But this same person probably has no problem badgering people left of her to choose between centrist Dems and Republicans, who are both too conservative for many.
It’s “vote blue no matter who” and “pick the lesser evil” - but only when it makes others uncomfortable.
We need to start talking about “perceived as normal” privilege. With the stress on ‘perceived’ - because people who are ostensibly still comfortable in this political climate are NOT normal.
What is normal, and responsible, is realizing that what we’ve been doing is broken and we need to try some new things. Like politicians who want to act like public servants.
poor alison, lost her mind
The mythical centrist (is actually far right but doesn’t want to admit it)
They want all the treats that come from exploiting others but don’t want to seem rude like those “far right” wingers that just say it (shudder)
Left wants to make world better and at least liveable for everyone,
right wants things to be better only for themselves and also keep purging people off their group so fewer will get more, rest are just “lesser humans” that dont matter to them.
World where right has won completely will likely end as last human kills the second last.
World where right has won completely will likely end as last human kills the second last.
I mean it’s unfortunate that not everyone can make it, but that’s just how nature works. There’s no place for weakness, and the sacrifice of one life for increasing our control of global GDP by 50% is just worth it. Sorry not sorry.
I know you were shitposting but they said the last human would kill the 2nd to last human just to say they “won”. Except their act of “winning” causes humanity to go extinct.
I was, yes.
Universal healthcare is considered pretty centrist in a lot of Europe…
Well, it used to be at any rate.
The success of the Trump regime has caused all of our right wing to move to the far right and they’ve dragged “centrists” along with them, so now even something like universal healthcare that was formerly very popular with centrists is now suddenly “far left”. The narrative is that we simply can’t afford universal healthcare anymore (because we have to give tax cuts to the rich, for the Economy™)
the radical left depicted here are not who i would define as radical left but just normal. or center.
‘radical left’ is who i would define someone who would dox an innocent person online and get them killed without a second thought because they were too emotionally outraged to read a name or story thoroughly. like what happeneed in the “don’t #$*@ with cats” documentary.
or emotionally manupulate center swinging politics and hiding behind their ranks and reasonings for ‘protection of their rights’ when they did something unethical. like accusing someone of bigotry for calling the cops after scamming them.
we got to stop pretending this isnt happening and call it out as a problem cuz it is that kind of callousness that the maga mind do to deny their own radicals aren’t that unreasonable. the wrong people are referring to their ability to reason as ‘radical’ and it burries the real radicals.
I mean ok but I’d say at least 3/4 of the things on the “radical right” list are also readily found in people describing themselves as centrist or moderate right…
yeah: they define themselves as less radical while being radical. they are doing harmful things. this is common knowledge. this is not what is being debated. we know the harmful thing is what makes them radical.
This is not the same as being centrist and describing yourself as more radical than you are just so you can pretend your politics are somehow immune to being used to harm. this is the exact blind spot the radical right are manipulating any victims of the actual radical left. and sadly they do have some reasons to take issue and so long as centrists want to refuse there is a problem they are taking part in causing unneccesssry struggle for others.
or maybe you are correct and those centrists who celebrate this blind spot are only speaking centrist points but are truly radical left so they can cause more harm.
A centrist should not ever want to be called radical anything nor celebrate radical since radical is associated with causing harm with no remorse. celebrating such blind spots would be that complete lack of remorse you would only see in the radicals.
Well said!
That’s not even radical left. That’s like slightly left of center.
The overton window in the US has shifted pretty far to the right.
the overton window isn’t real. it only ever constrains the left. the right doesn’t acknowledge it, and clearly doesn’t need to
It’s real, but viewed from the wrong perspective. The overton window is the set of ideas that The general public will find acceptable.
The right have been dragging it right in America (along with the rest of the world). They’ve done this by joking about various topics, then backing off. Individually, it doesn’t make much difference. With the media machine the right have, and a few decades, and we ended up here.
The left chooses to be constrained by it, rather than trying to push it back to counter the fascists.
The traditional conservatives (like Mitch McConnell) realized that if they pretended to be Nazis, it’d shift the Overton window right enough that the compromise in the middle would be what they wanted in the first place.
The problem with doing that is that you attract True Believers. And they lost control of the rope they were pulling.
But that’s what they were told radical leftist is! The propaganda has been wildly successful.
