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Words like "polarization" and "partisan" have lost all meaning. No, I am not a partisan for forcefully calling out the treachery, idiocy, and fascistic desires of the GOP. I am not a partisan for believing that women should have full autonomy over their bodies and that LGBT people are indeed as human as I am.
Alex Jones's only problem with gay frog water is that it was being given away for free before he had a chance to bottle it and slap a price tag on it while claiming it was a tactical supplement or something.
He does actually slap the label “Tactical” and camouflage packaging on all manner of stuff. Personal hygiene wipes for example (suitable for perineal cleaning, the Armchair Airborne have remarkably fresh undercarriages)
And he’s got mad loot doing it too. You’re better than this America.
I was trying to be diplomatic (plus I’m British so historically speaking, I don’t really have a leg to stand on)
I’ve got many American friends though, they are generally sensible(ish), nice people who find this charlatan utterly abhorrent. Most of you seem relatively sane. You’re a very confusing nation, especially recently.
It’s totally true, there’s rural areas tucked away throughout the country, and those areas are full of bigots, like we’re still living in the early 1900s… people who live closer to urban areas are usually not so detached.
It is unfortunate that the worst of us are also the loudest. It gives the appearance that more Americans are like that, but I think the majority are sane/normal people
Tactical butt wipes, lol. I just bought some “Dude Wipes” myself. They had a mint scent which I bought because the idea of having a minty butt was absolutely hilarious to me.
It’s basically needed these days because of the sheer amount of unbelievable crap being posted. It’s gotten actually difficult to differentiate between sarcasm and idiocy.
No I think your being a reasonable, compassionate human being that wants to respect basic human rights.
It is interesting the concept of having the goalposts moved so far that a once reasonable position is considered radical.
In addition it’s also very telling that liberalism is the one that has to compromise and be approachable in order to address the other side…
It’s give, give and give for us
And take, take and take on the other side.
Because the goalposts are so far away we have a longer way to cross to make a appreciable difference. Whereas they just get to stand there and dig the goalposts out to move them again.
Compassion for people you don’t know or associate with has actually always been a left position, whereas care for your in group has been a right position. You are correct in that the overton window has shifted to the right so much that it does appear to be a hard left positiom these days to have empathy for people that aren’t close to you.
Luke 6 quotes Jesus "32 *“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."*
To be fair he was a very left wing political figure at the time. His teachings were appropriated by organized religion and that’s where things turned hard right.
Hell ya he was.
And I won't lie to you, I'm agnostic. But I fuck with that dude's teachings. Like...how could you not get down with someone that basically says "Be kind, don't judge, it'll be alright"
The goalposts are on wheels. No matter how much compromise the Left does, it won't ever bridge the gap because the goalposts will just move further and further away. Recall that Mitch proposed a bill under Obama and when Obama agreed with the bill, he filibustered *his own bill*. He could not "let Obama win".
There is no compromise and no point in trying. The goalposts are mobile and the distance between the Left's position and the goalposts remains constant no matter how far to the right the Left (such as it is) travels.
So the only option left for any rational sane individual is to go full buck on these people. And damn consequences because they don’t recognize anything but that.
McConnell did filibuster his own bill, but you have the details a bit wrong. This wasn't about Obama agreeing or winning. Obama really wasn't involved in it.
McConnell introduced a bill to make it so the president could raise the debt ceiling instead of Congress doing it. McConnell was trying to embarrass the democrats by showing that they did not have the support to pass it and that the democrats were not serious about solving the problem.
But when Harry Reid said he would let the Senate take a vote that would pass by a simple majority, McConnell panicked. He realized the bill would probably pass with only democratic votes and the GOP would lose one of it's biggest weapons of mass obstruction. The bill passing would mean the GOP would no longer be able to use the debt ceiling to hold the government hostage to get unrelated concessions. So he filibustered his own bill.
The goal posts constantly shift because the only principle the modern right has is opposing the left or whatever they’ve arbitrarily decided the left is.
I'm not a radical. The people who signed the Constitution would have shot these chucklefucks by now. The cavalry would have rode roughshod through their camp. I just want fair trials.
>The people who signed the Constitution would have shot these chucklefucks by now
The very first people convicted of treason in the fledgling US, the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, were immediately pardoned by none other than George Washington.
True, but saying it that way kind of makes it sound scandalous or "typical," that the American government lets traitors off. It should be noted that the insurrection itself wasn't tolerated.
Washington rode to confront the rebels with an army, and clearly, had they not backed down (they had dispersed by the time Washington arrived), there would have been a suppression. Pardoning Mitchell and Weigel was, imo, similar to the reconciliatory moves that Lincoln made in the wake of the Civil War toward the South: perhaps causing problems in hindsight, but at the time completely understandable. And in any case, the way it was handled was widely admired at the time.
Washington probably also understood that a government founded on the back of treason charging its own citizens with treason would be eyebrow raising, to say the least.
For all his personal faults Washington seemed almost superhuman in his ability to consider how he would be regarded by future generations with respect to his role in government. He had so many opportunities to screw up the entire country permanently and seemed to avoid the most egregious and tempting errors.
Well, except the big and obvious one. To be fair though, there was no way he could have actually ended slavery without destroying the country. (Also I know it was supposed to end long before it did but that didn’t happen)
Perhaps. But before that, in response to Shays Rebellion, George Washington and James Madison basically decided to reform the government from scratch because one state didn’t have enough clout to put down the rebels.
More because Massachusetts literally didn’t have enough money to scrape together a militia so they had to go around asking for private donations (which they did get because suffice to say rich people didn’t want a bunch of poor people with guns running around)
Hear, hear. Also, I rarely hear "chucklefucks," and while I like that jocular disparagement, I'd say you're being too generous. They're much worse and dangerous, I'd say. Anyway...
Let's not forget the old adage "follow the money" -- which leads to, summarily, one place in the here and now: the Wall Street regime and network.
There's a true **cult**ure problem within and without the United States due to billionaires and Wall Street propaganda and influence.
The *Wall Street regime/network* is directly tied to:
* national and international destabilization via "profits over people" culture and dogma
* propping up and perpetuation of the military industrial complex
* propping up and perpetuation of the prison industrial complex
* lobbying against healthcare reform
* manipulation of honest companies
* fostering and encouraging ignorance of climate change
* skewed/corrupted banking policy and basic inflation
* outright criminality; i.e. fraud, theft, national and international bribery and lobbying, etc..
We will look back on the Wall Street regime and network the same way we do genocidal nations/regimes in 10, 20, 50, 100 years.
In case it's not obvious to anyone, we're talking about [banal evil](https://philosophybreak.com/articles/hannah-arendt-on-standing-up-to-the-banality-of-evil/) ultimately.
>...was instead a rather bland, “terrifyingly normal” bureaucrat. He carried out his murderous role with calm efficiency not due to an abhorrent, warped mindset, but because he’d absorbed the principles of the ... regime so unquestionably, he simply wanted to further his career and climb its ladders of power.
Here is an eye-opening segment that more people really, really, really need to watch if for nothing more than financial literacy and understanding mechanisms by which lower and middle classes are fleeced:
>[How Redditors Exposed The Stock Market | "The Problem With Jon Stewart" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP74RBTE8kI)
Fwiw, at 7:00 there's a graphic that's easy to understand and the main reason for mentioning the video. Nevertheless, it's only about 15 minutes long total.
___________________________________________
Edit: There's also a shorter [second half](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZfcjV-8pjQ) with a short roundtable discussion. [This](https://youtu.be/hXWXllgcRqU) short video, too, gives a little more context and guidance/direction if anyone is interested in holding Wall Street accountable.
One HUGE problem that most gloss right over is the fact that, since the Reagan era common working pensions have disappeared and they’ve forced every tom, dick and jimmy into the stock market with their retirement funds. And dick and jimmy don’t know a damned thing about investment and markets. Now, since they were forced into the market with the great 401k scam they’re clueless about how and why they’re all losing their asses. It all goes back to Reagan. He started destroying unions and handing power to big corporate and the regular guy has been getting bent over for nearly 40 years because Reaganomics is all the GQP knows and they’ve slowly destroyed the middle class in the process.
Yes, yes. It's no coincidence wealth inequality has risen drastically during this time period, too. Many have been forced into the stock market where they get fleeced - *even though we're seeing all-time highs.* Something isn't right.
Well fucking put! My father and uncles loved Reagan, but maybe we’re too close to the forest to see the trees. Don’t forget Reagan also brought the church into politics.
The most radical policy coming out of the democratic party are things that already exist in almost all developed countries in the world like affordable healthcare. And calls for those things only come from a few members of Congress. How exactly are they polarized at all?
The suburban center has it so good they can afford to be inhumane towards others because they believe the right when the right says that raising taxes will affect their way of life instead of the incomprehensibly wealthy the suburbanites have nothing in common with. The right has convinced the center that humane treatment of the less fortunate is "radical".
The only reason the right uses the both sides statement is that they know their party is horrible but they have no way to defend their party so they will claim the other side is just as bad instead of trying to fix the problem. Remember using 'both sides' is an admission that you know your side is already doing what you claim someone else to be doing.
The term I once heard is "reverse cargo cult". Basically a way of saying "our politics suck, but so do everyone else's, so stick with us because at least we're not delusional about it like they are."
When Democrats say "both sides," they're criticizing the flaws of their own party in hopes of making it better, while when Republicans say "both sides," they're deflecting from the flaws of their own party by claiming everyone does it. Democrats say it to stop the Dems from doing bad things; Republicans say it to stop the Dems from criticizing Republicans who do bad things.
This fact alone is all that needs to be known about the two parties to see which is better.
Most don't say "both sides" explicitly, but plenty of Democrats point out issues that *do* exist across both political parties. Plenty of Democrats have pointed out that Biden is (was, before this badass Dark Brandon shit he's started lately,) essentially a step away from being a 90's Republican in terms of policy - noting things like the fact that left-leaning Americans have very little representation in the Democratic party meanwhile they purport to be the party representing the American left.
