That's an excellent observation. I find myself conflating 'right' with all the bad things mentioned above, even though I find myself (surprisingly) sympathetic to various elements of this 'right' when I take the time to reflect.
In fact, I've been trying to elaborate, then delete, then elaborate again, and ended up with this non-statement because I feel I can't really properly go into this without the end result causing problems with the 'left' that I mostly identify with. It's incredibly frustrating that even under a badly-managed pseudonym on some online 'forum' I feel inhibited to do so, but I do.
I think it would be good to find better words for the various clusters that exist these days. They'll still be imperfect, but man do we gotta lose the one-dimensional left-right divide...
Thank you, and I definitely agree to all points. From my own observations, I feel that the right is often wrong on many things, but the far left has gone off the rails, and most of the left is either, willing, blind, useful idiots or outright evil. There's definitely a few racist, violent right wing assholes in the world, but they don't even compare to the numbers the far left weild.
It also irks me to no end, when people refer to leftists as "liberal" when they are no such thing at this point. I can deal with liberals, and as a libertarian share most of the values. More like Progressive past the point of usefulness to society.
I'm generally sympathetic to much of what this article is arguing, but I really wish everybody would agree to stop using "the Left" / "the Right" as if they were meaningful descriptors. Strive for more nuance, not less. I firmly believe that a large percentage of politically sensitive arguments would calm down if people would be specific about what they have a problem with and not try and generalize it.
But that’s because the right has become synonymous with, or at least tacitly supports, insane racists, fascists, bigots and more unpleasant adjectives. You can be pedantic about our wording and try and slide the issue but the data is there.
There are plenty of issues where you can have multiple sides or perspectives and want to allow debate. But that is not what is happening.
I think the commentor was as much concerned with the namespace pollution: to some people on the left, there doesn't seem to be a "right" (or even a "center"), anymore, only a "far right". This isn't because because they all share the same views, but rather because there's a lack of nuance to the language used by many people in discussing politics.
(I say people because the same thing occurs in reverse when talking about "extremist leftists")
Do you really believe that it's not possible to be left-wing and progressive, even part of a minority, generally accepting the things you mentioned as genuine problems that need to be addressed, while still simultaneously thinking that identity politics is flawed and counterproductive?
If I criticise the left it's not because I'm right, it's because I want the left to be better.
It's bizarre to see so many (allegedly former 'liberals' or 'lefties', itself a conflation) talking of / agreeing with a "firehose of hatred" supposedly coming from the left. What do these people think of the language and ideas coming from the right?
My suspicion is that they consider the right these days the calm voice of reason – not in spite of the racism, the misogyny, homophobia, or hatred of the poor, but because of these things, because maybe their sympathies simply lie with maintaining the comfortable order that they are used to, not with any of the ideals that they actually claim/ed to uphold.
>I don't think "the right" is nearly as much of a trigger phrase as "the left".
I dunno, "the left" has their own terms to incite rage: far-right, white supremest (rarely any evidence), racist (same), right-winger, evangelicals, Nazi, deplorable, redneck, etc.
"The right" uses terms: liberal, socialist, communist, SJW, etc.
If you are strictly speaking in terms of which is more insightful and limit it to "the left" or "the right," I guess it depends on which circle you are closer to. I can see the argument for "the left" as being more insightful, but that might just be because of the circle I'm currently closer to.
I try to use terms such as those as a red flag. Anyone who tries to make a generalization for a spectrum as broad as "the left," or "the right," is trying to sell me something. I try to stick to policy, everything else is usually just theatre to distract from policy.
I kind of agree with this—one of my main criticisms of left-wing ideology is that it so closely resembles right-wing ideology, and it certainly seems to push a lot of people toward the right wing. In particular the intense left-wing pressure to suppress any frank, unscripted conversations about race leaves a lot of “ideologically vulnerable” people with nowhere to turn with respect to their questions than the welcoming embrace of right wing folks, which unsurprisingly swells their ranks. All of this intense left-wing bad behavior similarly gives right wing folks a sense of moral license to behave badly as well (for just one example, think of how the media and other prominent voices profusely excused and justified BLM riots all summer long and the precedent that probably set for the 1/6 riot).
