It's not sadism. You just have to realize that any time there's progress, someone was there earnestly fighting against it. Women voting was going to ruin civilization. Civil rights would end the republic. Gay marriage would destroy the fabric of society.
The result is a lot of people finding themselves on the wrong side of history, desperately seeking vindication. "Woke" to them, is just gloating. Rubbing their faces in the fact that society has left them behind.
That's what they see in Trump. What they want him to be. The vindicator. They want for him to deliver their dreams of having been right all along.
They NEVER realize it! They didn't realize it with Nixon, they did not realize it with Reagan, they did not realize it with Bush and Little Bush. Cheney and Gingritch and Rove all knew they could easily dupe conservative voters because conservative voters WANTED to be duped.
Actually the "both sides" is a propaganda element that is spread with the far-right talking points, it is CRUCIAL for the fascist propaganda that it is heavily implied that what one side is doing the other side is also doing. This is necessary to be able to say "we want to slaughter the others before they slaughter us, cause they will totally do it, if we dont do it before them". Like it is a real essential step for the fascism to be able to take over power. Do NOT underestimate that.
The 2016 exit poles made it very clear. Hillary Clinton was going to Win!
Many people simply lied. They didn't want to admit they voted for Donald Trump. But they did.
Many, many people know what he is, and desperately want a truly incompetent, wannabe Dictator as our Nations Leader.
For reasons I simply cannot comprehend.
Some of them have lost touch with humanity beyond "their group". They live a controlling, vindictive, hate-filled, fear-based life.
*Others, including the "both sides" people, could just be [Russia or China on the other end](https://www.cfr.org/blog/election-2024-chinas-efforts-interfere-us-presidential-election).
The scary part is that they hate the left and Democrats and millennials and etc, not because of what these groups do or want to do, but because of the lies they've been told about them.
This is what makes it similar to Nazi Germany.
I've met many "radical conservatives" and they didn't hate me. Or threaten me. Or try and harm me.
It's literal right wing media feeding them shit. Liberals are an unseen, evil, fucking gangster mafia world order.
Guess what? We aren't. We want affordable Healthcare. And a livable minimum wage. Safe schools. Etc.
It's the media getting them fucking riled up on lies. It's shitttttr
I am slowly reaching the conclusion that the “both sides” people don’t believe in equality. Rather, they have a secret longing for a strong man to create a walled garden that, of course, they can live in but others can’t - the others being the poor, different, sick, foreign, criminal, this or that. When they face a long line at the DMV for example, they look around at the waiting room and think, this would be better if most of these people weren’t here at all. So despite their better instincts, they vote for the guy that’s promising to clear it out.
"Both sides" people tend to be centrists.
And people like to ignore that a centrist is NOT between two political positions. A centrist is anyone comfortable with the status quo and desperately wants everyone else to shut up and quit rocking the boat.
That's really the issue.
> They've lost touch with humanity beyond "their group". They live a controlling, vindictive, hate-filled, fear-based life.
So many words just to say they are libertarians.
The exit polls don’t matter all that much with the EC though. Millions more did vote for her, but because of the EC she didn’t win. Defenders will ramble on about the “tyranny of the majority” as if the tyranny of the minority is somehow better.
I'm Canadian. Here, we elect our Members of Parliament at election time, based on who's running in our district (or "riding") and their affiliation. The party with the most seats won has its leader as Prime Minister. Americans, you now understand the Canadian system better than most people will ever understand the US system. I defy anyone to explain why the Electoral College is beneficial to democracy and essential to fair elections.
The electoral college made sense to the 15 control freaks that were in charge of the 500 people who lived in the country back then. Now it just exists to make everything enormously worse than it would be without it.
I would have to guess that it came about because, in the 18th century, figuring out who won the popular vote nationwide would be damn near impossible, given the state of travel and communication.
The primary driver is deep, deep misogyny. There are millions of Americans who could never pull the lever for a woman as president - no matter how evil and corrupt the opponent is.
Misogyny was a huge factor, no doubt, but the Hillary 2016 campaign was a perfect storm of failure.
It was run by committee, which, ouch.
They spent more money trying to flip Texas than they did in the entire midwest plus PA combined.
She didn't even visit the midwest.
She did everything she could to alienate and antagonize the left of her own party and independents at the same time. Biden was much better at not saying bad things about anyone and building coalitions.
Cashing in on all those Wall Street speaking engagements was perfectly legal, but politically stupid.
"I'm with her' on sign with a red arrow pointing rightward? Who designed that iconography?
>Cashing in on all those Wall Street speaking engagements was perfectly legal, but politically stupid.
Especially since Occupy Wall Street as a nationwide movement had basically just happened. Millenials were just getting politically active and as a generation got dumped into a great recession where Wall Street got bail outs and home owners got fucked.
The highest 18-25 voter turn out of all time was in 2008, when 24% turned out to vote Obama. That dropped to half that level in 2016. 2020 had the 2nd highest with Gen Z coming out to vote for the first time and 23% of 18-25 year olds came out.
Hillary fucked herself and fucked everyone by thinking she had it in the bag and just doing high dollar donor dinners.
>The primary driver is deep, deep misogyny
There's a ton of misogyny, but the primary driver was a terrible campaign.
As one example: Michigan. During the primary, the Clinton campaign thought they'd win by 15. They lost by 15.
A competent campaign would say something like "holy shit, we've got a problem in MI" when that happened.
Or when organizers on the ground in MI reported support wasn't great and they needed help.
Heck, blowing it by 30 probably means you should stop treating your polling as accurate for the general election.
The Clinton campaign did none of those. Instead, the only public reaction was to complain that Sanders hadn't dropped out yet. Clinton never traveled to the state during the general election.
When grassroots tried to organize their own door knocking in MI to drive up support, the Clinton campaign told them to phone bank California instead, to run up the popular vote margin.
Clinton lost MI by 10,704 votes, which is 0.23%. It is likely that any effort in MI by the Clinton campaign would have overcome 0.23% because turnout was historically low.
Also, the Clinton campaign had been claiming her win was inevitable. A candidate people aren't enthusiastic about + the belief that she's going to win no matter what = they suppressed their own voters.
That's not true. The exit polls were pretty clearly down the middle of you go look at them. And even if they weren't, exit polls are just a snapshot not the true tally. Discrepancies in polling leading up to the actual election was more due to the fact that trumpers tend to distrust pollster-type people more than non-trumpers and therefore refused to answer more. Source: I work adjacent to the polling industry and have this info in my face all day.
It's single issue voters, those who consider politics white noise and don't pay close attention. All the complaints and explanations won't make them care.
“Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king!”
> Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king
[The Democracy, the.](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/poohadventures/images/7/73/SideshowBob2a.gif/revision/latest?cb=20141117020118)
I've caught a ton of right-wingers right in this sub pandering the "Genocide joe" crap. A couple of them have admitted that they don't even live in the US.
Yesterday, it was 5 of them.
I'm an immigrant who hasn't become a citizen yet, but I aalways help my SO figure out the best candidates & what to pock in ballot measures during elections.
We're both extremely Left-Leaning. We've both grown significantly more Progressive, Anti-Capitalist & somewhat Anarchist leaning ideologically over the years.
We have our ideals, our visions of how much better the world could be, but we're also smart enough to understand that we have to be realists in this world.
We don't really like Joe Biden for many reasons, & would prefer a more progressive candidate, but she'll be voting for him anyway because voting for anyone else, even a seemingly nice Progressive 3rd Party Candidate coming out of Left Field, is voting for Donald Trump.
We don't like Joe Biden, but we absolutely hate that Orange sh.t-filled Used Diaper.
We pick the most progressive candidates that we can find during primaries, knowing full well that they often have few chances to actually win, but maybe it will get the mainline DNC Clowns to realign & reposition themselves a bit if Progressives steadily keep gaining Steam.
During the General election, we pick whomever is most likely to win against the Republican Candidates. If there are no Republicans, Libertarians or other weirdo Conservative 3rd party running, or if they are polling so low that they could win even if the votes are split amongst other potential candidatss, then, & only then, we pick to our hearts content.
We don't like it that it's like this. We don't like this system of having to pick between a Douchebag or a Turd-Sandwich. But it's the system we have & we have to make the best, smartest decision we can, knowing & understanding the dynamics of this system.
Don't like what Joe Vixen is doing for/with Israel against Palestine?