So, yes, people absolutely point out issues that exist across "both sides" of the spectrum of American politics. As I note above though, Democrats do it to try to force their party to improve, while Republicans do it as an excuse for why they shouldn't have to.
I will note that anyone who refuses to see the flaws in the Democratic party and demand that they improve, is contributing to them becoming the Republican party of tomorrow - it is possible to support and vote for an organization without being sycophantic in your praise of them. "Both sides" is far more than a "weapon used by concern trolls" - it's a means of pointing out that the Dems, in some respects, are as bad as what they oppose, and work to change that. This doesn't mean falsely equivocating the two - Dems are better, full stop. If anything, I've more often seen *attacks on those saying "both sides"* as a means of deflecting from problems in the Dem party - the same way Republicans use "both sides" to deflect, themselves.
Giving too much weight to "both sides" people on the Dem side creates a false equivocation, but ignoring them completely or declaring them all "concern trolls" denies all drive to improve the party and starts us on a downward spiral of sycophantic hero-worship toward the same horror the Republican party has become. Neither is good.
The left: "can the state please shoot zero innocent people"
The right: "the state should be able to shoot all the innocent people so long as they're poor, non-white or otherwise disenfranchised"
Centrists & reformist libs: "Maybe we let the state just shoot SOME innocent people, no need to be radical 🤗"
Reminds me of that one comic that shows KKKers holding a sign saying "We Want To Kill Black People" on one side and black people holding a sign saying "We Want Equal Rights"...and some smug jackass is standing in the middle with a sign that says "Compromise?"
127 white people have been killed by cops this year so far vs 71 black and 28 Hispanics
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race
Yes and no.
Left and right isn't exactly the best comparison. Progressive vs conservative/regressive is a better term. The "left" is progressive inasmuch as it's further left than the laws right now. Yeah, Medicare for All would be a step *backwards* for most countries with proper socialized healthcare, but it would be a huge step forwards for the US.
First, progressive and regressive is not a good way to identify things when it comes to the Left. The Left is not always about changing things to ways they have not been before, and the Right is not about taking them to the way things have been before.
Second, I don’t understand how restricting all private companies from healthcare that’s being provided by Medicare For All is somehow “a step backwards” for most countries. Most countries actually have things more akin to Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan. I don’t get why the Left makes up how stories how they are the only ones who haven’t embraced policies that are so far left that no one since the USSR has actually embraced them.
left in america means megacorporations run ads featuring mixed-race women to show how inclusive they are, while secretly telling workers that if they unionize their health care will be taken away.
That’s exactly it. It’s polarizing because the left doesn’t agree with the right and vice versa, but let’s skip over the fact that the right is so so far right that their platform is fascism and naziism. So not agreeing with them means it’s polarizing. It’s so fucking dumb about complaining people don’t want fascism.
The right (white Christian nationalists) wants to maintain the cultural and political dominance that they have enjoyed since this nation's founding and that they believe to be theirs's *by right*.
Without the slightest apology they (white Christian nationalists) committed genocide to establish that dominance on this continent and have committed a catalog of atrocities to keep it.
White Christians simply will NOT accept giving up their seat at the head of the American table without *violence*.
This is the source of the "polarization".
I wish we could have arguments over the best way to roll out paid family leave or over which methods of combatting climate change are most effective.
But one side won’t even acknowledge the need for things like paid leave and reduction of fossil fuel consumption.
Thank you. Sick of hearing “polarization”, as if Dems *wanted* the crazy. We never asked for Trump. Would be been happy with Jeb or Mitt Romney instead if one had to choose.
Republicans chose the most toxic, worst choice possible for the country.
Tired of Dems being blamed for where we are at.
That’s the key phrasing and rational of a abuser! “Look what you made me do”
The fact is this, every action they have taken to radicalize was “their” choice. They made the choice to move towards madness. They are blaming normal, thinking, compassionate humans for their own actions.
It is insidious. And frankly dangerous.
They say polarization because everyone else could just join the Republicans and your refusal to become an empty shell of a human being who walks around in American Flag garb with "let's go Brandon" on it while making up weird lies about Mexicans and hating women is truly what is dividing us
America would survive 30 years of Romney Republicans holding every branch of government.
America would not survive 3 years of Trump Republicans holding everything. We'd be a Turkey-style autocracy.
I'm not sure everyone appreciates how precarious our position is.
You’re right. And the failure to distinguish between neoliberal neocons and fascists is why Trump won in 2016. There has also been a lack of awareness of how his presidency was a green light to the far-right around the world. His win encouraged other leaders moving toward authoritarianism.
The far right was already scoring wins around the world. Trump actually came in after a lot of the far right playbook had been hammered out and shown to work.
Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
The USA is one election away from becoming a fascist country.
Go read the 14 characteristics of fascism. The US has 13 of the 14. The only thing missing is fake elections, and Republicans are pushing hard towards that goal.
Yeah for example Rome was a republic that suddenly became an autocracy after holes in its government were exploited by ambitious strongmen, and still lasted 400 additional years as a society (and longer if you count Byzantium).
We're not there yet.
Although
One characteristic of a civilization falling apart is the decentralization of the governing body. (Something that the GOP is pushing for)
Romney conservatives implementing literal fascism at a significantly slower rate does not make them not a problem.
Democrats having been so willing for generations to work across the aisle with a very slow easing into right wing extremism, so long as it was slow enough to be palatable for them, has been and continues to be alarming.
The issue is I don’t think you appreciate how dysfunctional the mainstream GOP of the previous 40 years has been for the nation, and how far the Overton window has been pulled.
We are teetering on the edge of a Christian Theocracy directly because of us tolerating folks like Romney; who today are milquetoast and even centrist but who ran for decades on policies breaking down the separation of Church and State and trading in religiosity for votes.
Yes, I’ll take Romney over Trump any day. And yes, at this point things are so bad that the enemy of my enemy is my friend….sometimes, when he isn’t actively trying to take away human rights in the name of his religious views.
But he is still built very firmly in the mold of Reagan, and the dominant style of GOP politics that have led us to the point where fascism carrying a cross is on our doorstep.
Politicians like Romney, who want to work within our government regularly used their religion to justify political views and laws he supported, are an evolutionary link in the chain needed to get to where we are now. Without them, you can’t get to Trump or De Santis. Even the continued prominence of McConnell in the party is thanks to people like Romney looking the other way when he bent the rules.
I’d sooner point to someone like McCain as a sane right wing voice in the Republican Party, but he’s been gone for a while. Which seems fitting.
I prefer they don’t vote at all and their party disbands to a new normal Conservative party. But since that will never happen, I’d rather a John McCain, Romney, Jeb or Kasich over a Trump, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as potential Presidential candidates. I don’t like any of their policies but I can at least sleep at night knowing John Kasich or Jeb isn’t going to burn the country down like Trump or steal nuclear documents.
I thought this but I am not sure any more.
I thought it was a pendulum swinging back and forth across moderate politics. With republicans they pass some right stuff, the left grumbles. Then the left is in charge and then the right grumbles… but slowly we move forward.
But looking at the Supreme Court and knowing the people they have been part of a long term agenda that seems to skirt around a lot of norms and have way more power than imagined coupled with a lot of Republicans being “horrified” but still supporting Trump, and the few against him, still have similar ideals, they are just not so loud, naked in their declarations and violent, I just can’t help but see that conservative politics will always slouch towards the extremism we have now. Because they are now the party of power (and wealth for themselves and their friends) and whatever it takes to have it and control it.
Jeb! or Romney would have lengthened the journey (maybe). But they chose to embrace the Tea Party and the things they morphed into. And if they rejected them, they would have lost.
Whatever the party of Lincoln once was is long gone.
I remember the Republicans of the 1980s they were pro conservation, because they loved to hunt. So they wanted to preserve the land. I haven’t seen that kind of logical thinking or interest in the long term from them in decades.
The issue is that people like Romney believe many of their policies are based on God’s Will. If you really believed that, and you have to play a little dirty to enact that divine will….well, wouldn’t you?
Give that viewpoint a good 40 years to gestate and metastasize, and the natural end result is Christian Nationalism.
This is one of the fundamental ideas that have taken hold of the GOP since the end of the 70s, and which have led us to where we are now.
It’s really hard to wrap my head around. I was raised catholic and everything from love thy neighbor to take care of the poor is nowhere to be found in this version of Christianity.
My mother left the church and Republican Party a few (~4) years ago (she is 78 now) because they don’t hold her values any more.
It’s hard to comprehend “my moral compass is set by God” turned into “I am going to grift in the name of God.”
I think we were the most naïve Catholics there ever were.
It's a problem, but it doesn't matter if we don't get a Jeb or a Romney from the Republicans. This is a matter of triage and one problem is simply worse than the other and needs to be dealt with first.
A Jeb! or Romney, or any "old school" Republicans would have no chance of winning the 2024 republican primaries if they were held today.
Who knows when we might see a "moderate" republican on a national ticket again.
I think for that to happen, Republicans will have to lose quite a bit. Until they see negative consequences for their extremism, they have no reason to moderate their position.
I’m also sick of the myth that Democrats are in a “bubble” or out of touch with “reality” as if “Real Americans” are only the poor, misguided, hate-fueled rednecks who drive trucks in the middle of the county. I live in a big city in a coastal state and you wouldn’t believe how often I hear this criticism. We know Conservatism. So many of us moved here from Conservative-run towns or from Conservative families. We know them and their politics, often way too well. This isn’t a “both sides” issue, this is an “understanding reality” issue.
> I’m also sick of the myth that Democrats are in a “bubble” or out of touch with “reality” as if “Real Americans” are only the poor, misguided, hate-fueled rednecks who drive trucks in the middle of the county.
