Not with any sort of majority aspirations, that's for sure.

Found one!

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.

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.

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.

That's because slavery is great for the economy capital-hoarding class.

Drag would like to have a link to a study so drag can cite it in the future

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

Cool!

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?

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 💁

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"

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.

You mean other people outside the US can’t educate themselves, if they care to, about trump?

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.

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.

#Switzerland #NaziGold

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)

It’s a shame they lack the critical thinking to realize they lack critical thinking

But if we woke up tomorrow and trump didn’t exist, they would all be gone

They existed before Trump with the tea party, they will exist after him. The far right also exists in other countries

the kamala harris campaign

Right, not centrist. They just aren’t as right as the competition

“far left” israel palestine types

Not a left or right issue, you will find people on both supporting both sides

Generally, i think the left, currently is a lot more cohesive than the right

This has never been the case, the lack of cohesion is why right wing governments are more popular despite not being popular in a population. People will just not vote because there is no coheson on the left. Meanwhile the right will always come out to vote, even when they don’t agree with their candidate

You're correct, I'm on the left.

what it protects against is group ideology. I don’t want to start thinking things simply because the political party I align most with thinks that, and unfortunately, identifying with a political group can make people start doing that. I do recognize my biases when making decisions, it's important to do so, I just find it becomes harder to do that when I start identifying with a group

what it protects against is group ideology. I don't want to start thinking things simply because the political party I align most with thinks that, and unfortunately, identifying with a political group can make people start doing that.

no, I'm trying to keep MYSELF away from bias

c) never pass legislation due to never having enough political power

So I can't support them.

Well these things sure seem like they could be related...

I have yet to meet a right wing surfer, admittedly I haven't been surfing for long, so I'm sure it will happen.

Agreed, outside of union employees (teachers, police, teamsters) what employer is paying into pensions still? Certainly no small businesses are, right? Pensions are largely dead. I don't know the numbers, but small business owners bigger costs are providing healthcare and other benefits, not pensions. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but this person sounds like they're a centrist democrat on both sides of the economic/social divide.

The issue is that internet politics are often viewed from a USA-centric standpoint. When I say l'm neither left nor right (because it depends on the topic, as explained above) see memes like that come up. Although my economically right views for my country would be far left from an US-american standpoint anyway.

(Self-quoting my comment you replied to)

I'm from Austria, we have a functional social system covering healthcare, schools, universities and similar, but due to decades of regulations it is now extremely complicated and needlessly inefficient and therefore expensive (my father is a doctor so I have quite a bit of insight in the inefficient system).

Although, I'm confused what you mean by making a business easier to create,

We have so many regulations for everything, it'd be great if we just were able to create a business online within like a day. Currently we're losing quite a few start up founders to other countries and our economy has entered recession.

and what that has to do with pensions and putting in more than 1/3 of a business' operating budget into pensions. Seems like an unrelated issue.

In our very recent election one of the main points of our strongest left wing party was that they want to further increase the budget for pensions ("if someone has worked their whole life they should be rewarded for it properly" - 60+ is by far the biggest voting group...), and it's pretty obvious that the current system doesn't work (that's why so much of our general budget has to be added every year, and more every year).

Our system works in a way where the working people pay for the people who are currently in retirement and when we are in retirement the new workers will pay for us. This system was established after ww2 when there were few old people and many young ones, so... 5? iirc working people were paying for one in retirement. Currently two are paying for one in retirement, and the trend is heading towards one paying for one in retirement.

We need a rework there to update it for today's societal structure instead of promising people to add even more of the general budget to pensions (...populism to get 60+ people to vote for them).

Exactly. So I am curious why OP considers it remarkable that "neither left nor right" is not what it seems.

As for me, I might consider someone from a different country with different politics, like Japan perhaps, to be neither. Or someone who lives under a rock and doesn't pay attention to the news.

What I like about lemmy so far is downvotes don't effectively censor people like they do on Reddit. Reddit collapses downvoted comments which I think is kinda fucked up

"From MY point of view the Jedi are evil!"

It's all about perspective, and some perspectives are more reasonable than others. Saudi Arabia likely views the US as having a left wing and a far left wing party.

I think it's reasonable to call Democrats centrists with a slight lean to the left, compared to parties globally.

Thanks for proving my point.

Agreed. Doesn't negate my point though. Extremists usually view those closer to the center as on the other side of it.

Surprise surprise, the Democrat thinks I was being neutral to the Republicans.

Buried in extremism.

You will never get an answer from them because the small nuggets of truth that exist in Republican talking points are then used to make batshit claims and then turned into a point of profit for some grifter somewhere.

The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are:

1. that borders do actually matter to the sovereignty of a country and that control over who and what crosses that border is a necessity,

2. countries need some kind of balanced budget to prevent hyperinflation and inevitable austerity,

3. the constitution should be protected and enforced equally for all amendments unless and until they are further amended or repealed, and

4. the Federal government should exist to provide for the defense of the country, protection of interstate and international commerce, and protection of the common good.