You should still vote for him, & for Democrats down the Ticket. Because any vote for any other candidate, is a vote for Donald Trump & the Republicans.
& if you think that what's going on is bad right now, wait until Cheeto Benito gets his hands on it, with or without Congressional &/or Senatorial Support.
It's a vote for more of the same infuriating BS, or for something significantly worse. It's bad rright now, but it can always become even worse.
Or sadly it’s disassociated avoidant people pleasers. I cannot fathom how it’s possible to bury one’s head so deep in the sand literally all day every day to block out everything so they don’t even passively absorb literally anything… Have one family member that has intense trauma & rejection sensitivity (tragically you name it) & can source their politics aversion to a single evening in tweenhood where they overheard through the wall a presidential debate while they were trying to sleep & it scared and scarred them. Any non sunshine feelings expressed are read as conflict and danger to some folks. No excuse, work it out in therapy. Sorry for the rant but wanted to share a maybe unknown to some folks perspective. An especially disturbing part is this same person is gay & for a decade after their parent died voted republican to honor them. Until I learned about it ofc. Just mind boggling…
> so I'll invent a false equivalence between the two parties so that I can feel less guilty about voting for the objectively worse one
I JUST ENCOUNTERED THAT YESTERDAY with an online friend or two.
"Sure, trump is openly quoting Hitler, saying he'll be a dictator, and calling for a "unified American Reich", but Biden hasn't solved the 200 year old conflict in the middle east over the last 6 months, so they're basically the same"
Or they’re just too privileged to care
Met a guy the other day while doing voter reg, young white male, presumably straight. He said he doesn’t vote or pay attention to anything political for his mental health and not to rock the boat with his family.
I told him that’s fine, but in my head, all I could think was, must be nice not to care about anyone else but yourself. Like I’m in a purple state but with all levels of govt except Governor red, and that’s on the line this fall. All sorts of batshit crazy legislation being pushed through, straight up oppression on all sorts of levels, and this guy can’t be bothered to at least educate himself.
The system is working as intended. Why are you surprised at all? Have you not been paying attention? The State doesn't want an informed populace, otherwise, why would education cost so much? You're expecting too much from the average American, considering all they have against them to actually having an informed opinion on the subject. Propaganda is the worst it has been and you're expecting an under educated populace to be reasonable? Really look at where we are and how we got here, and maybe you'll start to have some gratitude for what you know and some empathy for those who weren't given the tools to come to your conclusions. Be the change you want to see, not the reflection of what you hate.
Center-left is where all the sane people end up. Tax the results of capitalism to fund schools and opportunities for the poor/middle class and you get a healthy society. At the same time get rid of laws and systems that are unfair towards some groups and not others; they're wrong on a moral level and lead to conflict that hurts everyone.
Reality is that the far-left can't handle making all the compromises necessary to make the above happen. They'd rather get lost in a communist fantasy instead of deal with all those pesky details that come with managing huge economies.
>Center-left is where all the sane people end up.
So, like every elected Democrat ever.
One of the many problems with both siders is the false equivalency. There are zero elected Democrats "lost in a communist fantasy. Zero. Compare with the far right nightmare Republicans who literally want to destroy democracy and oppress anyone that makes them feel uncomfortable.
My Boomer aged Dad tells EVERYBODY that he's a Libertarian, but he literally defends Trump like his life depends on it, and talks shit about any and all classes of people without hesitation. He's probably the biggest Republican I know, but when he brings it up in front of my homies, they always say "what happened, he used to be the cool dad on the block" and he hates feeling like a washed up, angry old man. Even though that's basically what he's become.
Neither the left or right is objectively worse, one because “left” and “right” aren’t real things and constantly changing, but also because if you take one issue for which they oppose, e.g. economic policy, we have no idea of which is “better” because there are too many variables. In some contexts more socialism might be better, in others not.
Id you are following a narrative “that team bad, my team good”, then you are just in an echo chamber and don’t have any grounded beliefs.
I think for you specifically who thinks “people on the right are selfish” (regarding their economic), you do not understand their point of view which is, we can all have better stuff if the government interferes less. There is no objective answer to if this is write or wrong, but America is the most capitalist country and is simultaneously the wealthiest country in the world, so it can’t be 100% false. Meanwhile it is clear capitalism has some issues.
My favorite is when they say “I know Republicans are worse in every way but Democrats can’t solve a decades old issue in another part of the world so I’m just not going to vote and let Republicans win”
>My favorite is when they say “I know Republicans are worse in every way but Democrats can’t solve a decades old issue in another part of the world so I’m just not going to vote and let Republicans win”
And they say shit like, "I can't in good conscience vote for Biden."
That's not "good conscience", you fools; it's single-issue bullshit. The thing that drove the Republican party insane.
The "both sides" thing is nonsense, but being human, there are quite a few people on the left that engage in the self-destructive behaviors we mock right-wingers for.
It's maddening.
Eh, while it is an emotional response, at least it's empathetic instead of hateful and fearful. It's still not a good idea to vote based on emotion though.
"the democrats failed to enshrine something into law that was supposedly decided by the courts and is supposed to be protected by precendent, and the republicans took that away completely so I'm voting for the republicans because it's the democrats fault!"
🤦♂️
And half the time democrats can’t solve issues is bc republicans block anything and everything democrats try and do. Doesn’t matter. Right wingers are all about obstruction.
Democrats: We're going to expand healthcare, protect the environment, create jobs, and protect national security!
Republicans: And *we're* going to do everything we can to stop you!
Twitter: I literally will not tell you two apart.
> Twitter: I literally will not tell you two apart [with respect to the fringe issue I have done little research on, but feel very strongly about, and have built an online 'following' around].
To me, the secret is: always remember the narcissism. Then it all makes sense.
That's sort of what I was getting at.
It's frustrating when someone in the center says the left and the right are the same, it's equally frustrating when someone on the far left or the far right says the Democrats and the Republicans are the same.
The far left cares about getting people's basic needs met, but they aren't the only ones. The Democratic party is a coalition, we've got Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders rubbing elbows in the same caucus and we needed both of them to pass $35 insulin. Not every member of the Democratic party is far left, but the Democratic party is the only party making progress on getting people's needs met.
It's not *just* the far left who cares about these issues, and it's not *just* centrists who can't see the differences.
Theres plenty of people who do not believe its the role of the government to make sure peoples needs are met.
These people live in a nice little secure bubble where they do have to see, talk to, or work with people who are different from them.
They prefer their fantasy world.
Yeah, the twitter has both extremes. Actual political parties - not so much. In this the left is much better as even the most leftist politicians aren't really extreme (I don't know, AOC?).
Meanwhile the whole republican party is becoming Trump party.
Californian here we have democrats on every branch and yeah we do set better environmental standards better, but our living wage jobs are lacking, affordable housing is lacking and a lot of insurance companies are leaving the state.
Better than a red state, but just having democrats in charge doesn't mean that things are just peachy.
Far left is "we'll arm ourselves and overthrow the capitalist system". Che Guevara was far left. Bernie Sanders isn't. Bernie Sanders is barely equal to liberal European politicians. In fact, I always thought the closest one I could name to him was Angela Merkel and she's a conservative in her country.
Europeans aren't nearly as far left as US far-leftists like to think. [Not even the Scandinavian countries that Sanders likes to hold up as successful socialism (they're not - socialist)](https://www.yahoo.com/news/democratic-socialist-bernie-sanders-too-101300187.html). What they are is firm Social Democrats.
Isn't the entire argument just one criticism about how Sanders rallies were a mix of too young people and too many actual socialists and the rest of the commentary is just saying, "he's using the word socialism but that's not socialism, that's social democracy"?
Because he can't actually say that. Same as I can go on stage and say fuck liberals, too far right for my taste. Nobody here knows what these words mean anymore because of media propaganda. Some people really do think liberal/socialist is the same thing. You use the parlance of the zeitgeist, same as I call a far right winger a conservative because that's just what you say they are here, it's interchangeable. I didn't change the lexicon, don't blame me, that's just the words you sometimes use to get your point across
As someone who has family that was killed during the October Revolution, I can assure you that isn’t “far left.”
Far left is much, *much*, further left.
It's funny people act like there's even a left wing party in the US.
The Democrats are a moderate conservative party.
