There is also a point for the left not wanting to alienate all their voters so they are wanting to start slow. Personally I see this as a progress point for how left a country is. If their left is saying a little genocide okay it’s probably a right leaning country.
Who are the centrists even. I am a pro capitalist and I am extremely pro universal healthcare and education in addition to free market economy. It seems what was meant by „centrist” is conservatives in the context of American politics.
Which primo is USA centric and secondo idk if even is a good definition of the word in that narrow context.
The problem with leftists (and I say this as a leftist) is they resort to name calling of anyone who disagrees with them. Instead of listening to their point of view and trying to convince them otherwise. There’s a real “othering” going on.
Tankie. Chinese. Russian. Republican. Child. Moron. Bot. Shill. Purity pony. Trumper. Jihadi cheerleading Jew hater.
This is what I’ve seen leftists and progressives called right here on lemmy. Yeah, leftists resort to name calling.
I’m not saying who’s morally worse. I’m saying it doesn’t help people change their minds. It only serves to push centrists further away.
I’m not saying who’s morally worse
Then I will. Not only does the center enable the worst excesses of capitalism, they’re also far more rude than you and they accuse the left of being.
I’ve said things like “you are literally alienating people who, being reasonable in general, would be voting for you this election,” and been downvoted or argued against.
Does anyone consider that there might be a large number of the people that consider themselves to be centrists are near the actual center, and that everyone dunking on them is imagining center of our current Overton window? I think about that a lot. (Not the guy in the meme, just in general)
I mean, even if not, why do both sides shit on them instead of trying to bring them closer to their side?
Do we not want to make change? Because you need people for that. Are we just concerned about being correct? Because that does nothing to solve our problems.
we’re talking centrists here, not liberals, not moderates, there’s a DISTINCT difference.
The vast majority of so-called centrists are people who just don’t like stress of having a hard stance. That’s why they piss off people on both sides. Impassioned people who understand that progress is a fight need fighters to join them don’t like someone saying that they need to compromise when there are lives and futures on the line. People who see the larger picture are going to be a lot more committed and able to weather criticism.
But most centrists think that they can somehow ride the line between the two and avoid being condemned by either side. This is a thing people do in many circumstances not just politics, and it always makes both sides mad. It’s just a very basic human social faux-paux to think that you can appeal to principled people with a butchered version of their ideals.
That is absolutely not what a centrist is. Although centrists have a non-voting, disinterested crowd, it likely it isn’t any larger, by percent, than, say, leftists, who have a difficult time getting people of their own party to vote. More likely it falls between the Democrats’ less aggressive voter turnout and the Republicans’ more aggressive voter turnout.
A centrist, in general, may agree with some aspects of either party, and, depending on the political climate and the overall weight and balance of needs, will vote one way or the other after actually thinking about the issues involved. This is because they are willing to take on the personal responsibility of making a fucking assessment.
…as opposed to extremists, who take the simplest, least nuanced, most insulting take they can of anyone with a different opinion, and assume that that is what those with a different opinion are doing.
This is, however, pretty understandable, because extremists are emotionally, mentally, and overall psychologically incapable of hosting two genuinely differing ideologies in their heads without going on tilt and asserting insulting shit about people whom they, in actuality, know nothing about except a label they have chosen to vent their hate on.
I stopped listening to this bullshit when we had one party openly wanting to roll us back to the dark ages, allowing raped children to die and rolling back the civil rights… and another who just wanted like, healthcare mid populism. If you think it’s extremist to think we need to push back on fascism at all costs then we have nothing to talk about, there is no compromise with hate. That’s literally what they want. You are playing right into their tricks.
as opposed to extremists, who take the simplest, least nuanced, most insulting take they can of anyone with a different opinion, and assume that that is what those with a different opinion are doing.
And then you went and did exactly what he said, you threw nuance out of the window, made broad assumptions of all parties motives, and then levied a “with us or against us” thinking to it.
We could all chill the fuck out and focus on real issues. Issues like how the ruling class inflames these wedge issues like abortion, and woke ideology for this exact purpose, so we are too busy fighting each other to care enough about being robbed so we don’t band together and end capitalism… Most people think the way they are told to by their peer groups, that is to say their values are a byproduct of environment, and as long as our government continues to let billionaires exist, they will continue exploiting large groups of people to fight each other over issues, those issues, that if we were all left alone to our own devices, i feel pretty certain we wouldn’t be fighting over.