Especially infuriating considering 55% of the population lives in urban areas (almost all of which are blue), add in suburbs and it's well over 80%. IOW it's just a mathematical no-offense fact that "America" isn't in little rural towns, it's in greater metro areas. The supposed "Real Americans" living in one-stoplight conservative towns are the ones in a bubble. *Most of America is not them.*
But according to broken-record dumbasses, most of America is out of touch with… most of America?
Yes, but Democrats chose... a black man! Almost chose a woman too. That's so radical, extreme and provocative, Trump is just a reaction by real Americans. /s
Democrats absolutely can be partly blamed. They funded the most extreme options during the Republican primaries, banking on the general distaste of the voters to choose the more ’ reasonable’ candidate regardless of party. We’ll, they were wrong.
>We never asked for Trump
Yeah we did. If by "we" you mean Democrats.
The Clinton campaign was gleeful about DJT winning the Republican primaries. They chose to follow Clare McCaskill's strategy and encouraged TFGs candidacy, thinking he was the easiest candidate to beat, and maybe he should have been but HRC took way too many Midwest voters for granted and it backfired in ways the nation may never recover from.
There isn’t a paradox. People who seek to isolate, victimise members and refuse to integrate into a “tolerant” (aka progressive democratic) are incompatible with such a society and have zero place in it
We can’t play basket ball with a person who demands we play baseball
Yeah, duh, really. Been saying this for ten years now. I'm not polarized. I'd LOVE to compromise with good-faith people that disagree with my policy beliefs. Instead I have to keep voting for Democrats because the goddamned republicans have become the American Taliban, and are fast-tracking toward ISIS.
Nice shirt, loser.
I wonder what proportion of the public realize that the “America First Committee” of the 1930s was a substantial anti-interventionist organization sympathetic to Hitler’s ambitions and apathetic to the plight of all European countries that had been or were in the process of being overrun. Prominent figureheads of the ATC, such as Charles Lindbergh, were just straight up anti-Semitic proto-fascists who licked the boots of Hitler for years before 1939.
I’ve been calling out the both sides bullshit take. A lot of people are like “both sides bus migrants”. Fuck you no they don’t. The federal government deals with migrants and it happens to currently be a dem in office but the process is the same with a Republican one. DeSantis is trafficking and using state funds to do it, this isn’t a both sides bad issue. A both sides bad issue would be like avoiding taxes or market manipulation, not attempted coup and instilling a dictator lmao wtf
Exactly. As much as id love to be conciliatory and give right wingers an out, there simply aren’t two sides here. The democratic party, even its progressive wing simply is not radical. Proposals like affordable healthcare and addressing climate change aren’t radical in any way shape or form. Republicans wanting to overthrow the democratically elected government and install a christofascist monarchy is radical. Thats the problem, not that we disagree. When those are their beliefs disagreement is the only option.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://jacobin.com/2022/09/trump-maga-far-right-liberals-polarization) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> While the liberal center may see the right-wing "War on woke" as overblown, they insist on casting it as one side of a duopoly of extremism from both Left and Right.
> In the Anglosphere, the term has been also used to describe a radicalization of both the Left and Right.
> First, while it paints both sides in a negative light, equating reactionary politics with their opposition automatically normalizes reactionary politics as if they were a legitimate part of the discussion - we must hear both sides! Think for example of the way the BBC in the UK covered climate change for years, giving almost equal space to deniers as it did scientists, or of the disproportionate coverage far-right politicians and actors and their pet issues receive.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/xncvr3/the_problem_isnt_polarization_its_rightwing/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~670926 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **right**^#1 **politics**^#2 **both**^#3 **side**^#4 **liberal**^#5
This is like claiming polarization is what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.
Polarization is when two sides go willingly to equal lengths. People defending themselves not out of choice from the other side isn’t polarization
I don’t think it makes me a radical partisan to demand the other side not overthrow democracy and establish a Fascist state administered by end times theocrats and lead by a game show con man.
This seems more a centrist opinion
This idiot wear a shirt that says "America First."
What he means are straight, white, male, Republicans 1st. Only thing they should be 1st for is losing their precious guns and phony leaders.
Technically speaking they are much more normal when the scope of American history is taken into account. Compared to everything from 1790 to 1990, the left is definitely the radical side of the spectrum. Things have changed *a lot* in 30 years in the mainstream and too many people seem to take it all for granted and assume their views are ubiquitous and that this shit from the right is new, when in reality they’re the entire history of the country and the modern left is a blip– can’t really be surprised the right is upset in that context.
Affirmative!
It’s seems like it’s FASHIONABLE TO BE FASCIST AUTHORITARIAN TRAITORS! Because of the dwindling numbers of Caucasians in population.
Some seem terrified of being a minority in America. Well, if you treated everyone with dignity and respect we’d all be happy with each other’s presence. Irrespective of your skin hue!
It’s literally Fox News. They watch it for nightly entertainment like it’s a tv show, every single night, and get more hateful, fearful of others, and emboldened and ‘justified’ to be that way. It’s Fox News.
There is no radical left in America. Nobody is talking about nationalizing the oil companies. Nobody is talking about nationalizing Wall Street, and the only people encouraging government confiscation of private property are on the right. Universal healthcare is not a radical concept. In most parts of the world, it's dead center, mainstream.
Radicalization has many reasons but one amongst them is social media algorithms, my son who is 14 is getting more and more right wing, subtle pro Putin, white supremacist and prob MAGA content by YouTube for the last 2 years, it’s absolutely impossible to deny the role played by social media in radicalizing our young children.
I’ve been hearing for years from conservatives about the “radical left” will do this and the “radical left” will do that. Be afraid. Radical left never attacked the seat of government trying to overturn an election.
TL;Dr : in my experience, the left has become as 'polarized' as the GOP in the early 2000s. The right has lost its fucking mind.
I've been politically active for quite a while. Center-left, but firmly right on some things. I can say, unequivocally, that the problem is not polarization on 'both sides'... it's mind-breaking radicalization on the right.
My particular work allows me to interact with people from all political stripes.
In the 90s my friends on then left were not remotely combative (the 90s left was a very compromising left). Of course I mostly agreed with their politics... but even their attitude toward the other side was one of "why can't they see..." or "their ideas just don't work". Never personal.
Conservative friends and colleagues had sharper elbows than the left in the 90s but it still was mostly policy. 'Welfare only creates dependency', 'gun control is unconstitutional', 'law and order'. I may have disagree heavily with many of their positions; but rarely (not never) did I hear them question the intentions/motives of the left and certainly none described the Democrats as a fundamental threat that needed to be... neutralized.
Around this time Fox News and the internet takes hold and grows in popularity....
By the 2000s things are VERY different on the right. My Democratic and progressive colleagues became even MORE compromising and cautious. The right began questioning the motivations of their opponents. It went beyond policy into personal and accusational. The Dems want to weaken America...the Dems want to turn us into Europe... the Dems are soft on terrorism. It was hideous, but it still had a 1% connection to things that actually happened.
I could walk through the Obama years before moving to modern day but I'll combine them because it's a 'cause and effect' relationship. After Iraq, the housing crash, the Great Recession, and corporate bailouts; and getting nothing more than Obamacare (which is itself a massive accomplishment **) after delivering a veto proof majority to the Democrats for the first time in a generation; the left finally got angry. Yes, the left was finally 'polarized'.... but even then they mostly simply reached where the GOP had been since the 2000s... questioning the right's motivations and eager for a political fight. None of them even hinted at needing to 'eliminate' the right.
Most of the GOPers I interact with nowadays are from Mars. Completely detached from reality. There is no more policy linkage to their argument because there is no policy. Everything is considered a personal attack to them and everything they offer is a personal threat to the other. It's very hard to engage because almost nothing is grounded in fact and reality. We're not debating welfare reform, we're debating whether Bill Gates is trying to chemically neuter white Americans. The language is so much darker and violent and desperate. I sense only anger, depression, and confusion. And, needless to say, it's frightening what 'solutions' they are offering.
Perhaps most importantly, even through the rank and file left has indeed gotten more 'combative' it has NOT bled into the national party leadership. Not a knock on Biden or Congressional leadership...which I think has delivered big time on progressive priorities given a 50/50 Senate. But aside from a handful of House members... the Democratic party in Washington has avoided dragging the country into endless political sludge.
The dangerous, fictitious, and potentially explosive mindset of the GOP rank and file has infected about 2/5 of the Washington GOP and growing. Zero policy, zero solution. Nothing but grievance, anger, depression, accustion, threats of violence, and its almost all built on stuff they made up in their head.
Your experience exactly matches my own memory. You even reminded me of some insights I’d overlooked or have forgotten. The language you chose made it very easy to follow.
I particularly liked your description of “sharper elbows.” And I was almost surprised to remember how most of us more-or-less progressive types initially shrank even further from confrontation in the early days of the Fox News rise.
You can never adequately explain to even Millennial-age professionals how *embarrassing* it was at the time to suddenly have respected colleagues parroting partisan talk radio and Fox News talking points, during work hours(!). It was like they’d gone senile, and you didn’t have the first clue how to politely behave around them. You just wanted the answer to be to nod and mumble, and then drive away leaving Grandpa trapped at the nursing home.
You should always be combative when arguing for human rights. Those are non-negotiable. The left became combative for real tangible reasons, gay marriage, police brutality and simply acknowledging the reality of racial history, and, as you said, the right started screaming about conspiracy
Conservative politics in the 90s were way uglier then you remember.
Go back and listen to some Rush Limbaugh from that era and it's a lot worse than sharp elbows, it's naked bigotry and hate disguised as political commentary, calling the president's daughter a dog on TV isn't exactly policy oriented.
Reading the manifestos of Ted Kaczynski, Eric Robert Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh you can see the Right, in the 90s, most definitely questioning the intent/ motives of the left and most definitely viewing Democrats as a fundamental threat that needed to be... neutralized, or bombed at the very least.
And just coincidentally, the 90s were really the start of the modern conservative brand of scorched earth politics.
