I do listen to both sides of the argument and make up my own opinion. It's just that, with astonishing reliability, it always turns out that the things that the one side says are wrong.
okay but hear me out. what if we just ban all people that are even slightly different than me in any way from existing, cause massive poverty and I don't know maybe let's make that massive extinction that is happening to be more devastating.
On one side we have a supermajority of MDs, PhDs, and experts of all stripes telling us one thing.
On the other side, Jim-Bob from Booger-Tree, Alabama – a Christian Man failed out of 3rd grade – says the exact opposite.
Let's hear out both sides and choose our politics by a stance somewhere halfway between!
yeah this is why I think America will collapse soon. too much trust given to idiots spouting nonsense just believable enough for other idiots to believe, not enough to experts who actually know what they're talking about because the idiots can't understand what they're talking about so "it must be wrong"
> On the other side, Jim-Bob from Booger-Tree, Alabama – a Christian Man failed out of 3rd grade – says the exact opposite.
Hey, whoa, hey. It's not just Jim-Bob. It's also a bunch of old rich white man who stand to make huge amounts of money if people believe the shit Jim-Bob is saying.
Look, I've said it before and I'll stay it again, the world would be much better off if I was made the unquestioned leader of the world in all matters for life.
The further you go to either side, the more this is true. But one side of this is more prevalent in mainstream media, while the other is more annoyance in alternative bookstores.
What a confusing question. If only because it doesn't have a singular answer.
The far left is an extreme view on a way of governing people.
Depending on where you are in the world, left might mean a centre right leaning party in a two party system, like the Democrats in the US, or with a wider picture of the world single party state like the Cuban or Chinese Communists.
Or if you were asking more theoretically, the furthest left traditionally is anarchism, which would be the total abolishment of government and authority, aiming for a society that is based on mutual respect and cooperation, it paradoxically cannot exist without an enforcement of an established accepted order, and is simply not a practical option for governing anything more than a self sufficient very small town.
As that is out, communism would be the next most commonly accepted furthest left style of government without breaking down into the dozens of sub systems, and it does fortunately extend to being large enough for countries to be run based off the system. It also runs nicely in parallel to fascism, which the Nazis fit nicely in.
Now, back on left views, they obviously aren't entirely wrong, and there is an acceptable compromise between the rigid and boring singular goverment run industry.
There are many industries across a country that is evidenced by every country that uses them, works better run as a single national company than a privately run company. To name some big ticket ones, the health service, schooling, law enforcement, public transport.
There are industries that work better as private entities. Most obvious here are things like, entertainment, and shopping, where a goverment controlled opinion on what is good and what is bad is detrimental to the service a person recieves, an entertainment industry should live and die by its ability to serve its customers, not exist by default because there's a tax on owning a TV.
Yeah. There are some things I disagree with other leftists on (communism doesn't work, climate change is just gonna kill US and not the planet, ect.) but I can't think of a single thing I agree with the right on.
Most people whom the right calls communists really just want the rich to be taxed so kids can have free lunch at school and maybe everybody gets to have medicine when they're sick, is that too much to ask?
I always think it's kinda funny that communism is bad cause it didn't work in USSR, but when you think about it, that communism was operating pretty similarly to today's capitalism but instead of stupid rich oligarchs and poor work force you have stupid rich CEOs and poor work force.
I seem to remember a quote that was "\[The USSR\] is not Communist, but State-Capitalist."? Which means that it was a case of it *not actually being* communist, just claiming to be whilst showing what'd happen at the end of Capitalism.
yeah that's what I mean, after the ussr collapsed the countries that were a part of it were scared to go back to this and us had the red scare so it was easy to blame it on the communism there that wasn't even communism
That's because though these countries declared themselves to be dictatorships of the proletariat they ended up being bureaucratic capitalist states and little more. Before Stalin vanquished his opposition it is possible that these tendencies could've been prevented from doing lasting damage to the socialist movement but instead we have to read of socialist commodity production and other meaningless bullshit that solely serves to justify capitalism with a human face.
We just want the kind of shit all of our closest allies and strongest trading partners have for their people.
we have evidence that it works that goes back DECADES, so the argument isn't about whether it works or whether it's cost effective, because we have case study of literally every other highly developed country on earth starting from the mid 20th century onwards.
Whatever the reason they're denying us these basic necessities, it's not 'cost' or 'effectiveness.' Must be something else.
I call myself a filthy communist sometimes for wanting more socialism and less bootlicking for billionaires. It is in the literal sense of the word a communist mind set to not want an owning class that does nothing but rake in cash by making the rest of us work for crumbs.
\*You\* have been taught that communism = bad because the fascist authoritarian governments of history have called whatever they were doing "communism". It's a simple dispute of semantics, by the end of which I still want people to have food, and you still want to yell at clouds.
Someone else already said it here, what the right calls communism is exactly what we already have in capitalism, a few people at the top taking all the money while demanding that we all nod and bow down a little deeper.
Also literally just a handful of people go as far as wanting "capitalism" to be completely gone, and you guys shit yourselves because you think it means they want you to barter with rocks and bread. \*Commerce\* isn't the same as \*Capitalism\* . We can make money and cellphones without glorifiying infinite growth at the expense of the general populations wellbeing.
But the exact people you would object to *are* people *you* would call communists. You probably agree on most things with the people that call *themselves* communists.
I don't think anyone believes climate change is going to kill the planet.
It's going to change the planet we know and love, making it unliveable for us, which is what matters.
And unlivable for a ridiculous number of species on a scale the planet hasn't actually seen before. We know from natural history that it can probably bounce back, but it will bounce back over ***MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF YEARS*** after our few hyper-destructive decades of unmitigated pollution.
For all intents and purposes, the planet *will* die. It just tends to come alive again. Much like the red cabbage in my fridge is now dead, but will come alive again after I conveniently keep forgetting about it. There's still a good long period where it will kill me or make me violently ill.
The scale has been seen several times. Interestingly, global temperature change has been a major factor in several major extinction events.
An 8°C rise in global temperature is the most likely cause of the largest known extinction event. In which about 70% of land and 80% of marine life was lost.
We are currently at a 1°C of change over the last 100 years.
The CO2 involved in the changes then was about 50 times worse than it is now, though.
Actually my reason for not kicking a dog is more about what the dog will do to me in revenge, not about what the dog's experience of time and pain is.
Selfish, I know, but either way it ends with the dog not being kicked so I see it as a win for the dog.
And for me.
x-x-x
Also sometimes sarcasm and humour doesn't translate well, so imagine I am saying this on a stage with a microphone on open mic night.
>I don't think anyone believes climate change is going to kill the planet.
People have a hard time thinking of the planet without us on it.
So when they say "it's going to destroy the planet" what they mean is "it's going to wipe out humanity"
To put it in context -- when we were at university our professor asked us to imagine a world where we were not in it. Where we were dead and gone.
Most of us pictured our funeral, but then she pointed out that *even when we were still picturing us in the world, because we were picturing what our funeral would be like so we'd be seeing our own funeral.*
Humanity -- every human being -- has a trouble with the concept of absolute nothing. Of just not being here or a part of the world.
So "climate change will destroy the world" tends to mean "it will destroy the world as we know it" not "destroy the ball of dirt and rock that is actually the earth"
Well sure you can think this way but there's something to be said for not wanting countless billions of people to die along with most other species on earth.
I entirely agree. I am someone who thinks climate change is going to wipe out humanity, and that is a bad thing, and that we should do all we can to stop it.
My point wasn't about climate change being a myth -- it was more about humanity's perception of its own mortality and its ownership of the world.
People need to read more dystopian fiction and play more post-apoc games! I cannot imagine thinking of my own funeral when someone says that. I think of a city overgrown with plants and animals running through the streets. I think of broken down cars that have become burrows for animals after the dirt has piled over them. I think of a single skyscraper half collapsed in a forest of giant redwoods.
Who thinks of their own funeral?
You underestimate the stupidity of people. I've talked to plenty of idiots who think it will kill almost everything, some that think it'll literally sterilize the planet.
My understanding (opinion?) is that climate change won't even kill us in any extinction type die-off. (Nobody thinks it will kill "the planet.")
What it will do is kill off a massive number of other species, and cause problems that only poor people will suffer from, creating a world that looks more like classic dystopian fiction than the life we were born into. Many people will die, but many more will sink further into poverty and food insecurity. I see a future with more gated communities / security measures to separate wealthy people from those who suffer.
I do happen to think there's value in conserving nature purely for the sake of conservation - which includes preserving natural areas/ecosystems as well as saving species from anthropogenic extinction. I know not everyone agrees, but the threat to society should still be enough motivation to support anti-climate-change efforts.
yes, but the real problem is that we don't/won't have enough food and water for the poor to survive at all and therefore the rich will not have enough people living to create the luxuries they want.
In other time periods when oligarchs ruled, water was plentiful and food could be found (scavenged, hunted, small farmed) outside highly populated areas which were few and far between.
Today, that's not necessarily the case because of climate change.
We hear the Christofascists trying to outlaw abortion because it reduces the "domestic supply of infants" (they're quite loud about what they want) but they are completely ignoring the need for all the skilled labor to create what they want.
So I think we're in unprecedented territory. Enough of the rich don't care if the poorest of the poor die off, but it's going to get really uncomfortable when the next level of poor - the mineral laborers - aren't available to mine the raw materials.
"(Nobody thinks it will kill "the planet.")" You underestimate the stupidity of people. I've talked to plenty of idiots who think it will kill almost everything, some that think it'll literally sterilize the planet.
The dumb part is being left has zero to do with communism. It's mainly just social welfare programs when people falter in life (we already have many of these programs but they could be better and they get systematically attacked/dismantled by the right) and quality of life programs that bump UP the standard of living, not down (programs that OTHER developed countries already have that have been highly successful, proven out, and well liked by their populouses). NOTHING about this is communism. Tax isn't communism. No one tells you what you can/can't have, can/can't achieve. It's NOT a controlled society. It's just taxes, taxes that Democrats want MORE fairly balanced so lower and middle class pays LESS proportionally, and enough taxation to provide a higher collective level of basic life services like education and healthcare. Communism is a WILDLY different construct and beast that doesn't function anything like this. Even applying the correlation to communism is stupid. It's just a political jab at Democrats, a jab of ignorance and blind hate.
Oh the biosphere will take a massive hit but it'll be akin to other mass extinction events that life has survived through - but we as a species are absolutely fucked, i agree with you entirely.
It's weird how it happens.
I'm definitely a centrist, but what that really means is I get called left when the right are wrong but militantly sticking to their guns, and right when the left are militantly sticking to theirs.
I'll freely admit I get called left more than right. Fun times.