I can't even remember who the liberal president was. Biden, Obama, Clinton were all varying degrees of moderate conservatives, with Obama arguably being the most right leaning.
Tbf, they aren’t *really* “moderate conservatives. They just adopted some fairly conservative positions because they needed broader support in order to win elections and make progress on their more liberal policies. As LBJ once said, “you can’t wield power if you don’t have it.” Politics is the art of compromise, after all.
The hilarity of the far left anarchist who've joined MAGA! They're aligned, even if they don't realize it.
Anarchists want to destroy the system, and so does Trump! They just disagree on what happens after. Which is the fun part most left wing anarchists don't understand.
It's very dependent on the wording of the poll.
https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/poll-finding/data-note-modestly-strong-but-malleable-support-for-single-payer-health-care/
Lemme preface this by saying: I hope there's never another Republican president for as long as I live.
But she's either ignorant, willfully or otherwise, or an idiot who's saying this with malice. The far right is an awful cesspool, but the far left has turned into racing them to the bottom. I've seen anti-white, anti-American sentiment from the figureheads on the far left. They don't want to vote for Joe Biden because of his policy in the Middle East, despite them not knowing the history of it... at the risk of Trump. It's insanity.
I'm right on the verge of far left on most of my political ideaologies, but the shit that they say doesn't align with what this chick is saying. Both extremes are just that, and destructive in their own way.
Some people in here are ignoring the forest for the trees.
I wish more people were like you. We would have a better country. You come in and say something with absolute common sense and I'm surprised there isn't a Redditor calling you a shitty centrist or a fake.
I have no idea if we would get along or you would respect me. But damn I'm pretty sure I would respect you regardless. Well said.
I never understood how anyone in the U.S. with a working memory could be "swing voters" either. Every time the Republicans get control of the government they screw America over. Every. Single. Time. What reason is there ever to vote for them again?
You’d be amazed how uninformed some people are. I remember working retail and this guy in his late 20s/early 30s who I worked with genuinely didn’t know who to vote for.
“I liked Obama so Biden’s gotta be similar, but Trump did fix the economy and everything’s been better under him”
I said “What? The economy did way worse under him.”
And he said “True true.”
A lot of people don’t follow politics or think critically on it. They just latch onto the last thing they hear.
> “I liked Obama so Biden’s gotta be similar, but Trump did fix the economy and everything’s been better under him”
>
> I said “What? The economy did way worse under him.”
>
> And he said “True true.”
Wow, ChatGPT really does emulate the average human.
How do you explain to someone in their 20s that we (and our politicians) are being exploited and manipulated by telecoms, hospitals and pharma, insurance, oil & gas industry, tech giants? How do we fix our broken system? Get money out of politics and vote in good decision makers who work for the people. How does that happen?
You explain that “perfect” is the enemy of “better than yesterday”
Due to the way of voting system works, either things get better or they get worse. Then show them the voting record of the parties on things they care about.
Hillary Clinton was going to require that any SCOTUS appointments were against Citizens United. Trump nominated appointees that were against Roe v. Wade.
One would take lots of money out of politics, the other removed women's rights.
On paper, its not that hard to do. But we're in America, where most of those explanations can be waived away with "but that's communism". We have to somehow convince people that nearly every big corporation is actively looking to make your life worse because it makes them more money, without making them think that we're implying something negative about capitalism.
i.e. We need to maintain their cognitive dissonance to gain their support. Its infuriating.
>we're in America, where most of those explanations can be waived away with "but that's communism
step one would be to deprogram from all the capitalist propaganda we've been fed our whole lives. and learn actual history, not the trash they put in our high school history textbooks
Slowly.
Politics is like riding the bus. It will not take you to your destination. So you pick the one that will get you the closest to your destination.
There is no vote on any ballot in 2024 that will get money out of politics during the next two years. But there are votes that would get us closer.
One simple reason. [Hurting people.](https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/msna1181316)
Any Republican voter who claims otherwise is either being dishonest with you/themselves, or they don’t pay attention to what republicans actually do.
Talking to some it seems like they believe in a social hierarchy system. They see themselves as higher on the totem pole than immigrants, minorities, and poor people but they know their place is not above like millionaires and billionaires. That’s why they lick the boot every time. They don’t want to be placed any lower.
There’s truth to that. This is a fairly quick read from which I learned that “authoritarianism” isn’t just an ideology or tactic, but a psychological trait. The paper validates and elaborates on your observation.
https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/4993/4993.html
Very true, it's one of the defining features of the right-wing mentality. They're subservient to what they view as legitimate authority and eager to punish those they see as below them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
Power. You can't push someone around if you are the smallest one at the bottom of the heap.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
Of course they believe in a natural hierarchy, that's the core belief that defines the right-wing as a concept. It's in the definition.
Left to Right, conceptually, is "hierarchies are not natural or preferable" vs "hierarchies are natural and preferable"
My dad is a registered member of a Federally recognized Tribe. He brags about being born a Republian, votes straight R and will die a Republican. He is also a broke ass farmer. The people he is hurting the most is himself. The people he votes for literally wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.
I was really impressed with how George W Bush could be both corrupt and incompetent at the same time. Seems like one would get in the way of the other.
The average person doesn't have a working memory in this country. It's terrifying how stupid we are, but we are a country full of morons that lack many different basic cognitive functions. The truly scary part is that we're one of the more well off countries in that regard too.
Intelligence and cognitive development haven't been traits that have been as strongly evolutionarily selected for in humans as they ought to have been since we learned to become more civilized and developed societies. If anything we've regressed.
In many ways we're still ~~barely~~ just civilized monkeys.
It’s shamefully cynical, and even social Darwinist, but our advances in science and social structure have created a safety net for people who would not have survived to breed 6,000 years ago.
A lot of them want tax cuts and are willing to overlook everything else imaginable to MAYBE get a few hundred bucks off a year (which rarely is permanent or even a thing unless they are quite wealthy).
USA prob have one of the highest % of single issue voters. and with how insanely fucked up the mass media are in the states just enhances that even further. same goes for the large % that barley leave their states/rural area and never travel. you reap what you sow.
Americans don't support a two party system, a two party system is forced upon it. The typology of American voters fall into these groups.
Faith and Flag Conservatives (10% of the public) (attached to MAGA)
Committed Conservatives (7%) (aka Reagan Republicans)
Populist Right (11%) (attached to MAGA)
Ambivalent Right (12%) (anti- Trumpers)
Stressed Sideliners (15%) (Centrists and largely don't vote)
Outsider Left (10%)(unsupportive of any party/younger/unreliable voters)
Democratic Mainstays (16%)(Working class / POC)
Establishment Liberals (13%)(Classic Liberals / College Graduates)
Progressive Left (6%) (Feel the Bern types)
[Link to source](https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1053929419/feel-like-you-dont-fit-in-either-political-party-heres-why)
The Ambivalent Right's internal monologue is essentially "some members of the left are getting too pushy with gay and trans rights, so I'm going to vote for the people that think we should put gay and trans people in camps."
Yeah fuck me for wanting to analyze each issue and making a determination based on who I want to vote for based on their position on issues and their plans for fixing them.
Recently that has meant voting overwhelmingly democrat, but I still don't identify as a democrat as I think there are several things I think the democratic party are just wrong on.
What you call centrists are strawmen. Just because someone calls themself a centrist doesn't mean they aren't a right winger pretending to be moderate.
Source: I'm a genuine (British observer) centrist and I'm fucking horrified by the right wing in the USA. They were fucking insane before Trump emerged snd he's much worse. And the impact is world wide before anyone says I don't count.
I'm also horrified by the right here in the UK but fortunately, it appears they're about to be destroyed for a while.
I call myself a centrist, but that's because I am a fairly-left-leaning Democrat who wishes we had a responsible opposition with whom we agreed about the desired basic outcomes, but disagreed with the way to get there - or at a minimum forced my party to prioritize.
Next year Canada looks to be going for a far right nutjob. His platform? Rage at the libs about everything.
it's made even sadder by people who think the conservatives are going to fix housing and limit immigrants lol... the amount of Pikachu faces is going to be epic, it's been a while since the conservatives have been in power so the youth are about to learn a lesson.
That’s not far left. Or it’s a bit of an understatement of what far left actually is.
Tankies are far left, they think communism must be achieved through any means necessary, including violence. That’s far left.
Yes, this post is literally "I drew myself as a Chad and you as a virgin" but they didn't even bother to draw.