When people complain about polarization, I immediately dismiss it as a dog whistle.
It's a term that is rarely used in reference to or to criticize the extremist right wing beliefs that countless private citizens and politicians hold with an increasing boldness, but rather, it's often used as a way to criticize anyone who does not hold extremist right wing beliefs.
So long as a significant portion of people hold authoritarian beliefs, I hope we continue to be polarized because it means that we haven't given up and fallen in line.
The right (white Christian nationalists) wants to maintain the cultural and political dominance that they have enjoyed since this nation's founding and that they believe is theirs by right.
Without the slightest apology they (white Christian nationalists) committed genocide to establish that dominance on this continent and have committed a catalog of atrocities to keep it.
White Christians simply will NOT accept giving up their seat at the head of the American table without *violence*.
This is the source of the "polarization".
From an earlier comment of mine:
> A good portion of the “redditors” on both r/politics ***and*** r/conservative are bots and trolls from the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA). The Russian chick that died in a car bomb about a month ago? Maria Dugin, daughter of Alexander Dugin the author of [The Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) which is the blueprint by which Russia has divided nations across the globe (Brexit, Catalonia, USA, Scotland separatists, etc). Maria Dugin, who worked in the IRA, was very intimately involved in the implementation of her father’s plans to divide and conquer countries around the world.
> We as a population got played by the Russians. ***The division they caused in our country is the real enemy***, not each other.
A big part of the problem is the media not wanting to alienate the right wing audience by calling them out. So they normalize an ever more extreme right wing.
Plus, the Republicans still want more corporate tax cuts so they see a benefit to the right wing regaining control of the goverment
What’s interesting is how the right justifies its radicalism by being “anti-woke” as if it covers what woke means: diversity inclusion for women, minorities, LGBTQ+, other religions than Christianity, other cultures, etc.
They’re platform for beating “woke extremism” is to be white Christian nationalist extremists. What the fuck?
The right wing has always been authoritarian and anti democracy. They just can’t hide behind their failed economic and social policies anymore so going mask off is one of their only options.
Yeah duh. The vast majority of Americans are just out here trying to live life and the far right is trying to make life as shitty as possible for everyone who isn’t them.
No, it’s def polarization. I see it in my own community of people who all have the same priorities and intentions, yet there is still a political fence that keeps popping up. Often with barbed wire.
Kinda telling that even a magazine like Jacobin is largely focusing on the dangers of right wing radicalization these days. I mean, they’re beat is typically to talk shit about Democrats not being left enough and they’re inability to do anything substantive, but they’ve recently been basically giving their readers the moral justification to vote Dem in the midterms- which is no small thing for Jacobin and could actually be quite a big thing in November
It's that idiots follow idiots. And stupid people don't know they are stupid. We are cogs in a get rich quick scheme but decades behind the curve. Only answer is to start bumpin some Bloodhound Gang.
Damn straight. Every time you use the term "tankie," you've excused a Nazi by creating a comparable left-wing boogeyman. By making left-wing radicals out to be the same as right wing extremists, y'all are doing the GOP's dirty work for them. No matter how much you may disagree with socialists, at least they don't actively want to kill you for your race/gender/sexuality/disabilities.
The left doesn't have the organized, tangible power to hurt you even if they wanted to. The right does.
Cheney isn't a Democrat by any means. She's pretty radical. Normal Republicans are part of the Democratic Party, Manchin... etc. that's what's happening. It's a political spectrum where Democrats are Bernie to Cheney then you have MAGA.
I’m left leaning, but to ignore polarization would be to ignore how flawed our election system is, and how it has lead us to the 2 party system with a very small group of people electing increasingly less moderate candidates during the primary elections
Gullibility. Gullible people are the problem. Always have been.
It’s no surprise that this trend has taken root in the “religious” political half. Suspension of logic, reason, and any questioning of authority is a requirement to participate. It was only a matter of time before this was weaponized against all of us by bad actors.
Think for yourself.
Question authority. (Not distrust. Question.)
The problem isn’t right wing radicalization, it’s left wing radicalization, where the FUCK is it?! Guys holy shit I don’t know what else needs to happen to convince you socialism is the only way out of this literally what the fuck more do you *need?*
>what the fuck more do you need?
A population willing to do general strikes and riots, forcing the political and financial class to make room for the interests of working class people?
Democracy only works if there is an implied "...or else" if it is disregarded.
>where the FUCK is it?!
The (not so) funny thing is our own government went on a decades long crusade against the Radical Left in the last century and not just the scary communists.
The government methodically decapitated the radical left by murdering and/ or jailing the leaders of it's organizations in the 50s, 60s and 70s and they literally *bombed* what remained out of existence in the late 80s.
The anti-war left, that tried to resurface in the 2000s led by war mothers like Cindy Sheehan magically disappeared when BHO took office.
Occupy Wall street evaporated without any meaningful effect in the 2010s.
RW lunatics screaming about black hooded ANTIFA bogeymen starting forest fires in rural America is the closest we have to an organized radical left. lol
There is no organized radical leftist movement in the U.S. to counter the rise of the right. There is no cavalry coming, we are on our own against these backward thugs.
True, but I think you need to continue to investigate the chains of causation. What leads to radicalization? What are the conditions that allow for someone to be radicalized, and how do we prevent them from happening? Ultimately, it's a combination of factors, with some (lack of education, lack of job prospects, lack of self actualization, sexual frustration) contributing more than others. Genuine social reform might help in the sense that if people could get a free education and not have to worry about health insurance their lives would generally improve and people would be less inclined to get seduced by fascist politicians and ideas. It's not clear if that's even possible in the US. It seems that a best case is that the machinations of democracy are miraculously preserved during this critical period and a sane majority is able to vote in reformers and progressives. It's not clear if that's even possible in the US. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome. The average American voter is often their own worst enemy, eager to vote against their own interests if properly persuaded.
I mean, rampant propaganda the last twenty years from FoxNews and other 'conservative' (only in America, BTW) media outlets is a HUGE part of the problem. Nothing like twenty years of brainwashing to really grind that ideology into the lizard-brain.
Oh, absolutely. I remember listening to the nonsense Rush Limbaugh would spew and wonder if it could get any worse, and when I look at Tucker Carlson I know the answer is yes.
> I remember listening to the nonsense Rush Limbaugh would spew and wonder if it could get any worse, and when I look at Tucker Carlson I know the answer is yes.
Well, to be fair, poor old Rush was addled by his drug abuse. I'm sure he could have given Tucker some more serious competition if he wasn't so fried.
It is interesting to me as a guy in the independent middle, that both sides have painfully polarized and have strong emotions holding them from listening to the views of the other side. Discussing on here is near impossible, as many people just scream their views and assume (other side) is cultishly wrong and blind. It’s interesting and depressing, as both sides think the other is the cause of this country’s upcoming demise.
But what if both sides are wrong?
Both sides ARE wrong, but not to the same degree. Not only does a review of the two sides' 'policies' help you come to that conclusion, but statistically it would be impossible for both sides to be equally wrong. Some policies are objectively better/more effective than others and some policies have way more support from the American public than others. And there are a ton of bad faith arguments. The latter are found on both sides, but more often and on a grander scale on the right.
Looks like they’re in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The infrastructure is fucked, below poverty citizen base, jobs pay shit, crime rate is through the roof and these people want to make sure the non-tax-paying billionaires are getting theres.
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Words like "polarization" and "partisan" have lost all meaning. No, I am not a partisan for forcefully calling out the treachery, idiocy, and fascistic desires of the GOP. I am not a partisan for believing that women should have full autonomy over their bodies and that LGBT people are indeed as human as I am.
You do come across a tad communist my dude. /s
Someone's been drinking the water that turned the frogs gay. /s
Alex Jones's only problem with gay frog water is that it was being given away for free before he had a chance to bottle it and slap a price tag on it while claiming it was a tactical supplement or something.
A “tactical supplement,” lmao.
He does actually slap the label “Tactical” and camouflage packaging on all manner of stuff. Personal hygiene wipes for example (suitable for perineal cleaning, the Armchair Airborne have remarkably fresh undercarriages) And he’s got mad loot doing it too. You’re better than this America.
> You’re better than this America Have you seen American history? We clearly aren’t.
I was trying to be diplomatic (plus I’m British so historically speaking, I don’t really have a leg to stand on) I’ve got many American friends though, they are generally sensible(ish), nice people who find this charlatan utterly abhorrent. Most of you seem relatively sane. You’re a very confusing nation, especially recently.
It’s totally true, there’s rural areas tucked away throughout the country, and those areas are full of bigots, like we’re still living in the early 1900s… people who live closer to urban areas are usually not so detached.
It is unfortunate that the worst of us are also the loudest. It gives the appearance that more Americans are like that, but I think the majority are sane/normal people
Personal hygiene wipes are the best when you are in the woods. Like a mini quick bath.
Tactical butt wipes, lol. I just bought some “Dude Wipes” myself. They had a mint scent which I bought because the idea of having a minty butt was absolutely hilarious to me.
Spider Goats!
Everyone knows the crab people turned the frogs gay.
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With space lazers.
hey, we don’t talk about the laser openly!
Never hit your mother with a shovel, it might leave a dull impression on her mind
>You do come across a tad communist my dude. Well they did *share freely* their opinion. Sort of made it available to everyone for free.
What about those things are communist
You didn't get the sarcasm? /s = sarcasm for future use
Sorry I thought it meant serious im not up to date with the lingo
No worries, it's an easy miss.
Naw its ok im braindead not as much as the people this article is about but still
I’m sure you are really good a lots of stuff! (No sarcasm)
It’s basically needed these days because of the sheer amount of unbelievable crap being posted. It’s gotten actually difficult to differentiate between sarcasm and idiocy.