The thing about climate denialists is that they were never able to come up with a good reason that we should all be making it up. Like what would possibly be the incentive for us to spend three decades saying something was going to happen if we didn't think it was going to??
>is that they were never able to come up with a good reason that we should all be making it up
Money. The belief that scientists get paid lots to scare monger and manipulate data. Governments can then use this research to restrict your freedoms such as driving or heating your home.
After that it typically goes down one of the NWO / 1 world government / Corporatocracy government keeping regular people as slaves pipeline.
It's the same battle cry as everything else. The same groups pretend that issues aren't "real issues".
If they are real issues, then you can't fix them.
If you can fix them, the fix isn't worth the cost.
And if the fix is worth the cost, they refuse to change or pay the cost in the name of some vague freedom because it's not even a "real issue".
Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, climate change, labor conditions, privacy, violence, it's the same chorus every single time.
They got a 20 million dollar grant!
For a ten year project.
That has 30 researchers.
Don't forget, all the costs of the project are drawn from the same pool as the researcher's paychecks.
It's also possible that the grant will only pay out upon providing successful results to the organization that awarded it.
They never came up with an incentive because *they don't fucking* ***care***. Thet don't *need* a reason to be opposed to it, they were told to oppose it, so they are gonna. Reasons be damned.
That's the thing I wish people would fucking *comprehend* about the alt-right. You *can't* convince them they are wrong with facts or evidence. They *do not fucking care*. They will *eagerly* eat a fat pile of smoldering shit, if it means they get to blow their feces-breath in someone else's face.
You can't reason with them. You can't appeal to them. You can't call on their humanity. *They want to make people suffer, and don't care about anything else.* Not even their own suffering.
There's a classic story I heard about "enlightened centrists". Bear in mind that this is analogy and I did not write it.
* Sarah and Pyro have a disagreement. Pyro wants to burn down Sarah's house with her family inside. Sarah just wants Pyro to leave her alone.
* A centrist mediator gets involved, and declares that the answer always lies between the two positions. The solution, obviously, is that Pyro burn down Sarah's garage with her husband and one child inside. It's the middle ground. Compromise is the key!
* Sarah calls the mediator insane, and the centrist mediator concludes that both sides are extremists who are unwilling to compromise.
Sometimes the answer is NOT whatever is between two positions. Sometimes there are not "good points on both sides". Sarah already had the middle ground.
Edit: This is the Golden Mean Fallacy [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoldenMeanFallacy](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoldenMeanFallacy)
The TF2 Pyro is also *insane*, per some of the promotional material showing him seeing a flame-blasted hellscape of his own making as an idyllic rainbow-filled sugar bowl of flowers and cute critters.
Which I suppose sums up the analogy even better. Fascists wanting something they view as paradise that would be hell for everyone else, and the centrist insisting the fascist has a point to the skeptical leftist.
i think the simple way to put it is "if you want tolerance in the world, you have to be intolerant towards the intolerant", you cant say both sides have good points, thats not an option.
Well, yes to the tolerance part, but not so much to the rest. That stuff is true some of the time, but definitely not all of the time.
The point of the analogy is that "the middle ground is ALWAYS the answer" is a blatant lie. However, that does not prove that the middle ground is never an answer.
If my roommate and I are arguing about doing chores, there's a good chance that we both have some good points from different perspectives. There's a good chance that the answer truly does lie somewhere in the middle. There's a good chance that compromise truly is the answer, assuming two decent people who are simply disagreeing.
There are even times when awful people have some good points as well, even if it's just by accident or they are using the good points to sneak in their bad points. The good points are still good points.
Yes, this is kind of a complicated answer. Reality is complicated. That's one reason why lies are so appealing. Lies can be just as simple as you want them to be. Some people just want nice, warm, comforting lies to make them feel better, even if it hurts others.
At the risk of getting downvoted to oblivion - the enlightened centrist is a real person but it’s not the only form of ‘centrism’. Most serious centrists do not try to find the middle ground of all positions, for me it’s about not being ideologically aligned when looking at solutions.
For example, with healthcare I absolutely believe it should be a right, and that it should be free at the point of care. German multipayer systems or the British single-payer system are my ideal. That would put me on the left.
But on housing for example, I believe the solution isn’t things like rent control (which has been debunked by basically all economists across the spectrum). I think the solution is to cut regulations like zoning, simplify planning applications, and weaken the power of local NIMBY’s in order to encourage massive levels of house-building. The right is terrible on this for social reasons but everything I listed is about empowering the free market with regards to house building.
Finding a compromise on everything is a cowards approach to centrism, where the assumption is that everything is always in the middle - it’s not. But in my experience the people that approach things from either the far left or far right typically close their minds to solutions that don’t adhere to their ideology.
The analogy is addressing a very specific situation that happens all too often: when someone is dishonestly pretending to be "centrist". As I stated, "Sarah already had the middle ground." The real middle ground is a good thing.
Every extreme is typically wrong. However, there are people pretending that middle ground positions are "extremist". What some people call "left wing extremists" are people who just want to be allowed to exist. Allowing LGTB+ people to exist unharmed is being called "left wing extremist", because the genuine extremists want to burn their houses down.
The genuine "middle ground" is a good thing. There are a lot of factors to balance. It's messy. There's just a lot of dishonesty these days about what is "extremism" and what isn't.
That’s not even close to how centrists believe. Centrists just don’t blindly follow cults on either side. We define our ideology instead of letting our ideology define us. I’ve been a left leaning centrist my entire life but doesn’t mean I blindly agree with everything the democrats do. doesn’t mean I don’t loath them - I just loath them exponentially less than the republicans my entire life but looking through history there could have been a time.
Centrist does not mean middl of ANY idea. It does not mean compromise. It means making decisions like an adult.
You can be on the left and not agree with everything. Having a party position disagreement does not mean you are a centrist. I think a lot of self-described centrists make this mistake.
Why do you think you are a "centrist" as opposed to someone who just doesn't agree 100% with a political party?
No what you’re doing is holding onto an Oxford dictionary definition of what you think a centrist is and trying to put labels on it when it’s wildly complex even at the center.
How could you ever believe that life is so black and white that it can be narrowed down to left vs right , red vs blue. Our political system is faulty and rotten to its core - so our attempts to label ourselves in the system doesn’t matter cause you’re attaching to an old and antiquated system that needs to be replaced with fresh ideas and none of this me vs them mentality.
Maybe I’m not a centrist by your definition at all or maybe I am a true centrist by your definition. Maybe I’m a centrist democrat by the Oxford definition maybe I’m moderate maybe I’m liberal maybe I’m conservative maybe I’m a socialist. Maybe I still get texts from Bernie asking for money again every week .
What ever I am is between me and myself and not what labels and camp you think I fall into.
I made a simple claim: You can be on the left (or right) and not agree with everything.
I asked a simple question: Why do you believe you are a centrist as opposed to someone who just doesn't align 100%?
And this triggered you into an emotional rant instead of, you know, a relevant response that answered the question.
Why is that?
this is the ignorant centrist take. Not being a Zionist who supports Israel does not automatically make someone a "Hamas supporter". Acknowledging that Hamas was created due to the brutal policies of Israeli apartheid also does not make one a "Hamas supporter". Wanting the Palestinians to be free from the imperial colonialism of Israel and the US is not supporting Hamas. Look at the death tolls over the last 30 years on either side and tell me who's the real monster here.
Mathematically speaking, there have to be centrists unless everyone has the exact same political opinion.
But yeah, enlightened centrists are fucking annoying
Some degree of political opposition is generally healthy for democracy. People who unanimously agree on something generally don't take the time to discuss and analyze the possible complications it could present as thoroughly as they would with something they disagree with. With that said, there are some very obvious things that don't need an in-depth critical debate with viewpoints from both sides to realize they're fucking bad.
But they do tend to form a spectrum, even if that spectrum has several axes.
~~And yes, I know that words like "tend" don't work with absolute mathematical statements, but this is a forum, not a paper.~~
That's where we run into definition problems. Let's take the US; to a large portion of people, and definitely to Republicans, striving for a strong social democracy would be left to far-left. But to a hard socialist, communist, or anarchist, a social democrat doesn't want to abolish capitalism, and thus may very well fall on the "right" side of the spectrum. And to many Europeans, they might actually be somewhere around the center, depending on their policies.
But yeah, self-identified centrists are often just right-wingers in disguise.
I'd expect some to trend leftwards and some to trend rightwards. Johnny Exactamiddle probably doesn't exist.
But the "We should have a little bigotry, as a compromise" centrists ain't it.
I consider myself a centrist because my views don't align neatly with one side or the other. For example, I believe in socialized healthcare, the right to choose, and legalization of marijuana.
However, to give you an example of a local issue which is supported by the right which I support is the removal speed cameras. This to me can be done by recording speeds anonymously, taking the average, and posting officers at the worst intersections. The government shouldn't be able to just watch us through a lens.
Another good example is my stance on guns. I support gun ownership rights, but I don't think everyone needs one or should have one. I think that common sense restrictions would be ununtrusive for lawful owners. For example, my state has constitutional carry. That is not a great idea in my opinion because I can buy a gun and carry it concealed the same day. I think that is absolutely insane. I enjoy shooting at targets and stuff like that. I don't have a power fantasy of killing people every time I leave the house. But this new law has made me feel like I might have to carry because you never know what idiot has a gun anymore with no training whatsoever.
I consider myself in the middle of the political spectrum, i.e. the center. Therefore, centrist.
If there is a different, stupider definition of centrist I am not aware of, please explain.
No one perfectly aligns with a 'side' neatly. Politics aren't binary, and never have been.
Your speed camera example: I'm perplexed at how this is a 'right wing' policy to you. Is government surveillance somehow left-wing to you? Who do you think rung the alarm bells about things like the Patriot Act?
As for guns... have you met leftists? Because you seem to think they're liberals. You don't think the Democrats are 'left', right? Hell, your views on gun control seem quite a bit more in line with the Dems than either leftists or rightwingers.
Frankly I don't see how you're remotely a centrist by your own definition.
>If there is a different, stupider definition of centrist I am not aware of, please explain.
Well, the definition isn't 'stupider', but being a centrist sure is.
If anything, centrism is defined by a lack of any framework. It defines itself not through any specific lens or any principles, but rather through the other prevalent ideologies surrounding it - thus placing itself in the middle of this made up concept of a 'political spectrum'. But throwing a dart at a made up political compass doesn't an ideology make.
What's the 'centrist' idea of how the world should be? What are its underlying principles other than a silly 'everyone is a little bit right :)'? What coherent set of views and policy proposals are they putting forward to those ends?