“Reversion to the mean” is probably a good thing insofar as it means “moderating ourselves”.
I feel there is a gap between left goals and left means. It’s particularly distressing to me because I always viewed “our team” as the side that was cooler headed, would wrestle with uncomfortable ideas, and would keep trying to find the merit in people that we disagree with.
But I find myself feeling that a portion of the left has retained the banner issues of the left, while adopting a shockingly tribal worldview and conservative tactics of the right.
It feels like when I was younger, and you'd say something critical about some aspect of the US, and the retort was, “if you hate our country so much, why don’t you just leave.” Critique was rounded to anti-American sentiment and you thus became a valid target of unlimited scorn.
I see the same thing on the left, where if you don’t agree to a reductive expression of certain wedge issues, people are rounded to nazi, misogynist, X-phobic, etc. and then are irredeemably subject to unlimited scorn.
I expect this kind of stuff from the right, but it’s painful to see it from the left.
Looking at your post history you're probably far enough left that everyone on the Right blends together. As people like me become more common you will probably be completely blindsided by the monster you've awakened.
Also you got pretty close with one of your guesses.
Yeah, that's usually associated with woke leftists these days. On the right, it isn't as common because being on the right isn't really a popular position to be in in this current political climate.
It is disheartening that a person such as yourself (looked at your bio) would draw these false equivalences between radicalism on the right and left. Four years ago these concepts would not have even remotely been part of your vocabulary, but now you sort of lay down and accept it as "we're screwed two ways over?" This is exactly the kind of psychological creep eluded to in the article.
You know, you make an interesting point. I think you're referring to the same thing that the author is referring to.
On the left side of the political spectrum, It's not a single phenomena though, I think you can break it down into two camps on the left:
1. older-school globalist liberals. Probably older, supported the Clintons, ect. These people seem to have traditionally looked down on the right as backward, uneducated "basket of deplorables" or whatever. Plays into the ivory tower liberal stereotype.
2. New-school farther left. Probably younger, fans of AOC et al. They'd also be likely to look down their noses, but in more of a moral superiority perspective.
I think the condescension of #1 goes back decades and has already borne its fruit in (at least to a degree) the political situation we find ourselves in today. I worry that group # 2 hasn't learned those lessons and is proving that they'll just repeat the same mistakes. Unless they self-destruct arguing about Israel, which totally mystifies me.
That said... so much of what comes out of the right is complete and utter bullshit. From the massive propaganda machine that is fox, to infowars, to tiny hyper-racist subreddits — there's a lot of noise to separate from the signal that might be a valid, reasonable conservative argument.
With that in mind, sometimes I wonder if we don't need a bit more contempt.
Maybe if the type of outright hate speech the mainstream right seems to support was not acceptable, that would open the floor for some actual conversation.
To summarize: I wish that democrats and the left weren't been so quick to dismiss legitimate concerns from everyone outside of NYC and SF (hyperbolic, I know). But it's right wing (and especially religiously-motivated) politics that have completely skewered our politics and media.
Saying "fuck that and fuck you" to anyone who supports that system is a reasonable reaction, in my opinion.
As someone "on the right", I think you hit the nail on the head. At least for me, I have no problem at all admitting there are tons of faults among people on my side of the spectrum, seeing someone point out the same for the left is extremely rare.
Out of curiosity, which "side" are you on predominantly?
Left and right might as well be called red and blue, banana and cherry, etc. To the common guy (me) there's no real meaning behind it other than "us" and "not us" (= them).
Thinking in these categories and acknowledging their existence is unhelpful to say the least and just highlights how broken the "debate platform" is (and it has crept into journalism as well).
It's a shitfest I stopped trying to comprehend some time ago and a legacy system of times past that overstayed its welcome. Where's the nuance? Where is the meta discussion?
In fact, I've been trying to elaborate, then delete, then elaborate again, and ended up with this non-statement because I feel I can't really properly go into this without the end result causing problems with the 'left' that I mostly identify with. It's incredibly frustrating that even under a badly-managed pseudonym on some online 'forum' I feel inhibited to do so, but I do.
I think it would be good to find better words for the various clusters that exist these days. They'll still be imperfect, but man do we gotta lose the one-dimensional left-right divide...
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