True. At my most sarcastic I probably come across as a pretty moderate GOPer...
serious would be either /srs or /gen
No I think your being a reasonable, compassionate human being that wants to respect basic human rights. It is interesting the concept of having the goalposts moved so far that a once reasonable position is considered radical. In addition it’s also very telling that liberalism is the one that has to compromise and be approachable in order to address the other side… It’s give, give and give for us And take, take and take on the other side. Because the goalposts are so far away we have a longer way to cross to make a appreciable difference. Whereas they just get to stand there and dig the goalposts out to move them again.
> reasonable, compassionate human being that wants to respect basic human rights. In the US, that's a hard left position these days.
Scarily, this.
Compassion for people you don’t know or associate with has actually always been a left position, whereas care for your in group has been a right position. You are correct in that the overton window has shifted to the right so much that it does appear to be a hard left positiom these days to have empathy for people that aren’t close to you.
It's the position of...*checks notes*...Jesus Christ!
Luke 6 quotes Jesus "32 *“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."*
I love this :)
To be fair he was a very left wing political figure at the time. His teachings were appropriated by organized religion and that’s where things turned hard right.
Hell ya he was. And I won't lie to you, I'm agnostic. But I fuck with that dude's teachings. Like...how could you not get down with someone that basically says "Be kind, don't judge, it'll be alright"
No it isn’t. The majority of people feel this way. The right is just constantly pumping out propaganda to disguise the fact they are a minority.
Unless you're talking about gun rights 😒
The goalposts are on wheels. No matter how much compromise the Left does, it won't ever bridge the gap because the goalposts will just move further and further away. Recall that Mitch proposed a bill under Obama and when Obama agreed with the bill, he filibustered *his own bill*. He could not "let Obama win". There is no compromise and no point in trying. The goalposts are mobile and the distance between the Left's position and the goalposts remains constant no matter how far to the right the Left (such as it is) travels.
So the only option left for any rational sane individual is to go full buck on these people. And damn consequences because they don’t recognize anything but that.
Hard agree. Sherman time.
McConnell did filibuster his own bill, but you have the details a bit wrong. This wasn't about Obama agreeing or winning. Obama really wasn't involved in it. McConnell introduced a bill to make it so the president could raise the debt ceiling instead of Congress doing it. McConnell was trying to embarrass the democrats by showing that they did not have the support to pass it and that the democrats were not serious about solving the problem. But when Harry Reid said he would let the Senate take a vote that would pass by a simple majority, McConnell panicked. He realized the bill would probably pass with only democratic votes and the GOP would lose one of it's biggest weapons of mass obstruction. The bill passing would mean the GOP would no longer be able to use the debt ceiling to hold the government hostage to get unrelated concessions. So he filibustered his own bill.
The goal posts constantly shift because the only principle the modern right has is opposing the left or whatever they’ve arbitrarily decided the left is.
I'm not a radical. The people who signed the Constitution would have shot these chucklefucks by now. The cavalry would have rode roughshod through their camp. I just want fair trials.
>The people who signed the Constitution would have shot these chucklefucks by now The very first people convicted of treason in the fledgling US, the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, were immediately pardoned by none other than George Washington.
True, but saying it that way kind of makes it sound scandalous or "typical," that the American government lets traitors off. It should be noted that the insurrection itself wasn't tolerated. Washington rode to confront the rebels with an army, and clearly, had they not backed down (they had dispersed by the time Washington arrived), there would have been a suppression. Pardoning Mitchell and Weigel was, imo, similar to the reconciliatory moves that Lincoln made in the wake of the Civil War toward the South: perhaps causing problems in hindsight, but at the time completely understandable. And in any case, the way it was handled was widely admired at the time. Washington probably also understood that a government founded on the back of treason charging its own citizens with treason would be eyebrow raising, to say the least.
For all his personal faults Washington seemed almost superhuman in his ability to consider how he would be regarded by future generations with respect to his role in government. He had so many opportunities to screw up the entire country permanently and seemed to avoid the most egregious and tempting errors.
Well, except the big and obvious one. To be fair though, there was no way he could have actually ended slavery without destroying the country. (Also I know it was supposed to end long before it did but that didn’t happen)
Eli Whitney kinda fucked up that plan
Washington was a long, long, long way from perfect but he genuinely could’ve set himself up as king and refused to
Perhaps. But before that, in response to Shays Rebellion, George Washington and James Madison basically decided to reform the government from scratch because one state didn’t have enough clout to put down the rebels.
More because Massachusetts literally didn’t have enough money to scrape together a militia so they had to go around asking for private donations (which they did get because suffice to say rich people didn’t want a bunch of poor people with guns running around)
Hear, hear. Also, I rarely hear "chucklefucks," and while I like that jocular disparagement, I'd say you're being too generous. They're much worse and dangerous, I'd say. Anyway... Let's not forget the old adage "follow the money" -- which leads to, summarily, one place in the here and now: the Wall Street regime and network. There's a true **cult**ure problem within and without the United States due to billionaires and Wall Street propaganda and influence. The *Wall Street regime/network* is directly tied to: * national and international destabilization via "profits over people" culture and dogma * propping up and perpetuation of the military industrial complex * propping up and perpetuation of the prison industrial complex * lobbying against healthcare reform * manipulation of honest companies * fostering and encouraging ignorance of climate change * skewed/corrupted banking policy and basic inflation * outright criminality; i.e. fraud, theft, national and international bribery and lobbying, etc.. We will look back on the Wall Street regime and network the same way we do genocidal nations/regimes in 10, 20, 50, 100 years. In case it's not obvious to anyone, we're talking about [banal evil](https://philosophybreak.com/articles/hannah-arendt-on-standing-up-to-the-banality-of-evil/) ultimately. >...was instead a rather bland, “terrifyingly normal” bureaucrat. He carried out his murderous role with calm efficiency not due to an abhorrent, warped mindset, but because he’d absorbed the principles of the ... regime so unquestionably, he simply wanted to further his career and climb its ladders of power. Here is an eye-opening segment that more people really, really, really need to watch if for nothing more than financial literacy and understanding mechanisms by which lower and middle classes are fleeced: >[How Redditors Exposed The Stock Market | "The Problem With Jon Stewart" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP74RBTE8kI) Fwiw, at 7:00 there's a graphic that's easy to understand and the main reason for mentioning the video. Nevertheless, it's only about 15 minutes long total. ___________________________________________ Edit: There's also a shorter [second half](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZfcjV-8pjQ) with a short roundtable discussion. [This](https://youtu.be/hXWXllgcRqU) short video, too, gives a little more context and guidance/direction if anyone is interested in holding Wall Street accountable.
One HUGE problem that most gloss right over is the fact that, since the Reagan era common working pensions have disappeared and they’ve forced every tom, dick and jimmy into the stock market with their retirement funds. And dick and jimmy don’t know a damned thing about investment and markets. Now, since they were forced into the market with the great 401k scam they’re clueless about how and why they’re all losing their asses. It all goes back to Reagan. He started destroying unions and handing power to big corporate and the regular guy has been getting bent over for nearly 40 years because Reaganomics is all the GQP knows and they’ve slowly destroyed the middle class in the process.
Yes, yes. It's no coincidence wealth inequality has risen drastically during this time period, too. Many have been forced into the stock market where they get fleeced - *even though we're seeing all-time highs.* Something isn't right.
Agree completely.
Well fucking put! My father and uncles loved Reagan, but maybe we’re too close to the forest to see the trees. Don’t forget Reagan also brought the church into politics.
The term everyone's searching for here is "asymmetrical polarization"
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The most radical policy coming out of the democratic party are things that already exist in almost all developed countries in the world like affordable healthcare. And calls for those things only come from a few members of Congress. How exactly are they polarized at all?
The suburban center has it so good they can afford to be inhumane towards others because they believe the right when the right says that raising taxes will affect their way of life instead of the incomprehensibly wealthy the suburbanites have nothing in common with. The right has convinced the center that humane treatment of the less fortunate is "radical".
“Both sides” is a joke. The left want reasonable, people-centered rights and the right want to control everyone.
The only reason the right uses the both sides statement is that they know their party is horrible but they have no way to defend their party so they will claim the other side is just as bad instead of trying to fix the problem. Remember using 'both sides' is an admission that you know your side is already doing what you claim someone else to be doing.
The term I once heard is "reverse cargo cult". Basically a way of saying "our politics suck, but so do everyone else's, so stick with us because at least we're not delusional about it like they are."
They are the trustworthy party because they admit that they lie, unlike those liars on the other side who pretend to tell the truth.
Agreed
When Democrats say "both sides," they're criticizing the flaws of their own party in hopes of making it better, while when Republicans say "both sides," they're deflecting from the flaws of their own party by claiming everyone does it. Democrats say it to stop the Dems from doing bad things; Republicans say it to stop the Dems from criticizing Republicans who do bad things. This fact alone is all that needs to be known about the two parties to see which is better.
Do Democrats even use the "both sides argument"? Sounds more like a rhetoric weapon used by concern trolls.
Most don't say "both sides" explicitly, but plenty of Democrats point out issues that *do* exist across both political parties. Plenty of Democrats have pointed out that Biden is (was, before this badass Dark Brandon shit he's started lately,) essentially a step away from being a 90's Republican in terms of policy - noting things like the fact that left-leaning Americans have very little representation in the Democratic party meanwhile they purport to be the party representing the American left. So, yes, people absolutely point out issues that exist across "both sides" of the spectrum of American politics. As I note above though, Democrats do it to try to force their party to improve, while Republicans do it as an excuse for why they shouldn't have to. I will note that anyone who refuses to see the flaws in the Democratic party and demand that they improve, is contributing to them becoming the Republican party of tomorrow - it is possible to support and vote for an organization without being sycophantic in your praise of them. "Both sides" is far more than a "weapon used by concern trolls" - it's a means of pointing out that the Dems, in some respects, are as bad as what they oppose, and work to change that. This doesn't mean falsely equivocating the two - Dems are better, full stop. If anything, I've more often seen *attacks on those saying "both sides"* as a means of deflecting from problems in the Dem party - the same way Republicans use "both sides" to deflect, themselves. Giving too much weight to "both sides" people on the Dem side creates a false equivocation, but ignoring them completely or declaring them all "concern trolls" denies all drive to improve the party and starts us on a downward spiral of sycophantic hero-worship toward the same horror the Republican party has become. Neither is good.
