As a centrist, I hate how I get smack from both sides. Rightwings hate me whenever I have leftwing opinions and leftwings hate me whenever I have rightwing opinions.
ah, americans. you guys love your team sport don’t ya
But hell, I’ll bite. I’ve ranted about this before, and I know my views don’t fully apply to Americans, but I truly believe that using left/right as labels is playing into the elite’s hands. You ask a left-person or a right-person their opinions on the rich, and both of them will come to the same conclusion, but as soon as you mention either side, then they start fighting. Thus, the picture is ignored; it’s about teams now, it’s about cancelling and gotchas, no more about the imbalance of social power.
Honestly, how can anyone be so binary with their political beliefs in an age where we have functional neural networks, global interconnectivity and instant access to whatever we desire? Our water is so fucking clean that we shit in it. We have so much food that there’s obesity in ourselves and in our pets. When a disaster happens, when the walls break down, are you really going to be so petty and pathetic as to worry about left or right? I don’t reckon.
I refuse to use left/right since I don’t even think it applies in my country. Allow me to explain. In Australia’s system, we have two separate houses of Parliament, preferential voting, state, federal, and local elections, councils, a monarchy, and territories. Preferential voting ensures your vote is never wasted and goes exactly where you want it.
Where do I fit if I vote for Fusion first, Animal Justice second, Greens Third, Labor fourth, and Liberals fifth for Representatives? While also voting for UAP, One Nation, or Liberal for Senate? What if I throw independents into the mix? Shit, the way parliaments are designed is that parties have to come together to get bills and acts through.
Can you legitimately blanket all that with just one side? Not in Australia, at least. Only advice I have for Americans is to leave, find a better country, they’ll be more than willing to take you in and as an American, you can certainly afford to leave to almost every other country.
hey it’s @Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works
#BothSiders often end up repeating Republican talking points
Of course the both sides argument comes from the right because America has no left
Not with any sort of majority aspirations, that’s for sure.
Found one!
and I woulda gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids
Often? I’ve never seen it NOT that way, and I’m a huge fan of nuance. With them, I just can’t see any justification for that argument.
Thanks for saving me the effort of pointing this out.
“Yeah, I don’t agree with his racism, but I can’t support post-partum abortions by feeding babies to coyotes so we can afford to pay for 25 billion illegals to stay in the Ritz Carlton like the Democrats do. #BothSides”
Oh this is the classic : “I’m socially progressive, but fiscally conservative” LOL
The thing is real fiscal conservatism relies on evidence. They just want to sell off the government so they can make a profit replacing it. A real fiscal conservative would have already passed universal education, universal healthcare, universal background checks, taken military procurement to task, and repealed half of the laws restricting unions.
The Republicans talk about laws that spend less and create more revenue, but they fight tooth and nail against ones that actually would do that.
no no, republicans don’t want the govt to make revenue. tax cuts, ridiculously complicated tax code, gutting the IRS… all to let rich people keep as much money as possible.
Rich people making more money is true Republican goal and the reason for everything else. Co-opting the deranged fanatical Christian sector was just part of the strategy to achieve that.
Or as they say, “make government small… Enough to drown in a bath tub”
The US government is so small it already fits in an uterus!
So, a Democrat?
Well the bar is six feet under when you compare Democrats to Republicans. Democrats appears leftwing simply because Republicans went further to the right on the spectrum unfortunately. If you place Democrats in Canada or Western Europe, they would be considered a right wing government, or centrist if we stretch it.
So much this. The only thing that remedied US Democrats in this sense was their LGBT stances being more progressed than in many Western European countries. Otherwise they are in the right/far right/neoliberal spectrum by European standards.
At this point anybody can just download all the financial freedom they want, nobody is stopping us. So our votes only even matter for social issues anymore.
Code for “I’m conservative but know a gay person and/or once smoked a marijuana.”
“I want to smoke weed and not pay taxes and I lack basic empathy for anyone with problems worse than my own.”
