• @Apocalypteroid@lemmy.world
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    556 days ago

    Meeting everyone’s basic needs isn’t even far left. This is how far the Overton window has shifted to the right. Meeting everyone’s basic needs is left-of-centre. Far left would be state owned and controlled everything, redistribution of wealth via any means necessary, all public services fully state funded and free for all at the point of use.

  • NutWrench
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    195 days ago

    Narrator: The left did not, in fact, get everyone’s basic needs met.

    Both Democrats and Republicans have been moving steadily to the right for the last 40 years. So Democrats are now where Republicans were in the 1980s: friends of banks, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And the right has moved all the way into an insane asylum.

  • @phlegmy@sh.itjust.works
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    677 days ago

    Getting everyone’s basic needs met is more of a centre-left ideology.
    Many centre-right parties believe in things like public healthcare, because it has a net-benefit to the economy.

    Centrists don’t sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything. That’s a really poor strawman argument from someone who clearly doesn’t understand global politics.

    I guess you’re confused with people in the U.S who think having views somewhere in-between those of democrats and republicans makes you a centrist.
    That U.S-specific ‘centrism’ is really just right wing politics.

    • @Trihilis@ani.social
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      247 days ago

      Maybe we should stop with left, right and centrist all together.

      It’s a stupid way of defining politics. If you ask a random person what being left means it can vary from anything between hugging a tree or wanting good health care.

      By calling yourself “green” or “social” you are immediately putting a label on yourself and a lot of people won’t vote for you because they’re too dumb or lazy to actually read into what a party is about. I saw an article here on lemmy that pointed out some moron that voted for Trump in hopes he would save his farm, if he would have read into politics he would have known that Trump was the worst possible choice but here we are…

      I’m from Europe and I see the same shit happening here. Call yourself green or left and people will scoff at you.

      If there is anything the current “left” parties absolutely suck at its marketing. Call yourself the freedom party or whatever but stop using idiotic terminology that people can’t relate to. Almosr no one will vote for the “environment party”.

      I hate the extremist conservative parties here but i have to give them credit for being able to market their party in such a way that people are literally voting on them AGAINST their own best interests.

      • @huppakee@lemm.ee
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        37 days ago

        The biggest party in the Netherlands is called the freedom party, their mainly anti-immigrant and against the freedom of religion and the freedom of education. Totally agree they’re great at marketing (though it’s more about being loud and talking about social problems than it is about having ideas of how to solve them). They’re considered to be far-right populist, their leader (Geert Wilders) is aligned with Marine Le Pen and Georgia Meloni. The left has lost their working class-base traditional base to them because of them being more relatable (and less high-brow) than the labour party, the socialists and the greens.

        • @Rob1992@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          Wait… checks news how the fuck did that happen. I knew we had plenty of racists here but I didn’t realize the vote swung that way.

      • @ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        15 days ago

        If there is anything the current “left” parties absolutely suck at its marketing.

        You mean to tell me endless purity tests and screaming “you’re a literal nazi” at everyone who disagrees slightly with your position aren’t effective tactics to change someone’s mind? No waaaaaaay.

    • @EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de
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      217 days ago

      Centrists don’t sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything.

      I seriously don’t understand how fucking difficult this is to understand. It’s why I largely ignore political discussions on Reddit/Lemmy/all social media.

      I don’t look at one person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is bad”, look at another person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is good!” and try to find a way where both are right.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness
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        107 days ago

        I don’t look at one person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is bad”, look at another person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is good!” and try to find a way where both are right.

        This is literally what centrists all over the world (well, the parts that show up in English-language news anyway) think about Palestine, though.

        • @EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de
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          7 days ago

          And you missed the entire point. Centrism isn’t about trying to find a perfect middle ground to every individual subject.

          Of course there will be centrists that support Israel carpet bombing everything. There are other centrists that don’t support them. There are some that will support them with conditions. I know someone who is broadly centrist who thinks Israel should be dissolved entirely.