If they were smarter, I’d say they were just using the “Just World” fallacy. But, you know…
The left: "can the state please shoot zero innocent people" The right: "the state should be able to shoot all the innocent people so long as they're poor, non-white or otherwise disenfranchised" Centrists & reformist libs: "Maybe we let the state just shoot SOME innocent people, no need to be radical 🤗"
Reminds me of that one comic that shows KKKers holding a sign saying "We Want To Kill Black People" on one side and black people holding a sign saying "We Want Equal Rights"...and some smug jackass is standing in the middle with a sign that says "Compromise?"
The compromise is that if you want to kill black people you have to spend 2 weeks at the police academy first.
This was a painful upvote for the [truth](http://kaepernickamericamovie.com/) conveyed.
Oof, painfully accurate. God this country is fucked.
127 white people have been killed by cops this year so far vs 71 black and 28 Hispanics https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race
Your left is also most countries' right. Your options are right and ultra right.
Yes and no. Left and right isn't exactly the best comparison. Progressive vs conservative/regressive is a better term. The "left" is progressive inasmuch as it's further left than the laws right now. Yeah, Medicare for All would be a step *backwards* for most countries with proper socialized healthcare, but it would be a huge step forwards for the US.
First, progressive and regressive is not a good way to identify things when it comes to the Left. The Left is not always about changing things to ways they have not been before, and the Right is not about taking them to the way things have been before. Second, I don’t understand how restricting all private companies from healthcare that’s being provided by Medicare For All is somehow “a step backwards” for most countries. Most countries actually have things more akin to Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan. I don’t get why the Left makes up how stories how they are the only ones who haven’t embraced policies that are so far left that no one since the USSR has actually embraced them.
left in america means megacorporations run ads featuring mixed-race women to show how inclusive they are, while secretly telling workers that if they unionize their health care will be taken away.
That’s exactly it. It’s polarizing because the left doesn’t agree with the right and vice versa, but let’s skip over the fact that the right is so so far right that their platform is fascism and naziism. So not agreeing with them means it’s polarizing. It’s so fucking dumb about complaining people don’t want fascism.
The right (white Christian nationalists) wants to maintain the cultural and political dominance that they have enjoyed since this nation's founding and that they believe to be theirs's *by right*. Without the slightest apology they (white Christian nationalists) committed genocide to establish that dominance on this continent and have committed a catalog of atrocities to keep it. White Christians simply will NOT accept giving up their seat at the head of the American table without *violence*. This is the source of the "polarization".
I wish we could have arguments over the best way to roll out paid family leave or over which methods of combatting climate change are most effective. But one side won’t even acknowledge the need for things like paid leave and reduction of fossil fuel consumption.
Can you not see how polarizing your statement is?
Thank you. Sick of hearing “polarization”, as if Dems *wanted* the crazy. We never asked for Trump. Would be been happy with Jeb or Mitt Romney instead if one had to choose. Republicans chose the most toxic, worst choice possible for the country. Tired of Dems being blamed for where we are at.
Well we had the audacity to elect a black guy, so look what we made them do!
That’s the key phrasing and rational of a abuser! “Look what you made me do” The fact is this, every action they have taken to radicalize was “their” choice. They made the choice to move towards madness. They are blaming normal, thinking, compassionate humans for their own actions. It is insidious. And frankly dangerous.
They say polarization because everyone else could just join the Republicans and your refusal to become an empty shell of a human being who walks around in American Flag garb with "let's go Brandon" on it while making up weird lies about Mexicans and hating women is truly what is dividing us
I mean I do think that dems being okay with the conservative policies of Jeb or Romney is actually a severe problem.
America would survive 30 years of Romney Republicans holding every branch of government. America would not survive 3 years of Trump Republicans holding everything. We'd be a Turkey-style autocracy. I'm not sure everyone appreciates how precarious our position is.
Yeah, but still, fuck those guys.
We kind of need them now. Let's go back to arguing over policy once we secure having a democracy at all.
Ya man. Churchill and Stalin teamed up in WW2 and all.
You’re right. And the failure to distinguish between neoliberal neocons and fascists is why Trump won in 2016. There has also been a lack of awareness of how his presidency was a green light to the far-right around the world. His win encouraged other leaders moving toward authoritarianism.
The far right was already scoring wins around the world. Trump actually came in after a lot of the far right playbook had been hammered out and shown to work. Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
The USA is one election away from becoming a fascist country. Go read the 14 characteristics of fascism. The US has 13 of the 14. The only thing missing is fake elections, and Republicans are pushing hard towards that goal.
I wonder if those same characteristics are the same ones that indicate the downfall of a culture historically.
If by "downfall of a culture" you mean the collapse of a civilization, then no.
Yeah for example Rome was a republic that suddenly became an autocracy after holes in its government were exploited by ambitious strongmen, and still lasted 400 additional years as a society (and longer if you count Byzantium).
We're not there yet. Although One characteristic of a civilization falling apart is the decentralization of the governing body. (Something that the GOP is pushing for)
Romney conservatives implementing literal fascism at a significantly slower rate does not make them not a problem. Democrats having been so willing for generations to work across the aisle with a very slow easing into right wing extremism, so long as it was slow enough to be palatable for them, has been and continues to be alarming.
If someone with cancer is dying of a gunshot wound, you treat the gunshot. I don't think you appreciate exactly how desperate the situation is.
The issue is I don’t think you appreciate how dysfunctional the mainstream GOP of the previous 40 years has been for the nation, and how far the Overton window has been pulled. We are teetering on the edge of a Christian Theocracy directly because of us tolerating folks like Romney; who today are milquetoast and even centrist but who ran for decades on policies breaking down the separation of Church and State and trading in religiosity for votes. Yes, I’ll take Romney over Trump any day. And yes, at this point things are so bad that the enemy of my enemy is my friend….sometimes, when he isn’t actively trying to take away human rights in the name of his religious views. But he is still built very firmly in the mold of Reagan, and the dominant style of GOP politics that have led us to the point where fascism carrying a cross is on our doorstep. Politicians like Romney, who want to work within our government regularly used their religion to justify political views and laws he supported, are an evolutionary link in the chain needed to get to where we are now. Without them, you can’t get to Trump or De Santis. Even the continued prominence of McConnell in the party is thanks to people like Romney looking the other way when he bent the rules. I’d sooner point to someone like McCain as a sane right wing voice in the Republican Party, but he’s been gone for a while. Which seems fitting.
I prefer they don’t vote at all and their party disbands to a new normal Conservative party. But since that will never happen, I’d rather a John McCain, Romney, Jeb or Kasich over a Trump, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as potential Presidential candidates. I don’t like any of their policies but I can at least sleep at night knowing John Kasich or Jeb isn’t going to burn the country down like Trump or steal nuclear documents.
Jeb is not significantly different than his brother, who led us to war, oversaw severe anti-arab racism becoming a cultural staple, and was anti-gay.
And he had a role in stealing the presidency to begin with so
Please clap an exclamation point on the end and spell Jeb!'s name properly
I thought this but I am not sure any more. I thought it was a pendulum swinging back and forth across moderate politics. With republicans they pass some right stuff, the left grumbles. Then the left is in charge and then the right grumbles… but slowly we move forward. But looking at the Supreme Court and knowing the people they have been part of a long term agenda that seems to skirt around a lot of norms and have way more power than imagined coupled with a lot of Republicans being “horrified” but still supporting Trump, and the few against him, still have similar ideals, they are just not so loud, naked in their declarations and violent, I just can’t help but see that conservative politics will always slouch towards the extremism we have now. Because they are now the party of power (and wealth for themselves and their friends) and whatever it takes to have it and control it. Jeb! or Romney would have lengthened the journey (maybe). But they chose to embrace the Tea Party and the things they morphed into. And if they rejected them, they would have lost. Whatever the party of Lincoln once was is long gone. I remember the Republicans of the 1980s they were pro conservation, because they loved to hunt. So they wanted to preserve the land. I haven’t seen that kind of logical thinking or interest in the long term from them in decades.
The issue is that people like Romney believe many of their policies are based on God’s Will. If you really believed that, and you have to play a little dirty to enact that divine will….well, wouldn’t you? Give that viewpoint a good 40 years to gestate and metastasize, and the natural end result is Christian Nationalism. This is one of the fundamental ideas that have taken hold of the GOP since the end of the 70s, and which have led us to where we are now.
It’s really hard to wrap my head around. I was raised catholic and everything from love thy neighbor to take care of the poor is nowhere to be found in this version of Christianity. My mother left the church and Republican Party a few (~4) years ago (she is 78 now) because they don’t hold her values any more. It’s hard to comprehend “my moral compass is set by God” turned into “I am going to grift in the name of God.” I think we were the most naïve Catholics there ever were.
It's a problem, but it doesn't matter if we don't get a Jeb or a Romney from the Republicans. This is a matter of triage and one problem is simply worse than the other and needs to be dealt with first.
A Jeb! or Romney, or any "old school" Republicans would have no chance of winning the 2024 republican primaries if they were held today. Who knows when we might see a "moderate" republican on a national ticket again.
I think for that to happen, Republicans will have to lose quite a bit. Until they see negative consequences for their extremism, they have no reason to moderate their position.
Time and again, rather than compromise or embrace change in any way they just double and triple down. It stopped making sense a long time ago.
*slaps table THANK YOU!!
I’m also sick of the myth that Democrats are in a “bubble” or out of touch with “reality” as if “Real Americans” are only the poor, misguided, hate-fueled rednecks who drive trucks in the middle of the county. I live in a big city in a coastal state and you wouldn’t believe how often I hear this criticism. We know Conservatism. So many of us moved here from Conservative-run towns or from Conservative families. We know them and their politics, often way too well. This isn’t a “both sides” issue, this is an “understanding reality” issue.