Fiscally conservative somehow means hoarding money under the mattress instead of investing in projects like infrastructure, an educated populace, a healthy populace, or an environment that is habitable.
Actual centrists recognize how extreme the right has gotten, and vote accordingly. Bothsiders are the brainless, egotistical tools of the far right, going along with normalizing fascism because they don’t want to think too hard.
… and because they want slaves back. The right is focused on having women-slaves and immigrant-slaves. Take away rights, invent crimes, jail, enslave.
That’s because slavery is great for the
economycapital-hoarding class.
It’s because they identify 100% with the party but don’t want the negative flack it rightfully deserves, so they pretend to be centrist.
deleted by creator
This has actually been studied
Anti-Authoritarians and Moderates view it as best to be seen as Anti-Authoritarians, Authoritarians view it best to be seen as Moderates.
They literally view opportunistic claiming of the center not just as a political tool but as a social survival tactic to not be ostracized for their bullshit.
Drag would like to have a link to a study so drag can cite it in the future
What makes you qualified to speak for the entire drag community?
Drag is not a community, drag is a dragon rider.
Go back to Pern where you came from
Never thought I’d see anti-immigrant sentiment on here
How about a little compassion! That’s a big jump between Sol and Rukbat. That there even is a pernese here is a testament to their enduring spirit. Aivas would be proud!
“Rider”* whether thon ride dragons or “rider” is thon’s nickname is unclear.
Drag rides dragons and also “rides” dragons
Bad dragon. Be clear.
Exactly this. Many of them are concerned about how it might affect their work too and their families if they found out they’re were horrible racist people.
It’s part of the reason why the KKK wore clokes
It used to be libertarians that did this shit. Too afraid to commit to the bit, but still want to appear as if they’re the good guys.
yeah… Here in Australia, they were also the only political party around who never removed their shitty signage after the election (and they legally have to). I’m surprised the Election council didn’t do it for them and send them the bill. I think the problem with those wankers is that they constantly try to get away with dodgy actions, and they end up being successful so many times, that they just keep doing it
Everytime I have a discussion with someone who says “both sides are the same”, they always end up voting right. I ask if both sides are the same why not vote left?
I don’t think that “both sides are the same”, but there is a Venn Diagram of shared interests under the two party system; the overlap is fairly large (e.g., both parties are susceptible to lobbying, both parties fight to maintain first past the post voting, etc.)
Everybody votes right-wing in usa. There are no left-wing candidates just liberals.
Cool!
Deep.
Anyone claiming to be undecided on Trump and the GOP in 2024 is full of shit.
I’m undecided on Trump and the GOP in 2024, I can’t tell if they’re brutally evil or evilly brutal.
I’m a centrist. I say they’re brutally evil AND evilly brutal, and I would even add the hot-take as an ENLIGHTENED centrist that they’re probably also stupid.
I am a centrist as well and therefore usually undecided. But these rights make it really easy to decide who not to be undecided about.
same, but i am go between “he can’t be that stupid, he must know he is lying” and “oh, he is that stupid, he might believe the nonsense he says”
When the whole world is USA!
The whole world is inundated with news about the election, looking on in horror at the fact that Trump, in spite of everything has a 50/50 shot at the presidency. The fact that he remains viable is one of the worst enditements possible on the US government and people.
Yeah - we see you guys, and we’ve decided.
i mean, statistically trump has never won the popular vote… So…
Worst indictments
I dunno. English…
Oof - yep - I was way off on that one - thanks.
I’ll leave that as-is though.
MTG would have called it an indication.
But as a northern neighbor to this clown party, I cannot agree more.
Stop fucking around, the USA! You’re supposed to model this shit for everyone! You want some other countries’ movies to get more popular than yours?!
You mean other people outside the US can’t educate themselves, if they care to, about trump?
No its fine! But the whole world has left and right in their political spectrum, yet every comment in here is about USA (and one(?) about France)
Well, yes…this instance and community are full of Americans, so that’s the viewpoint the comments will revolve around.
