cultwear pushed out like the MAGA hat, so the Democrats are really slacking in their zealotry.
Zealotry comes in many forms. Of course you wouldn't use anything that smacked of what the Republicans use, and vice versa. Different teams, and all.
You could post an example and invalidate my point, but I think there's a good reason why you didn't.
I bow to your superior insight. I stand corrected.
What a horrible meme... you're only escalating the divisiveness of current politics. Surely, people shouldn't be defined by political inclinations.
Lord.