16 ms·

I spent a number of years living in America in the past, and made friends with people across the political spectrum there. And what has always stood out to me i

I spent a number of years living in America in the past, and made friends with people across the political spectrum there. And what has always stood out to me is how much hatred and animosity the American right and left have for each other. Talk with someone over beers long enough and they really open up about it, probably because I'm an outsider. As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), but there are many confounding factors due to their society being forced into the mold of one-of-two parties. Indeed, the choice of ideologies and political tactics are downright bizarre, even contradictory to the outside norm of left and right when viewed by a foreigner. What always surprises me is the rabidity of the comments left on sites such as these (both left and right oriented). Although you belong to different tribes, your words are remarkably similar: It seems that you really do see the other party as made up of terrible people, misguided at best, inhuman monsters at worst, unfeeling and callous, perhaps even extermination-worthy in some extreme cases. This is not how politics work in the rest of the world.

AzzieElbab 6y ago
It is the media and short election cycles. The politicians who serve long terms(senate) generally get along with each other because they have to work together, while members of the house and the president must keep media frenzy since they are constantly in election mode. Also, if you pay attention - it is no longer left vs right, more like localism vs globalism. Of course media portrays localism as nationalism, and globalism as progressivism
krageon 6y ago
> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. Between radicalised parties it looks like that everywhere. When people have only two choices, by necessity each choice contains radicalised fringe elements. For some reason societal factors in the US give these elements a huge presence, which I don't really understand.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  Its very simple for the other side to push their agenda and cater to their crowd "See , we told you the other side was crazy" 911 truthers & marxists have always existed, however its only when the "mainstream" of the other side chose to hand the fringe a megaphone, that they came to the fore. This was not done for debate or charity. It was to score cheap political points in the age of clickbait. Extra Bonus: they got to extrapolate the extreme over 50% of the US population, and by consequence, to expand their potential eyeball audience
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Interesting. That explains why all the crazies have the microphone lately. The mainstream of the other side is giving it to them, to use them as a freak show. And the reason it's blowing up now is because the media monopoly is over. Back when "the media" was ABC, CBS, NBC, AP, UPI, and then-centrist New York Times and Washington Post, nobody was giving the crazies the microphone, on either side. But when Fox and talk radio came on the right, and CNN on the left (and many of the former-center media moved left), then there were people with a slant, and therefore with a motivation to make the other side look silly. But these people (on both sides) need to reconsider what they're doing. They're making the other side look silly to the mainstream, but they're also helping the fringe of the other side recruit. That may not be a very wise policy...
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      I believe what helped Trump win was all the (left leaning) news sites covering him saying, “look how stupid he is”, but then some saw it and sided with him. By giving him a platform, they helped put him in power.
arethuza 6y ago
"This is not how politics work in the rest of the world." A lot of the debate around Brexit in the UK worked exactly that way - on both sides.
- rndgermandude 6y ago
  From my outside observer perspective of both US and UK politics the level of hatred and animosity in the US appears orders of magnitude higher.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Unfortunately, if you aren’t here on the ground floor in America, you are getting information from the news which has a tendency to only amplify the extreme cases that are “newsworthy“
- JulianMorrison 6y ago
  There was and is a lot of anger, animosity, and the assumption that the other side is bad or motivated by spite.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I feel that's disingenuous. It wasn't the same way on both sides. This kind of false equivalence crops up in a lot of places but it needs to be called out. Many high profile Remainers claimed Leavers were/are racist, ignorant, far-right, small minded, hated all foreigners, didn't know what they were voting for, were old and thus should have their vote be ignored, and worse. Leavers claimed Remainers were ... what? Afraid of independence? That's about the worst of it from what I can remember. There was not by any stretch of the imagination the same kind of smear campaign alleging terrible motives and terrible souls. And now this. Parler and Gab within a few months of each other. It's not left wing outlets getting hacked and dumped, is it? I'm afraid there's no equivalency here: whether it's the USA or UK, it's always the same: it's always the left attacking the right. They do not view opposition of any sort as legitimate any more and are determined to destroy conservatism by any means possible, both legal and illegal. Nothing like it exists in reverse.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. Weighted by population, and including the places where that attitude has been taken to it's logical extreme by the dominant faction actually suppressing it's opposition, it absolutely is how politics works in the rest of the world. It's not how politics works in healthy, multiparty democracies, but those are, globally, rather more the exception than the rule.
mfer 6y ago
> As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), Does anyone have a good global breakdown of political ideology? What we call the west (North America, Europe, Australia, etc) is about 20% of the global population. These are the sources I usually see. I’m curious about this stuff globally
- evgen 6y ago
  OP is radically incorrect regarding where US parties would fit on a global scale. There is actually a lot of good research out available in political science papers based on large-scale surveys conducted over decades that show the US parties to be close to the middle of the right and left respectively. If you removed health care from the equation (given how messed up this is in the US) then the two parties would actually shift a bit to the left when compared to right and left political parties in other western democracies. The past five years or so may have muddied the waters slightly with the impact of populism, but prior to this point they were not significant outliers.