Maybe that’s the meme. One side always points out what’s so bad about the other side while whitewashing their own sides issues meanwhile casting anyone who has a different view on any issue as a “Centrist” that needs to be taught a lesson.
While I get what you mean, what is the radical left then? Do they break into large companies and take the food and spread to everyone through the night… I mean I guess they could actually be trying to disrupt capitalism somehow, but how? Killing a person doesn’t end capitalism.
There is almost nothing going on in the world that could classify as real leftwing extremism. Every few decades some cars get light on fire at a political event and that’s about it. In Germany the RAF is still the example for the radical left after like 3 or 4 decades of nothing happening because they don’t have new examples. They shot some politicians in the 70s and 80s. There hasn’t been anything like that since. Everything you hear about the extrem left is basically propaganda by the right and capitalists. If you want to see right wing extremism it is probably sufficient to watch the damn news. The overton window has now made fascism normal. People are just going with it because people always are going with what the “current thing” is.
Mass proscriptions, seizing of major companies, either nationalizing or returning them to worker control, etc…
Proscription of what? Also they would have to be in power to seize the companies and nationalize them. It sounds like individuals wouldn’t be much of a threat if it requires having control of the government as step 1.
Radical left is various things depending on the group. Like, there is no common agreement among them. Flavours include Communism/Marxism, Anarchy, unlimited unchecked migration, pacifists, hating police, forcing everyone to altruism.
Radical leftwing politics is stuff like this.
Extreme left wing would be nationalizing Silicon Valley and then putting them under UN command.
It would still benefit the world at large, even the americans.
Bro… Don’t be a meme.
It’s what republicans call the “radical left,” but honestly it’s just center-left.
Fortunately there aren’t many (if any at all) actual “radical leftists” in US politics currently (though I’d call them “left-wing extremists” to differentiate from the republican hyperbolic scare-tactic).
They exist on the internet, the people I’m referring to are basically the types you find on hexbear, lemmygrad, and .ml
They certainly exist but fortunately most are little more than keyboard warriors. They do give leftist politics as a whole a bad name though, and to an extent enable and justify the caricatures that right-wingers depict the entire left as.
I assume the “centrist” in the OOP is probably deceived into thinking the DSA are all tankies (but as we know, tankies hate the DSA). So she thinks she has to choose between “radical right and radical left”, when really the choices are “radical right or center left”.
The guy responding is making the assumption that what she means by “radical left” is actually “center left,” which is a justifiable assumption seeing as an actual “radical left” option isn’t even on the table…
The lemmygrad and Hexbear types are left, but they are authoritarian left, which makes them in my eyes closer to the fascists than to any legitimate left wing movement that wants people to thrive.
The reduction of USA politics down to a single dimension (l/r) is absurd and the cause why the left in the US is so fractured. Authoritarians, regardless of left or right wing, are primarily engaged with securing power, just as long as they stay in power, while the libertarians (l/r) are fractured for a good reason - Right wing Libs (aka “the establishment”) do not have much in common with left wing, anti-authoritarian positions.
I agree that they’re closer to fascists. I’ve tried explaining that to them but they get all up in arms about how their ideologies differ. I tell them it doesn’t matter, because their methodologies are the same, but they just dig in with the strawman, red herring, sea lion combo and claim over and over again that I’m an uneducated idiot who doesn’t know the difference between fascism and communism.
(I tend to refer to their beliefs as bolshevism though, because after all that’s what ML is. Nothing like Marxism or really any other kind of communism. And their only response to that is to try to glaze the bolsheviks because they can’t even deny that that’s what they are).
And yes, US politics are overly reductive, but I find that inevitable in a two-party, FPTP system. I’ve been pointing that out for years, since even before I fully understood it. I’ve learned a lot in the time since and changed my opinions on various things, but the underlying intuition that something was deeply wrong with a two-party political system at least was correct.
And libertarian is such a loaded term because of its association with right-wing libertarian capitalists. But libertarian and liberal are too distinct concepts, although it could be argued that they’re related. Liberal is another loaded term though, and often gets conflated with neoliberal (which is an illiberal and conservative economic policy).
In short though, the libertarian-authoritarian axis on the political matrix is not what most people think of when they hear “libertarian,” even though according to that schema, anarcho-syndicalists would fall all the way on the libertarian side of the spectrum.