Let me be clear by saying i agree these wedge issues actually matter, but that’s why they are effective tools. But fighting over them creates more division which makes the wedge issues more serious, but if we could just collectively agree we are sick of capitalist money in politics and collectively force the government to end it, within 5-10 years you would see that we can have common sense policies again. But we cant do that while divided.
For me I see 2 things happening. 1) I see capitalism destroying the world rapidly, for real, while we are fighting each other over social issues global warming is rapidly closing in on ending our species. 2) I see a population trained to hate each other that cannot stand together against the ruling class that is going to destroy us all just so that they can live like gods on private islands.
This is what gets me, even when you make well reasoned arguments like this people just collectively what-about-ism you into the floor, and we drifter closer to the end. It feels like screaming into a vacuum…
Absolutely solid take. Well said.
“Divide and conquer” has worked from time immemorial. I may not agree with everything in socialism or capitalism, or other world views - there are lots of things everyone can disagree about in our variegated ideologies.
But the far greater threat is falling prey to the divisions used to control the populace, and thus being unable to effectively defend yourself and those you love against things like the ruling class centralizing wealth excessively while blithely ignoring matters that are critical to species survival.
tl:dr
Centrists piss me off because inevitably they will treat civil rights as negotiable
No.
Civil rights are literally the things we happen to by and large agree upon because we have negotiated. We must always refine and improve our idea of civil rights and what they mean - and much of that refinement comes through negotiation.
A more generous interpretation would be that an “appeal to principled people with a butchered version of their ideals” is basically the definition of compromise. From their perspective, they’re just trying to keep the band together. Maybe the band needed to break up a long time ago, and they’re just holding everyone back. But I don’t think intellectual cowardice / laziness explains all centrists.
See, I agree with you on everything here, and I even used to hold this same position:
But I don’t think intellectual cowardice / laziness explains all centrists.
I really, really wanted to be charitable, as a former conservative, as someone who grew up in the deep rural south surrounded by hardline conservatives, and then flipped a hard 180-degree later in life, I figured my own unique perspective allowed me to see both sides.
Then the fire nation attacked.
And by that I mean covid happened, and with it came off a lot of masks. Now I believe that not only is centrism intellectual laziness, so is ALL political dysfunction. It’s as close as I will get to a twinge of centerism myself, that I have seen into the hearts of people and have seen that they share a common factor that unites us all: laziness.
It’s too broad of a term, and would take an essay to define properly in this context, but at heart it’s what drives everyone, a desire to avoid challenge.
Learning and becoming politically astute to even a grade-school level takes some amount of effort and self-improvement and betterment and study and acceptance of new ideas, and we have left the age of self-challenge. Just look at the state of video games with quest markers to do anything, and 30-second popular video clips for the shortest of attention spans, or make a comment more than three paragraphs in a popular forum if you need evidence that people are not out to challenge themselves broadly. They set into a position that feels comfortable based on who they’re around and who validates them, and they generally stay there. We don’t celebrate people changing their minds, if anything people treat it with shame, and not without good reason. I have been shouted out of leftist spaces for saying I used to be right-wing in some of my views. (Purity testing appears to be another common trait.)
Well said! I’ve come to terms with being Fire Nation, myself. I try to be Iroh but too often end up Mai.
Covid did a number on me. I have a thing about germs anyway, but the vitriol around masks and the anti-vax stuff really reset my barometer for what I can expect from other people. I’m basically just now getting some faith back in humanity whilst trying to pull my head out of my ego. But still, there’s a reason I spend more time with A.I. these days. Without dredging up the loss of third spaces and the effects of social media, I just gotta say - it seems like we’ve forgotten how to help each other. Like as a species.
The vast majority of so-called centrists are people who just don’t like stress of having a hard stance.
No, that’s a bullshit definition imposed by nuance-allergic ‘either you’re with us or you’re against us’ ideologues. Someone who consistently avoids taking an explicit stance on issues is not a centrist. Fence-sitting is not centrism–they’re only “so-called centrists” because ignorant people like you label them that.