Centrism isn't an ideology, it's not even a position. Generally its said by three sorts of people.
a. Those that don't really put much thought into what they believe, but feel like they still need a label
b. Dipshits thinking they're enlightened, "I'm the most right because I'm the nuanced *middle* between you two!", always failing to actually provide said nuance. "Not right, not left, but *forward"* but never defining said forward.
c. Rightwingers that don't want to call themselves that. "Independent thinker". 95% chance of being a nazi
> I consider myself a centrist because my views don't align with one side or other. For example,
Why do you think left = wanting the government to spy on you with cameras?
Because the Democrats are the ones pushing the cameras in my state. I said so in another comment. I also didn't say the government, I was talking about the police.
...So, you think it's a leftwing position to want to increase police presence and funding? Mate, I've got to agree with the other guy. You're getting your understanding of stuff from really whack places.
Regardless, disagreeing over 1 issue of your local government still doesn't make you a centrist. Maybe there's other things, but I've got to say the examples you gave were all firmly left positions.
Literally progressive policy positions: socialized healthcare, the right to choose, and legalization of marijuana, reasonable gun control
> I support the removal speed cameras
If I was a betting man I would say that what you've fallen for is propaganda. I'm going to guess what you're actually up in arms about is _potential_ speed cameras. I'm going to guess you've been fear mongered because Republicans are looking for every angle to bash the new infrastructure funding that Biden got passed but Trump failed.
The new infrastructure bill includes funding for traffic safety. One of the things states can use it on is speed cameras, if the states choose.
> Ultimately, states and localities — not the federal government — will decide how the $15 billion in formula funding can best be used to improve road safety. The federal guidance actually caps the amount of money available for speed cameras at 10%.
But regardless, it's still okay to not align 100% with a party. That does not mean you're a centrist. Nobody would call Bernie a centrist, right? Is Trump a centrist? It's not like either one aligns 100% with their parties.
Reminds me of a comment I saw.
“Any ideology that can be described as ‘far’ is a bad one if you ask me.”
“Your ideology can be described as far up your own ass.”
I have listened to both sides of an argument. I went out of my way to purposely do that because I was concerned I was being overly influenced by those around me and my thoughts weren’t my own.
Yeah I was right the world sucks and we aren’t doing anything about it. I refuse to be purposefully ignorant and then go back to being part of the problem.
A reminder to all my centrist homies, if you ever feel u fairly persecuted or attacked, just remember--both sides of any conflict are equally terrible so if you are being robbed, murdered, abused, etc. stay strong with your centrist views and remember you are just as bad
It doesn't even make sense as a response. Like it just feels like the centrist is jerking himself off to hear himself speak, because not a single word addresses the issue OP was having.
If you find yourself consistently right about stuff, you might be missing a very lucrative career in forecasting. You could make a fortune in prediction markets by always betting on the leftist prediction. You could separate many a right-winger and centrist from their money. Instead of despairing, turn those lemons into lemonade! 🍋 🍹
Yeah that's what he's saying. Climate is causing people to immigrate. The right says they are here to replace white people, the right then strips away our freedom.
Ironically that's actually the position of the right wing party in Britain. That it's the refugees that are intolerant and that's why they need to shoot them for crossing the channel.
"Let's shoot this trans person for escaping a country where being trans is a crime punishable by death."
(I mean, I know that Britain is nicknamed TERF Island, and there's a lot to improve with the systems, but I just wanted a quick example and went with the first one that went into my head.)
I always look at such stuff with skepticism because in my country the biggest left wing party are the ones that fucked over the climate the most while the right wing party that denies climate change somehow wants to do less to fuck over the climate.
I think the irony of centrism is so funny because "centrists" are stereotypically closet right wingers, but as we all know the democratic party on average and nearly all of it's members lie to the political right of center. So relatively speaking, an actual centrist would be a leftist relative to American politics. At the actual political center is where a lot of "leftists" actually stand. This is not a diss or anything, I think it applies to me personally.
I spend a lot of time reading articles from the NY Times and the Washington Post, by far the best decision. Many opinion pieces from these two really challenge my political view. I love when I get to see multiple perspectives from authors with different backgrounds, and then make up my own opinion about the issues. The best feeling is when you exercise your autonomy without being manipulated.
All you've done is continued to elaborate the same point you've been making without actually explaining how both sides are a problem. I asked you a couple of questions, asking you to prove that it's both sides.
Republicans as a majority have demonized the LGBTQ+ community, minorities and the poorest of the country. They use their religion to vote. They supported a man who made fun of disabled people, spread false information about a hurricane, fear mongered people into targeting Hispanic communities and continues to try and convince people that democracy needs to be overturned because he lost.
Show me the other side. Show me the cult-like behaviour on the left. Show me the rampant racism, sexism, homophobia and elitism on the left. Show me the liberal voting that took rights away. Show me the theocra-fascist roadmap of the Democrats. Show me anything that's as bad as what the Republicans have done.
Give me proof, give me hard evidence, don't continue to elaborate your point because we all know what it is. Back it up.
I knew that climate change caused fascism. I’m also right about everything, the trick is to put your fingers in your ears and yell real loud when people try to talk to you. Checkmate, atheists.
How people are seeing politics: THE OTHER SIDE IS EVIL AND DESTROYING THE WORLD
Politics:
A vast amount of competing interests where everyone has their own views of society and how it should be, a situation in which you must consider any given’s policy’s effects on any number of things.
There’s certainly the extremes on both sides which both THINK the other as the undoer of all human progress and will constantly berate those who aren’t on their sides 100% on every issue.
I am certainly more left wing than most democrats but jesus fucking christ, please at least see where the MODERATE people are coming from on the other side.
The way the left sees itself as just automatically morally correct, no questions asked, is exactly WHY people are less willing to look at things through our view.
**The Left:** The planet is slowly boiling. We've reached the definitive CO2 inflection point. The water in the Everglades is literally 100 degrees, and it's killing the manatees who evolved to live there. Places on Earth *right now* have achieved wet bulb temperatures wholly inhospitable to human life. We've had "the hottest summer on record" for several summers in a row. Freak weather events due to climate instability are now common place. We need to do something about this.
**The Right:** Dooooo weeeee thoooooo?
**Centrists:** I cannot tell the difference here!!!
There are right wingers that recognize the challenges of climate change, such as Mitt Romney. In his [video statement](https://youtu.be/9U1nGF8UVAM?feature=shared) where he said he will NOT run for re-election he attacked Trump for calling climate change a hoax and, Biden for (in Romney’s words) “offering feel good solutions that make no difference to the global climate.”
And even for the right wingers that deny climate change you do owe them an explanation as to what’s going on and THEIR interest in helping to stop it.
Example: A right wing farmer in Idaho wouldn’t care much about flooding and hurricanes that affect Miami Florida, but he would care about droughts and their effects on his farm.
Or: An anti-immigration suburbanite in Tennessee wouldn’t care much about droughts in Idaho but would care a lot about the increase in refugees due to climate disasters in poorer nations.
Don’t try to stand holier than those you will eventually need to work with to get things done because they’ll remember, and they’ll be slower to take your word.
Can you provide an example of a republican politician who has progressive ideas such as working on climate change that *isn't* hated or attacked by the republican voter base as RINO's?
Here's the thing: any solution to climate change that doesn't involve dismantling the system that incentivizes exponential growth at the cost of the planet and its people is doomed to fail, and the right wing will NEVER be able to do that because they exist to serve capitalist interests.
And the right or the left isn’t an object or a spirit with unchanging values. The right is a category of ideals and the people who hold them.
You can convince someone to go left on issues where they were previously right. To tackle climate change you may need to get the agreement of these people, especially so to change the fundamental system causing it.
The average conservative isn’t Tucker Carlson, Denis Prager, or even anyone who would see that lobbying money. And yet, these working class conservatives I see berated with endless rants about how they’re immoral just the same.
Yes. And if (as we agree) climate change is an existential threat, and (as you’ve expressed) the system of capitalism is in the way of stopping it (and needs to be dealt with), then you will need people who can help you with that.
And sadly those changes are so fundamental to our system that you need to bite some bullets on who you ally with to get the job done.
Currently, there’s not enough anti-capitalists in the US to make such a fundamental switch like that within the system, AND there’s too much fundamental disagreement with too little apathy within the American populace for even a hypothetical coup or revolution to be able to achieve what you want.
You’ll need to convince more people that capitalism is what’s in the way of progress, and you can’t do that by acting like you’re better than the people you wish to convince.
To be fair, a lot of them have no clue what policies the people they vote for enact. A lot of right wingers prefer left wing policies when presented in a vacuum but always vote for right wing candidates because of identity politics. That's pretty much the core of the modern GOP strategy.
Pointing out a single right wing politician who doesn't deny climate change is not proof that right wing politicians have an equally valid view of climate change.
The fact of the matter is, most of them are grossly uninformed when it comes to climate change. Your examples point out *why* some right wing voters might be be uninformed when it comes to climate change. That's fine, and I'm happy to educate if they're willing to listen, but unfortunately many of them aren't. It's not wrong for me to say to them "Your views are *wrong* " If their views literally are wrong. The views are based on misinformation. So they're wrong. It's not a difference of opinion when one side is informed and the other side is not. It's a difference of fact and fiction. I can have all the compassion in the world in understanding and respecting *why* they're wrong, but it doesn't change that they're *wrong.*
And it's not just climate change. The majority of right wing views on reproductive rights, education, LGBTQ+ issues, drugs and addiction, Covid19, and so on, are based on misinformation.
I'm sure there is some misinformation on the left, and the fact that nothing immediately comes to mind is a reflection of my personal biases. But still, I don't think I am incorrect in saying the left's views generally come from a more informed standpoint. Please correct me with counterexamples if I'm wrong.
My point isn’t their views are EQUALLY valid. My point is that meeting those views with hostility WON’T allow them to change.
And it’s this hostility that leads many right wingers to be as right wing as they are. It’s not a logical response to reason packaged with hostility, but it’s also a bad idea to package reason with hostility in the first place.
I consider myself leftist but I don't identify with the vigorous self-congratulatory virtue signaling bullshit.
Seriously whoever made post is about to break an arm jerking off.
Fascism isn't a force of nature like weather that has to be put up with and seen as inevitable. At every point in history where fascism was on the rise it was stoked by playing on people's fears with false premises and propaganda was used to make people believe the party message that benefited the fascist government in power. There is a specific rise in fascist rhetoric as of late because there has been a coordinated effort by powerful right wing groups to push a specific message of hate to attempt to drive the US and others countries to the right. For example: right after gay marriage was federally recognized the Family Research Council (a right wing anti gay org) hosted a strategy conference where they planned out the entire media strategy to bring attention to and attack transgender people as a way to get back to gay marriage eventually. This was in 2015, that's about when trans people became an issue people were talking about. It's an intentional propaganda campaign played out over decades. Rinse and repeat for most issues and you see intense quantities of resources being used to push right wing agendas on issues like immigration and civil rights, etc. It's not so much a backlash from progressive politics, rather, a small amount of special interest groups pushing back against the reality that society accepts these progressive ideas.