          It’s not a fucking hivemind.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness
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            67 days ago

            It’s not a hive mind, but centrist parties almost invariably have pro-Israel/“it’s complicated” positions. There will always be individual variation, but the pattern is clear.

    • @Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social
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      7 days ago

      You are right, that centrists don’t actually sit as a 50/50 middle. But that means that “centrists” always actually side with fascists and the far right when forced to take a position. If you aren’t fully willing to confront capitalism, it means that you will side with fascism before even mild socialism.

      • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        Fascism is not the same as capitalism. For capitalism to work properly, it is required that market power is minimized and that companies cannot influence politics. The fact that they have been able to do so is not capitalism.

        Milton Friedman – In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), he argues that government intervention should be minimal and that businesses should focus on profit rather than lobbying for special advantages. While he doesn’t explicitly state that capitalism requires private companies to stay out of politics, he warns against corporate influence leading to cronyism.

        Adam Smith – In The Wealth of Nations (1776), he warns against “the merchants and manufacturers” using their influence to gain monopolies and special privileges, which distort free competition. He emphasizes that capitalism works best when businesses do not manipulate laws in their favor.

        James Buchanan (Public Choice Theory) – Buchanan and other public choice theorists (like Gordon Tullock) argue that when businesses influence politics, they engage in rent-seeking, which distorts market efficiency. They emphasize that government should limit corporate lobbying to prevent economic inefficiencies.

        Luigi Zingales – A more recent economist, Zingales argues in A Capitalism for the People (2012) that corporate political influence undermines free markets and leads to a system of “crony capitalism,” where economic power translates into political power.

      • @Nangijala@feddit.dk
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        27 days ago

        Am I understanding you right that you are saying that all centrists will side with fascism over socialism? Because I have some news for you in that case.

      • @phlegmy@sh.itjust.works
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        17 days ago

        That’s your opinion, not a fact.
        And the issue with that is you’re only seeing it as two sides and a fence-sitter.
        Centrists form their own views and positions, independent of the parties on either side.

        There’s no forcing them to take a position, they already have one.
        And when they have to vote for/against legislation changes, they’ll side with whichever option aligns most closely with their views.

        US pseudo-centrism is right wing though, which might be what you’re confusing real centrism with.

    • @Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      36 days ago

      Centrists don’t sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything.

      In practice, they just capitulate every time.

      • Echo Dot
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        207 days ago

        They are relative to global politics which most Americans know nothing about, it seems.

        Republicans have always been pretty hard right and as of the Trump administrations they are pretty much extreme right. Democrats seem to randomly oscillate between centre right and right.

      • @kreskin@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        Some issues are not relative or negotiable. Rape, murder, war crimes, pedophilia, etc. If you want to be soft on that stuff then you lose my vote, period. Now and in the future. If that means we collectively burn this place to the ground, well if thats what it takes, thats what it takes-- lets get it over with.

  • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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    467 days ago

    Centrism doesn’t mean that you can’t choose between democrats and republicans, it means that ideologically, you believe in a balance between capitalist ideas and socialist ideas. For example, you can believe in the Hayekian idea that the many interactions between individuals in the market is better at creating prosperity than a centralized government that distributes all goods and services. But you can also believe that the market can’t do everything on its own due to market failures like monopoly power, externalities, assymmetric information. There exists a compromise between the two that is negotiated through politics. A core necessity for this to happen is that democracy is maintained. Democracy is not maintained when elections are bought by companies.

    What is happening in the US now is that politics has been taken over by the private market. No economist would have agreed with this (unless they were paid to). It is against everything that we know. This is not a left vs right stance. It’s a democracy vs autocracy stance. Autocracy can happen from both the right and left, and it doesn’t matter who.

    The one thing I dislike about the idea of centrism is the idea that you can’t decide on everything because you remain agnostic about every issue. I think a much better idea to advocate for is pluralism: the idea that your opinion on specific issues is not dependent on your politcal stance. Every issue is unique and doesn’t automatically identify you with left or right. You can have different opinions on different issues.