  - trentlott 6y ago
    > If you removed health care from the equation Removing a defining characteristic to force data to fit your model surely isn't good science
    - evgen 6y ago
      The US is a clear outlier compared to other western democracies in regards to public health policy. It makes little sense to try to map US healthcare debates to non-US political positions because it is almost unique. It is not about trying to fit a model, it is about removing things that add no useful information when it comes to points of comparison. And yes, it is good science.
  - relaxing 6y ago
    Well, I would like to see their methodology. Obviously these are data points that are hard to assign categorical labels to, let alone quantifiable values. I’d guess that by looking at the wide spectrum of governance with an inclusive view of Western democracies, you could come to the conclusion that economically-liberal powers share much in common. On the other hand, when commentators make these comparisons they’re generally comparing a handful of exemplar Northern European democratic-socialist governments on a subset of hot-button issues (racial and economic justice, foreign policy, economic regulation, etc.) because that’s where the political action is.
throw0101a 6y ago
> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. Actually, it is. It's just in places that you probably don't want to live in: > Donald Trump’s Republican party has become more illiberal and retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years, a study has found, with its rhetoric shifting closer that of authoritarian parties ruling in Turkey, Hungary, Poland and India. > The research by Sweden-based V-Dem Institute highlights what it calls a “global trend” where “the median governing party in democracies has become more illiberal in recent decades”. * https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/gop-trump-republican-democrats-authoritarian-hungary-austria-india-poland-turkey-b1343847.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio... * PDF: https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/b6/55/b6553f85-5c5d-45ec-be63-a48a2abe3f62/briefing_paper_9.pdf https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/b6/55/b6553f85-5c5d... By 2014 it was the GOP that had become more-right and the median with the Democrats hadn't change much from preceding decades: * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-polarization-is-asymmetric-and-conservatives-are-worse/373044/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-pol... However since then it appears that Democrats have become more-left.
skinkestek 6y ago
> ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), For readers who are not aware immediately, note that parent here uses far-right correctly. It is quite correct in this setting, but has been misused to describe nazism for quite a long time so if one thinks parent is comparing Republicans to Nazis that is (hopefully) not the intention. (Hitler was more of a pragmatic centrist, leaning to Socialism early as seen by the party name, but having no qualms cooperating with the industry either).
- Schiendelman 6y ago
  Have you been missing the Nazi flags the Republicans fly? The Nazi symbol in the stage of their event? There are openly Nazis in the Republican party.
  - jki275 6y ago
    Stop it. There was no fucking nazi symbol on the stage at cpac. If you want to take a tiny group of extremists that are not accepted by a group and pretend they represent a group, we can do that the other way also.
    - Schiendelman 6y ago
      The CPAC stage was, indeed, a Nazi symbol. The question is whether it was intentional or not. And the Charlottesville protestors did use that symbol: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/12/flags-and-other-symbols-used-far-right-groups-charlottesville https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/12/flags-and-oth...
      - jki275 6y ago
        One can always find whatever bullshit one goes looking for. Nobody at CPAC made up a stage out of a nazi symbol. Some people made up a narrative to fit a false conclusion they created and produced in the media.
        6y ago
matheusmoreira 6y ago
Politics are the same everywhere. There's always an enemy and they're always dehumanized. It's always about empowering yourself and your group at the expense of everyone else.
- banannaise 6y ago
  The ideology you're describing is fascism. Power for power's sake, enemies for enemies' sake. That these look like the politics everywhere should scare the hell out of all of us.
dangernous 6y ago
“ America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans” Calling democrats center right by worldwide standards is a bit of a stretch. If you are comparing to worldwide, please remember a large majority of the world are still socially far right by American standards, take women’s rights and gay marriage for example. If you are comparing to the West, democrats are far more left wing than much of Europe’s parties (apart from maybe Sweden), most social justice movements originate from the states and these are in-line with the democrats policies.
frr149 6y ago
I am afraid this is far more common. At least Brazil, Spain and the UK are exactly like that, if not worse.
- reallydontask 6y ago
  Can't speak for Brazil, but in the UK this trend has been greatly exacerbated by Brexit. Spain is indeed closer to the US in some ways as the legacy of Franco is very hard to forget by both sides, which causes all manner of weird things
  - lbebber 6y ago
    In Brazil it has been exacerbated by the legacy of the military dictatorship, openly defended by the current president, and lately by the high number of deaths caused by COVID and the reactions (or lack thereof) to that.
    - cfcosta 6y ago
      That's revisionism, the political rift was already there at least from the second Dilma government.
      - lbebber 6y ago
        Well I did say "exacerbated", not caused by it hahah
mbeex 6y ago
> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. On the contrary, a strengthening of this very pattern can be observed everywhere.
- scotty79 6y ago
  Is it progress?