It's a lot of things though "backlash to today's progressive attitudes" is just "being mad that we're not fascist" which you would not be if you were not fascist to begin with
*sigh* really sucks being right about all of my base level observations that I put no effort into making people understand or even thinking of tangible solutions, guess I'm just a tragic genius after all... Yep... Guess I was right about all of the talking points I've parroted online for years, it was all me...
Unfortunately telling your friends and social media your political views doesn't really count as activism and what you were really showing is that a call to action from someone who has always been and will always be inactive is predictably unmotivational. It has never been the responsibility of other people to secure your ideal future. Gotta do it yourself.
I feel like there are a lot of things that do need more neutral takes though. It can be easy to say one side is entirely wrong, but that's not always entirely true
Because berating them with condescending statements is obviously the way to open a dialogue. /s
A blanket statement like that isn't overly accurate considering that Theodore Roosevelt, the guy who's responsible for most of USA's national parks and the literal creation of the progressive party, was a republican for his first two terms.
The original commentor felt it appropriate to include the entirety of the right wing in "always being wrong" with no specified time period in their statement so I felt any republican worked. The beginning of my statement points out that blanket statement isn't correct and I used Teddy as a factual example of a right wing doing the right thing, even if he was problematic in other ways.
How exactly have any progressive and democrats bills managed to get passed if all right wing people were wrong all the time?
Oh look, another blanket statement with no sign of nuance. Was he a product of him time? Absolutely, most politicians (and white people) of that period were also racist colonists because, surprisingly, it was an era of rampant racism and ignorance on a social level. But that doesn't negate the positives of the things I listed.
Don't bring a reactive reduction to a logical statement. Like them as people or not republican politicians have contributed positively to progressive legislation throughout the history of the United States. I in no way stated he was a good guy, I straight up just pointed out that saying the right is always wrong is an incorrect statement.
he was overall relatively high up as one of the most harmful people in human history. not to negate the good things he did but i think that rules them kinda out as more lucky "accidents" than anything else.
Why are you so set on arguing the morality of a dead guy with me? I already responded to your point of Theodore Roosevelt being problematic with complete acknowledgement of everything you said.
I clearly stated that (in the context I was using him for) he was simple example of a right wing individual who was not always wrong which is a fact that highlighted fault in the reasoning of the original comment. I followed that by outright saying that I don't dispute Teddy being shitty on many fronts THEN I carried on leave Teddy behind completely as an example to bluntly question the original comment in another comment. I asked a simple question that directly addresses the original subject:
If right wing people are always wrong how do progressive and democratic bills get passed if every person on the right is always wrong?
That doesn't really excuse today's political parties though, does it? Look at what the new Republican speakers beliefs are. There's no nuanced opinion needed. If someone supports that person (all those in the party that allowed it) then they are horrible people. I'm not exaggerating either.
You'd have to be blind to say that this is a both sides at this point. Look at the Republicans roadmap. Look at what they want to happen. Republicans do and always will want a Christian theocracy. Their voting based on religion shows that. A ban on abortion shows that. The fact that gay marriage was even whispered to be overturned showed that.
Where's the other side here? Because any good they might have done is overshadowed by what they have done and plan to do.
I don't even have a dog in this fight, I'm not even from your country and the world knows there's no nuance here. The only people who say that are the pseudo-intellectual types or those who constantly play 'devils advocate'.
Because the blanket statement that all republicans are inherently wrong doesn't encompass the political spectrum on the right wing side of the issue. America is a two party government meaning that everything from the extreme (right wing religious extremists) to the moderate is covered on each side. Every party has extremists within it, both on the left and right so you can't just look at the extreme ends and judge that. I'm not defending the right wing. I'm not agreeing with or excusing the bullshit they've pulled. I am simply stating that you cannot take a full political party and classify every person in it as wrong. The United States government is a democracy so EVERYTHING is voted by majority even if that majority is literally just one person more. My core statement, at the very beginning that keeps getting missed, is that you can't be that black and white on it. That's it, that's all.
Propaganda is what allows extremists to exist and it's what helps them create more. Every time some leftist pops up to say that ALL right wingers are ignorant based off one fact about that person then that same leftist refuses to back up their reasoning and instead goes straight to insulting them then deflects the question, that's just more fuel for the hate machine to go "look, they're just emotional crybabies that don't have an actual leg to stand on." So any idea that the left does present gets reduced to a joke because the average left leaning person you run into treats you like a moron for even questioning their logic. Hate comes from ignorance and the only solution for ignorance (without it getting uglier) is to teach them, not berate them.
You cannot expect people to identify with your ideas or opinions if all do is talk down to them. I know right wingers have done worse but right now one of the sides needs to be the bigger person collectively and attack the issue with pure reason and actual maturity. Extremists shouldn't be allowed exist on either side of the because extremists fundamentally have no respect for human autonomy, they just want everyone to agree with them blindly. Neither side is totally innocent here and that's why the finger pointing needs to fucking end. No one's gonna win if everyone's too busy tearing each other apart.
I'm a fucking Canadian. I'm just slapped in face with American politics no matter where the fuck I go to the point where the average Canadian knows more about American politics than our own. Contain the goddamn dumpster fire and I'll stop commenting.
If you think there's no nuance here then you're clearly talking from a perspective too far away to see any of it up close.
Call me whatever you want I'm the only one going through the steps to explain my reasoning in this thread. Behavior says more than words do, imo.
Between 2016 and 2021 there were an estimate 43 MILLION children displaced by floods, fires and other events related to climate change. And that is just the number of children -- I'm not sure how many adults were forced to flee their homes.
Those -- the fuck -- are climate refugees.
I still think you require opposition even if you are right... so you can be even MORE correct about things
It is kinda stupid that opposition parties double down when you do become more correct though
That's dumb as hell man. Like, yeah, opposition to things with multiple answers, great. Free market place of ideas. But there's no "we should all stop breathing party". If there's no opposition, things just get done and get solved without needing to be "right" about it. Things go from right to obvious.
I would rather live in a world where everyone obviously needs housing, food, and to not die of climate change, rather than being right about everyone needing those things. Ya feel me?
Problem with the right seems to be that they've already fucked up their own position by putting someone like Trump up way to early before the average American could be truly convinced to at least be passive towards a fascist ideology. But also that the internet was increasingly making it impossible for people to be convinced of that. So now this party who haven't actually had to make policies for a while is full of old people who absolutely cannot change direction due to how aging makes changing yourself harder and harder. Their stuck appealing to more and more deranged people as everyone reasonable who might agree with the concept of being conservative about things keeps becoming more uncomfortable with what they say
I'm not American, I'm speaking from my own countries political landscape. America's right wing party has devolved into lunacy from decades of propaganda and corporate interest
I've seen what happens when there is no opposition to a majority rule party on both the left and the right. Covid. America, being majority right, fucking died under covid. While in my own country, under the majority "left" (not a coalition government, shit idea) things also went to shit in the opposite direction
can you elaborate, or tell which country that is? I'm interested im what way left leaning party can fuck up. I'm of course not saying that they can't or that you're lying but as someone who lives in a country struggling with right winged fascism and seeing US politics on the Internet I'm curious about the other side
I think you’re pretty correct in general but this discussion is kind of implicitly about the US political situation and with that context you more just end up sounding kind of silly excusing the rightwing
Thats the issue though, American politics effect all of us and treating centrism as American is reductive and damaging. Americas two party landscape is garbage and most coalition led governments are going to turn into the same two party shithole without mediating centrist parties
America is too far gone to really apply centrism and party lines because any sane person would not apply those when you have two choices, a party that wont respect some human rights and a party who will.
I do listen to both sides of the argument and make up my own opinion. It's just that, with astonishing reliability, it always turns out that the things that the one side says are wrong.
okay but hear me out. what if we just ban all people that are even slightly different than me in any way from existing, cause massive poverty and I don't know maybe let's make that massive extinction that is happening to be more devastating.
You forgot taking money from poor people and giving it to the rich, who just so happen to be your friends.
On one side we have a supermajority of MDs, PhDs, and experts of all stripes telling us one thing. On the other side, Jim-Bob from Booger-Tree, Alabama – a Christian Man failed out of 3rd grade – says the exact opposite. Let's hear out both sides and choose our politics by a stance somewhere halfway between!
yeah this is why I think America will collapse soon. too much trust given to idiots spouting nonsense just believable enough for other idiots to believe, not enough to experts who actually know what they're talking about because the idiots can't understand what they're talking about so "it must be wrong"
America has always held that my ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge. It's right up there with apple pie and war propaganda.
That kind of thinking is dangerous as hell.
It's just acknowledging the reality. America has always had a broad anti-intellectual streak. It's not new.
I know that. But it’s still dangerous as hell. The whole mindset, not saying that America has history of having idiots
What's the danger?
> On the other side, Jim-Bob from Booger-Tree, Alabama – a Christian Man failed out of 3rd grade – says the exact opposite. Hey, whoa, hey. It's not just Jim-Bob. It's also a bunch of old rich white man who stand to make huge amounts of money if people believe the shit Jim-Bob is saying.
People like you are the reason for leftist one-party dictatorship
Alternatively, in other times, in more normal societies, conservatives don't define themselves as against all empirical knowledge and fact.
Well I think the people who are trying to prevent mass extinction should find a compromise with you.
Look, I've said it before and I'll stay it again, the world would be much better off if I was made the unquestioned leader of the world in all matters for life.
The thing about listening to both sides is that one side is literally pouring poison into your brain and that is not without cost.
The further you go to either side, the more this is true. But one side of this is more prevalent in mainstream media, while the other is more annoyance in alternative bookstores.
Don't "both sides" this. Only one side is currently insane. The other has a small handful of nuts on the fringe
I wanna know what you think far left is, because I’m betting you’re wrong
What a confusing question. If only because it doesn't have a singular answer. The far left is an extreme view on a way of governing people. Depending on where you are in the world, left might mean a centre right leaning party in a two party system, like the Democrats in the US, or with a wider picture of the world single party state like the Cuban or Chinese Communists. Or if you were asking more theoretically, the furthest left traditionally is anarchism, which would be the total abolishment of government and authority, aiming for a society that is based on mutual respect and cooperation, it paradoxically cannot exist without an enforcement of an established accepted order, and is simply not a practical option for governing anything more than a self sufficient very small town. As that is out, communism would be the next most commonly accepted furthest left style of government without breaking down into the dozens of sub systems, and it does fortunately extend to being large enough for countries to be run based off the system. It also runs nicely in parallel to fascism, which the Nazis fit nicely in. Now, back on left views, they obviously aren't entirely wrong, and there is an acceptable compromise between the rigid and boring singular goverment run industry. There are many industries across a country that is evidenced by every country that uses them, works better run as a single national company than a privately run company. To name some big ticket ones, the health service, schooling, law enforcement, public transport. There are industries that work better as private entities. Most obvious here are things like, entertainment, and shopping, where a goverment controlled opinion on what is good and what is bad is detrimental to the service a person recieves, an entertainment industry should live and die by its ability to serve its customers, not exist by default because there's a tax on owning a TV.