Some tales my mother told me about the far left in my country involved Sendero Luminoso. This post is just propaganda and denial of humanitarian crimes committed by the far left.
Awful.
>This post is just propaganda and denial of humanitarian crimes committed by the far left.
No, it's just adopting the average American mindset where Bernie Sanders is far left.
Y'all living online need to remember that 99% of normal people do not know what a tankie is and think establishment Democrats are socialists.
I was watching a YouTube video that was claiming that the Left wants to kill babies (pro choice), eradicate Israel (pro Palestine), etc.
I guess if you lie and project enough, you can make it appear that both sides are the same.
Pretty cringey.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nnN1a8nNCwA&t=154s&pp=ygUbU2F0YW4gdGVsbCB0aGUgbGVmdCB0byB0b25l
No. It's more like this:
Far Left: America and Israel are colonial powers and everything they do and are is bad. Democracy is a bourgeoisie system.
Progressives: Let's get everyone's basic needs met AND preserve democracy.
Centrists: I support the military but want low taxes. I think people can be LGBTQ+ but I don't like artsy people with blue hair even suggesting I have privilege. Very likely, I fetishize my gun.
Far Right: The more Christians, the more we will dominate others. Let's keep women in the house. Brown people are scary so we should control them, but make sure they can still work in the fields and wash the dishes.
Yeah I think the biggest problem with modern progressivism is thinking you should blindly hate America and western nations and support complete governmental reform or you *must* be far right.
Well, that and the way the DNC has generally manipulated their own primaries to install candidates that aren’t actually very progressive and instead fall in line with corporate lobbyists. Then they turn around and harp on the evil Republicans and how our only option is blue.
Like sure the GOP is far worse, but a large part of the disillusion that actual centrists or center-left folks have (especially young voters) is this strategy of pissing on you and telling you it’s raining.
It is funny to me that the actual center of the ideological spectrum is basically Biden. He's a Catholic capitalist who understands you have to have public programs every once in a while.
One side
Free college, free healthcare, free meals for children
Centrists
Whose going to pay for it?
Other side
Tax breaks for ultra wealthy, industrial military complex, giant ineffective border wall
Centrists
*Silence*
"Russia and China are perfectly justified in slaughtering minorities, don't vote genocide Joe and fuck Zionists" -far left
"Russia and China should kill the minorities, don't vote for Sleepy Joe and fuck the Jews" -far right
The red-brown alliance was and is a thing. Anything to depose capitalism, even joining hands with Nazis.
Its the Media. Centrists are mostly average Americans that don't pay much attention to politics, and our main stream media is controlled by corporate interests. Follow the money.
Your confusing centrist with far left and leaving far left off the list
Biden is a centrist not far left.
Far left are Tankies that want to destroy capitalism with force. They do not belive in voting because they think the masses are too dumb. They have uniroinc posters of Stalin and Mao.
BoTh SiDeS
The Left: we're gonna help you
The Right: were literally gonna kill you
Everyone else: DUUUUHHHH....I CAN'T TELL THEM APART
Boron from Freakazoid is smarter than both categories of non Democrats.
ETA: A lot of republicans got triggered by this comment 🤣🤣🤣
I like the idea of having everyones basic needs met, but i dont see this as where the far left are heading. This is a sad and reductionist over simplification
damn, it is so nice to live in a world where it is clear who is wrong and who is right. left are bunnies, right are voldermorts. where were you my whole life
That's not the actual Far Left. That's just The Left. People might get confused because conservatives accuse everything left of Joseph Goebbels to be "radical communist marxists". But the true Far Left is nearly indistinguishable from the Far Right. If you ever met one, you'd know.
There are currently no Far Left candidates in or running for office in this country. Not even "The Squad". Not even Bernie. I'm not bemoaning that absense. I just wish we were as good at eliminating the Far Right from our political pool.
That's pretty close:
Far Right:
We make the rules and you will obey them.
The "left":
America is a democracy and we will include everyone in the decision making process, to create policies to benefit everyone.
Centrist:
But SOCIALISM!
Reminder:
Netanyahu won his first election in 1996 by 0.5% because the center-left-leaning Israeli Arabs boycotted the election. They were unhappy with how Israel was fighting its war with Lebanon at the time.
"Genocide Joe" is a known Russian troll talking point, just like walkaway and ukraineBioLabs were
Nobody actually thinks any US president is responsible for the Middle East conflicts and history. It's just some thing recent that trolls can latch onto because they have literally nothing else to smear Biden with.
Apparently, the far left doesn’t care about climate change issues anymore because Trump may just end any effort to save the planet for ever. Hopefully, they don’t live on the coast because it’s going to be sooner than later that huge sections of glaciers are going to raise the water level where entire cities will be gone.
I do essentially always vote blue, but i'll say it: leftists are fucking annoying. I agree with the party's platform far more than republicans, and the republicans in congress are insane, but living in a very blue area, im so goddamn sick and tired of how annoying the actual leftist people are here.
Dude im with you. The fuckin smug fart smelling in this thread is awful. I can picture all these dickwads saying and typing these responses just like Kyle's dad in South Park when he gets a hybrid. Republican party in its current state is straight evil, but siding with these turds is just awful.
Total strawman... you're assuming the "far left" don't also have extreme views as well, and just picking some centrist opinion to represent a far left opinion, you could do that for anything.
Far Right: I think we should have control of our borders.
Far left: We should have open borders and let anyone who wants to come in do so without any limits.
I mean… far left groups like Chinese socialists literally are trying to remake different ethnic groups like Hui Muslims or Uyghurs into a more homogenous, Chinese mold to prevent any opposition from taking root. They’re using forced labor, population transfers, and violence to do this.
The far right and far left have more in common than you want to admit. Extremism isn’t a good thing. I’m staying in the center.
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And then be shocked and surprised when the right starts taking MY liberties away! They are only supposed to take other people’s liberties away.
“He’s hurting the wrong people!”
The actual quote is worse: >He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.
Sums it up quite well. Republicans and republican voters want Americans to suffer. And republicans seem to deliver on the promises of suffering.
> Republicans and republican voters want Americans to suffer How very Christian of them!
There's no hate like Christian love.
It's not sadism. You just have to realize that any time there's progress, someone was there earnestly fighting against it. Women voting was going to ruin civilization. Civil rights would end the republic. Gay marriage would destroy the fabric of society. The result is a lot of people finding themselves on the wrong side of history, desperately seeking vindication. "Woke" to them, is just gloating. Rubbing their faces in the fact that society has left them behind. That's what they see in Trump. What they want him to be. The vindicator. They want for him to deliver their dreams of having been right all along.
Do you get a lot of images of rocks or do people misread your username and send you...well...?
"...and it's the librul left's fault!"
Don’t tread on ME, tread on THEM
Brilliant. Consider me freshly well-armed.
Damn, using this
Unless they're talking about trump, then it's, "tread on me, daddy!"
The leopard wasn't supposed to eat ***my*** face!
It’s hilarious how the right was supposed to be the party of personal freedom when now it’s the opposite of that..
They want the personal freedom to make sure no one else has them
The bootlickers are happy as long as the boot doesn't crush them quite as hard as the non-bootlickers.
"just the toe, please and thank you sir"
You just have to be "more white" than the next guy.
That’s the big problem with the right. They won’t realize they fucked up until ITS TOO LATE.
They NEVER realize it! They didn't realize it with Nixon, they did not realize it with Reagan, they did not realize it with Bush and Little Bush. Cheney and Gingritch and Rove all knew they could easily dupe conservative voters because conservative voters WANTED to be duped.
*”Do you not see the color of my skin?”*
Actually the "both sides" is a propaganda element that is spread with the far-right talking points, it is CRUCIAL for the fascist propaganda that it is heavily implied that what one side is doing the other side is also doing. This is necessary to be able to say "we want to slaughter the others before they slaughter us, cause they will totally do it, if we dont do it before them". Like it is a real essential step for the fascism to be able to take over power. Do NOT underestimate that.
The 2016 exit poles made it very clear. Hillary Clinton was going to Win! Many people simply lied. They didn't want to admit they voted for Donald Trump. But they did. Many, many people know what he is, and desperately want a truly incompetent, wannabe Dictator as our Nations Leader. For reasons I simply cannot comprehend.
