The left eating itself
It's no secret that I've always had a soft side for traditional liberal ideas. The notion being that everyone should live their life as they wish, granted they don't hurt anyone else. It's because of this, that I've been labeled as a lefty at times, but it's a lot more nuanced than that.
The truth is that we are witnessing a division of ideologies within the umbrella of liberalism. We have a spectrum of course, but there's a clear point where the difference is big enough to anyone who pays attention. We have today, to put it simply, two factions of the left. One that believes and strives for equal opportunity and one that is looking to turn the tables of oppression.
You might read my words and imagine that I'm being hyperbolic, but it doesn't seem to be the case at all, as much as I would wish it to be. What makes this confusing, for lack of a better word, is that these two factions of liberalism are intermingled. Which is to say that in many ideological conversations, those who appear as allies are actually not, but they lack awareness of what each other think.
We can truly use this framing to examine many of the current socio-political discussions and find ourselves able to make the clear distinctions. We can clearly see a difference between the traditional idea of feminism, that seeked to put women's right equal to men, and the distorted version that believes men to be inferior scum, and that's not hyperbole.
What this mean to society, I don't really know. I think at times that the waters are settling and we are doing a better job at molding public discourse, abandoning identity politics and the demonization of others, but I'm quickly confronted with the opposite with just a couple of clicks.
Does this mean that the right is the one who holds the truth these days? Not necessarily, of course. But it does seem like the ones who were supposed to help bring progress to the forefront are actually responsible for the regressions, and that is somewhat sad.
MenO
I guess what I experience out there is just more and more extreme polarization on both sides of the ideologies. It feels like those who hold some more moderate and "traditional" tenets of Liberalism and Conservatism are no longer considered "strong enough" to hold the floor, so to speak. And maybe that's where some of the division comes from.
A "friendly acquaintance" often stops by my place of work during his many breaks... and discusses politics, much of the time. In his words — a sort of neo-Con, almost White supremacist medley — I watch him "splitting off" from the traditional conservative values.
I fear that what you're describing may be something that's happening across the entire political spectrum. And that's a bit worrisome... unless we somehow abandon the two-party system and end up with multiple viable political parties like they have in many other parts of the world outside the USA.
Being from the US I am actually in support of a multi-party based system. That is something that the US could benefit certainly from importing from European Politics for sure. I just wanted to add, you are not White Supremacist simply by failing to recite the Left's canned woke soundbites and pandering to people based on their identity stereotype. If you do not like someone because of anything to do with them outside of the content of their character, yes that makes some degree of racist. But if you disagree with Leftist HQ Orwellian monopoly of what is truth, that makes you opposed to hard left principles, not necessarily a racist, neo-con, alt-right, or any other name thrown at as a stigma in their eyes.
and that's precisely it... its about who is strong enough to represent... it's a sad situation.
When it comes to social issues, my country is almost absolutely right wing. We have pockets of individuals with liberal views but their voice is merely a drop in the ocean. Virtually all our laws and statuses consider the "socially generous free willed nature" of the western world as crime. So for example, homosexuality is considered a crime and the Senate of the poverty capital of the world actually sat down to make this law some years ago.
When it comes to economical issues, it is hard to even know where we stand, we operate what I call a pseudo-democracy. Our "political" office holders are barely held accountable and become very rich after ten minutes in office.
I tend to lean to the right economically, middle of the road when it come to most social issues. The left right now is living through it's own prism of reality, a good example would be that they have created their own cryptocurrency and only accept their own crypto as capital and truth in any matter involving virtually anything. Here's a trivia question, who was the last duly elected Republican as President of the US? Trump...not much data needed here of course. GW Bush? One word... Florida. GH W Bush--Iran Contra. Reagan--Iran Contra. Ford-good point **never elected to public office in his life, look it up, succeeded Nixon, pardoned Nixon, had no chance of being elected dog catcher after that. Nixon, scandals end in -gate because of him, and btw what he did even in the coverup is daily executive business today. So does that take us back to Dwight Eisenhower as the last, completely, duly elected respected POTUS by the hard left? I mean hard left, not liberals. Liberal=not woke enough in today's politics. **Certainly not one to brag, the right has their disasters as well. They showed up for the 'eat yourselves banquet,' saw what the hard left was doing and then started gnawing on their arms to fit in with the way they support the leader of their party. If he is not the leader of their party then their party is also dead and doesn't know it yet. For the first time in American History there is a president that is not the leader of their party not named Nixon, or maybe Andrew Johnson, he managed to divide the country even more just after fighting a Civil War that killed over 3% of the national population alone on the battlefield. Anyways sorry for the rant nice discussion @meno I hope I didn't wreck it. In my humble opinion, wings are good on planes, birds, and with hot sauce, not with monopolistic political parties.
Greetings, appreciated @meno.
In my opinion it is the uncontrolled avarice of man that has always led to the failure of projects that in one way or another could be beneficial for society and individuals. If we talk about socialism or capitalism, in both cases we find factors that negatively affect the principles that underlie the bases of these ideologies or economic models.
We can also analyze the results that history has left us. In general, socialism, communism and other leftist tendencies have only left misery and impairment of human rights in the world.
But I insist, regardless of the model adopted, it has always been the alienating nature of the human being that has caused these models to fail.
All best, Piotr.
Live-and-let-live liberalism has been dead for about 80 years.
It had its last rites read to it after the Woodrow Wilson Administration in the US.
I've always thought of myself as a left-wing radical, but there are a lot of issues I diverge on. I also find myself getting along with Libertarians quite well.
In the end it's silly to try and categorize everything and put them all into neat little boxes. We don't need to be told how to think. Think for yourself.
The truth is that nobody can be unidirectional. Humans will always pick and choose and that is fine, as long is it helps the society
The basic premise of humanism. So should not be considered in terms of political direction, although fools do.
at least in America it is my friend. We have conservative voices who literally believe that homosexuals should repent, go into conversion therapy and get closer to God. We can ask how what two consenting adults do in their intimacy affect anyone else, but some are uninterested in the logical question.
On the other spectrum, we have people advocating that I should feel guilty for being white, and that I take some anti-whiteness classes. They tell me that I'm complicit simply because I'm white. Turns out that if I don't feel guilty for being white, I'm not an ally of the oppressed minorities.
So it's polarized, very much so...
I've heard about this and I think it is absurd. People shouldn't be made to feel some kind of way simply because of their race. Trying to fill your mind with guilt, things you know nothing about and whatnot is actually laughable.
The problem is we keep classifying, even in Nigeria we have a religious divide between Christians and Muslim, there's this habit of generalization. It is frustrating
Yes, that's the impression I get when I read about US politics and even differing areas within the US. In Alabama they ban abortion, in New York they're banning declawing of cats ....poles apart! (Well done NY)
Incredible concept, friend.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.
Hi @meno!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.938 which ranks you at #377 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 1 places in the last three days (old rank 376).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 243 contributions, your post is ranked at #41.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server