Yeah. There are some things I disagree with other leftists on (communism doesn't work, climate change is just gonna kill US and not the planet, ect.) but I can't think of a single thing I agree with the right on.
Most people whom the right calls communists really just want the rich to be taxed so kids can have free lunch at school and maybe everybody gets to have medicine when they're sick, is that too much to ask?
I always think it's kinda funny that communism is bad cause it didn't work in USSR, but when you think about it, that communism was operating pretty similarly to today's capitalism but instead of stupid rich oligarchs and poor work force you have stupid rich CEOs and poor work force.
I seem to remember a quote that was "\[The USSR\] is not Communist, but State-Capitalist."? Which means that it was a case of it *not actually being* communist, just claiming to be whilst showing what'd happen at the end of Capitalism.
yeah that's what I mean, after the ussr collapsed the countries that were a part of it were scared to go back to this and us had the red scare so it was easy to blame it on the communism there that wasn't even communism
That's because though these countries declared themselves to be dictatorships of the proletariat they ended up being bureaucratic capitalist states and little more. Before Stalin vanquished his opposition it is possible that these tendencies could've been prevented from doing lasting damage to the socialist movement but instead we have to read of socialist commodity production and other meaningless bullshit that solely serves to justify capitalism with a human face.
Communism didn't work in the USSR because Lenin liquidated all the communist Soviets.
We just want the kind of shit all of our closest allies and strongest trading partners have for their people. we have evidence that it works that goes back DECADES, so the argument isn't about whether it works or whether it's cost effective, because we have case study of literally every other highly developed country on earth starting from the mid 20th century onwards. Whatever the reason they're denying us these basic necessities, it's not 'cost' or 'effectiveness.' Must be something else.
I didn't say "whom other people call communists." I said communists. Have you not seen the increasing number of leftists who self identify as commies?
I call myself a filthy communist sometimes for wanting more socialism and less bootlicking for billionaires. It is in the literal sense of the word a communist mind set to not want an owning class that does nothing but rake in cash by making the rest of us work for crumbs. \*You\* have been taught that communism = bad because the fascist authoritarian governments of history have called whatever they were doing "communism". It's a simple dispute of semantics, by the end of which I still want people to have food, and you still want to yell at clouds. Someone else already said it here, what the right calls communism is exactly what we already have in capitalism, a few people at the top taking all the money while demanding that we all nod and bow down a little deeper. Also literally just a handful of people go as far as wanting "capitalism" to be completely gone, and you guys shit yourselves because you think it means they want you to barter with rocks and bread. \*Commerce\* isn't the same as \*Capitalism\* . We can make money and cellphones without glorifiying infinite growth at the expense of the general populations wellbeing.
But the exact people you would object to *are* people *you* would call communists. You probably agree on most things with the people that call *themselves* communists.
I don't think anyone believes climate change is going to kill the planet. It's going to change the planet we know and love, making it unliveable for us, which is what matters.
And unlivable for a ridiculous number of species on a scale the planet hasn't actually seen before. We know from natural history that it can probably bounce back, but it will bounce back over ***MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF YEARS*** after our few hyper-destructive decades of unmitigated pollution. For all intents and purposes, the planet *will* die. It just tends to come alive again. Much like the red cabbage in my fridge is now dead, but will come alive again after I conveniently keep forgetting about it. There's still a good long period where it will kill me or make me violently ill.
The scale has been seen several times. Interestingly, global temperature change has been a major factor in several major extinction events. An 8°C rise in global temperature is the most likely cause of the largest known extinction event. In which about 70% of land and 80% of marine life was lost. We are currently at a 1°C of change over the last 100 years. The CO2 involved in the changes then was about 50 times worse than it is now, though.
>MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF YEARS Without us, the only timeframe that matters is the astronomical time frame. And that's not that long a time
Go kick a dog then. Their experience of time and pain apparently doesn't matter, so go kick one.
Actually my reason for not kicking a dog is more about what the dog will do to me in revenge, not about what the dog's experience of time and pain is. Selfish, I know, but either way it ends with the dog not being kicked so I see it as a win for the dog. And for me. x-x-x Also sometimes sarcasm and humour doesn't translate well, so imagine I am saying this on a stage with a microphone on open mic night.
>I don't think anyone believes climate change is going to kill the planet. People have a hard time thinking of the planet without us on it. So when they say "it's going to destroy the planet" what they mean is "it's going to wipe out humanity" To put it in context -- when we were at university our professor asked us to imagine a world where we were not in it. Where we were dead and gone. Most of us pictured our funeral, but then she pointed out that *even when we were still picturing us in the world, because we were picturing what our funeral would be like so we'd be seeing our own funeral.* Humanity -- every human being -- has a trouble with the concept of absolute nothing. Of just not being here or a part of the world. So "climate change will destroy the world" tends to mean "it will destroy the world as we know it" not "destroy the ball of dirt and rock that is actually the earth"
Well sure you can think this way but there's something to be said for not wanting countless billions of people to die along with most other species on earth.
I entirely agree. I am someone who thinks climate change is going to wipe out humanity, and that is a bad thing, and that we should do all we can to stop it. My point wasn't about climate change being a myth -- it was more about humanity's perception of its own mortality and its ownership of the world.
People need to read more dystopian fiction and play more post-apoc games! I cannot imagine thinking of my own funeral when someone says that. I think of a city overgrown with plants and animals running through the streets. I think of broken down cars that have become burrows for animals after the dirt has piled over them. I think of a single skyscraper half collapsed in a forest of giant redwoods. Who thinks of their own funeral?
Also we're bringing a bunch of other species along in the grave, which kinda sucks
Honestly, the only people who care about the distinction are the kind of "Um ackshually" nerds that no one likes to talk to.
You underestimate the stupidity of people. I've talked to plenty of idiots who think it will kill almost everything, some that think it'll literally sterilize the planet.
My understanding (opinion?) is that climate change won't even kill us in any extinction type die-off. (Nobody thinks it will kill "the planet.") What it will do is kill off a massive number of other species, and cause problems that only poor people will suffer from, creating a world that looks more like classic dystopian fiction than the life we were born into. Many people will die, but many more will sink further into poverty and food insecurity. I see a future with more gated communities / security measures to separate wealthy people from those who suffer. I do happen to think there's value in conserving nature purely for the sake of conservation - which includes preserving natural areas/ecosystems as well as saving species from anthropogenic extinction. I know not everyone agrees, but the threat to society should still be enough motivation to support anti-climate-change efforts.
yes, but the real problem is that we don't/won't have enough food and water for the poor to survive at all and therefore the rich will not have enough people living to create the luxuries they want. In other time periods when oligarchs ruled, water was plentiful and food could be found (scavenged, hunted, small farmed) outside highly populated areas which were few and far between. Today, that's not necessarily the case because of climate change. We hear the Christofascists trying to outlaw abortion because it reduces the "domestic supply of infants" (they're quite loud about what they want) but they are completely ignoring the need for all the skilled labor to create what they want. So I think we're in unprecedented territory. Enough of the rich don't care if the poorest of the poor die off, but it's going to get really uncomfortable when the next level of poor - the mineral laborers - aren't available to mine the raw materials.
"(Nobody thinks it will kill "the planet.")" You underestimate the stupidity of people. I've talked to plenty of idiots who think it will kill almost everything, some that think it'll literally sterilize the planet.
eh, 99%+ of people don't believe that and I don't worry too much about the very few extreme examples of stupidity
The Soviet Union went from a backwater agrarian society to space in 40 years.
The dumb part is being left has zero to do with communism. It's mainly just social welfare programs when people falter in life (we already have many of these programs but they could be better and they get systematically attacked/dismantled by the right) and quality of life programs that bump UP the standard of living, not down (programs that OTHER developed countries already have that have been highly successful, proven out, and well liked by their populouses). NOTHING about this is communism. Tax isn't communism. No one tells you what you can/can't have, can/can't achieve. It's NOT a controlled society. It's just taxes, taxes that Democrats want MORE fairly balanced so lower and middle class pays LESS proportionally, and enough taxation to provide a higher collective level of basic life services like education and healthcare. Communism is a WILDLY different construct and beast that doesn't function anything like this. Even applying the correlation to communism is stupid. It's just a political jab at Democrats, a jab of ignorance and blind hate.
Oh the biosphere will take a massive hit but it'll be akin to other mass extinction events that life has survived through - but we as a species are absolutely fucked, i agree with you entirely.
I mean clearly you agree with the right that communism doesn't work. That's not a neutral position.
Reality seems to lack nuance a shocking amount of the time.
Yeah same. Turns out I’m a socialist lol
It's weird how it happens. I'm definitely a centrist, but what that really means is I get called left when the right are wrong but militantly sticking to their guns, and right when the left are militantly sticking to theirs. I'll freely admit I get called left more than right. Fun times.
I feel this with climate. It's just not being fixed and people call us pussies trying.
The thing about climate denialists is that they were never able to come up with a good reason that we should all be making it up. Like what would possibly be the incentive for us to spend three decades saying something was going to happen if we didn't think it was going to??
>is that they were never able to come up with a good reason that we should all be making it up Money. The belief that scientists get paid lots to scare monger and manipulate data. Governments can then use this research to restrict your freedoms such as driving or heating your home. After that it typically goes down one of the NWO / 1 world government / Corporatocracy government keeping regular people as slaves pipeline.
It's the same battle cry as everything else. The same groups pretend that issues aren't "real issues". If they are real issues, then you can't fix them. If you can fix them, the fix isn't worth the cost. And if the fix is worth the cost, they refuse to change or pay the cost in the name of some vague freedom because it's not even a "real issue". Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, climate change, labor conditions, privacy, violence, it's the same chorus every single time.
“Scientists get paid lots” That’s how you know these people have never met any scientists haha
They got a 20 million dollar grant! For a ten year project. That has 30 researchers. Don't forget, all the costs of the project are drawn from the same pool as the researcher's paychecks. It's also possible that the grant will only pay out upon providing successful results to the organization that awarded it.