Some of them have lost touch with humanity beyond "their group". They live a controlling, vindictive, hate-filled, fear-based life. *Others, including the "both sides" people, could just be [Russia or China on the other end](https://www.cfr.org/blog/election-2024-chinas-efforts-interfere-us-presidential-election).
The scary part is that they hate the left and Democrats and millennials and etc, not because of what these groups do or want to do, but because of the lies they've been told about them. This is what makes it similar to Nazi Germany.
I've met many "radical conservatives" and they didn't hate me. Or threaten me. Or try and harm me. It's literal right wing media feeding them shit. Liberals are an unseen, evil, fucking gangster mafia world order. Guess what? We aren't. We want affordable Healthcare. And a livable minimum wage. Safe schools. Etc. It's the media getting them fucking riled up on lies. It's shitttttr
I am slowly reaching the conclusion that the “both sides” people don’t believe in equality. Rather, they have a secret longing for a strong man to create a walled garden that, of course, they can live in but others can’t - the others being the poor, different, sick, foreign, criminal, this or that. When they face a long line at the DMV for example, they look around at the waiting room and think, this would be better if most of these people weren’t here at all. So despite their better instincts, they vote for the guy that’s promising to clear it out.
"Both sides" people tend to be centrists. And people like to ignore that a centrist is NOT between two political positions. A centrist is anyone comfortable with the status quo and desperately wants everyone else to shut up and quit rocking the boat. That's really the issue.
> They've lost touch with humanity beyond "their group". They live a controlling, vindictive, hate-filled, fear-based life. So many words just to say they are libertarians.
I thought Hilliary won the popular vote?
The exit polls don’t matter all that much with the EC though. Millions more did vote for her, but because of the EC she didn’t win. Defenders will ramble on about the “tyranny of the majority” as if the tyranny of the minority is somehow better.
I'm Canadian. Here, we elect our Members of Parliament at election time, based on who's running in our district (or "riding") and their affiliation. The party with the most seats won has its leader as Prime Minister. Americans, you now understand the Canadian system better than most people will ever understand the US system. I defy anyone to explain why the Electoral College is beneficial to democracy and essential to fair elections.
The electoral college made sense to the 15 control freaks that were in charge of the 500 people who lived in the country back then. Now it just exists to make everything enormously worse than it would be without it.
It’s not, and never has been.
You have an infinitely better system. Long live Canada!
I would have to guess that it came about because, in the 18th century, figuring out who won the popular vote nationwide would be damn near impossible, given the state of travel and communication.
The primary driver is deep, deep misogyny. There are millions of Americans who could never pull the lever for a woman as president - no matter how evil and corrupt the opponent is.
But she won the popular vote?
Too bad that doesnt matter to the gerrymandered method of electing presidents, oops, I meant to say the electoral college.
Misogyny was a huge factor, no doubt, but the Hillary 2016 campaign was a perfect storm of failure. It was run by committee, which, ouch. They spent more money trying to flip Texas than they did in the entire midwest plus PA combined. She didn't even visit the midwest. She did everything she could to alienate and antagonize the left of her own party and independents at the same time. Biden was much better at not saying bad things about anyone and building coalitions. Cashing in on all those Wall Street speaking engagements was perfectly legal, but politically stupid. "I'm with her' on sign with a red arrow pointing rightward? Who designed that iconography?
>Cashing in on all those Wall Street speaking engagements was perfectly legal, but politically stupid. Especially since Occupy Wall Street as a nationwide movement had basically just happened. Millenials were just getting politically active and as a generation got dumped into a great recession where Wall Street got bail outs and home owners got fucked. The highest 18-25 voter turn out of all time was in 2008, when 24% turned out to vote Obama. That dropped to half that level in 2016. 2020 had the 2nd highest with Gen Z coming out to vote for the first time and 23% of 18-25 year olds came out. Hillary fucked herself and fucked everyone by thinking she had it in the bag and just doing high dollar donor dinners.
>The primary driver is deep, deep misogyny There's a ton of misogyny, but the primary driver was a terrible campaign. As one example: Michigan. During the primary, the Clinton campaign thought they'd win by 15. They lost by 15. A competent campaign would say something like "holy shit, we've got a problem in MI" when that happened. Or when organizers on the ground in MI reported support wasn't great and they needed help. Heck, blowing it by 30 probably means you should stop treating your polling as accurate for the general election. The Clinton campaign did none of those. Instead, the only public reaction was to complain that Sanders hadn't dropped out yet. Clinton never traveled to the state during the general election. When grassroots tried to organize their own door knocking in MI to drive up support, the Clinton campaign told them to phone bank California instead, to run up the popular vote margin. Clinton lost MI by 10,704 votes, which is 0.23%. It is likely that any effort in MI by the Clinton campaign would have overcome 0.23% because turnout was historically low.
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That comment was about exit polls. Your comment isn't about exit polls, it's about the regular ones
Also, the Clinton campaign had been claiming her win was inevitable. A candidate people aren't enthusiastic about + the belief that she's going to win no matter what = they suppressed their own voters.
That's not true. The exit polls were pretty clearly down the middle of you go look at them. And even if they weren't, exit polls are just a snapshot not the true tally. Discrepancies in polling leading up to the actual election was more due to the fact that trumpers tend to distrust pollster-type people more than non-trumpers and therefore refused to answer more. Source: I work adjacent to the polling industry and have this info in my face all day.
It's single issue voters, those who consider politics white noise and don't pay close attention. All the complaints and explanations won't make them care.
Especially the single issue voters for taxes, abortion, and putting women back in the kitchen
“Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king!”
> Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king [The Democracy, the.](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/poohadventures/images/7/73/SideshowBob2a.gif/revision/latest?cb=20141117020118)
Nah, it’s code for “I’m a foreign troll”
I've caught a ton of right-wingers right in this sub pandering the "Genocide joe" crap. A couple of them have admitted that they don't even live in the US. Yesterday, it was 5 of them.
I'm an immigrant who hasn't become a citizen yet, but I aalways help my SO figure out the best candidates & what to pock in ballot measures during elections. We're both extremely Left-Leaning. We've both grown significantly more Progressive, Anti-Capitalist & somewhat Anarchist leaning ideologically over the years. We have our ideals, our visions of how much better the world could be, but we're also smart enough to understand that we have to be realists in this world. We don't really like Joe Biden for many reasons, & would prefer a more progressive candidate, but she'll be voting for him anyway because voting for anyone else, even a seemingly nice Progressive 3rd Party Candidate coming out of Left Field, is voting for Donald Trump. We don't like Joe Biden, but we absolutely hate that Orange sh.t-filled Used Diaper. We pick the most progressive candidates that we can find during primaries, knowing full well that they often have few chances to actually win, but maybe it will get the mainline DNC Clowns to realign & reposition themselves a bit if Progressives steadily keep gaining Steam. During the General election, we pick whomever is most likely to win against the Republican Candidates. If there are no Republicans, Libertarians or other weirdo Conservative 3rd party running, or if they are polling so low that they could win even if the votes are split amongst other potential candidatss, then, & only then, we pick to our hearts content. We don't like it that it's like this. We don't like this system of having to pick between a Douchebag or a Turd-Sandwich. But it's the system we have & we have to make the best, smartest decision we can, knowing & understanding the dynamics of this system. Don't like what Joe Vixen is doing for/with Israel against Palestine? You should still vote for him, & for Democrats down the Ticket. Because any vote for any other candidate, is a vote for Donald Trump & the Republicans. & if you think that what's going on is bad right now, wait until Cheeto Benito gets his hands on it, with or without Congressional &/or Senatorial Support. It's a vote for more of the same infuriating BS, or for something significantly worse. It's bad rright now, but it can always become even worse.
Shit, I engaged with one of them a few days ago who forgot he wasn't supposed to admit he's Russian. Hope he didn't get fired.
Or sadly it’s disassociated avoidant people pleasers. I cannot fathom how it’s possible to bury one’s head so deep in the sand literally all day every day to block out everything so they don’t even passively absorb literally anything… Have one family member that has intense trauma & rejection sensitivity (tragically you name it) & can source their politics aversion to a single evening in tweenhood where they overheard through the wall a presidential debate while they were trying to sleep & it scared and scarred them. Any non sunshine feelings expressed are read as conflict and danger to some folks. No excuse, work it out in therapy. Sorry for the rant but wanted to share a maybe unknown to some folks perspective. An especially disturbing part is this same person is gay & for a decade after their parent died voted republican to honor them. Until I learned about it ofc. Just mind boggling…
Alternative translation: "If I can't get exactly ***what*** I want ***when*** I want it then I give up."