    • @Valar_Morghulis@jlai.lu
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      327 days ago

      It’s funny because from my European perspective there’s no (visible) left in the USA. Democrats are centrist. Sanders could be social democrat. Otherwise I fully agree with you.

      • ssillyssadass
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        36 days ago

        The US political spectrum has shifted so far. What is right in the US is far right in the EU, and what is left in the EU is far left in the US.

    • @InputZero@lemmy.world
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      157 days ago

      Lately I’ve caught myself thinking differently. The left is progressive because they want to progress civil rights. The centerists are conservative because they just don’t want things to change. The right is regressive because they want to turn back the clock. Honestly I think we need to stop calling people on the right conservative and give them the new label regressives.

        • @Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          76 days ago

          As a mediocre white guy, I can confidently say that is today. Any white guy who is like “I never got any special treatment for being white” has gone though life and society with their eyes closed.

          • @CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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            46 days ago

            There’s still systematic racism with America. That being said, everyone’s quality of life other than the uber rich has gone down noticeably. That’s part of the reason populist lies from Trump work so well.

      • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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        26 days ago

        You have to see conservativism and “the conservatives” as separate things. One is a group that can hold many different views and another is a view point itself.

    • @Dasus@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Ugh, market socialism exists.

      Not all socialism has planned economies. That’s communism. A specific subset of socialism.

      Capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on market economies. badumtssh

      • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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        16 days ago

        Right, but I see market socialism as an ideological compromise rather than inherent socialism. Im from scandinavia, and my country is a capitalist country with a strong welfare state.

        • @Soup@lemmy.world
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          35 days ago

          You have “welfare capitalism” as they define it so that they get to still try to keep people tethered to capitalism. Capitalism is not just having money, it’s a system that prioritizes said money. Capitalism seeks to reduce regulation and separate the worker and owner class and basically by definition you don’t get to have a say if you don’t have money. Scandinavian countries are not finding a balance but are resisting capitalism while keeping its name and to make people not be afraid of not having it(for some fuckin’ reason people really want it I don’t get it).

          If you have strong regulations, a government focused on taking care of people instead of relying on businesses to do it, and the people have fair power then you don’t have capitalism, just a system where private ownership exists but is not jerked-off at every turn like in the states. It was literally made up so the merchant class could keep all their money as monarchies were falling. It’s a not something you want to even associate with. Even the states hasn’t gone full capitalism because they know(knew) that it’s not a truly viable system.

          I also want system with some level of private ownership, but I also don’t think private, for-profit power generation should be a thing and if a company under “capitalism” is too big to fail then at least a large part of it should be sold to the government, and at least have it’s executive board purged, not handed a bunch of money as they hold their employees’ jobs hostage.

          • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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            15 days ago

            Capitalism goes through different waves and has grown to accept government involvement insofar as to reduce market failures of which monopolies and externalities are some important ones. Unions are justified in capitalism by solving the market failure of asymmetric information.

      • @echinop@lemmy.world
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        06 days ago

        Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it’s more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff it’s communism.

      • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        You can advocate for wealth taxes, unions, and other welfare measures within a capitalist system. I’m from one of the most egalitarian countries in the world and we are capitalist too.

          • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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            4 days ago

            Nope, but I’m from scandinavia, no oil money.

            Edit: also, I dont like categorical descriptions, because reality is more complicated. But what is happening in the US is more specifically referred to as “rentier capitalism”. In Scandinavia, we have something like “welfare capitalism”.

              • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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                34 days ago

                I’m not saying we don’t have things to work on, but it’s not black or white. Social injustice gets reduced over time in a democracy. Name a country that is not capitalist that has never done bad things.

    • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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      -56 days ago

      I consider myself Centrist because I would rather eat 10 pounds of fried bugs than align myself with either absolute clown show of a party.

      I’m a free agent, and the haters can’t stand that they can’t have me.

      • @Soup@lemmy.world
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        76 days ago

        That doesn’t make you a centrist. Ya’ll seriously have lost your ability to see anything objectively it’s wild. The Democrats aren’t left wing except for a few people I could probably count on one hand but nearly the entire country, and its inability to pay attention even across its northern border, believes that the Democrats must be left wing since the Republicans are right wing.