A centrist is someone whose collective of views/stances is such that it would not really be accurate to label them with “left” or “right”. Furthermore, people like you also, in my experience, don’t seem to realize that, for example, “left-leaning” and “right-leaning” are in fact subcategories of “centrist”–the “lean” describes the direction that the majority (but not all) of their positions go.
The irony is that a lot more people can be accurately described as “centrist” than actually self-identify (or are accurately identified by others) as such (partially thanks to people like you constantly using the term incorrectly), while the hardline ideologues of both wings arguably hate ‘people who agree with them more than they disagree, but won’t go as far as they do’, more than they do the ones at the opposite end of the political spectrum, and call them “centrists”, instead of the ones for whom the definition actually applies!
Yes. As a European centrist, I would be far left-wing in USA.
My brother called me the other day, and after explaining how nature isn’t “take or be taken from” when there’s enough to go around. We got more into the myths about humans we’re taught, and eventually he asked how I identify politically, and about the difference between a leftist and a liberal
I told him liberals want the system to work, to be fair. Leftists look around and say “there’s so much food we leave a third of it to rot, why the fuck are people starving? What the fuck are we doing? No one is happy with the world we’ve created, why are we doing it? Why don’t we start with the assumption that everyone gets to live, and figure out the details from there?”
Leftists/progressives say “the reason for all of that is the oligarchy hoarding all the resources, so we need to start with stopping them from doing that”
Liberals kinda want the same things as progressives, but they don’t want to "hurt " the rich to get it. But of course if 5 people are hoarding literally everything the only way to get more for everyone is to take it from those 5 people. Liberals just can’t get themselves to take that next step.
(This is US liberal btw, might be different in Europe)
liberals say they want the same things as leftists. they do not.
In Europe, the Liberal party is pretty far right, tbh.
The rest of the world uses the name “liberal” for different things. I think left and (American) liberal are pretty much the same thing, but obviously since America has two words, America divides the left into two.
We used to think the conservative side of politics was fairly united, while the left was a mess, ranging from leninists through environmentalists through workers’ rights through people into the public good (and a thousand other divisions)
Now that conservative politics has been replaced by a radical mix of authoritarianism, individualism, anti-government, so I’m not all that sure they’re as united as they used to look
I don’t think that’s true. At the heart of it …
Liberals want to fix the system. They want to tweak things to make it fair, to make it work better
Leftists want to change the system. They want to rewrite the rules in a way that works better, the way things are currently be damned
Maybe I’d say liberals think the system CAN be tweaked enough to make it work for the people, progressives don’t think it can and want to create a system that does… But I do think the major difference between liberals and progressives is liberals serve the oligarchy while progressives want to eradicate it
I think it’s more like the system is built for the oligarchy, and liberals want to preserve the system. They’ll often support things like taxes on the rich or worker protections - but they don’t like the idea of something more direct
Neo-liberals do directly serve oligarchs, because they’re liberals who operate under myths about how capitalism works - the efficiency of corporations, billionaires as innovators and job creators, voting with your wallet. They think if you fix the economy, everything else will work out, and for every social service they make sure to send a pile of money into someone’s pocket. Thank God this seems to finally be declining
I think what makes this topic so complicated is we’re taught a lie - that the political spectrum is a line. It’s not two dimensional or a horseshoe - tankies are leftist authoritarians, but they’re not further left than anarcho-communists. On some aspects they’re pretty close to christo-fascists, but it’s not because they went so far around that they’re curving towards the far right. They just also want their end goal enforced from above, and also are willing to overlook a little genocide of the “enemy”
Meanwhile, anarcho-communists are on the other side of a different spectrum. They don’t believe in a large system of enforcement from the top down, they believe in building community from the ground up. They don’t believe in a system of rules, they believe in social bonds
The end goal is the same, but the methods couldn’t be more different
My point with all this is that the left want change, the right wants the status quo. Conservatives want a hierarchy under de facto aristocrats, liberals want a system of rules, and anarchists want community rule
This doesn’t all fit on a 2d spectrum, but it all makes sense when you break it down in more dimensions - you can nail down any coherent political stance to a point in this multifaceted graph space.
American liberals are different from liberals elsewhere, but what they have in common is they hold the legal framework as sacred. We already live in a world managed by English common law, they all want to perfect the laws, but resist anything that threatens the status quo
Edit: who exactly is the liberal in the original post?