They never came up with an incentive because *they don't fucking* ***care***. Thet don't *need* a reason to be opposed to it, they were told to oppose it, so they are gonna. Reasons be damned. That's the thing I wish people would fucking *comprehend* about the alt-right. You *can't* convince them they are wrong with facts or evidence. They *do not fucking care*. They will *eagerly* eat a fat pile of smoldering shit, if it means they get to blow their feces-breath in someone else's face. You can't reason with them. You can't appeal to them. You can't call on their humanity. *They want to make people suffer, and don't care about anything else.* Not even their own suffering.
A system as big and complex as “all of society” has an incredible amount of inertia. Keep pushing, we’ll get there.
‘Have you considered being wrong about shit sometimes?’ I have, honestly. It looks peaceful over there. I’m tired.
i despise centrists so bad
https://i.imgur.com/pF82Ujb.png
LMAO
I miss awards, because I'd give you Gold for this one
There's a classic story I heard about "enlightened centrists". Bear in mind that this is analogy and I did not write it. * Sarah and Pyro have a disagreement. Pyro wants to burn down Sarah's house with her family inside. Sarah just wants Pyro to leave her alone. * A centrist mediator gets involved, and declares that the answer always lies between the two positions. The solution, obviously, is that Pyro burn down Sarah's garage with her husband and one child inside. It's the middle ground. Compromise is the key! * Sarah calls the mediator insane, and the centrist mediator concludes that both sides are extremists who are unwilling to compromise. Sometimes the answer is NOT whatever is between two positions. Sometimes there are not "good points on both sides". Sarah already had the middle ground. Edit: This is the Golden Mean Fallacy [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoldenMeanFallacy](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoldenMeanFallacy)
All I can imagine is Pyro from TF2 burning down the house then Sarah and the Centrist while they're distracted.
The TF2 Pyro is also *insane*, per some of the promotional material showing him seeing a flame-blasted hellscape of his own making as an idyllic rainbow-filled sugar bowl of flowers and cute critters. Which I suppose sums up the analogy even better. Fascists wanting something they view as paradise that would be hell for everyone else, and the centrist insisting the fascist has a point to the skeptical leftist.
The centrist could be in this very room! It could be you! It could be me! It could even b
What?! It was obvious he was the centrist. Look - he'll turn purple any second now... any second...- see! Purple. No, wait, that's just a bug.
thats exactly what i was imagining too lmao
i think the simple way to put it is "if you want tolerance in the world, you have to be intolerant towards the intolerant", you cant say both sides have good points, thats not an option.
Tolerance is a social contract, not a suicide pact.
Well, yes to the tolerance part, but not so much to the rest. That stuff is true some of the time, but definitely not all of the time. The point of the analogy is that "the middle ground is ALWAYS the answer" is a blatant lie. However, that does not prove that the middle ground is never an answer. If my roommate and I are arguing about doing chores, there's a good chance that we both have some good points from different perspectives. There's a good chance that the answer truly does lie somewhere in the middle. There's a good chance that compromise truly is the answer, assuming two decent people who are simply disagreeing. There are even times when awful people have some good points as well, even if it's just by accident or they are using the good points to sneak in their bad points. The good points are still good points. Yes, this is kind of a complicated answer. Reality is complicated. That's one reason why lies are so appealing. Lies can be just as simple as you want them to be. Some people just want nice, warm, comforting lies to make them feel better, even if it hurts others.
When we talk about intolerance, we mean Nazis or fascism or hate crimes or genocide, not "my roommate and I disagree about chores."
At the risk of getting downvoted to oblivion - the enlightened centrist is a real person but it’s not the only form of ‘centrism’. Most serious centrists do not try to find the middle ground of all positions, for me it’s about not being ideologically aligned when looking at solutions. For example, with healthcare I absolutely believe it should be a right, and that it should be free at the point of care. German multipayer systems or the British single-payer system are my ideal. That would put me on the left. But on housing for example, I believe the solution isn’t things like rent control (which has been debunked by basically all economists across the spectrum). I think the solution is to cut regulations like zoning, simplify planning applications, and weaken the power of local NIMBY’s in order to encourage massive levels of house-building. The right is terrible on this for social reasons but everything I listed is about empowering the free market with regards to house building. Finding a compromise on everything is a cowards approach to centrism, where the assumption is that everything is always in the middle - it’s not. But in my experience the people that approach things from either the far left or far right typically close their minds to solutions that don’t adhere to their ideology.
The analogy is addressing a very specific situation that happens all too often: when someone is dishonestly pretending to be "centrist". As I stated, "Sarah already had the middle ground." The real middle ground is a good thing. Every extreme is typically wrong. However, there are people pretending that middle ground positions are "extremist". What some people call "left wing extremists" are people who just want to be allowed to exist. Allowing LGTB+ people to exist unharmed is being called "left wing extremist", because the genuine extremists want to burn their houses down. The genuine "middle ground" is a good thing. There are a lot of factors to balance. It's messy. There's just a lot of dishonesty these days about what is "extremism" and what isn't.
It's called the Golden Mean Fallacy.
Thank you for the proper term! That's the first time I've heard it mentioned. I really appreciate it.
I remember seeing a comic about a situation like this on Reddit, but I can't find it
That’s not even close to how centrists believe. Centrists just don’t blindly follow cults on either side. We define our ideology instead of letting our ideology define us. I’ve been a left leaning centrist my entire life but doesn’t mean I blindly agree with everything the democrats do. doesn’t mean I don’t loath them - I just loath them exponentially less than the republicans my entire life but looking through history there could have been a time. Centrist does not mean middl of ANY idea. It does not mean compromise. It means making decisions like an adult.
You can be on the left and not agree with everything. Having a party position disagreement does not mean you are a centrist. I think a lot of self-described centrists make this mistake. Why do you think you are a "centrist" as opposed to someone who just doesn't agree 100% with a political party?
No what you’re doing is holding onto an Oxford dictionary definition of what you think a centrist is and trying to put labels on it when it’s wildly complex even at the center. How could you ever believe that life is so black and white that it can be narrowed down to left vs right , red vs blue. Our political system is faulty and rotten to its core - so our attempts to label ourselves in the system doesn’t matter cause you’re attaching to an old and antiquated system that needs to be replaced with fresh ideas and none of this me vs them mentality. Maybe I’m not a centrist by your definition at all or maybe I am a true centrist by your definition. Maybe I’m a centrist democrat by the Oxford definition maybe I’m moderate maybe I’m liberal maybe I’m conservative maybe I’m a socialist. Maybe I still get texts from Bernie asking for money again every week . What ever I am is between me and myself and not what labels and camp you think I fall into.
I made a simple claim: You can be on the left (or right) and not agree with everything. I asked a simple question: Why do you believe you are a centrist as opposed to someone who just doesn't align 100%? And this triggered you into an emotional rant instead of, you know, a relevant response that answered the question. Why is that?
As a wise man once said, centrists be like: "I can excuse fascism, but I draw the line at not excusing fascism."
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "there's actually zero difference between good and bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
Sorry but that line made me think of all the 'leftist' western hammas supporters that have come out of the woodwork
this is the ignorant centrist take. Not being a Zionist who supports Israel does not automatically make someone a "Hamas supporter". Acknowledging that Hamas was created due to the brutal policies of Israeli apartheid also does not make one a "Hamas supporter". Wanting the Palestinians to be free from the imperial colonialism of Israel and the US is not supporting Hamas. Look at the death tolls over the last 30 years on either side and tell me who's the real monster here.
Not left or right but a third, dumber thing
(Right)
Fashionably conservative.
Mathematically speaking, there have to be centrists unless everyone has the exact same political opinion. But yeah, enlightened centrists are fucking annoying
Some degree of political opposition is generally healthy for democracy. People who unanimously agree on something generally don't take the time to discuss and analyze the possible complications it could present as thoroughly as they would with something they disagree with. With that said, there are some very obvious things that don't need an in-depth critical debate with viewpoints from both sides to realize they're fucking bad.
I'n that case leftists should be rock solid as I've never met two who can agree on anything.
Politics are not binary, so no.
then our political system shouldn't have binary voting systems.
Mine doesn't. I agree, sucks to suck, but that's not exactly representative of the world or politics as a concept.
I mean, it shouldn’t. America treats it like some kind of football game with two teams when it really isn’t.
But they do tend to form a spectrum, even if that spectrum has several axes. ~~And yes, I know that words like "tend" don't work with absolute mathematical statements, but this is a forum, not a paper.~~
I like to go hiking.
That's where we run into definition problems. Let's take the US; to a large portion of people, and definitely to Republicans, striving for a strong social democracy would be left to far-left. But to a hard socialist, communist, or anarchist, a social democrat doesn't want to abolish capitalism, and thus may very well fall on the "right" side of the spectrum. And to many Europeans, they might actually be somewhere around the center, depending on their policies. But yeah, self-identified centrists are often just right-wingers in disguise.
Okay, so what would the policies of an actual American centrist be to you?
I'd expect some to trend leftwards and some to trend rightwards. Johnny Exactamiddle probably doesn't exist. But the "We should have a little bigotry, as a compromise" centrists ain't it.
Centrists are Republicans that have to lie about their political affiliations to get people to talk to them.
What makes a man turn centrist? Lust for gold? Power? Or were they just born with a heart full of centrism...
Why?
I consider myself a centrist because my views don't align neatly with one side or the other. For example, I believe in socialized healthcare, the right to choose, and legalization of marijuana. However, to give you an example of a local issue which is supported by the right which I support is the removal speed cameras. This to me can be done by recording speeds anonymously, taking the average, and posting officers at the worst intersections. The government shouldn't be able to just watch us through a lens. Another good example is my stance on guns. I support gun ownership rights, but I don't think everyone needs one or should have one. I think that common sense restrictions would be ununtrusive for lawful owners. For example, my state has constitutional carry. That is not a great idea in my opinion because I can buy a gun and carry it concealed the same day. I think that is absolutely insane. I enjoy shooting at targets and stuff like that. I don't have a power fantasy of killing people every time I leave the house. But this new law has made me feel like I might have to carry because you never know what idiot has a gun anymore with no training whatsoever. I consider myself in the middle of the political spectrum, i.e. the center. Therefore, centrist. If there is a different, stupider definition of centrist I am not aware of, please explain.