        You may very well not be a centrist, or maybe you are, but basing that on anything that suggests that the Democrats are left, and left to a point where they balance the extremism of the GOP, renders he whole thing worthless.

        We’ve been screaming at the US for years to get a fuckin’ clue PLEASE just become moderately politically literate we are begging you.

        • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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          05 days ago

          I spent 4 years going into debt for a degree in political literacy. And then more for a related Master’s. I appreciate the frustration, but I can assure you I know exactly what I’m taking about.

          Relative to the 1D spectrum of D to R in the US, I’m certainly in the middle ground, beyond the border of what falls enough into the D realm. From a global perspective, sure, the Dems are already a mess that overlaps the center some, but thats a fuzzy edge and not as fully held by the Dems as most moderately informed Europeans like to imply.

          And yes, the lack of appropriate labels makes me more of a “Centrist” than anything else, but its barely an accurate term, as is using a 1D left/right binary to define anything can be. I’m against many types of government spending, which only a decade or two ago used to be such a quaint way to identify oneself politically, then everyone dropped the mask and it’s just a full-on Kleptocracy out there now. On a Nolan Chart, I’m squarely in the Centrist square. On a quadrant evaluation, I fall into the same zone as Thomas Jefferson and…Marianne Williamson, oddly enough.

          Plus, Lemmy needs to hear opinions from outside the tankie echo chamber.

          • @Soup@lemmy.world
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            25 days ago

            I’d love to hear about that “many types of government spending” because that’s kinda important here.

            Any dipshit can barely pass classes and get a degree. I’ve worked with engineers who can’t even fucking count pillars in a picture and argue when you politely ask for a recount so you’re gunna need to do a lot more than leave incredibly important context up in the air while flapping around your basically worthless-until-proven-otherwise degree.

            Trump went to a good school. He’s bad at everything he supposedly learned there. Many republicans have law degrees and some days you wonder if they’re even able to read a children’s book with any level of competency.

            • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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              14 days ago

              Yes, well I also hate typing out my political beliefs on mobile, but you raise a fair point. Even though in sure you’ll hate everything I say out of principle. Apologies in advance for typos.

              In general, the GAO does a good job of enumerating wasteful spending. For example, there’s 133 individual programs over 15 Federal agencies intending to expand broadband coverage. FFS, consolidate that. So there’s statutory reforms and some streamlining to be done strategically across government. Not to balance spoons on a fork better than one can look at a spreadsheet, like some people.

              My family has spent their carers in education, and for me there’s no love lost with the Dept of Education being eliminated. Even if you reduce it to a small grantmaking entity that funds state level systems, that’s a function that can be easily done from within DOI.

              There’s a large number of farm and oil subsidies that are so old as to be the goal of the industry to exploit. But oh no, don’t touch farmers because you might undermine Monsanto’s bottom line. These poor people are human shields.

              Earmarks, while a pittance on paper at only $15B in 2024, are a cultural artifact of the endemic problem in budget making. While not all spending is Earmarked, there’s plenty beyond that scope which is a personal or lobbyist-initiated favor. Innumerable examples exist for this, and neither side is willing to get rid of theirs in order to get rid of the other side’s favorites. Everyone is the problem here. Sure, at some level this is a balancimg act with the cost of politics and playing to constituents. But the fact that most Reps see it as their right is the problem.

              Military spending is crazy bananas and no one will touch it. Regardless of what idiots Musk and Hegseth say. The whole infrastructure is based on the Cold War+Post9/11 add on.

              My career is in international development, and as an industry, it very often achieved remarkably little other than things like gainfully employing 10% of the PhDs in a small country in Sub-Saharan Africa to do office work. Some programs were awesome and saved lives and made a difference. They were the rare exceptions to the rule. However, simply strangling USAID like has happened is the stupidest, most expensive way to accomplish chaos with nothing to show for it. Many programs that engaged in short-term behavior change frequently showed how ineffectual they were in their own final reports, yet the same companies still thought they did a great job because they had simply not failed to complete the contract.