ITT people conflating liberalism with centerism.
Liberals in Australia are our right wing hypocrites so it’s tracking for me
Is the US the only country where liberals aren’t clearly right-wing? I know liberals in the US that sincerely seem to lean left (they agree that capitalism is destroying our planet, that we need more worker co-ops, co-op housing, etc)
Yeah, no. That’s not why. But cute meme!
Adding nothing of value: a JimSamtanko specialty.
They say, in the comment section of a shit-tier leftist meme post.
*golfclap.
are you seeing a therapist? because I have actually genuinely never seen someone post a troll comment this insecure
That’s cool, I’m concerned that you actually think the bullshit in this shit meme are true. Do you honestly think that the reason people are mad at leftists is because they’re rude about letting people die??
You think THAT is why people think leftists are irritating?
Maybe they got a cyber truck and the XL sicker pack instead?
Not wanting people to die is a leftist thing now?
Basically.
For example, tens of thousands of people die every year in the US because of inadequate access to health care. Universal payer would be cheaper and result in fewer preventable deaths. Centrists do not support the policy and thus are willing to let people die in order to support the parasitic insurance industry.
The genocide in Gaza, homelessness, prison industrial complex, climate change, etc. all get people killed in preventable ways. But we have to protect the owner class so we’re not going to do any of the clear solutions. Letting people die needlessly is an acceptable result.
This sounds like the plot of a post modern movie about society collapsing
Yeah. They own that now apparently. I think it happened around the same time they collectively agreed that both sides are the same.
I’m sorry if this is a stupid question. Both sides of what?
I hope this is a genuine question because they are referring to the Political Spectrum.
A “spectrum” can exist on a line, a 2D graph, or even a 3D graph. I’m unsure of the 4th & 5th dimensions, though.
It was! I didn’t quite get that considering they’re fighting over each others differences
Well it’s certainly not a right-wing thing
It’s more the idea that everyone counts as people. The further right you go the smaller the group you assign full person status becomes. Liberals are OK with a bit of genocide and/or slavery as long as the victims are sufficiently poor, distant, and profitable.
Not wanting people to die is a normal and sane idea.
People are still who they are but the world we live in has for the last half century significantly shifted to state authotorian and fascist idealogy has flourished in our ego centric rewarding capitalist economy
Political Left in the US aligns with center in Europe. Only adding to the evidence that political labels are arbitrary and subjective.
Fascist attack normalcy and misinformation adds to confusion. You have to believe its us and them, you have to pick a side.
Decent people stay true to what they are, causing the people who are fooled to listen to fascists to now label you a vilified left. You then have the option to confirm to your centrists peers or to stay true to your original ideals.
Currently i am aligned with far left anarchism But i can perceive plenty of context and societal structures where my identical ideas could be perceived as conservative.
Political Left in the US aligns with center in Europe. Only adding to the evidence that political labels are arbitrary and subjective.
Dutch right wing conservative parties are further left than the US left. Not all of them, obviously/unfortunately, but they’re there.
America’s political compass is weird. On one side you have a party that mostly just wants to keep the status quo, only really doing changes where it is already desperately behind the times. And on the other side you have the conservatives.
I had a weird experience with this “have to pick a side” issue just a couple days ago on a different lemmy. According to the moderators there, not being willing to use violence against protestors was the same as defending them
Pacifism being perceived as hostile by both sides of modern politics is a great summary for the state of things.
Also a huge red flag for what may still come, we may not all realize it but very important parts of our collective history are being decided on today.
Let’s hope for a good outcome
Yup. Not wanting to get into an argument about what defines a “real women” gets you banned from posting.
Lemmy does not imply free speech.
Ehh, just get to the next instance over :/
Has been for a couple of years now.
That is quite sad to read, but thank you
I don’t think centrists are against socialised health care.
There are people in this thread who think being centrist means you’re ok with a little genocide. What do you even say to that?
By answering whether someone like Joe Biden is a centralist and whether his actions contribute to genocide.
The reason your confused is because leftist have seen examples of people calling themselves centralist and also being okay with what is going on in Gaza.
By being okay I mean not trying to stop it actively.
It’s important to define what we mean when we use these terms/phrases.
It’s probably a bad idea to reply in the first place because I don’t really want to argue… at all, let alone about politics and what label I or someone else has, but fuck it.