The far left online doesn't even vote, and discourages other people from voting democrat because "they're both the same".
> so I'll invent a false equivalence between the two parties so that I can feel less guilty about voting for the objectively worse one I JUST ENCOUNTERED THAT YESTERDAY with an online friend or two.
"Sure, trump is openly quoting Hitler, saying he'll be a dictator, and calling for a "unified American Reich", but Biden hasn't solved the 200 year old conflict in the middle east over the last 6 months, so they're basically the same"
No. I can vote Democrat and bitch about Democrats at the same time.
But do you say both sides are the same? Because if not, no one was talking about you.
Or they’re just too privileged to care Met a guy the other day while doing voter reg, young white male, presumably straight. He said he doesn’t vote or pay attention to anything political for his mental health and not to rock the boat with his family. I told him that’s fine, but in my head, all I could think was, must be nice not to care about anyone else but yourself. Like I’m in a purple state but with all levels of govt except Governor red, and that’s on the line this fall. All sorts of batshit crazy legislation being pushed through, straight up oppression on all sorts of levels, and this guy can’t be bothered to at least educate himself.
The system is working as intended. Why are you surprised at all? Have you not been paying attention? The State doesn't want an informed populace, otherwise, why would education cost so much? You're expecting too much from the average American, considering all they have against them to actually having an informed opinion on the subject. Propaganda is the worst it has been and you're expecting an under educated populace to be reasonable? Really look at where we are and how we got here, and maybe you'll start to have some gratitude for what you know and some empathy for those who weren't given the tools to come to your conclusions. Be the change you want to see, not the reflection of what you hate.
Center-left is where all the sane people end up. Tax the results of capitalism to fund schools and opportunities for the poor/middle class and you get a healthy society. At the same time get rid of laws and systems that are unfair towards some groups and not others; they're wrong on a moral level and lead to conflict that hurts everyone. Reality is that the far-left can't handle making all the compromises necessary to make the above happen. They'd rather get lost in a communist fantasy instead of deal with all those pesky details that come with managing huge economies.
>Center-left is where all the sane people end up. So, like every elected Democrat ever. One of the many problems with both siders is the false equivalency. There are zero elected Democrats "lost in a communist fantasy. Zero. Compare with the far right nightmare Republicans who literally want to destroy democracy and oppress anyone that makes them feel uncomfortable.
Oh shit.
My Boomer aged Dad tells EVERYBODY that he's a Libertarian, but he literally defends Trump like his life depends on it, and talks shit about any and all classes of people without hesitation. He's probably the biggest Republican I know, but when he brings it up in front of my homies, they always say "what happened, he used to be the cool dad on the block" and he hates feeling like a washed up, angry old man. Even though that's basically what he's become.
Neither the left or right is objectively worse, one because “left” and “right” aren’t real things and constantly changing, but also because if you take one issue for which they oppose, e.g. economic policy, we have no idea of which is “better” because there are too many variables. In some contexts more socialism might be better, in others not. Id you are following a narrative “that team bad, my team good”, then you are just in an echo chamber and don’t have any grounded beliefs. I think for you specifically who thinks “people on the right are selfish” (regarding their economic), you do not understand their point of view which is, we can all have better stuff if the government interferes less. There is no objective answer to if this is write or wrong, but America is the most capitalist country and is simultaneously the wealthiest country in the world, so it can’t be 100% false. Meanwhile it is clear capitalism has some issues.
Accurate
My favorite is when they say “I know Republicans are worse in every way but Democrats can’t solve a decades old issue in another part of the world so I’m just not going to vote and let Republicans win”
>My favorite is when they say “I know Republicans are worse in every way but Democrats can’t solve a decades old issue in another part of the world so I’m just not going to vote and let Republicans win” And they say shit like, "I can't in good conscience vote for Biden." That's not "good conscience", you fools; it's single-issue bullshit. The thing that drove the Republican party insane. The "both sides" thing is nonsense, but being human, there are quite a few people on the left that engage in the self-destructive behaviors we mock right-wingers for. It's maddening.
Not to mention that Biden's opponent is objectively worse on the SAME issue. It's complete nonsense.
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Eh, while it is an emotional response, at least it's empathetic instead of hateful and fearful. It's still not a good idea to vote based on emotion though.
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The majority of them don't. Just ask them if they support the death penalty.
"the democrats failed to enshrine something into law that was supposedly decided by the courts and is supposed to be protected by precendent, and the republicans took that away completely so I'm voting for the republicans because it's the democrats fault!" 🤦♂️
And half the time democrats can’t solve issues is bc republicans block anything and everything democrats try and do. Doesn’t matter. Right wingers are all about obstruction.
Democrats: We're going to expand healthcare, protect the environment, create jobs, and protect national security! Republicans: And *we're* going to do everything we can to stop you! Twitter: I literally will not tell you two apart.
> Twitter: I literally will not tell you two apart [with respect to the fringe issue I have done little research on, but feel very strongly about, and have built an online 'following' around]. To me, the secret is: always remember the narcissism. Then it all makes sense.
The tweet said far left though which are not democrats. In fact the far left these days spends more time crying about democrats than republicans.
That's sort of what I was getting at. It's frustrating when someone in the center says the left and the right are the same, it's equally frustrating when someone on the far left or the far right says the Democrats and the Republicans are the same. The far left cares about getting people's basic needs met, but they aren't the only ones. The Democratic party is a coalition, we've got Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders rubbing elbows in the same caucus and we needed both of them to pass $35 insulin. Not every member of the Democratic party is far left, but the Democratic party is the only party making progress on getting people's needs met. It's not *just* the far left who cares about these issues, and it's not *just* centrists who can't see the differences.
Theres plenty of people who do not believe its the role of the government to make sure peoples needs are met. These people live in a nice little secure bubble where they do have to see, talk to, or work with people who are different from them. They prefer their fantasy world.
Yeah, the twitter has both extremes. Actual political parties - not so much. In this the left is much better as even the most leftist politicians aren't really extreme (I don't know, AOC?). Meanwhile the whole republican party is becoming Trump party.
Californian here we have democrats on every branch and yeah we do set better environmental standards better, but our living wage jobs are lacking, affordable housing is lacking and a lot of insurance companies are leaving the state. Better than a red state, but just having democrats in charge doesn't mean that things are just peachy.
Democrats aren't far left.
I voted for Bernie Sanders. But far left doesn't accurately describe the rest of the democratic party.
"Far left" doesn't even accurately describe Bernie Sanders.
Far left is "we'll arm ourselves and overthrow the capitalist system". Che Guevara was far left. Bernie Sanders isn't. Bernie Sanders is barely equal to liberal European politicians. In fact, I always thought the closest one I could name to him was Angela Merkel and she's a conservative in her country.
Europeans aren't nearly as far left as US far-leftists like to think. [Not even the Scandinavian countries that Sanders likes to hold up as successful socialism (they're not - socialist)](https://www.yahoo.com/news/democratic-socialist-bernie-sanders-too-101300187.html). What they are is firm Social Democrats.
Isn't the entire argument just one criticism about how Sanders rallies were a mix of too young people and too many actual socialists and the rest of the commentary is just saying, "he's using the word socialism but that's not socialism, that's social democracy"? Because he can't actually say that. Same as I can go on stage and say fuck liberals, too far right for my taste. Nobody here knows what these words mean anymore because of media propaganda. Some people really do think liberal/socialist is the same thing. You use the parlance of the zeitgeist, same as I call a far right winger a conservative because that's just what you say they are here, it's interchangeable. I didn't change the lexicon, don't blame me, that's just the words you sometimes use to get your point across
It's hysterical that the meme simply says "Far Left" and some ITT take that to mean Democratic Party...
Doesn’t describe Bernie either 😅
that isn't the far left.
Took way too much scrolling to see this comment.
The entire US political spectrum goes from centre to right. There isn't really a left.
Well, come on, there's much further left than OP's meme.
But it's what conservatives would describe as "the radical/extreme left", and it's certainly the definition "centerists" use.
Feeding school children lunches is sadly a "far left" thing in America.