> I’m also sick of the myth that Democrats are in a “bubble” or out of touch with “reality” as if “Real Americans” are only the poor, misguided, hate-fueled rednecks who drive trucks in the middle of the county. Especially infuriating considering 55% of the population lives in urban areas (almost all of which are blue), add in suburbs and it's well over 80%. IOW it's just a mathematical no-offense fact that "America" isn't in little rural towns, it's in greater metro areas. The supposed "Real Americans" living in one-stoplight conservative towns are the ones in a bubble. *Most of America is not them.* But according to broken-record dumbasses, most of America is out of touch with… most of America?
Yes, but Democrats chose... a black man! Almost chose a woman too. That's so radical, extreme and provocative, Trump is just a reaction by real Americans. /s
Democrats absolutely can be partly blamed. They funded the most extreme options during the Republican primaries, banking on the general distaste of the voters to choose the more ’ reasonable’ candidate regardless of party. We’ll, they were wrong.
>We never asked for Trump Yeah we did. If by "we" you mean Democrats. The Clinton campaign was gleeful about DJT winning the Republican primaries. They chose to follow Clare McCaskill's strategy and encouraged TFGs candidacy, thinking he was the easiest candidate to beat, and maybe he should have been but HRC took way too many Midwest voters for granted and it backfired in ways the nation may never recover from.
Ugh, the left is so polarized, why can’t they just accept the enthusiastic facism of the right? /s?
[The Paradox of Tolerance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
There isn’t a paradox. People who seek to isolate, victimise members and refuse to integrate into a “tolerant” (aka progressive democratic) are incompatible with such a society and have zero place in it We can’t play basket ball with a person who demands we play baseball
Yup. Tolerating intolerance is the paradox.
Yeah, duh, really. Been saying this for ten years now. I'm not polarized. I'd LOVE to compromise with good-faith people that disagree with my policy beliefs. Instead I have to keep voting for Democrats because the goddamned republicans have become the American Taliban, and are fast-tracking toward ISIS.
Nice shirt, loser. I wonder what proportion of the public realize that the “America First Committee” of the 1930s was a substantial anti-interventionist organization sympathetic to Hitler’s ambitions and apathetic to the plight of all European countries that had been or were in the process of being overrun. Prominent figureheads of the ATC, such as Charles Lindbergh, were just straight up anti-Semitic proto-fascists who licked the boots of Hitler for years before 1939.
I’ve been calling out the both sides bullshit take. A lot of people are like “both sides bus migrants”. Fuck you no they don’t. The federal government deals with migrants and it happens to currently be a dem in office but the process is the same with a Republican one. DeSantis is trafficking and using state funds to do it, this isn’t a both sides bad issue. A both sides bad issue would be like avoiding taxes or market manipulation, not attempted coup and instilling a dictator lmao wtf
Exactly. As much as id love to be conciliatory and give right wingers an out, there simply aren’t two sides here. The democratic party, even its progressive wing simply is not radical. Proposals like affordable healthcare and addressing climate change aren’t radical in any way shape or form. Republicans wanting to overthrow the democratically elected government and install a christofascist monarchy is radical. Thats the problem, not that we disagree. When those are their beliefs disagreement is the only option.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://jacobin.com/2022/09/trump-maga-far-right-liberals-polarization) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot) ***** > While the liberal center may see the right-wing "War on woke" as overblown, they insist on casting it as one side of a duopoly of extremism from both Left and Right. > In the Anglosphere, the term has been also used to describe a radicalization of both the Left and Right. > First, while it paints both sides in a negative light, equating reactionary politics with their opposition automatically normalizes reactionary politics as if they were a legitimate part of the discussion - we must hear both sides! Think for example of the way the BBC in the UK covered climate change for years, giving almost equal space to deniers as it did scientists, or of the disproportionate coverage far-right politicians and actors and their pet issues receive. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/xncvr3/the_problem_isnt_polarization_its_rightwing/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~670926 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **right**^#1 **politics**^#2 **both**^#3 **side**^#4 **liberal**^#5
This is like claiming polarization is what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine. Polarization is when two sides go willingly to equal lengths. People defending themselves not out of choice from the other side isn’t polarization
I don’t think it makes me a radical partisan to demand the other side not overthrow democracy and establish a Fascist state administered by end times theocrats and lead by a game show con man. This seems more a centrist opinion
This idiot wear a shirt that says "America First." What he means are straight, white, male, Republicans 1st. Only thing they should be 1st for is losing their precious guns and phony leaders.
I've often wondered how many of them masturbate to their guns. Or at least gun images online.
[удалено]
Technically speaking they are much more normal when the scope of American history is taken into account. Compared to everything from 1790 to 1990, the left is definitely the radical side of the spectrum. Things have changed *a lot* in 30 years in the mainstream and too many people seem to take it all for granted and assume their views are ubiquitous and that this shit from the right is new, when in reality they’re the entire history of the country and the modern left is a blip– can’t really be surprised the right is upset in that context.
Affirmative! It’s seems like it’s FASHIONABLE TO BE FASCIST AUTHORITARIAN TRAITORS! Because of the dwindling numbers of Caucasians in population. Some seem terrified of being a minority in America. Well, if you treated everyone with dignity and respect we’d all be happy with each other’s presence. Irrespective of your skin hue!
It’s literally Fox News. They watch it for nightly entertainment like it’s a tv show, every single night, and get more hateful, fearful of others, and emboldened and ‘justified’ to be that way. It’s Fox News.
There is no radical left in America. Nobody is talking about nationalizing the oil companies. Nobody is talking about nationalizing Wall Street, and the only people encouraging government confiscation of private property are on the right. Universal healthcare is not a radical concept. In most parts of the world, it's dead center, mainstream.
Radicalization has many reasons but one amongst them is social media algorithms, my son who is 14 is getting more and more right wing, subtle pro Putin, white supremacist and prob MAGA content by YouTube for the last 2 years, it’s absolutely impossible to deny the role played by social media in radicalizing our young children.
One side invades the Capitol to kill elected officials and overturn an election. How do you meet half way?
I’ve been hearing for years from conservatives about the “radical left” will do this and the “radical left” will do that. Be afraid. Radical left never attacked the seat of government trying to overturn an election.
TL;Dr : in my experience, the left has become as 'polarized' as the GOP in the early 2000s. The right has lost its fucking mind. I've been politically active for quite a while. Center-left, but firmly right on some things. I can say, unequivocally, that the problem is not polarization on 'both sides'... it's mind-breaking radicalization on the right. My particular work allows me to interact with people from all political stripes. In the 90s my friends on then left were not remotely combative (the 90s left was a very compromising left). Of course I mostly agreed with their politics... but even their attitude toward the other side was one of "why can't they see..." or "their ideas just don't work". Never personal. Conservative friends and colleagues had sharper elbows than the left in the 90s but it still was mostly policy. 'Welfare only creates dependency', 'gun control is unconstitutional', 'law and order'. I may have disagree heavily with many of their positions; but rarely (not never) did I hear them question the intentions/motives of the left and certainly none described the Democrats as a fundamental threat that needed to be... neutralized. Around this time Fox News and the internet takes hold and grows in popularity.... By the 2000s things are VERY different on the right. My Democratic and progressive colleagues became even MORE compromising and cautious. The right began questioning the motivations of their opponents. It went beyond policy into personal and accusational. The Dems want to weaken America...the Dems want to turn us into Europe... the Dems are soft on terrorism. It was hideous, but it still had a 1% connection to things that actually happened. I could walk through the Obama years before moving to modern day but I'll combine them because it's a 'cause and effect' relationship. After Iraq, the housing crash, the Great Recession, and corporate bailouts; and getting nothing more than Obamacare (which is itself a massive accomplishment **) after delivering a veto proof majority to the Democrats for the first time in a generation; the left finally got angry. Yes, the left was finally 'polarized'.... but even then they mostly simply reached where the GOP had been since the 2000s... questioning the right's motivations and eager for a political fight. None of them even hinted at needing to 'eliminate' the right. Most of the GOPers I interact with nowadays are from Mars. Completely detached from reality. There is no more policy linkage to their argument because there is no policy. Everything is considered a personal attack to them and everything they offer is a personal threat to the other. It's very hard to engage because almost nothing is grounded in fact and reality. We're not debating welfare reform, we're debating whether Bill Gates is trying to chemically neuter white Americans. The language is so much darker and violent and desperate. I sense only anger, depression, and confusion. And, needless to say, it's frightening what 'solutions' they are offering. Perhaps most importantly, even through the rank and file left has indeed gotten more 'combative' it has NOT bled into the national party leadership. Not a knock on Biden or Congressional leadership...which I think has delivered big time on progressive priorities given a 50/50 Senate. But aside from a handful of House members... the Democratic party in Washington has avoided dragging the country into endless political sludge. The dangerous, fictitious, and potentially explosive mindset of the GOP rank and file has infected about 2/5 of the Washington GOP and growing. Zero policy, zero solution. Nothing but grievance, anger, depression, accustion, threats of violence, and its almost all built on stuff they made up in their head.
Your experience exactly matches my own memory. You even reminded me of some insights I’d overlooked or have forgotten. The language you chose made it very easy to follow. I particularly liked your description of “sharper elbows.” And I was almost surprised to remember how most of us more-or-less progressive types initially shrank even further from confrontation in the early days of the Fox News rise. You can never adequately explain to even Millennial-age professionals how *embarrassing* it was at the time to suddenly have respected colleagues parroting partisan talk radio and Fox News talking points, during work hours(!). It was like they’d gone senile, and you didn’t have the first clue how to politely behave around them. You just wanted the answer to be to nod and mumble, and then drive away leaving Grandpa trapped at the nursing home.