I’m more confused about what you’re trying to say than what I think about Gaza. I don’t really care about Biden, I’m not an American. There’s nothing I can do about what he says or does. I can’t tell you whether he’s a centrist or not, frankly I don’t care.
Naturally, I don’t agree with any support whatsoever, financial, military, or otherwise of what Israel is doing in Gaza. The same applies for the vast majority of armed conflict… ever. It might apply to all of it, I don’t care to do a quick run through all of human history and make a judgement call on each and every one but… get this. War bad. Subscribe for more hot takes.
As to what I’m doing about it, I’m not protesting or arguing with faceless text online. I don’t have the time, inclination, or energy for it. I have a lot of things to worry about that are a lot closer to me. Elections happened, and are coming up, and I’m gonna vote according to my interests which happen to include not supporting Israel.
Having said all that, I’m not even sure how disagreeing with killing innocent people and supplying weapons for killing innocent people is a political alignment factor. Shit’s crazy, what the fuck.
As far as I’m concerned, both the far left and the far right have completely insane dealbreaker things I never want to see happen (again). The reason I think I’m centrist is that there are ideas on both sides that are a lot tamer that I think could help us all live fulfilling, comfortable lives. When I think about compromising with either side, it’s about trading between these tamer ideas. I think it’s strategically worthwhile to not get everything you want from those tamer ideas immediately so you can at least get some of them.
Surely I won’t regret typing this out.
As far as I’m concerned, both the far left and the far right have completely insane dealbreaker things I never want to see happen (again).
I’m so curious what dealbreaker things the far left has.
But overall, you misunderstood my point. It was that centralist could mean being okay with genocide as in they literally want to meet halfway between fascism and reasonability.
Like if one side said let’s not do slavery, and one side says let’s do slavery, a centralist compromised means being okay with some slavery.
My comment was more about:
Halfway between justice and injustice is still injustice.
You see it as fascism (the far right) and reasonability (the far left). I don’t really have anything to say to that other than, that is not reasonable. I come from a formerly communist country. I won’t entertain that bullshit.
Edit:
Like if one side said let’s not do slavery, and one side says let’s do slavery, a centralist compromised means being okay with some slavery.
This is completely batshit crazy, what the fuck. I’m a few more drinks in right now and don’t have the same filter, but “not slavery” is not what the far left is.
Edit 2: Yeah I probably could’ve phrased it better or just not answered. Sorry about that, shouldn’t have called you batshit crazy. If I were to phrase it better, I don’t believe that is a reasonable depiction of what the spectrum looks like. The far left isn’t a rainbow land of inclusion, acceptance, and happiness. I don’t really care to debate with communists the failings of communism, I’m not going to change my opinion on my experience and they won’t change their world view because of some random comment on lemmy.
formerly communist country
Far left doesn’t automatically = communism.
There are many flavours of socialism, including social democracies which I would call far left even though it has aspects of capitalism (it’s the end result that matters imo. If it’s more equality, that’s far left).
Which goes back to my original point, it’s really important for people to spell out what they actually mean when they use words or phrases that have been twisted by the other side.
Sorry if you’re fuming. Didn’t really mean to offend.
Thanks for waiving that little snafu, I appreciate it, sincerely.
As far as I’m concerned, social democracy is center left. Maybe there’s a difference between European and NA perspectives. I live in a social democratic country and I have to say life is pretty good.
This is what I mean by that depiction of the spectrum not being reasonable. I don’t see how someone can say that on equal distance from the center you have social democracy and genocide.
“Yes, you’re correct, as clearly demonstrated by the Gazan Genocide.”
Yeah what?
I thought secure socialized programs were left and “fuck you i got mine” system was about as far right as you could get.
The centrist position would be universal healthcare, but less available to higher incomes who can afford portions of health insurance. Thus reducing limitations of too much tax going toward a top-tier health system, neglecting other areas of the nation like education, infrastructure, aged care, etc.
“If you can afford it, you can afford it. Don’t neglect it and don’t abuse it.”
I’m pretty sure centrists think we’re bad because we want to abolish private ownership of the means of production, unless “leftism” means something else where OP is from.
The political center wants to maintain the status quo with regard to private property.
Edited for clarity.