As someone who has family that was killed during the October Revolution, I can assure you that isn’t “far left.” Far left is much, *much*, further left.
That's the Overton window for you. Honestly I was amazed a center-left politician like Bernie even got the votes he did.
It's funny people act like there's even a left wing party in the US. The Democrats are a moderate conservative party. I can't even remember who the liberal president was. Biden, Obama, Clinton were all varying degrees of moderate conservatives, with Obama arguably being the most right leaning.
Tbf, they aren’t *really* “moderate conservatives. They just adopted some fairly conservative positions because they needed broader support in order to win elections and make progress on their more liberal policies. As LBJ once said, “you can’t wield power if you don’t have it.” Politics is the art of compromise, after all.
The hilarity of the far left anarchist who've joined MAGA! They're aligned, even if they don't realize it. Anarchists want to destroy the system, and so does Trump! They just disagree on what happens after. Which is the fun part most left wing anarchists don't understand.
Horseshoe theory
You aint far left until your communist government is rounding up other communists for being anti communists lol
People on Reddit have no idea what a centrist is…
The crazy thing is that in most polls the overwhelming majority wants universal healthcare which makes it a centrist issue.
It's very dependent on the wording of the poll. https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/poll-finding/data-note-modestly-strong-but-malleable-support-for-single-payer-health-care/
Lemme preface this by saying: I hope there's never another Republican president for as long as I live. But she's either ignorant, willfully or otherwise, or an idiot who's saying this with malice. The far right is an awful cesspool, but the far left has turned into racing them to the bottom. I've seen anti-white, anti-American sentiment from the figureheads on the far left. They don't want to vote for Joe Biden because of his policy in the Middle East, despite them not knowing the history of it... at the risk of Trump. It's insanity. I'm right on the verge of far left on most of my political ideaologies, but the shit that they say doesn't align with what this chick is saying. Both extremes are just that, and destructive in their own way. Some people in here are ignoring the forest for the trees.
I wish more people were like you. We would have a better country. You come in and say something with absolute common sense and I'm surprised there isn't a Redditor calling you a shitty centrist or a fake. I have no idea if we would get along or you would respect me. But damn I'm pretty sure I would respect you regardless. Well said.
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I never understood how anyone in the U.S. with a working memory could be "swing voters" either. Every time the Republicans get control of the government they screw America over. Every. Single. Time. What reason is there ever to vote for them again?
You’d be amazed how uninformed some people are. I remember working retail and this guy in his late 20s/early 30s who I worked with genuinely didn’t know who to vote for. “I liked Obama so Biden’s gotta be similar, but Trump did fix the economy and everything’s been better under him” I said “What? The economy did way worse under him.” And he said “True true.” A lot of people don’t follow politics or think critically on it. They just latch onto the last thing they hear.
> “I liked Obama so Biden’s gotta be similar, but Trump did fix the economy and everything’s been better under him” > > I said “What? The economy did way worse under him.” > > And he said “True true.” Wow, ChatGPT really does emulate the average human.
How do you explain to someone in their 20s that we (and our politicians) are being exploited and manipulated by telecoms, hospitals and pharma, insurance, oil & gas industry, tech giants? How do we fix our broken system? Get money out of politics and vote in good decision makers who work for the people. How does that happen?
You explain that “perfect” is the enemy of “better than yesterday” Due to the way of voting system works, either things get better or they get worse. Then show them the voting record of the parties on things they care about.
Hillary Clinton was going to require that any SCOTUS appointments were against Citizens United. Trump nominated appointees that were against Roe v. Wade. One would take lots of money out of politics, the other removed women's rights.
On paper, its not that hard to do. But we're in America, where most of those explanations can be waived away with "but that's communism". We have to somehow convince people that nearly every big corporation is actively looking to make your life worse because it makes them more money, without making them think that we're implying something negative about capitalism. i.e. We need to maintain their cognitive dissonance to gain their support. Its infuriating.
>we're in America, where most of those explanations can be waived away with "but that's communism step one would be to deprogram from all the capitalist propaganda we've been fed our whole lives. and learn actual history, not the trash they put in our high school history textbooks
Slowly. Politics is like riding the bus. It will not take you to your destination. So you pick the one that will get you the closest to your destination. There is no vote on any ballot in 2024 that will get money out of politics during the next two years. But there are votes that would get us closer.
Sometimes the ONLY information they have is ONE fox news smearing job and that's enough for them to go vote. It's incredibly sad
A lot of people believe what they are told, if the person telling the stories does so with a lot of confidence.
>You’d be amazed how uninformed some people are. that and we're a *heavily* propagandized ppl
>A lot of people don’t follow politics or think critically on it. They just latch onto the last thing they hear. The Joe Rogan effect.
One simple reason. [Hurting people.](https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/msna1181316) Any Republican voter who claims otherwise is either being dishonest with you/themselves, or they don’t pay attention to what republicans actually do.
Talking to some it seems like they believe in a social hierarchy system. They see themselves as higher on the totem pole than immigrants, minorities, and poor people but they know their place is not above like millionaires and billionaires. That’s why they lick the boot every time. They don’t want to be placed any lower.
There’s truth to that. This is a fairly quick read from which I learned that “authoritarianism” isn’t just an ideology or tactic, but a psychological trait. The paper validates and elaborates on your observation. https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/4993/4993.html
Very true, it's one of the defining features of the right-wing mentality. They're subservient to what they view as legitimate authority and eager to punish those they see as below them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
Power. You can't push someone around if you are the smallest one at the bottom of the heap. “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson
Of course they believe in a natural hierarchy, that's the core belief that defines the right-wing as a concept. It's in the definition. Left to Right, conceptually, is "hierarchies are not natural or preferable" vs "hierarchies are natural and preferable"
My dad is a registered member of a Federally recognized Tribe. He brags about being born a Republian, votes straight R and will die a Republican. He is also a broke ass farmer. The people he is hurting the most is himself. The people he votes for literally wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.
I know people like this too. It's basically impossible for them to understand this if you explain it to them
To be conservative is to be some combination of stupid and evil.
I was really impressed with how George W Bush could be both corrupt and incompetent at the same time. Seems like one would get in the way of the other.
The average person doesn't have a working memory in this country. It's terrifying how stupid we are, but we are a country full of morons that lack many different basic cognitive functions. The truly scary part is that we're one of the more well off countries in that regard too. Intelligence and cognitive development haven't been traits that have been as strongly evolutionarily selected for in humans as they ought to have been since we learned to become more civilized and developed societies. If anything we've regressed. In many ways we're still ~~barely~~ just civilized monkeys.
It’s shamefully cynical, and even social Darwinist, but our advances in science and social structure have created a safety net for people who would not have survived to breed 6,000 years ago.
A lot of them want tax cuts and are willing to overlook everything else imaginable to MAYBE get a few hundred bucks off a year (which rarely is permanent or even a thing unless they are quite wealthy).
USA prob have one of the highest % of single issue voters. and with how insanely fucked up the mass media are in the states just enhances that even further. same goes for the large % that barley leave their states/rural area and never travel. you reap what you sow.
Americans don't support a two party system, a two party system is forced upon it. The typology of American voters fall into these groups. Faith and Flag Conservatives (10% of the public) (attached to MAGA) Committed Conservatives (7%) (aka Reagan Republicans) Populist Right (11%) (attached to MAGA) Ambivalent Right (12%) (anti- Trumpers) Stressed Sideliners (15%) (Centrists and largely don't vote) Outsider Left (10%)(unsupportive of any party/younger/unreliable voters) Democratic Mainstays (16%)(Working class / POC) Establishment Liberals (13%)(Classic Liberals / College Graduates) Progressive Left (6%) (Feel the Bern types) [Link to source](https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1053929419/feel-like-you-dont-fit-in-either-political-party-heres-why)
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The Ambivalent Right's internal monologue is essentially "some members of the left are getting too pushy with gay and trans rights, so I'm going to vote for the people that think we should put gay and trans people in camps."
Utter fucking nonsense.
It’s elections season. People are self-propagating the “tow the party line you are secret Hitler” myth.
Yeah fuck me for wanting to analyze each issue and making a determination based on who I want to vote for based on their position on issues and their plans for fixing them. Recently that has meant voting overwhelmingly democrat, but I still don't identify as a democrat as I think there are several things I think the democratic party are just wrong on.