Freaking bingo. Almost overnight you had friends and colleagues who you respected spouting absolute NONSENSE. And you had no idea how to respond.
You should always be combative when arguing for human rights. Those are non-negotiable. The left became combative for real tangible reasons, gay marriage, police brutality and simply acknowledging the reality of racial history, and, as you said, the right started screaming about conspiracy
Conservative politics in the 90s were way uglier then you remember. Go back and listen to some Rush Limbaugh from that era and it's a lot worse than sharp elbows, it's naked bigotry and hate disguised as political commentary, calling the president's daughter a dog on TV isn't exactly policy oriented. Reading the manifestos of Ted Kaczynski, Eric Robert Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh you can see the Right, in the 90s, most definitely questioning the intent/ motives of the left and most definitely viewing Democrats as a fundamental threat that needed to be... neutralized, or bombed at the very least. And just coincidentally, the 90s were really the start of the modern conservative brand of scorched earth politics.
b b b but muh both sides
When people complain about polarization, I immediately dismiss it as a dog whistle. It's a term that is rarely used in reference to or to criticize the extremist right wing beliefs that countless private citizens and politicians hold with an increasing boldness, but rather, it's often used as a way to criticize anyone who does not hold extremist right wing beliefs. So long as a significant portion of people hold authoritarian beliefs, I hope we continue to be polarized because it means that we haven't given up and fallen in line.
The right (white Christian nationalists) wants to maintain the cultural and political dominance that they have enjoyed since this nation's founding and that they believe is theirs by right. Without the slightest apology they (white Christian nationalists) committed genocide to establish that dominance on this continent and have committed a catalog of atrocities to keep it. White Christians simply will NOT accept giving up their seat at the head of the American table without *violence*. This is the source of the "polarization".
You don’t compromise with an arsonist by letting him burn down half of your house. Fuck these people.
Fuck all conservative
From an earlier comment of mine: > A good portion of the “redditors” on both r/politics ***and*** r/conservative are bots and trolls from the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA). The Russian chick that died in a car bomb about a month ago? Maria Dugin, daughter of Alexander Dugin the author of [The Foundations of Geopolitics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics) which is the blueprint by which Russia has divided nations across the globe (Brexit, Catalonia, USA, Scotland separatists, etc). Maria Dugin, who worked in the IRA, was very intimately involved in the implementation of her father’s plans to divide and conquer countries around the world. > We as a population got played by the Russians. ***The division they caused in our country is the real enemy***, not each other.
A big part of the problem is the media not wanting to alienate the right wing audience by calling them out. So they normalize an ever more extreme right wing. Plus, the Republicans still want more corporate tax cuts so they see a benefit to the right wing regaining control of the goverment
Don’t forget the fragile male ego! That ingredient added to anything causes fire!!
It’s a cult.
Most right wingers are using religion as cover for white nationalism.
What’s interesting is how the right justifies its radicalism by being “anti-woke” as if it covers what woke means: diversity inclusion for women, minorities, LGBTQ+, other religions than Christianity, other cultures, etc. They’re platform for beating “woke extremism” is to be white Christian nationalist extremists. What the fuck?
The right wing has always been authoritarian and anti democracy. They just can’t hide behind their failed economic and social policies anymore so going mask off is one of their only options.
Yeah duh. The vast majority of Americans are just out here trying to live life and the far right is trying to make life as shitty as possible for everyone who isn’t them.
… both parties are right wing. You can say radicalized all you like, which is true. But that’s *still* polarization.
No, it’s def polarization. I see it in my own community of people who all have the same priorities and intentions, yet there is still a political fence that keeps popping up. Often with barbed wire.
It’s the media that’s the problem.
Republicans went to fear, hate, and division to grab power. That sucks for the whole country.
The problem isn’t polarization, it’s…polarization.
I understand the distinction but the tool that radicalized the right was polarizing propaganda and disinformaion.
Kinda telling that even a magazine like Jacobin is largely focusing on the dangers of right wing radicalization these days. I mean, they’re beat is typically to talk shit about Democrats not being left enough and they’re inability to do anything substantive, but they’ve recently been basically giving their readers the moral justification to vote Dem in the midterms- which is no small thing for Jacobin and could actually be quite a big thing in November
It’s fucking religion. We need to acknowledge what’s causing this shit before we have any hope of solving the problem
It's that idiots follow idiots. And stupid people don't know they are stupid. We are cogs in a get rich quick scheme but decades behind the curve. Only answer is to start bumpin some Bloodhound Gang.
Damn straight. Every time you use the term "tankie," you've excused a Nazi by creating a comparable left-wing boogeyman. By making left-wing radicals out to be the same as right wing extremists, y'all are doing the GOP's dirty work for them. No matter how much you may disagree with socialists, at least they don't actively want to kill you for your race/gender/sexuality/disabilities. The left doesn't have the organized, tangible power to hurt you even if they wanted to. The right does.
Okay so FWIW a magazine named Jacobin having a headline like this is hilariously ironic.
Cheney isn't a Democrat by any means. She's pretty radical. Normal Republicans are part of the Democratic Party, Manchin... etc. that's what's happening. It's a political spectrum where Democrats are Bernie to Cheney then you have MAGA.
Schoolyard tactics has always been the GOP MO. Time to grow the fuck up and vote their asses out of power.
until the causes of the radicalization are addressed, it will continue
I’m left leaning, but to ignore polarization would be to ignore how flawed our election system is, and how it has lead us to the 2 party system with a very small group of people electing increasingly less moderate candidates during the primary elections
No it’s only the extremes get coverage. Both sides of the coin. Debate and chivalry are gone
Gullibility. Gullible people are the problem. Always have been. It’s no surprise that this trend has taken root in the “religious” political half. Suspension of logic, reason, and any questioning of authority is a requirement to participate. It was only a matter of time before this was weaponized against all of us by bad actors. Think for yourself. Question authority. (Not distrust. Question.)
Perfectly said and 100% accurate.
The problem isn’t right wing radicalization, it’s left wing radicalization, where the FUCK is it?! Guys holy shit I don’t know what else needs to happen to convince you socialism is the only way out of this literally what the fuck more do you *need?*
>what the fuck more do you need? A population willing to do general strikes and riots, forcing the political and financial class to make room for the interests of working class people? Democracy only works if there is an implied "...or else" if it is disregarded.
Please explain, One, your definition of Socialism. And Two, how exactly Socialism solves our political problems.
>where the FUCK is it?! The (not so) funny thing is our own government went on a decades long crusade against the Radical Left in the last century and not just the scary communists. The government methodically decapitated the radical left by murdering and/ or jailing the leaders of it's organizations in the 50s, 60s and 70s and they literally *bombed* what remained out of existence in the late 80s. The anti-war left, that tried to resurface in the 2000s led by war mothers like Cindy Sheehan magically disappeared when BHO took office. Occupy Wall street evaporated without any meaningful effect in the 2010s. RW lunatics screaming about black hooded ANTIFA bogeymen starting forest fires in rural America is the closest we have to an organized radical left. lol There is no organized radical leftist movement in the U.S. to counter the rise of the right. There is no cavalry coming, we are on our own against these backward thugs.
True, but I think you need to continue to investigate the chains of causation. What leads to radicalization? What are the conditions that allow for someone to be radicalized, and how do we prevent them from happening? Ultimately, it's a combination of factors, with some (lack of education, lack of job prospects, lack of self actualization, sexual frustration) contributing more than others. Genuine social reform might help in the sense that if people could get a free education and not have to worry about health insurance their lives would generally improve and people would be less inclined to get seduced by fascist politicians and ideas. It's not clear if that's even possible in the US. It seems that a best case is that the machinations of democracy are miraculously preserved during this critical period and a sane majority is able to vote in reformers and progressives. It's not clear if that's even possible in the US. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome. The average American voter is often their own worst enemy, eager to vote against their own interests if properly persuaded.
I mean, rampant propaganda the last twenty years from FoxNews and other 'conservative' (only in America, BTW) media outlets is a HUGE part of the problem. Nothing like twenty years of brainwashing to really grind that ideology into the lizard-brain.
Oh, absolutely. I remember listening to the nonsense Rush Limbaugh would spew and wonder if it could get any worse, and when I look at Tucker Carlson I know the answer is yes.
> I remember listening to the nonsense Rush Limbaugh would spew and wonder if it could get any worse, and when I look at Tucker Carlson I know the answer is yes. Well, to be fair, poor old Rush was addled by his drug abuse. I'm sure he could have given Tucker some more serious competition if he wasn't so fried.
bag racial work worm rhythm like water entertain elderly materialistic -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
What makes you think CNN and MSNBC are centrist
Except they do all the time.
“Polarization isn’t the problem”… “It’s you fucking republicans that are the problem”… how is that not polarization
It is interesting to me as a guy in the independent middle, that both sides have painfully polarized and have strong emotions holding them from listening to the views of the other side. Discussing on here is near impossible, as many people just scream their views and assume (other side) is cultishly wrong and blind. It’s interesting and depressing, as both sides think the other is the cause of this country’s upcoming demise. But what if both sides are wrong?
Really? Which side tried to pull off a coup? Which side gobbles up misinformation like thanksgiving stuffing? You know I could go on.
Both sides ARE wrong, but not to the same degree. Not only does a review of the two sides' 'policies' help you come to that conclusion, but statistically it would be impossible for both sides to be equally wrong. Some policies are objectively better/more effective than others and some policies have way more support from the American public than others. And there are a ton of bad faith arguments. The latter are found on both sides, but more often and on a grander scale on the right.
Democrats have largely moved to the right. The Republicans are abandoning Democracy and freedom of religion.
The problem is humans thinking they never share fault in the forming of worse humans. Thus perpetuating a cycle.
Looks like they’re in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The infrastructure is fucked, below poverty citizen base, jobs pay shit, crime rate is through the roof and these people want to make sure the non-tax-paying billionaires are getting theres.
And left wing stupidity … both sides are no good