Oh and for what it’s worth, I think we could divide the horizontal spectrum into at least seven segments: (from proximal to lateral) “Centrist,” “Center-(L/R)”, “Moderate (L/R)”, and “Radical (or far-) (L/R)”.
Anything beyond radical would be extremist, and falls outside of the political domain so isn’t on this spectrum.
The difference between moderate and center- would be that the Moderates in this interpretation would be the meat and potatoes of representing the values and priorities of that side of the spectrum, neither too rash nor overly compromising, whereas the Center-(L/R)s would be the next thing to centrists, only barely distinguishing themselves as falling to one side or the other, and more prone to compromising and appeasement.
The problem with this interpretation though is that many of these terms are already so loaded in the current political environment, it would be difficult to give them technical definitions that don’t provoke emotional responses and knee-jerk reactions…
I agree on the “loadedness” of terms in the US. Liberalism on its own isn’t a bad thing, it simply means that the state does not want to interfere in basic things like trade or relationships. The US have redefined it into something more like Staliniism - this is nowhere near the truth, but they made it THEIR truth. This makes informed discourse in the US very hard - because just like newspeak in 1984 it removes the ability to communicate different ideas than what the establishment wants to be available as options.
For some reason your comment made me crave loaded baked potatoes.
But yeah, it’s next to impossible to have an intelligent discussion in the US. Not just because the education system is sorely lacking and anti-intellectualism is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness, but also because so many terms are so loaded that you can’t even use them according to their precise technical definitions without everyone assuming you’re exaggerating and hyperbolizing because vitriol and mudslinging are so much the norm here.
The inherently polarizing nature of a two-party FPTP electoral system is partly to blame, but so is the concerted effort the right-wing has made in recent years to discredit all political discussion by using all these buzzwords so disingenuously that they lose their meaning.
I think they did it on purpose. The whole projection/every-accusation-is-a-confession thing was a deliberate tactic to preemptively make anyone sound crazy who accuses them of doing the shit they really do, because they’ve already been so busy accusing everyone else of those things!
I have the same opinion regarding “on purpose”. The GOP has been doing this for a long, long time now while cooperating with evangelists, and if you look in from the outside it is pretty obvious that they want to keep their populace poor in education and money and use religion to keep them radicalized and anti-intellectual.
The dems either did not realize the game plan, or didn’t think it would succeed (the displayed hybris in the last decade lets me suspect the second option)
Yep, those are classic socialist demands. Extreme left would be nationalizing the whole shit that goes down in silicon valley to make sure they behave.
Fine. Let’s switch to ranked choice voting so more than two parties are viable.
US seems to have a specifically bad version of FPTP. In the UK we use it and yet still have more than 2 political parties. Though its still not a great system and it largely favours 2 parties, its more possible for a new party to emerge.
That’s what I’m saying. So far in states that have a super majority like Red states theyve banned RCV and even states that are super majority Blue like WA state the legislature year after year refuses to make it law.
Great example of why those on the left are not perfect, there is a lot of room for improvement to go further left and not be like MAGA or fascist.
Oregon voted it down too because it was too confusing. Sigh…
The Oregon Democratic party was also likely against it because they’re pushing a system that’s much better. They’re all in on STAR.
Which is over at starvoting.org
The failure of democracy in 'Murica isn’t a bug, it’s a feature
The issue is, Ranked Choice doesn’t actually make that happen.
Ranked Choice is a very old voting system, first written about by The Marquis de Condorcet in 1785.
Condorcet was a mathematician and was sort of interested in electoral politics… Which ended up in him dying in a French prison as a enemy of the Revolution.
Neither here nor there. Anyway Condorcet only had contempt for his version of RCV because not only did it fail to elect the pairwise winner, it could actually be twisted to elect the pairwise loser.
The pairwise winner is someone who can win in a one on one election vs every other candidate. It’s now called the Condorcet winner.
Anyway, RCV was then reinvented in the 1820s as the Single Transferable Vote for use in multiple winner elections, and then a decade or two later the multiple winner part was stripped out to create the version of RCV that Condorcet was not a fan of, nor was the creator of STV.
Then in the 1990s a lobbying group called FairVote started pushing the broken RCV.
And the system has broken in the real world. Burlington Vermont 2009, and the Alaska congressional election of 2022 are both well documented.