              And don’t get me started on how many contractors there are that charge 50% above market rate just because they can. Doesn’t matter the industry, it’s literal collusion across every contractor. I’ve written the budgets, and learned how to be only a “tiny” part of the problem. The reliance on contractors is a strategic disadvantage. Because money can solve that problem, it goes away temporarily over and over. That was a low-information environment in the past, ordering copier toner from a paper catalog. We need a new round of procurement reforms.

              I can go on and on. In large part, there’s no one simple solution here. It’s a lot of statutory reforms, hard work, strategic planning, and doing less with less that had to be adopted over years, as was done in the 90s. But at a much higher rate, and with more urgency. The US is in a genuine debt crisis, and the people who ran on crashing the system won in part because the Dems ran on ignoring this among other problems.

              • @Soup@lemmy.world
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                14 days ago

                To be honest, I agree with most of that. I’d love to hear more about the department of education but I also don’t wanna waste too much of your time and am aware that in the States it’s not entirely what it may seem to be. Personally I think it should be expanded to be more of what people believe it to be; leaving education so fully up to states doesn’t seem to do much besides make it easier for republicans to turn their base into even bigger drooling morons.

                But anyway thanks for clarifying, and in such depth, too. I’m glad to hear that “streamlining” doesn’t seem to mean the classic right-wing nonsense around making government small enough that it can be easily controlled by awful people. I’m also not sure how centrist these points are, especially if you’re aiming to, for example, not rely on private contractors. Left-wing policies aren’t “spend blindly”, that’s just a right-wing attack angle so they can defund things, so if you have ways for the government to be able to do things well then I mean of course I’m all for it.

                • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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                  14 days ago

                  The simple version is that there is no Constitutional mandate for the Federal government to do anything related to education, which is why education is a function of the states. Yet it’s also 4% of the Federal budget, so depending on how much of a strict constitutionalist you are, the root question is more about what does it really need to be doing, and why. I would argue that this far after the end of Jim Crowe, and the proliferation of for-profit universities, ED isn’t maintaining standards, and is moving too slow to not simply feed Univ of Phoenix publicly-backed loan and GI Bill funds at a net loss to both taxpayers and students.

                  At the state level, from what I hear second hand, ED does little more than manage overly complicated and tonedeaf grant mechanisms that flow down to state Education Departments, and then becomes this sort of Leviathan of distant micromanagement. Often with feckless management, confusing and unclear terms, and making the District/State/ED relationship unnecessarily odd and overly burdensome.

                  Carter carved a new Department out of the Proto-HHS, and it’s been a target of elimination since it was created. Its necessary functions can either get folded into DOI, or maybe back into HHS, or maybe even just a smaller independent agency, though that alone raises the specter of duplicitive administrative costs.

          • @PyroNeurosis@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            35 days ago

            Reducing an individual to a single point on these charts is kinda a fool’s errand.

            Far better to give yourself a series of points on stances you agree with and carve out a spread of your beliefs with an averaged point that represents you.

            To say you are a centrist because your beliefs are purely in line with what society considers anodyne and ‘normal’ is far removed from a person that agrees with extreme positions on all sides of the compass.

      • Jerkface (any/all)
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        5 days ago

        This only makes sense if you insist on reducing complex multidimensional concepts to a single scalar value. Even intuitively it doesn’t make sense. You place yourself in the centre between two philosophies you disagree with? What?

        • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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          15 days ago

          It actually makes more sense when you don’t reduce it. Look up a Nolan Chart, or quadrant-based political stance diagram. I fall squarely into the center of the Nolan Chart.

          • Jerkface (any/all)
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            25 days ago

            You think that reducing to two dimensions is significantly different than reducing to one. I disagree.

            • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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              15 days ago

              Lol, a lot of political scientists disagree with you, too. I bet they’re all stupid, right?

      • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Why do you think voting for a party aligns yourself with that party?