What you call centrists are strawmen. Just because someone calls themself a centrist doesn't mean they aren't a right winger pretending to be moderate. Source: I'm a genuine (British observer) centrist and I'm fucking horrified by the right wing in the USA. They were fucking insane before Trump emerged snd he's much worse. And the impact is world wide before anyone says I don't count. I'm also horrified by the right here in the UK but fortunately, it appears they're about to be destroyed for a while.
I call myself a centrist, but that's because I am a fairly-left-leaning Democrat who wishes we had a responsible opposition with whom we agreed about the desired basic outcomes, but disagreed with the way to get there - or at a minimum forced my party to prioritize.
You need to cut that reasonable and mature bullshit out man! How dare your views have nuance!
Next year Canada looks to be going for a far right nutjob. His platform? Rage at the libs about everything. it's made even sadder by people who think the conservatives are going to fix housing and limit immigrants lol... the amount of Pikachu faces is going to be epic, it's been a while since the conservatives have been in power so the youth are about to learn a lesson.
That’s not far left. Or it’s a bit of an understatement of what far left actually is. Tankies are far left, they think communism must be achieved through any means necessary, including violence. That’s far left.
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Yes, this post is literally "I drew myself as a Chad and you as a virgin" but they didn't even bother to draw. Some tales my mother told me about the far left in my country involved Sendero Luminoso. This post is just propaganda and denial of humanitarian crimes committed by the far left. Awful.
>This post is just propaganda and denial of humanitarian crimes committed by the far left. No, it's just adopting the average American mindset where Bernie Sanders is far left. Y'all living online need to remember that 99% of normal people do not know what a tankie is and think establishment Democrats are socialists.
I was watching a YouTube video that was claiming that the Left wants to kill babies (pro choice), eradicate Israel (pro Palestine), etc. I guess if you lie and project enough, you can make it appear that both sides are the same. Pretty cringey. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nnN1a8nNCwA&t=154s&pp=ygUbU2F0YW4gdGVsbCB0aGUgbGVmdCB0byB0b25l
Doublethink is a cornerstone of fascism. The enemy must appear to be both weak and strong at the same time.
No. It's more like this: Far Left: America and Israel are colonial powers and everything they do and are is bad. Democracy is a bourgeoisie system. Progressives: Let's get everyone's basic needs met AND preserve democracy. Centrists: I support the military but want low taxes. I think people can be LGBTQ+ but I don't like artsy people with blue hair even suggesting I have privilege. Very likely, I fetishize my gun. Far Right: The more Christians, the more we will dominate others. Let's keep women in the house. Brown people are scary so we should control them, but make sure they can still work in the fields and wash the dishes.
Centrists: Also I'm left wing, everyone left of me is an extremist.
Yeah I think the biggest problem with modern progressivism is thinking you should blindly hate America and western nations and support complete governmental reform or you *must* be far right. Well, that and the way the DNC has generally manipulated their own primaries to install candidates that aren’t actually very progressive and instead fall in line with corporate lobbyists. Then they turn around and harp on the evil Republicans and how our only option is blue. Like sure the GOP is far worse, but a large part of the disillusion that actual centrists or center-left folks have (especially young voters) is this strategy of pissing on you and telling you it’s raining.
It is funny to me that the actual center of the ideological spectrum is basically Biden. He's a Catholic capitalist who understands you have to have public programs every once in a while.
Everyone: “I have no idea what a centrist actually is so I’m gonna to villainize them to make myself feel morally superior”
One side Free college, free healthcare, free meals for children Centrists Whose going to pay for it? Other side Tax breaks for ultra wealthy, industrial military complex, giant ineffective border wall Centrists *Silence*
"Russia and China are perfectly justified in slaughtering minorities, don't vote genocide Joe and fuck Zionists" -far left "Russia and China should kill the minorities, don't vote for Sleepy Joe and fuck the Jews" -far right The red-brown alliance was and is a thing. Anything to depose capitalism, even joining hands with Nazis.
Its the Media. Centrists are mostly average Americans that don't pay much attention to politics, and our main stream media is controlled by corporate interests. Follow the money.
No theres an unambiguous dichotomy of good and evil, there’s no in between!
Your confusing centrist with far left and leaving far left off the list Biden is a centrist not far left. Far left are Tankies that want to destroy capitalism with force. They do not belive in voting because they think the masses are too dumb. They have uniroinc posters of Stalin and Mao.
Most naive statement I have ever read.
BoTh SiDeS The Left: we're gonna help you The Right: were literally gonna kill you Everyone else: DUUUUHHHH....I CAN'T TELL THEM APART Boron from Freakazoid is smarter than both categories of non Democrats. ETA: A lot of republicans got triggered by this comment 🤣🤣🤣
"See? The left goes off on us for being undecided!"
Would you prefer I do it the Republican way? Murder you, and become an idol?
We can tell them apart we just hate them both. Big difference!
I like the idea of having everyones basic needs met, but i dont see this as where the far left are heading. This is a sad and reductionist over simplification
damn, it is so nice to live in a world where it is clear who is wrong and who is right. left are bunnies, right are voldermorts. where were you my whole life
Also far left: “We’ll abandon all of this if Biden doesn’t make peace in the Middle East.”
That's not the actual Far Left. That's just The Left. People might get confused because conservatives accuse everything left of Joseph Goebbels to be "radical communist marxists". But the true Far Left is nearly indistinguishable from the Far Right. If you ever met one, you'd know. There are currently no Far Left candidates in or running for office in this country. Not even "The Squad". Not even Bernie. I'm not bemoaning that absense. I just wish we were as good at eliminating the Far Right from our political pool.
That's pretty close: Far Right: We make the rules and you will obey them. The "left": America is a democracy and we will include everyone in the decision making process, to create policies to benefit everyone. Centrist: But SOCIALISM!
What an incredible lie.
The centrists are actually voting for Biden and the far left voters are sitting this one out because of the genocide in Gaza.
Reminder: Netanyahu won his first election in 1996 by 0.5% because the center-left-leaning Israeli Arabs boycotted the election. They were unhappy with how Israel was fighting its war with Lebanon at the time.
Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Eh, we will see. That’s certainly being pushed in a lot of leftist spaces, but the people doing the pushing are kind of uh… suspicious, usually.
Нет, товарищ! There's absolutely nothing suspicious about these activities!
"Genocide Joe" is a known Russian troll talking point, just like walkaway and ukraineBioLabs were Nobody actually thinks any US president is responsible for the Middle East conflicts and history. It's just some thing recent that trolls can latch onto because they have literally nothing else to smear Biden with.
Apparently, the far left doesn’t care about climate change issues anymore because Trump may just end any effort to save the planet for ever. Hopefully, they don’t live on the coast because it’s going to be sooner than later that huge sections of glaciers are going to raise the water level where entire cities will be gone.
That is not far left. That’s just left. *Far left* is Stalin and Mao, who were both very much into eradicating groups they didn’t like.
I do essentially always vote blue, but i'll say it: leftists are fucking annoying. I agree with the party's platform far more than republicans, and the republicans in congress are insane, but living in a very blue area, im so goddamn sick and tired of how annoying the actual leftist people are here.
I fucking hate them but don't want to vote for Trump. But God these comments piss me off. I hate redditors.
Dude im with you. The fuckin smug fart smelling in this thread is awful. I can picture all these dickwads saying and typing these responses just like Kyle's dad in South Park when he gets a hybrid. Republican party in its current state is straight evil, but siding with these turds is just awful.
Total strawman... you're assuming the "far left" don't also have extreme views as well, and just picking some centrist opinion to represent a far left opinion, you could do that for anything. Far Right: I think we should have control of our borders. Far left: We should have open borders and let anyone who wants to come in do so without any limits.
The real meme is that Americans think Democrats are on the left.
Such a whitewashed version of what the far left actually believes.
Ones lying to your face the other behind your back
Is this how 16 year olds view politics?
What a fair and objective description of all parties.
That's what happens when you're in an echo chamber 24/7.
I mean… far left groups like Chinese socialists literally are trying to remake different ethnic groups like Hui Muslims or Uyghurs into a more homogenous, Chinese mold to prevent any opposition from taking root. They’re using forced labor, population transfers, and violence to do this. The far right and far left have more in common than you want to admit. Extremism isn’t a good thing. I’m staying in the center.
Remember: The Democrats are not the left, they are centrist to centre-right. There is no major left-wing party in America.