The meta-analysis is that RCV tends to break at a rate of about 4% of the time with three candidates, and about 7% with 4.
It gets worse if the candidates are all somewhat viable.
FairVote has to date ignored or actively downplayed these issues.
The good news is that other voting systems exist and actually do break the two party dominance.
Approval is used in STL City elections, and STAR is used by the Democratic party of Oregon.
Score is used in a lot of feedback forms, rate a group of things on a scale, 1-5, 0-100, etc.
Isn’t failing 4% of the time like a thousand million times better than our current failure rate of 100%?
Not really, because when RCV breaks, it breaks hard.
As in the person who would otherwise have won being eliminated in the first round of counting, and then the person who is actually elected being the last choice on a bunch of ballots because the ballots had been gutted down the middle.
Also, that 4% was padded out by a lot of elections where the third party was not viable in the first place. As soon as the third party is viable, then RCV just breaks due to the return of the Spoiler Effect.
It’s explained in too much detail here.
I feel a better choice is just infinite choice voting. Vote for anyone and everyone you want,tally them up and most votes win.
Vote everyone if you dont care, vote your main choice and a safe choice otherwise, or vote for one person if you are super confident or dont like the others
I agree, ranked choice voting is way overdue
As a leftist how are we going to root out the Zionism in the party?
Depends which party you’re taking about but I can’t think of a contemporary leftist party that would uphold “leftist” values while condoning genocide.
According to another meme I saw recently – wolves.
That’s not the radical left. That’s a centrist platform, none of those policies are even socialist.
And yeah, I know those are really her options.
Things like making sure medical issues don’t bankrupt you is left of center regardless of the system (at least slightly, and it is a policy that has been proven to be advantageous for countries at large), but the US conflates them with large scale nationalizing of industry and removing the freedom to have private property. Taxing Billionaires for a substantial amount of their wealth is also left of center (and something the average person would benefit greatly from). Both of those things are what socialists are advocating for, and with good reason.
But none of it is extreme left. USians cant even name extreme left positions anymore. Extreme left would be nationalizing Silicon Valley and putting them under UN control, it would be dismantling private health insurance completely and using their funds to create a nationwide system like the NHS (without being starved like the NHS). It would be a tax rate of 100% for every income (including non-realized wealth growth) above a certain amount to finance public services.
Keeping the population healthy is completely independent of left-right thinking; keeping the workforce able is a slightly right-wing concern. De-fanging the natural monopoly that always appear in the private health market is a completely right-wing concern.
Every moderate position favors the state providing health-care. It’s not a left-wing point.
Thats why i said it is “slightly left”. everyone left wing will agree with you that a single payer health care system would be preferable to the status quo.
I do not see the moderates/right wing advocating for universal health care in the US, because the establishment does not give a fuck about the health of the common people. Therefore this is a left-wing position in the US, while it might not be an identifier for being left wing in other nations.
The US does not have a left-wing.
I can think of Bernie Sanders, that is a left moderate. But he is really an exception.
because the establishment does not give a fuck about the health of the common people
And that’s a radical position. It’s not even radical on the individualist-socialist spectrum, it’s completely out of it.
I agree that this position is “out-of-bounds” radical, making the US just as hostile to the welfare of common people as Russia (best example from the last days: shooting down a drone passing over a densely populated beach instead of a mile further inland causing 7 dead and around 20 wounded civvies, and then abusing the pain and loss of these people to run anti-Ukraine propaganda)
you is left of center regardless of the system
What? Left or right leaning is entirely dependent upon the system.
Back when the US was taxing its richest at nearly 90% was still capitalism thus still right of center, because those taxes still went to pay owners who controlled whether or not labor was done.
Welfare capitalism is still right leaning.
nwith the difference that welfare capitalism can be left leaning, depending on the set focus.
Capitalism, as a system, is fundamentally on the right. Your statement is blatantly false.
The “set focus” is irrelevant. What makes something left or right leaning is the system itself.
Bro literally just listed the centrist platform and labeled it “radical left” lol
I guess bro is American. Their center is more to the right than in other places
Nope. News and social media thrive on extremes. Most Americans agree on the issues he mentioned.