        If two people want to attempt to unalive your mother with a 50% probability that they will succeed, and you have the chance to stop only one of them, reducing the chance to 25%. Does it mean that you align with whoever you do not choose?

        • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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          5 days ago

          Voting WITH a party is not the same thing as voting for a candidate that has openly identified as a member one party or the other because that is a barrier to entry or funding avenue for them.

          I know it’s hard to accept, but the entire history of both parties hasn’t been “socialist utopia vs. Nazis.” For a century the Democrats didn’t eject all the Southern racists that declared they were Dems simply to be a counterpoint to Lincoln-to-MLK-era Republicans.

          Even a cursory understanding of history should make anyone distrust all political parties forever.

          But please tell me more about how the party that denied us a president Bernie Sanders (I) is worth my time.

          • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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            35 days ago

            Why not vote for Bernie then? Better than nothing. At least it may give a lot of people or the democrats faith that he could potentially win in the future.

            I’m not saying that you need to give them your time, I’m just saying that voting for them doesn’t mean that you stand for what they believe. You can vote them and at the same time advocate for a different voting system.

          • @ultranaut@lemmy.world
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            25 days ago

            But please tell me more about how the party that denied us a president Bernie Sanders (I) is worth my time.

            Like Bernie has said, it is the only realistic vehicle to carry someone like him into the White House. The way the US political system is structured your movement needs to take over an existing party instead of trying to establish its own new party from the ground up if it wants any hope of success.

            • @hansolo@lemm.ee
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              15 days ago

              Yes, that’s what “barrier to entry” meant in my comment. Happepend to Bernie, happened to a family member of mine at the county level.

              Parties prevent YOU from being ABLE to vote for qualified candidates. That’s all they are for, to give unqualified rich or charismatic people a chance to sell the party to you. Nothing else.

    • @Ttangko@lemmy.world
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      -36 days ago

      agnostic are agnostic because there is no foolproof evidence basis.

      with politics you can clearly see how some stances have been done and their effects. and other instances you also have a basis even in the most unclear case

      just had an issue with the negative connotation implied here talking about agnosistics :D

      • @kreskin@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I think we can all agree that adding religious parallels to anything is a waste of everyones time.

      • @lookupgeorgism@lemm.ee
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        -16 days ago

        Yeah since people cannot be expected to have full knowledge of the evidence, you have to recognize you can be agnostic about some issues. It’s virtuous to seek evidence and knowledge, and you should make choices based on the best information you have.

        I’m not advocating for independents btw. I think you should clearly pick a party to vote for, but the two party system is a horrible system for people who are pluralistic in their views.

  • @vga@sopuli.xyz
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    6 days ago

    Lol that’s not the far left’s position get the fuck out of here. The first paragraph is describing center/center-left.

  • @UncleGrandPa@lemmy.world
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    196 days ago

    Party A… We want to kill 1.000.000 people

    Party B … We want to kill 0 people.

    Centrist… Lets just kill 500.000 people.

    Sometimes there IS no centrist position

  • @turnip@sh.itjust.works
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    75 days ago

    Still waiting on that basic need.

    Biden built entire wings onto for-profit hospitals during Covid, while ironically being against universal healthcare. Almost like his donors didn’t want it or something.

  • @Noizth@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 days ago

    A more real scenario.

    European country bans far right candidate with conections with Russia trying to poison their democracy.

    Le centrists: What about muh freedoms!?.

    US Government forces Universities campuses to remove degrees of students for protesting (by threatening cutting funds) and threatens foreign students with deportation if they protest.

    Edit: Just read the news that an University caved to Trump’s demands to be able to get funds. Among the demands is for police to be able to arrest students.

    Le centrists: Well they were asking for it…

    • @Filthcollins@lemmy.world
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      197 days ago

      Centrists in the EU don’t think like that at all. Centrists can hold strong opinions, their position isn’t just do not pick sides and play devil’s advocate at all times. As a centrist, both scenarios boil my piss.

      You’ve just described two extreme situations, that any centrist would instantly notice are extreme.