I happen to personally think that the best implementation for these points would be:

1. an overhaul of immigration policy is needed to increase legal immigration and decrease the time spent in that process to months or at least under 1-2 years with a pathway that allows current illegal immigrants to get in the back of that (actually useful and reasonably short) line,

2. countries cannot balance a budget like a household balances a checkbook because it doesn't work like that and anyone who says otherwise is either economic-illiterate or a con artist,

3. First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth amendments especially all need to be equally enforced and double especially on the police and the State (looking at you Civil Asset Forfiture, and your partner in crime Cash Bail), and

4. all of these functions would be best served with Universal Healthcare, Universal Education to an undergrad (Associates) level, Universal Basic Income replacing the existing welfare framework with no hoops or requirements or means testing, some form of Georgist land tax integration to help ensure the wealthy at least start to pay their fair share, and a heavy dose of monopoly busting and anti-trust enforcement to prevent billionaires from becoming a thing in the first place and prevent regulatory capture by capital at the very least.

Also religion has no business in government and fuck off with race/orientation/religious/etc discrimination. It is all class warfare from the elite and Reagan deregulation caused the death of the economy and the middle class.

This is why I consider myself a centrist, because the Right would have a conniption fit at most of those beliefs. The Left would have the same conniption fit that I also think that current border policies, the existence of sanctuary cities/states providing incentive, and worst of all the companies and people hiring and exploiting illegal labor due to insufficient availability, use, and enforcement of tools like e-verify (AKA the current status quo) is a shit show and the "left" shows too much weakness on this topic, I think the "open borders/a person cannot be illegal" crowd are dangerously misguided utopiasts, I support the personal right to keep and bear arms interpretation of 2A, support (not limited but also limited) Sates rights as useful ways to experiment with policy along with the original intention of the Senate and Electoral College, and think a decent amount of Left/Democrat ideology is unrealistic, counterproductive, or worse.

Really, it's not so much the current taking points that make sense - although there are underlying truths and values that are being denied, that show up in current taking points.

And honestly, although things will be okay, I don't have anything you'll like to hear about the current situation.

In general, the biggest issue with the Republican Party is that it depends on good leadership. Like a monarchy, that's great when you have a reasonable leader, and really shitty when you don't.

Currently, the Republican corpus is having to come to terms with the failure of it's leadership, and the loss of it's underlying moral fortitude. A very large part of this is because the party has been effectively hacked, and has become a Straussian cult. The Democratic party is not immune to the spread of the underlying ideology, nor of the cult itself, but is impacted in less obvious (but no less problematic) ways.

While Strauss himself may have had some reasonable ideals, the consequences of the intersection of his methodology of teaching and his ideologies, by nature, create a kind of "you get it or you don't" state of affairs, where much is implicit. He intentionally did this, because he wanted people to be capable of reading between the lines, and to be able to stand for true and valuable things that you can't fully justify or comprehend analytically. Although some things must be implicit and be stood for even if they cannot be articulated, the consequences of intentionally creating a scenario where much is left to subtext in an environment (politics) where power is a main focus creates a problematic circumstance that is malignant and difficult to pin down in real-world conflict.

Not only is this complex of interactions difficult to pin down in real-world interactions, it is difficult to pin down internally, once you've genuinely been impacted by it. And so it can spread. And it has spread, in the Republican leadership. And they spread the discordant mixture of implicit behaviors to their constituents.

All of this is to say:

Republicans depend on good leadership, and their leadership is fucked right now. But that doesn't mean the corpus of Republicans in general is actually fucky. They are being fucked too, and their fuckyness will right itself when a mentality comes about that is:

A: communicable implicitly and explicitly B: capable if seeing through the morass of the Straussian cult.

Meanwhile, many of the things that the Republican corpus actually cares about manifest in problematic ways, because their needs are no longer met by their leadership.

So if you're looking to feel good about Republicans, don't look at their leadership, or the maga asshats. Look at the very large body of people who has lost representation, and never has been good at having a public voice. Look at the fundamental Republican philosophies, which are, by and large, good. When they act out, tie it back to those philosophies and beliefs, and try to understand how it led to this, now.

One of the primary things the Republican party doesn't do is look away from the fundamental necessity for power. This isn't (generally) out of a desire for power, though that may be what manifests. Instead, it's from a willingness to deal honestly in realities other people find distasteful. This is why they consider the Democratic corpus "weak" at times. But currently, that's kinda fucking them, because they also can't see an answer to the Straussian cult situation. They know, on some level, that something fundamentally important is being left out, but can't find a way to get back to the moral foundation they had - the power has them. Their leadership knows how to point that unease at the wrong things.

The good thing is - getting to know your local Republican, and sorting through the emotions it brings up in you can help, because the fundamental issue is deeply psychological.

The bad thing is, nobody wants to do that, because it's lots easier to just say "those guys suck" and "we'll best them at the polls". But unless the underlying issue is addressed, you'll lose again. And then time will pass, and you'll win, maybe, and then lose again. And each time, it will be shocking, and each time, a worse leader, and each time, the mentality and it's supporting antithetical mentalities spread.

But, once people realize they can't escape a thing, and it needs to be faced, they face it.

You could say this whole thing is a battle between (or a lack of capacity for mutual understanding by) the explicit and the implicit motivators.

Sure, there are shills for both parties all over.

It's almost as if being so single-minded makes them incredibly manipulable.

It's the kind of thinking that turned Anakin into Darth Vader

I have yet to see the trucks with an idolized Kamala Harris holding an American flag on them or even a single article of cultwear pushed out like the MAGA hat, so the Democrats are really slacking in their zealotry.

I bow to your superior insight. I stand corrected.