this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Meh, though the meme is true, most Americans would say liberals are EVERYONE left of center, and conservatives are EVERYONE right of center.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The center is now also conservative, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Doesn't matter to my explanation

[–] [email protected] -4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

They only say that because they've been trained to by conservative media. Just because education is bad doesn't mean reality is different.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

No, it's a matter of colloquial semantics.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Yep, many people complaining about semantics here don’t realize that when the US calls something “the left” they aren’t referring to “leftism”, they are referring to a metaphorical graduated chart where democrats are on the left hand and republicans are on the right.

“The left” on this chart is anyone leaning towards the Democratic Party, where “the right” is anyone leaning towards the Republican Party.

It’s frustrating that we let this become a dividing topic, because it is pedantic at best.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

And what's annoying is conservatives certainly bicker, but are generally very unified.

True leftists seem so hellbent on distancing themselves from "liberals". All they are doing is sowing division, in what conservatives consider a binary landscape.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Close; true leftists are hellbent on disillusioning liberals of the notion that they're contributing anything by simply voting every 4 years for the democrat du jour.

The political goals of leftists involve a lot more than simply defeating republican opponents, but that doesn't seem to matter to the majority of casual democrats. What's more; leftists have an understanding that reactionary political movements don't simply go away when you vote them out; they are created by real material conditions that need to be addressed, else they will return the next cycle having gained more momentum.

Liberals are either comatose leftists who are dragging progress to a halt, or reactionaries in denial who would rather a reactionary movement take over than see the hierarchical structure of their country change, even marginally.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If there were no distance between us then you wouldn't need to move to close the gap.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And there aren't differences between factions of the conservative end of the spectrum?

This is my exact point: the whole left-scented side of the spectrum eats their own. The right doesn't.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)
  • RHINOs
  • NeverTrumpers
  • Libertarians
  • NeoCons
  • MAGA Republicans

........

Yea, sure, the right certainly does not do any infighting. They are a unified monolith with no divisions.

Edit: liberals and leftsts are allies in the same way the Soviets were aligned with West against the Nazis. As soon as the fascists were defeated the West turned on the Soviets to wipe them out. This 'but we're friends' attitude is just willfully blind to the reality that liberals are hostile to leftists, just not while they actively need them to help resist fascists.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

At the ballot box? Yeah.

I clearly, from the start, indicated that they have differences

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

How do you know leftists aren't voting for the democrats? and how do you know never-trumpers are voting for Trump?

This speculative fiction really just seems like a convenient way to blame leftists for the democrats own lack of approval.

Maybe the votes democrats are loosing are normal people who think politicians have nothing to offer them, and the leftists are trying to get Democrats to do something to help those voters and excite them.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

We're distancing ourselves from libs because we don't want the same things for the most part. Besides getting trump out of the picture we're rather different.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Right, and conservatives want lots of different things, yet they generally act in a unified way when it comes down to voting day.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago

I always vote democrat

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

People will casually remark "that's just they way they're using the word, no point in arguing" and then never stop to ask why and to what end.

The reason US politics operates along that dimension is explicitly because of the way their electoral politics work. It's not simply a matter of it being the common usage, it's also a core part of what capital L leftists are critiquing when they say 'liberals are not left wing'. Democrats are dealing in exactly the ideological framework that is the target of leftist opposition, it isn't sufficient to lump everyone on the democratic side into a single category.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Corporate media and cable news in general