        • Echo Dot
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          47 days ago

          Centralists define centralism as whatever their personal particular political views are at this exact moment in time. They also like to try and claim that anybody who disagrees with them is either ultra right wing or ultra left-wing. Rather than just somebody who doesn’t think that everyone’s opinions are equal.

        • @CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Everyone will have a slightly different understanding and perception of centrism. That goes for all words and ideas. Conversation is so vital because it helps us iron out the differences. Most people want the same thing at the end of the day; peace, prosperity, and love. All of the misunderstandings we have get in the way of that.

        • @endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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          7 days ago

          in america: whatever you want the strawman to be this week, usually an enemy of the left or right whenever conveinent for the echo chamber you find yourself in…

          Rest of the world: someone who likes some ideas from camp a and some ideas from camp b, dislikes some ideas from camp a and some ideas on camp b and is neutral on issues from camp a and from camp b. Eg, free education, citizen pay, more renewable energy good but unchecked, uncontrollable immigration bad.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness
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            07 days ago

            Eg, free education, citizen pay, more renewable energy good but unchecked, uncontrollable immigration bad.

            That just sounds like a center-leftist with one extra step, and that’s the problem with centrism: The right has little to no good ideas, so someone who thinks critically about their positions will strongly lean left, and someone who doesn’t will strongly lean right. “Centrists” are therefore people who simply don’t care about politics and not subscribers to a coherent political ideology.

      • Echo Dot
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        7 days ago

        Really because I’m not at all on board with allowing self-serving oligarch to play act as being a legitimate political positions.

          • Echo Dot
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            7 days ago

            That’s my point though. I’m not a centralist and I never claimed to be one.

            I’m definitely not in favor of centralism I don’t think it works, I think it allows for dangerous situations like the one I just described where people who absolutely need to be stopped are not stopped because “what about their freedom”. But I am not some left-wing extremist simply because I don’t think Nazi should be allowed to go around being Nazis. If you think that’s radical then I think your political dial is somewhat misconfigured.

            The thing is the US has freedom of expression laws, most of the world doesn’t because it turns out that unconstrained freedoms like that aren’t really a very good idea. If it weren’t for the Constitution, which Americans seem to be obsessed with, I’m sure the US wouldn’t have unrestricted freedom of expression either.

            • @Filthcollins@lemmy.world
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              47 days ago

              The fuck are you on about? I’m a centrist and if Iwas in the US I’d be out protesting right now. Where are people getting these backwards ass views on what centrists represent?

    • @Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social
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      47 days ago

      European countries haven’t banned the far right, the AFD, Sweden Democrats, Front Nationale, Orban, etc. are not banned and they are the results of their own political failings. Not that Putin magically conjured them forth with a wave of the hand. Playing into the meme… Germans do anti-semitism and fascism Germanly… “what are we, a bunch of Russians!”

    • @Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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      -17 days ago

      That real scenario is BS.
      European country bans far right candidate bcs LIBERAL party is trying to poison their democracy by paying for that social media campaign.
      Monolith European regime press blame Russia as usual.
      When the facts came out they suddenly were real quiet and didn’t feel that was newsworthy.
      Better to let people believe the lie bcs that fits their narrative, and it worked apparently.

  • @tibi@lemmy.world
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    45 days ago

    Dictatorships are dictatorships, regardless of the political ideology. Both sides did horrible things, like purging intellectuals and anyone seen as a potential threat, mass murder of entire social groups, maintaining informant networks to instil fear etc.

  • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮
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    7 days ago

    in my book far left are hexbears hence centrism is something like social democrats a la usa bernie

    gotta hate politics and its muddy definitions but I unironically like to call myself centrist. Then I am surprised how controversial it is on the interwebs because apparently everyone has different definitions. They routinely make them up on the fly 🪰

    For me centrism is a fine art 🎨 of staying far away from the madness of extremism 🤪. I love centrism. I huff centrism. I breathe centrism.
    I fuck with centrism.