A big problem of this entire argument, particularly when Americans are making it, is that nobody seems to agree on who the “centrists” and “leftists” are supposed to be.
Turns out social democrats are pretty sure they’re leftists, but everybody else self-identifying as a leftist is convinced they are indistinguishable from free market liberals, while free market liberals think they’re center left while social democrats are pretty sure they are indistinguishable from neocons.
Unless you’re in the US, where apparently social democrats are both far left and communists, the word socialism has about as much meaning as a Rorschard test card and hard left people seem to be a figment of an AI’s imagination in that they appear to exist exclusively online.
So yeah, I really don’t know what the OP is talking about, honestly.
This shit right here is why I hate to argue about labels or whether someone is/isn’t liberal/leftist/centrist/conservative/whatever. At best, they’re an extremely vague, ill-defined, hyper-individualized label that means different things to different people. One person says “I’m a leftist,” and they mean it as “I’m a progressive Democrat who supports heavily regulated capitalism, labor unions, LGBT rights, and am pro-choice.” Another person says “I’m a leftist,” and they mean it as “I’m an anarcho-communist who believes billionaires should forcibly redistribute their wealth, and I don’t give a rat’s ass about LGBT or minority rights because they’re a bourgeoisie distraction from class consciousness.”
I don’t care about your label, I care about your policies. Those actually tell me something about you.
An anarcho-communist who thinks gender identity is a bourgeoisie distraction, is actually a Soviet flavored fascist.
Not an anarcho-communist.
1000%. To me it feels like 99 times out of 100 it’s a complete waste of time to not only figure out what collectivist labels one is using, but then getting them to define that label, because not everyone uses the same term the same way, etc. etc.
That time and energy could be spent discussing the actual topic at hand. I’ve ‘debated’ abortion with a friend who is very against it, but labels herself as progressive/leftist. Is it really worth the effort trying to unravel the apparent contradiction? What purpose would that actually serve, in the end? The topic at the time was abortion, so really, the only relevant fact about one politically at that time is what one’s stance on that particular topic is, and why it is what it is.
This excessive and ever-more-granulated labeling is a waste of time at best, and an artifically-created wedge that drives people apart who are actually in agreement, at worst.
Hold up… Are centrist people now lumped together with right wingers?
the problem is that people are called centrists because their major opinion is simply “the status quo is fine”, which is effectively just being a conservative but without the active outspoken racism.
The centre party here in sweden meanwhile actively promotes LGBT rights and obvious things like that, they actually have opinions on both sides of the spectrum and a vision for the future, and that vision is one that you might not consider optimal but it’s not obviously fucking evil.
Don’t you love how American commenters can’t see things like LGBT rights as obvious
Gay rights are human rights. No sane person cares what adults do in private. No sane person cares about who other people hold hands with and kiss
But then they’re not centrist. If these people are conservative minus active racism, then they’re just “RIGHT WING lite.”
Why destroy the whole concept of centrism that way?
This issue doesn’t stem from the left, it stems from many self-proclaimed centrists actually espousing right wing ideology to the point it has become almost a dogwhistle.
dunno, but they always do it. ask any woman who dates men and has been single in the past five years.
They often are, because they often are effectively supporting similar policies. I think MLK wrote about this quite well in Letter from a Birmingham Jail. If you haven’t read that, it’s well worth the 20 minutes.
On a more specific note, many centrist Democrats are actually corporate Democrats, and they’re supporting many laws that Republican politicians are also supporting, laws that benefit big businesses at the expense of everyone else in the world.
Here are the two paragraphs you’re referencing from the letter he wrote from the Birmingham jail in 1963
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured
Oh, so, moderates, not centrists. Yeah.
Apparently, yes, at least by some liberals and leftists.
It’s clearly an extremist view. Nobody in their right mind would do so much to alienate people who they also want to vote for their party.
From my point of view, virtually all of the people who call themselves “centrists” in U.S. politics are the people who say that both sides are bad, and when you dig into it, they think both sides are bad because they uncritically accept right-wing talking points (read: lies) and framing of the issues.
The problem with US politics is that there are only two sides, two parties. This lumps together all the worst elements of a particular point of view with the more moderate or logical ones.