Please do offer your country’s difficulties with right wing politics instead of a sarcastic comment. The more we all know of nationalist, populist, and theocratic fascists trying to make inroads around the world the better.
It’s weird how often people say they “Aren’t for Right or the Left” and “Think BOTH parties are the problem”, but only ever have negative things to say about the Left.
Concern Trolls are not your friends
It betrays a deep level of self-awareness of being on the “bad” side and knowing that if you say your actual values around a large number of normal people you will face criticism and attacks, so it’s shame. Centerism is almost always some level of shame, or at best woefully immature ignorance of actual politics.
I actually got chills lately when Bill O’Reily came out and said Obama was the best president of his lifetime and he only talked shit on him because he got paid to.
How can you know something is wrong and do it anyway?
It’s weird how people think usa has a left-wing party.
well the richest guy on the planet and the republican party candidate both are trying to portray kamala harris as a communist when she’s possibly slightly to the right of nixon.
I do think the media needs to be broken up, the lack of competition for big media (including social media) has resulted in some level of complacency with unhinged conspiracies.
It’s weird how you made it your personal mission is to correct “other people’s wrong opinions”.
Get over yourself 💁
I’ve had a guy tell me he votes for Trump because he’s trying to take a balanced centrist view of things. But dude, if Trump is the center, wtf are your extremes?
Homie just heard a bunch of words online and attempted to string them together into a coherent political opinion. They failed, but hey they tried.
It’s so funny to see Alex Jones present himself as above left-right politics despite constantly spewing far right BS.
It’s the media, not the people. If you read the same article from sources across the political spectrum, you’ll find the further right you go, the more information is omitted and the more opinionated the journalist becomes. So, someone who reads primarily right wing and centrist media will naturally have a right wing opinion when reading centrist articles.
Yeah, I’m not buying the “your opinions are just biases” argument. I don’t deny the influence of past experiences, I just believe humans are more nuanced than that.
Opinions are absolutely subjective, but the content they’re based on is also skewed.
If all of the news you consumed was curated through an engagement algorithm, it would change the way you see the world. Your opinions would be based on that perception.
Now you’re just describing human perception. That’s not really remarkable. And, still, there’s a lot more to it, such as the sum total of experiences a person has.
I still think this concept is being oversimplified quite a bit.
While this is true, people still bear responsibility for the media they choose to consume. People wake up every day and decide to get their information from liars and grifters, because they prefer the way lies feel. It isn’t as if they don’t have options. Now, media literacy is definitely a problem. But the only solution is education, and that’s a silver bullet too slow to save us from all the extant ill-educated mooks.
I agree. Many people make the mistake of getting their news exclusively served through algorithms. They see a very skewed painting of the world based on what they’ve shown interest in previously.
Let’s just start with the fact that American political system is super skewed to begin with and no actual left has any power.
Dems are highly pro-capitalist, moderately nationalist and merely call to strike a bit less horrible balance between the interests of people and businesses. This is not left, this is a bit better right.
This fallacy keeps people trapped in an idea that the only possible options are “good” ultra-capitalism and “greedy” ultra-capitalism, which is not true.
People that try to have “both sides heard” totally ignore that there are way more than two angles in this conversation and that Dems are not some sort of a political extreme. Reps, ironically, kinda are.
And Democrats often think they vote for something actually good, when it’s actually just a lesser evil. Keep that in mind, no matter what you decide.
And Democrats often think they vote for something actually good, when it’s actually just a lesser evil. Keep that in mind, no matter what you decide.
well i mean to be clear, not voting for a literal fascist, is a pretty good vote.
The post brought to you by Emmanuel Macron
The extreme center, no political ideology, only opportunism!
A banker is true neutral, he follows the money.
#Switzerland #NaziGold
tbf we all should have known the moment he said he was going to rule like a Graeco-Roman god.
Did anybody ever think once that this dude was left-wing?
No but he did protest very loudly that he was “neither left nor right” during his first election which of course really meant “neither left nor left”
Why don’t you tell us more (nvm, you have lmao)