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Most people’s views don’t neatly align with any party; that’s simply the easiest narrative to follow. I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly
by StuffedParrot 7y ago
Most people’s views don’t neatly align with any party; that’s simply the easiest narrative to follow. I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly have a mountain of criticism about Democrats. When party loyalty is divorced from values I wouldn’t expect a change in the underlying dynamic that drives people to partisan polarization.
To give an example, I can empathize with the problems many Republicans face: fear of a loss of quality of life, fear of loss of stability, fear of change, fear of changing classes, fear of losing your culture, fear of being left behind by society. In more concrete terms, how do I know I can eat and be healthy and be around my people in the future and experience joy as I do now? In fact these are often the same things that drive Democrats, Independents, in fact these are universal. It is something else (cultural, economic, social?) that drives party loyalty.
For another example, often conservative christians give to charity at higher rates than any other group (at least in the us). Yet, the left is constantly striving for representation and equity, which in some forms is certainly a type of empathy. It is a mistake to consider a lack of empathy a driving force in politics.
- garmaine 7y ago> To give an example, I can empathize with the problems many Republicans face: fear of a loss of quality of life, fear of loss of stability, fear of change, fear of changing classes, fear of losing your culture, fear of being left behind by society. I’m a republican-leaning independent, and what you write here strikes me more as stereotype of the right than actual concerns of the right. I don’t really worry about any of the things you mention.
- aleister_777 7y agoAgreed. These are not the values that make me. Many of the values that I represent will lead towards stability, however, it's not fear that I'm defined by.
- StuffedParrot 7y agoThat may be true, I never claimed to be accurate (certainly not in a general sense), I am just conveying what I hear when I talk to people about what matters to them. Fear is certainly not a value, but americans rarely talk about values in any explicit way.
- garmaine 7y agoWhat I'm saying is that what you describe is the straw man caricature of the right that lefties like to dismantle, not how an actual right-of-center person would describe their political motivations. Take gay marriage. The left likes to lampoon the right for claiming that "homosexuality is against our values" or some such homophobic nonsense. But that's not why republicans are against gay marriage--because you might be surprised to learn that republicans are NOT against gay marriage! They're against the government defining what marriage is: marriage is a religious and/or cultural tradition and it's none of the government's damn business to define or restrict it in any way. Being right-of-center is more about preferring distributed, consensual, market-based solutions over government mandates and regulation, and staying out of people's lives. The obsession with "our values!" and fear response is a weird leftist caricature of the right, not reality.
- StuffedParrot 7y agoA straw man implies I am trying to convince you of something. I am just sharing my perspective. “Market based solutions” is no more a value than fear is. You can’t evaluate its efficacy without having a value with which to measure. There’s really no point in discussing politics at all without values. Personally I think it’s fucked up that government recognizes marriage at all. The benefits have very little to do with the pluralistic definitions of marriage that exist around the world today—tax benefits & visitation rights are not closely related to tying family assets together OR romance. It’s abhorrent that these rights were ever denied to couples regardless of whether they married or not. Religious couples deserve these rights regardless of marriage too. It makes no sense to recognize marriage at the state level. As a gay man I have never nor will ever have any ambitions of marriage, but these rights are still denied to me. I hope you can see through this that the policy and dialogue championed through partisanship is divorced from values that I hold dear, though I emphatically do not begrudge the gay couples that did find a victory through the policy.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoI would wager that people who vote Republican and oppose gay marriage do so for a variety of reasons, not just the one you stated.
- EdwardDiego 7y ago> I am on the left (technically independent) but I certainly have a mountain of criticism about Democrats. I'm entirely unsurprised, they're more to the right than our NZ centre-right party National. The fact that the Democrats are even considered left-wing in the USA baffles me.
- StuffedParrot 7y agoNote, the downvotes distinctly correlate with US evening timezones.
- EdwardDiego 7y agoI'm interested in the downvotes - is it disagreement from people on the American left that the Democrats are, by my Kiwi political compass, centre-right? Or disagreement from people on the American right that the Democrats aren't lefties?
- StuffedParrot 7y agoI would hazard a guess that it is both. Neither party likes being reminded how little differentiates them in material terms, preferring to focus on manufactured culture wars. It would destroy the Democratic party leadership to acknowledge the center in material terms is far to the left of our left party. Neither party likes to acknowledge the cultural and ideological differences between America and the rest of the world that led (and still do) to a lack of any comprehensive social welfare and collectivized problem solving, save for problems that affect trade and the economy (the military, defense contractors, bank bailouts, border security and immigration enforcement).