Lol. Lmao, even. They’ll say those nice words, but they’re really for doing nothing and getting your vote cause they’re not actively evil
What radical left lol? It’s ultra right or so fascist Hitler would blush right for yanks
Weeeeelllllllll. I never realized there was much of a “radical left” until Lemmy. I’m a SOLID progressive. I would consider myself a social Democrat. If you are the same then a Marxist Leninist leftist would consider you an enemy. They don’t think their policies could ever be truly enacted through gradual change and that a violent revolution is essentially required.
I’m not a centrist, but ML leftists scare the shit out of me. Meeting them on Lemmy is when I discovered that I’m not actually a “leftist” and it made me do quite a bit of soul searching on what these political terms actually mean.
I know a handful of communists and Marxist-Leninists irl and yes they would very much like to dismantle liberal governments through whatever means possible, but they’re also very woke on like your typical identity politics, don’t agree with sending in the tanks, believe people should get votes / control government, so I think it varies even there.
ML aren’t even leftists, they’re pro-dictatorship. It’s just right wing bullshit wearing leftist colors.
Eh, there’s Vanguardist Revolutionaries and there’s Pol Pot. I sympathize with the Vanguard because the average person has no idea what the fuck is going on and a nation like the US is simply too large (in many ways) for direct democracy, a small group of people who can devote all their time and energy to the political and logistical needs is probably necessary to transition from this nightmare to FALGSC. Without, like, a global tragedy dissolving all existing hierarchies.
There’s lots of problems with Vanguardism, not least of which is the ease of installing a Stalin or Kim, but I think most AuthComs of that type are sincere idealogues. They’re leftists without faith in humanity.
I sympathize with the Vanguard
My condolences.
the average person has no idea what the fuck is going on and a nation like the US is simply too large (in many ways) for direct democracy
Exhibit A of why the US shouldn’t be a singular nation. If it can’t be run without bullshit, then don’t do that. Just don’t. Time has tested and proven that it was a bad idea.
a small group of people who can devote all their time and energy to the political and logistical needs is probably necessary to transition from this nightmare to FALGSC
Who says we have to convert an existing nation? The US is a failure. Do away with it. Start the FALGSC ball rolling without trying to first occupy the corpse of a failed monster.
here’s lots of problems with Vanguardism, not least of which is the ease of installing a Stalin or Kim, but I think most AuthComs of that type are sincere idealogues. They’re leftists without faith in humanity.
And there I disagree. If you’re okay with dictatorship of any sort for any reason, you’re not actually a leftist, you don’t actually care about the people around you or mankind as a whole. You’re still playing kiddy little political games that have failed us time and time again for as long as recorded history. We need to get over it already!
the US shouldn’t be a singular nation.
I agree but that’s a much bigger conversation that 99.99% of people aren’t ready for. That’s the kind of radical discourse that scares normies to the right.
Who says we have to convert an existing nation
Even if the political boundaries becomes meaningless there’s still 300 million people (or 8 billion+ if you’re really dreaming big) that very much do not agree on how things should be done. We don’t have to convert the government we have to convert the populace. And that won’t happen by burning everything down while saying “trust me bro”.
little political games that have failed us time and time again for as long as recorded history.
Every form of political system has failed up to this point, having either collapsed or inadequately caring for its people. Alternatively: everything that is currently happening “works” if you approach it Darwinianly. There’s 5000 years of “recorded history” and people bicker almost exclusively about the last 100 but there’s a lot more fighting about the path than the destination.
okay with dictatorship
They either don’t see it as a dictatorship or they consider it a necessary evil, much like accelerationists are rarely cognizant or concerned with the people who will die if the systems they rely on stopped functioning.
Maybe the ‘right - left’ metaphor is a bit outdated? Stuck with a 20th century take for our modern problems.
I think you’re correct on that. In my eyes there are people that are out for the good of all mankind, and there are people who are willing to throw some portion of their own kind under the bus to get ahead. The latter are constantly masquerading as the former to gain power and influence, and they’ll wear whatever color they think you’ll vote for to get it.
Most of the tankies aren’t in the US.
“The Right is mean, but the Left is annoying in how it wants me to treat trans people like they’re people.”
Is… Is anyone making her choose? How are they doing that?
She wants to live in Neutropolis…
What would the right wing version of that reply be? I don’t really have a grasp on their selling points.
“'member when there didn’t used to be so many brown people?” That sort of thing