    It is deeply based in the sense of superiority and moral high ground. As all politics but this is a fundamental part of centrism. Centrism is saying “You all suck” I am better than you and enables feeling of superiority over the biggest swath of Redditors internet activists 🤓 which is a lovely perk. It is a true essential trick of the ultimate hedonist. If politics were about sex, centrist would be someone jerking it off to the mirror.

      • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮
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        7 days ago

        sarcasm tags are for the weak willed, we don’t do such things even in the autism central online. What happens, happens

        I have unironically read my comment 10 times already just to savor how perfectly and tastefully it is composed. Truly a masterpiece of some kind.

    • @Quadhammer@lemmy.world
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      57 days ago

      Yeah the far leftists kinda have the problem of full com is never going to work in the states at least not for a while. We’re going to have to deal with capitalism in its current form, and that means changing how housing is done and how politics works. Eat the rich can work with centrism. Theyll say oh centrist that means you ally with the fascists! No… there are people on the right who arent that extreme that can come back left

      • @Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
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        36 days ago

        I think they want to expunge groups because a monoculture is easier to control. If everyone fits into a couple of narrow boxes that all speak the same language, fulfill the same roles, have the same hard limits on expression and are all able-bodied, mentally tuned to function as desirable cogs in a machine you get an easily exploitable force. It’s why they want all costs of maintenance and risk borne by the individual and more specifically the family unit which has the power to ostricize and disenfranchise on a micro scale. Pluralistic societies mean that the individual is supported by a culture of acceptance and those groups all run off of different rules which make demands of society. They want a society that makes very few demands but feels catered to thus earning higher levels of compliance.

      • @Tja@programming.dev
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        -16 days ago

        They do. The problem is that the far left wants the same.

        The meme is comparing the far right with the moderate left.

          • @ohulancutash@feddit.uk
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            26 days ago

            Take your pick. Who they most want to exterminate is other far left who have slightly different opinions, because these are “class traitors” and “counterrevolutionaries”.

          • @Tja@programming.dev
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            16 days ago

            Depends on the group and the country they’re from but it goes from anyone with more money than the person speaking, to any foreigners, to anyone with a brain that dares to think differently (“counter-revolutionaries”).

            See Cuba, north Korea, Soviet Union (and puppet states) and the lemmy instances most people defedarate from, like lemmygrad.

        • @JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          66 days ago

          If it’s meant to be US politics, they’re comparing the far right to the near right. Our left is carefully contained so it can’t affect anything.

        • @T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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          26 days ago

          Genuinely asking, not trying to be a dick, do you think the far left actually want that too? What makes you say that?

          • @ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            25 days ago

            Never talked to anyone on .ml or grad about those who fail their purity tests, eh?

            They literally want to kill my grandma because she rented out their beach house when they moved back into town instead of giving it to a family in need. Sure they’ll say “landlords means blackrock” but in reality, my grandma was a landlord (and a damn good one, her renters loved her, fair price, fast with hiring fixers for broken shit, etc) and they’ll admit “yes her too” when pressed.

            • @T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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              25 days ago

              Well that’s fucking horrible. I don’t like landlords as a concept, and sure kill Blackrock, but someone who has 1 or 2 extra properties, who isn’t a slum lord is fine. Beyond that I disagree generally but I wouldn’t call for your grandma to be killed for it

              • @ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                15 days ago

                Sure you seem cool, but there are many self avowed leftists that are very uncool lol. I think most leftists are more like you, though it does seem the authoritarians are gaining traction (but I’m not sure if that is just my exposure to them from lemmy, so I’m still unsure if they actually are.)

                Perhaps the bigger issue imo is that those people are still accepted by society at large instead of shunned like actual nazis (which they parallel quite a bit,) they should be equally shunned, but they’re good at keeping the murder part secret until you ask “and what if my grandma refuses to give you her house when you come with your ‘revolution?’”

          • @Tja@programming.dev
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            36 days ago

            Might be, in the US anyone asking for something as mild as universal Healthcare is quickly labeled extremist…

  • /home/pineapplelover
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    67 days ago

    But the far left are commie bastards idk what else to tell you

    /s for whoever the fuck needs it