this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Meh, though the meme is true, most Americans would say liberals are EVERYONE left of center, and conservatives are EVERYONE right of center.
Yeah, but that ‘center’ is a relative term and people move ‘center’ to fit their opinion. Every American I know thinks they are close to center, but I know people that are far left and far right, as well as people that lean left and right from a mostly central position.
No one wants to consider themselves radicalized, but there are a lot of people out there that are.
Most of American politics is right wing. Democrats lean right and Republicans run right. You could change the slant of your statement with a left-bias, instead of the right, by saying everyone left of center is progressive and everyone right of center is regressive.
Correct, I invoked an unnamed speaker in my statement.
Rephrased: each asked American would describe liberal or conservative as capturing the entire spectrum, (left or right respectively) of what they consider center.
All I mean is that the terms are most commonly used (in America) to capture damn near half of the spectrum.
Speak for yourself buddy, proud owner of the "radical leftist" label here.
What most Americans think of as 'center' is way fucking right compared to most of the world.
Here Bernie Sanders is a radically dangerous communist.
In other parts of the world he is just considered a bit progressive.
Bernie is barely left of center on the world stage
The center is now also conservative, unfortunately.
Doesn't matter to my explanation
It does, really, if you understand what an Overton Window is...
They only say that because they've been trained to by conservative media. Just because education is bad doesn't mean reality is different.
No, it's a matter of colloquial semantics.
Yep, many people complaining about semantics here don’t realize that when the US calls something “the left” they aren’t referring to “leftism”, they are referring to a metaphorical graduated chart where democrats are on the left hand and republicans are on the right.
“The left” on this chart is anyone leaning towards the Democratic Party, where “the right” is anyone leaning towards the Republican Party.
It’s frustrating that we let this become a dividing topic, because it is pedantic at best.
And what's annoying is conservatives certainly bicker, but are generally very unified.
True leftists seem so hellbent on distancing themselves from "liberals". All they are doing is sowing division, in what conservatives consider a binary landscape.
Close; true leftists are hellbent on disillusioning liberals of the notion that they're contributing anything by simply voting every 4 years for the democrat du jour.
The political goals of leftists involve a lot more than simply defeating republican opponents, but that doesn't seem to matter to the majority of casual democrats. What's more; leftists have an understanding that reactionary political movements don't simply go away when you vote them out; they are created by real material conditions that need to be addressed, else they will return the next cycle having gained more momentum.
Liberals are either comatose leftists who are dragging progress to a halt, or reactionaries in denial who would rather a reactionary movement take over than see the hierarchical structure of their country change, even marginally.
Lol this is it
If there were no distance between us then you wouldn't need to move to close the gap.
And there aren't differences between factions of the conservative end of the spectrum?
This is my exact point: the whole left-scented side of the spectrum eats their own. The right doesn't.
........
Yea, sure, the right certainly does not do any infighting. They are a unified monolith with no divisions.
Edit: liberals and leftsts are allies in the same way the Soviets were aligned with West against the Nazis. As soon as the fascists were defeated the West turned on the Soviets to wipe them out. This 'but we're friends' attitude is just willfully blind to the reality that liberals are hostile to leftists, just not while they actively need them to help resist fascists.
At the ballot box? Yeah.
I clearly, from the start, indicated that they have differences
How do you know leftists aren't voting for the democrats? and how do you know never-trumpers are voting for Trump?
This speculative fiction really just seems like a convenient way to blame leftists for the democrats own lack of approval.
Maybe the votes democrats are loosing are normal people who think politicians have nothing to offer them, and the leftists are trying to get Democrats to do something to help those voters and excite them.
We're distancing ourselves from libs because we don't want the same things for the most part. Besides getting trump out of the picture we're rather different.
Right, and conservatives want lots of different things, yet they generally act in a unified way when it comes down to voting day.
I always vote democrat
I wish you libs would do more than just vote a couple times a year.
Exactly the type of division I'm referring to, thanks
Why don't you take my advice?
Because you're assuming in bad faith, unaware of what actions I take in life outside of voting day.
You displayed behavior aligning with my statement ( pushing libs away, creating blue division)
I've never provided evidence of your statement (only doing anything on voting day)
You assume I never vote
Never said that.
Then what's the problem if I vote the way you like?
Never said it was.
What's the problem then? You want me to not criticize liberals who have moderate to right wing beliefs?
Do whatever you want. I wasn't asking you to do anything. I was making an observation between the different but unified conservatives, vs the different but divided liberals in the context of the labels as described here.
And boy, the replies delivered
Well, we're not sycophants who all believe the same things. Still not sure what you're criticizing since we do indeed vote the same. I'm not gonna just shut up about regressive positions amongst those who share other, not regressive positions with me for the sake of unity. We're not unified as tightly as the fascists because we actually have much more fully fleshed out ideologies unlike them.
If you both let it, it's assumptions all the way down. If you look closely, you'll even spot the communication problem in microcosm.
People will casually remark "that's just they way they're using the word, no point in arguing" and then never stop to ask why and to what end.
The reason US politics operates along that dimension is explicitly because of the way their electoral politics work. It's not simply a matter of it being the common usage, it's also a core part of what capital L leftists are critiquing when they say 'liberals are not left wing'. Democrats are dealing in exactly the ideological framework that is the target of leftist opposition, it isn't sufficient to lump everyone on the democratic side into a single category.
Corporate media and cable news in general