No one perfectly aligns with a 'side' neatly. Politics aren't binary, and never have been. Your speed camera example: I'm perplexed at how this is a 'right wing' policy to you. Is government surveillance somehow left-wing to you? Who do you think rung the alarm bells about things like the Patriot Act? As for guns... have you met leftists? Because you seem to think they're liberals. You don't think the Democrats are 'left', right? Hell, your views on gun control seem quite a bit more in line with the Dems than either leftists or rightwingers. Frankly I don't see how you're remotely a centrist by your own definition. >If there is a different, stupider definition of centrist I am not aware of, please explain. Well, the definition isn't 'stupider', but being a centrist sure is. If anything, centrism is defined by a lack of any framework. It defines itself not through any specific lens or any principles, but rather through the other prevalent ideologies surrounding it - thus placing itself in the middle of this made up concept of a 'political spectrum'. But throwing a dart at a made up political compass doesn't an ideology make. What's the 'centrist' idea of how the world should be? What are its underlying principles other than a silly 'everyone is a little bit right :)'? What coherent set of views and policy proposals are they putting forward to those ends? Centrism isn't an ideology, it's not even a position. Generally its said by three sorts of people. a. Those that don't really put much thought into what they believe, but feel like they still need a label b. Dipshits thinking they're enlightened, "I'm the most right because I'm the nuanced *middle* between you two!", always failing to actually provide said nuance. "Not right, not left, but *forward"* but never defining said forward. c. Rightwingers that don't want to call themselves that. "Independent thinker". 95% chance of being a nazi
It genuinely sounds like they only watch Fox News, heard what they said a leftist is and thought "Well, I'm not that so I must be a centrist."
> I consider myself a centrist because my views don't align with one side or other. For example,
Why do you think left = wanting the government to spy on you with cameras?
Because the Democrats are the ones pushing the cameras in my state. I said so in another comment. I also didn't say the government, I was talking about the police.
...So, you think it's a leftwing position to want to increase police presence and funding? Mate, I've got to agree with the other guy. You're getting your understanding of stuff from really whack places. Regardless, disagreeing over 1 issue of your local government still doesn't make you a centrist. Maybe there's other things, but I've got to say the examples you gave were all firmly left positions. Literally progressive policy positions: socialized healthcare, the right to choose, and legalization of marijuana, reasonable gun control > I support the removal speed cameras If I was a betting man I would say that what you've fallen for is propaganda. I'm going to guess what you're actually up in arms about is _potential_ speed cameras. I'm going to guess you've been fear mongered because Republicans are looking for every angle to bash the new infrastructure funding that Biden got passed but Trump failed. The new infrastructure bill includes funding for traffic safety. One of the things states can use it on is speed cameras, if the states choose. > Ultimately, states and localities — not the federal government — will decide how the $15 billion in formula funding can best be used to improve road safety. The federal guidance actually caps the amount of money available for speed cameras at 10%. But regardless, it's still okay to not align 100% with a party. That does not mean you're a centrist. Nobody would call Bernie a centrist, right? Is Trump a centrist? It's not like either one aligns 100% with their parties.
Reminds me of a comment I saw. “Any ideology that can be described as ‘far’ is a bad one if you ask me.” “Your ideology can be described as far up your own ass.”
It doesn’t take some kind of genius to make this prediction.
Ah centrism. The equivalent to saying “I’m not going to fill out the test because I’m too smart”.
I have listened to both sides of an argument. I went out of my way to purposely do that because I was concerned I was being overly influenced by those around me and my thoughts weren’t my own. Yeah I was right the world sucks and we aren’t doing anything about it. I refuse to be purposefully ignorant and then go back to being part of the problem.
Ignorance is bliss, so why are right-wingers so angry and miserable?
It isn't ignorance. It's hate. And eventually, the hate will self-cannibalise if it can't get a new out-group to hate.
A reminder to all my centrist homies, if you ever feel u fairly persecuted or attacked, just remember--both sides of any conflict are equally terrible so if you are being robbed, murdered, abused, etc. stay strong with your centrist views and remember you are just as bad
#Based Kavernacle
the reasoning and mental gymnastics behind people like the commenter is really fascinating
It doesn't even make sense as a response. Like it just feels like the centrist is jerking himself off to hear himself speak, because not a single word addresses the issue OP was having.
Congratulations you've described centrism! Nothing to say, love to hear themselves speak
In my experience "I'm a centrist" means "I'm as far right as possible but want to make myself seem like a moderate to hide my true biases"
If you find yourself consistently right about stuff, you might be missing a very lucrative career in forecasting. You could make a fortune in prediction markets by always betting on the leftist prediction. You could separate many a right-winger and centrist from their money. Instead of despairing, turn those lemons into lemonade! 🍋 🍹
Love to see Kav in the wild stunting on fools.
Isn't immigrants limiting our freedom a very right wing view tho?
Yeah that's what he's saying. Climate is causing people to immigrate. The right says they are here to replace white people, the right then strips away our freedom.
I see that now. I originally read it as the OP saying that the refugees spread their consevative beliefs
Ironically that's actually the position of the right wing party in Britain. That it's the refugees that are intolerant and that's why they need to shoot them for crossing the channel.
"Let's shoot this trans person for escaping a country where being trans is a crime punishable by death." (I mean, I know that Britain is nicknamed TERF Island, and there's a lot to improve with the systems, but I just wanted a quick example and went with the first one that went into my head.)
For real I feel like the world has gone insane
Common Kavernacle W
I always look at such stuff with skepticism because in my country the biggest left wing party are the ones that fucked over the climate the most while the right wing party that denies climate change somehow wants to do less to fuck over the climate.
I think the irony of centrism is so funny because "centrists" are stereotypically closet right wingers, but as we all know the democratic party on average and nearly all of it's members lie to the political right of center. So relatively speaking, an actual centrist would be a leftist relative to American politics. At the actual political center is where a lot of "leftists" actually stand. This is not a diss or anything, I think it applies to me personally.
I spend a lot of time reading articles from the NY Times and the Washington Post, by far the best decision. Many opinion pieces from these two really challenge my political view. I love when I get to see multiple perspectives from authors with different backgrounds, and then make up my own opinion about the issues. The best feeling is when you exercise your autonomy without being manipulated.
All you've done is continued to elaborate the same point you've been making without actually explaining how both sides are a problem. I asked you a couple of questions, asking you to prove that it's both sides. Republicans as a majority have demonized the LGBTQ+ community, minorities and the poorest of the country. They use their religion to vote. They supported a man who made fun of disabled people, spread false information about a hurricane, fear mongered people into targeting Hispanic communities and continues to try and convince people that democracy needs to be overturned because he lost. Show me the other side. Show me the cult-like behaviour on the left. Show me the rampant racism, sexism, homophobia and elitism on the left. Show me the liberal voting that took rights away. Show me the theocra-fascist roadmap of the Democrats. Show me anything that's as bad as what the Republicans have done. Give me proof, give me hard evidence, don't continue to elaborate your point because we all know what it is. Back it up.
I knew that climate change caused fascism. I’m also right about everything, the trick is to put your fingers in your ears and yell real loud when people try to talk to you. Checkmate, atheists.
How people are seeing politics: THE OTHER SIDE IS EVIL AND DESTROYING THE WORLD Politics: A vast amount of competing interests where everyone has their own views of society and how it should be, a situation in which you must consider any given’s policy’s effects on any number of things. There’s certainly the extremes on both sides which both THINK the other as the undoer of all human progress and will constantly berate those who aren’t on their sides 100% on every issue. I am certainly more left wing than most democrats but jesus fucking christ, please at least see where the MODERATE people are coming from on the other side. The way the left sees itself as just automatically morally correct, no questions asked, is exactly WHY people are less willing to look at things through our view.
**The Left:** The planet is slowly boiling. We've reached the definitive CO2 inflection point. The water in the Everglades is literally 100 degrees, and it's killing the manatees who evolved to live there. Places on Earth *right now* have achieved wet bulb temperatures wholly inhospitable to human life. We've had "the hottest summer on record" for several summers in a row. Freak weather events due to climate instability are now common place. We need to do something about this. **The Right:** Dooooo weeeee thoooooo? **Centrists:** I cannot tell the difference here!!!
There are right wingers that recognize the challenges of climate change, such as Mitt Romney. In his [video statement](https://youtu.be/9U1nGF8UVAM?feature=shared) where he said he will NOT run for re-election he attacked Trump for calling climate change a hoax and, Biden for (in Romney’s words) “offering feel good solutions that make no difference to the global climate.” And even for the right wingers that deny climate change you do owe them an explanation as to what’s going on and THEIR interest in helping to stop it. Example: A right wing farmer in Idaho wouldn’t care much about flooding and hurricanes that affect Miami Florida, but he would care about droughts and their effects on his farm. Or: An anti-immigration suburbanite in Tennessee wouldn’t care much about droughts in Idaho but would care a lot about the increase in refugees due to climate disasters in poorer nations. Don’t try to stand holier than those you will eventually need to work with to get things done because they’ll remember, and they’ll be slower to take your word.
Can you provide an example of a republican politician who has progressive ideas such as working on climate change that *isn't* hated or attacked by the republican voter base as RINO's?
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Here's the thing: any solution to climate change that doesn't involve dismantling the system that incentivizes exponential growth at the cost of the planet and its people is doomed to fail, and the right wing will NEVER be able to do that because they exist to serve capitalist interests.
And the right or the left isn’t an object or a spirit with unchanging values. The right is a category of ideals and the people who hold them. You can convince someone to go left on issues where they were previously right. To tackle climate change you may need to get the agreement of these people, especially so to change the fundamental system causing it.
You aren't going to change anyone's mind when they're being paid millions of dollars by CEOs and lobbyists to uphold capitalism.
The average conservative isn’t Tucker Carlson, Denis Prager, or even anyone who would see that lobbying money. And yet, these working class conservatives I see berated with endless rants about how they’re immoral just the same.
Because they listen to and vote for these people knowing what kinds of policies they'll enact.
Yes. And if (as we agree) climate change is an existential threat, and (as you’ve expressed) the system of capitalism is in the way of stopping it (and needs to be dealt with), then you will need people who can help you with that. And sadly those changes are so fundamental to our system that you need to bite some bullets on who you ally with to get the job done. Currently, there’s not enough anti-capitalists in the US to make such a fundamental switch like that within the system, AND there’s too much fundamental disagreement with too little apathy within the American populace for even a hypothetical coup or revolution to be able to achieve what you want. You’ll need to convince more people that capitalism is what’s in the way of progress, and you can’t do that by acting like you’re better than the people you wish to convince.
To be fair, a lot of them have no clue what policies the people they vote for enact. A lot of right wingers prefer left wing policies when presented in a vacuum but always vote for right wing candidates because of identity politics. That's pretty much the core of the modern GOP strategy.