The extreme elements of the American left are doing the incredibly ironic thing of reintroducing racist concepts, such as segregation, under the idea of it being somehow progressive. State that the slaves brought to the US were bought on African markets that existed centuries before Europeans ever took interest and you’ll get a veritable social media lynching mob come after you because it doesn’t fit in the idea that anyone with European origins need to feel shame for history long gone. I had an argument in Discord voice chats three times with some American leftists who were adamant that racism was entirely created by white people and that no other ethnic group in the world is capable of being racist (an ironically racist statement). These same kinds of people thought they could educate Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the RPG Cyberpunk, on racism because they wanted him to exclude black characters fram fictional gang called “The Animals” and didn’t like the existence of a Haitian gang called “The Voodoo Boys”.
In short; uneducated dumbasses who think they can speak for people who they never even met or consulted with, and get incredibly vengeful to the point of ruining people’s lives if you call them out on their bullshit. That is why someone can look up at how fucked up American politics is and say. without much difficulty, “Both sides are equally shit. Just choose a flavour”.
In general maybe not, in these lemmy spaces absolutely.
Centrists are seen as fence sitters because they are ok with the horrible things the system has baked into it, as they are comfortable enough to refuse to take a hard stance against it. Right wingers are people who actively destroy things.
I’ve been accused of being centrist, usually by American left wingers, on multiple occasions. I don’t go about defining my political views with a specific side, much less American sides, but if I am indeed an example of someone centrist, then I can safely say your statement is bullshit.
I could explain why, but I’m not sure if I’ll be spending half an hour writing something that nobody is going to read.
I’ll read it
YES.
How was it? The right says “we want to do genocide”, the left says “no, we don’t want any genocide”. So the right responded “ok, so let’s just do a little genocide”, and the left responded “no, we don’t want any genocide”. And the centrist said to the left “see, You are the extremists, you don’t want to meet in the middle”.
Fake might be the wrong word. To me it feels very real and very entrenched both due to our voting system and those two powerful parties being the ones with the power to change it. Plus both are beholden to interests other than those of the general population, so their stated platforms aren’t necessarily real. (This is not a both sides comment, one side is still far worse than the other)
It’s an emergent thing from other flaws in the system, and it is bad, but it feels all too real.
This is perfect. The right has gone so far to the right that meeting in the middle is still very much on the right.
The lesser evil, still being evil trope.
Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.
You take a step toward him. He takes a step back.
Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.—A.R. Moxon
I’m a centrist. I live in Canada. We have public health care here. Even right wingers here like it. People who are against public health care aren’t ideological, they’re in the pockets of private insurance.
If it’s not ideological, why is it always the conservatives in Canada and the UK trying to dismantle public healthcare? Come the fuck on.
Same pattern holds here in Sweden. It’s definitely ideological. The right wing ideology of “fuck you, I’m lining my pockets”
Yeah, US lefties are odd.
Where I’m from, if far left is 10, centrist 5, and far right is 0. You apply the US version to our spectrum and their left is like 5, centrist 0, right -5. Hell, not even, because the moderate-far right support universal health.
I’m centrist-left and I see the average US self-labelled lefties as generally more centrist or even right-leaning than me. Their whole spectrum and perspective is decades behind and heavy right-leaning.
But credit where credit is due, progress has gotta start somewhere and they no doubt see themselves as very progressive and left in their environment.
It’s not that the entire spectrum is further right, it’s more that the vast majority of society is dealing with actual praxis and thus living in some anarchocapitalist hellscape where fairly centre-liberal reforms are a big lurch left, while a small pocket of cosplayers are online pretending they’re about to start the February Revolution.
It’s not a one axis thing, either. Americans are also blissfully unaware of how hostile European leftism is against some of their cultural causes. We don’t talk enough about how it’s well accepted among Euro leftist circles that surrogate pregnancies are a form of human trafficking, or that all sex work should be banned. Culture is culture, left/right positions aren’t universal.
Ah, I see you’re a fellow “three-dimensional spectrum” person. Not the traditional two-dimensional one, or worse yet, the binary “If not this, than that. This and that are only options.”
More of a “people agree and disagree on different things, often for cultural and historical reasons, and the bundling of those things into pre-established packages is way less consistent than political traditions would suggest”. How much that’s the same thing I leave up for interpretation.
i like how this image is three different posts tied together precariously.
true (talking about beathecult reply)