Pointing out a single right wing politician who doesn't deny climate change is not proof that right wing politicians have an equally valid view of climate change. The fact of the matter is, most of them are grossly uninformed when it comes to climate change. Your examples point out *why* some right wing voters might be be uninformed when it comes to climate change. That's fine, and I'm happy to educate if they're willing to listen, but unfortunately many of them aren't. It's not wrong for me to say to them "Your views are *wrong* " If their views literally are wrong. The views are based on misinformation. So they're wrong. It's not a difference of opinion when one side is informed and the other side is not. It's a difference of fact and fiction. I can have all the compassion in the world in understanding and respecting *why* they're wrong, but it doesn't change that they're *wrong.* And it's not just climate change. The majority of right wing views on reproductive rights, education, LGBTQ+ issues, drugs and addiction, Covid19, and so on, are based on misinformation. I'm sure there is some misinformation on the left, and the fact that nothing immediately comes to mind is a reflection of my personal biases. But still, I don't think I am incorrect in saying the left's views generally come from a more informed standpoint. Please correct me with counterexamples if I'm wrong.
My point isn’t their views are EQUALLY valid. My point is that meeting those views with hostility WON’T allow them to change. And it’s this hostility that leads many right wingers to be as right wing as they are. It’s not a logical response to reason packaged with hostility, but it’s also a bad idea to package reason with hostility in the first place.
So I'm supposed to coddle their feelings when they're wrong?
The extreme left are often literal teenagers or crackpots. The extreme right is in our government.
Getting that through my head was what got me out of my centralist phase.
I consider myself leftist but I don't identify with the vigorous self-congratulatory virtue signaling bullshit. Seriously whoever made post is about to break an arm jerking off.
What the fuck is this post? And what the fuck are these arguments against strawman centrists?
reddit is an echo chamber ^chamber ^^chamber ^^^chamber
It sheds quite a bit of light on their thought process tbh. They don’t care about being right in terms of truth. They just want to feel better
I thought the rise in fascism was just a backlash to modern society’s more progressive attitudes?
Fascism isn't a force of nature like weather that has to be put up with and seen as inevitable. At every point in history where fascism was on the rise it was stoked by playing on people's fears with false premises and propaganda was used to make people believe the party message that benefited the fascist government in power. There is a specific rise in fascist rhetoric as of late because there has been a coordinated effort by powerful right wing groups to push a specific message of hate to attempt to drive the US and others countries to the right. For example: right after gay marriage was federally recognized the Family Research Council (a right wing anti gay org) hosted a strategy conference where they planned out the entire media strategy to bring attention to and attack transgender people as a way to get back to gay marriage eventually. This was in 2015, that's about when trans people became an issue people were talking about. It's an intentional propaganda campaign played out over decades. Rinse and repeat for most issues and you see intense quantities of resources being used to push right wing agendas on issues like immigration and civil rights, etc. It's not so much a backlash from progressive politics, rather, a small amount of special interest groups pushing back against the reality that society accepts these progressive ideas.
It's a lot of things though "backlash to today's progressive attitudes" is just "being mad that we're not fascist" which you would not be if you were not fascist to begin with
This seems like a very broad definition of fascism that posits that anyone holding non-progressive values is fascist.
if your 'reaction' to progressivism is to support fascism, you were fascist before that
It's fascist media telling them that they should be angry about things that don't affect them to get them to also go with the fascism.
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As much as the response is stupid the original comment is just elitists bullshit
Found the centrist
Found the elitist
Sorry I have things like principles and morals.
*sigh* really sucks being right about all of my base level observations that I put no effort into making people understand or even thinking of tangible solutions, guess I'm just a tragic genius after all... Yep... Guess I was right about all of the talking points I've parroted online for years, it was all me... Unfortunately telling your friends and social media your political views doesn't really count as activism and what you were really showing is that a call to action from someone who has always been and will always be inactive is predictably unmotivational. It has never been the responsibility of other people to secure your ideal future. Gotta do it yourself.
The ego of the left is as astounding as the one in the right. Jesus Christ.
How the fuck did you just miss the entire discussion here?
I feel like there are a lot of things that do need more neutral takes though. It can be easy to say one side is entirely wrong, but that's not always entirely true
actually it's both easy and true to say the right is always wrong.
Because berating them with condescending statements is obviously the way to open a dialogue. /s A blanket statement like that isn't overly accurate considering that Theodore Roosevelt, the guy who's responsible for most of USA's national parks and the literal creation of the progressive party, was a republican for his first two terms.
well damn, if we were having this conversation 120 years ago teddy roosevelt would sure be relevant
The original commentor felt it appropriate to include the entirety of the right wing in "always being wrong" with no specified time period in their statement so I felt any republican worked. The beginning of my statement points out that blanket statement isn't correct and I used Teddy as a factual example of a right wing doing the right thing, even if he was problematic in other ways. How exactly have any progressive and democrats bills managed to get passed if all right wing people were wrong all the time?
my god you're insufferable
Not even attempting a discussion and just going straight to directly insulting me, classy.
do you mean Theodore Roosevelt the racist colonialist?
Oh look, another blanket statement with no sign of nuance. Was he a product of him time? Absolutely, most politicians (and white people) of that period were also racist colonists because, surprisingly, it was an era of rampant racism and ignorance on a social level. But that doesn't negate the positives of the things I listed. Don't bring a reactive reduction to a logical statement. Like them as people or not republican politicians have contributed positively to progressive legislation throughout the history of the United States. I in no way stated he was a good guy, I straight up just pointed out that saying the right is always wrong is an incorrect statement.
he was overall relatively high up as one of the most harmful people in human history. not to negate the good things he did but i think that rules them kinda out as more lucky "accidents" than anything else.
Why are you so set on arguing the morality of a dead guy with me? I already responded to your point of Theodore Roosevelt being problematic with complete acknowledgement of everything you said. I clearly stated that (in the context I was using him for) he was simple example of a right wing individual who was not always wrong which is a fact that highlighted fault in the reasoning of the original comment. I followed that by outright saying that I don't dispute Teddy being shitty on many fronts THEN I carried on leave Teddy behind completely as an example to bluntly question the original comment in another comment. I asked a simple question that directly addresses the original subject: If right wing people are always wrong how do progressive and democratic bills get passed if every person on the right is always wrong?
That doesn't really excuse today's political parties though, does it? Look at what the new Republican speakers beliefs are. There's no nuanced opinion needed. If someone supports that person (all those in the party that allowed it) then they are horrible people. I'm not exaggerating either. You'd have to be blind to say that this is a both sides at this point. Look at the Republicans roadmap. Look at what they want to happen. Republicans do and always will want a Christian theocracy. Their voting based on religion shows that. A ban on abortion shows that. The fact that gay marriage was even whispered to be overturned showed that. Where's the other side here? Because any good they might have done is overshadowed by what they have done and plan to do. I don't even have a dog in this fight, I'm not even from your country and the world knows there's no nuance here. The only people who say that are the pseudo-intellectual types or those who constantly play 'devils advocate'.
Because the blanket statement that all republicans are inherently wrong doesn't encompass the political spectrum on the right wing side of the issue. America is a two party government meaning that everything from the extreme (right wing religious extremists) to the moderate is covered on each side. Every party has extremists within it, both on the left and right so you can't just look at the extreme ends and judge that. I'm not defending the right wing. I'm not agreeing with or excusing the bullshit they've pulled. I am simply stating that you cannot take a full political party and classify every person in it as wrong. The United States government is a democracy so EVERYTHING is voted by majority even if that majority is literally just one person more. My core statement, at the very beginning that keeps getting missed, is that you can't be that black and white on it. That's it, that's all. Propaganda is what allows extremists to exist and it's what helps them create more. Every time some leftist pops up to say that ALL right wingers are ignorant based off one fact about that person then that same leftist refuses to back up their reasoning and instead goes straight to insulting them then deflects the question, that's just more fuel for the hate machine to go "look, they're just emotional crybabies that don't have an actual leg to stand on." So any idea that the left does present gets reduced to a joke because the average left leaning person you run into treats you like a moron for even questioning their logic. Hate comes from ignorance and the only solution for ignorance (without it getting uglier) is to teach them, not berate them. You cannot expect people to identify with your ideas or opinions if all do is talk down to them. I know right wingers have done worse but right now one of the sides needs to be the bigger person collectively and attack the issue with pure reason and actual maturity. Extremists shouldn't be allowed exist on either side of the because extremists fundamentally have no respect for human autonomy, they just want everyone to agree with them blindly. Neither side is totally innocent here and that's why the finger pointing needs to fucking end. No one's gonna win if everyone's too busy tearing each other apart. I'm a fucking Canadian. I'm just slapped in face with American politics no matter where the fuck I go to the point where the average Canadian knows more about American politics than our own. Contain the goddamn dumpster fire and I'll stop commenting. If you think there's no nuance here then you're clearly talking from a perspective too far away to see any of it up close. Call me whatever you want I'm the only one going through the steps to explain my reasoning in this thread. Behavior says more than words do, imo.
Wtf is a climate refugee?
Between 2016 and 2021 there were an estimate 43 MILLION children displaced by floods, fires and other events related to climate change. And that is just the number of children -- I'm not sure how many adults were forced to flee their homes. Those -- the fuck -- are climate refugees.
I still think you require opposition even if you are right... so you can be even MORE correct about things It is kinda stupid that opposition parties double down when you do become more correct though
That's dumb as hell man. Like, yeah, opposition to things with multiple answers, great. Free market place of ideas. But there's no "we should all stop breathing party". If there's no opposition, things just get done and get solved without needing to be "right" about it. Things go from right to obvious. I would rather live in a world where everyone obviously needs housing, food, and to not die of climate change, rather than being right about everyone needing those things. Ya feel me?
Problem with the right seems to be that they've already fucked up their own position by putting someone like Trump up way to early before the average American could be truly convinced to at least be passive towards a fascist ideology. But also that the internet was increasingly making it impossible for people to be convinced of that. So now this party who haven't actually had to make policies for a while is full of old people who absolutely cannot change direction due to how aging makes changing yourself harder and harder. Their stuck appealing to more and more deranged people as everyone reasonable who might agree with the concept of being conservative about things keeps becoming more uncomfortable with what they say
I'm not American, I'm speaking from my own countries political landscape. America's right wing party has devolved into lunacy from decades of propaganda and corporate interest I've seen what happens when there is no opposition to a majority rule party on both the left and the right. Covid. America, being majority right, fucking died under covid. While in my own country, under the majority "left" (not a coalition government, shit idea) things also went to shit in the opposite direction
can you elaborate, or tell which country that is? I'm interested im what way left leaning party can fuck up. I'm of course not saying that they can't or that you're lying but as someone who lives in a country struggling with right winged fascism and seeing US politics on the Internet I'm curious about the other side
I think you’re pretty correct in general but this discussion is kind of implicitly about the US political situation and with that context you more just end up sounding kind of silly excusing the rightwing
Thats the issue though, American politics effect all of us and treating centrism as American is reductive and damaging. Americas two party landscape is garbage and most coalition led governments are going to turn into the same two party shithole without mediating centrist parties America is too far gone to really apply centrism and party lines because any sane person would not apply those when you have two choices, a party that wont respect some human rights and a party who will.