  - mbeex 6y ago
    It is. But unfortunately, most people are not willing to separate the concept of progress from something that is magically inherently good. Same as with evolution or agile development :-)
    - scotty79 6y ago
      Progress is not always good but it's not inevitable like evolution. Regress is entirely possible. I know too little about history to say if two party system is progress or regress.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
> by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans) OhBoyHereWeGo.jpg It's stupid to try and condense the political ideology of the US (or almost any nation) down to one spectrum and then try and map that onto the rest of the world when we (and the rest of the world) have a lot of ideology based on "well party X took position Y because party V had position W back in year Z and they needed to be opposite and it stuck around". What's left and right is mostly a figment of historical coincidence, not any sort of ideological consistency across a party. Shall we do a survey of immigration and gun control policies across Europe to drive the point home? If you don't like that option we can survey the social safety nets and freedom of expression in Asia.
- thamidolide 6y ago
  Anyone who is genuinely left wing will easily recognize that neither party in the US represents their interests.
  - Delmania 6y ago
    Correct, the Democrats are a weak willed party of centrists more concerned with maintaining the status quo as opposed to implementing progressive legislation that will help people. The GOP has become a cult of personality.
    - jejones3141 6y ago
      The Democrats had their cult of personality in the Obama years.
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        At least he was a better role model.
        vinger 6y ago
        Any response that begins with at least... should remain in kindergarden. No one is a role model.
threatofrain 6y ago
In the US, a majority of GOP voters believe that Democrats stole the election, and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Here is a pollster that is respected by US conservatives: https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2020/most_gop_voters_still_don_t_think_biden_was_elected_fairly https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ele... Many also believe that patriotic violence is acceptable to protect the legitimacy of democracy. What kind of conversation do you have when people believe their democracy was stolen from them? There is no way at this point for the GOP to safely retreat from the position that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. To do so would be political death.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  > What kind of conversation do you have when some people believe you condone the cheating of democracy? A conversation with my friends on the left about how important gun ownership is when the right is armed to the teeth, and last summer showed the police won’t protect the left from right-wing violence. We have to do it ourselves, which means acquiring firearms and training with them. The US is headed towards a civil war. Pretty sure it’s unavoidable at this point, though it’ll take some years to play out. Biden pushing strong gun control could be enough to do it.
- gurukhaider 6y ago
  Have you already forgot the russia collusion fiasco, and all the "not my president" talk. Heck, even crooked shillary said Trump was illegitimate and now you think this s*it is something new. Of course half of the US won't accept Biden since why would you accept someone who deeply hates you and your values.
  - wayoutthere 6y ago
    Biden doesn’t hate anyone; he’s basically a republican minus the silly cult of personality. His actual political values align with the GOP from a decade ago. Anyone trying to paint him or Harris as “far leftists” is confused at best and probably trying to manipulate you. The far left has no party that represents them; the democrats pay lip service to progressive policy but aren’t willing to spend any political capital to actually do anything about it.
arianon 6y ago
"The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content. Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on anyone antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be confused with or mistaken for the others. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party. Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. Emotionally the enemy is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specifically political sense of the word. Thereby the inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses." —Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. [emphasis mine]
piokoch 6y ago
I disagree that Democrats are center-right. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are definitely left wing, even for European standards. But you might be partly right. One of the reasons for that are rules of political marketing (rarely politicians have enough courage to ignore them). One of those rules says that you need to differ and polarization is good. You want to win? Show how different you are. Another rule is that people don't vote with their brains but with emotions. So stirring emotions is needed. Humiliating your opponent is a good recipe for high emotions. Social platforms are magnifying differences, emotions, so there is no much more left. As a result democracy is not in the greatest shape now, some would even argue that it resembles more democracy of Roman Empire from triumvirate times (it was only a facade for the mob that was manipulated by those with power) than system that John Stuart Mill or Alexis de Tocqueville had in their minds.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  No, most of the stuff Bernie and AOC advocate for are considered fairly centrist policies in western Europe. Universal healthcare coverage? Paid parental leave? These are the norm in western Europe, they're not radical in the least.
  - folknor 6y ago
    In my country, the party (and we have representatives from ~20 parties that are in nationally significant seats of power, 9 parties in the national assembly) that is considered the most "right-wing" actually supports _expanding_ the universal healthcare (EDIT: specifically, they want it to include dentistry, which we currently pay for except for in rare circumstances.) It's not a centrist policy at all - the parties (I think there are two, one of which is probably the Libertarian party) that don't support it here don't hold _any_ elected seats on any level. Not even a single city council seat in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere. So yeah, this is the norm. I'm not saying this to argue, I'm saying it to reinforce you (hopefully that's obvious) :-)
    - TulliusCicero 6y ago
swiley 6y ago
There's a lot of money spent convincing us to hate each other because it's one of the most effective ways to change our behavior.
jariel 6y ago
US animosity (i.e. firings for utterances of a word, lambasting any org. that doesn't meet certain criteria as 'White Supremacist', politicians blatantly lying about the election and running procedural coup attempts, lying on every Tweet) - is not really a left/right thing. It's mostly raw pathetic populism, incited as much by the press as any other group.
shrimpx 6y ago
This type of anti-American sentiment is boring and old-hat. I often hear it made by Europeans who still insist EU countries like France and Germany are so much better. In reality EU is a polarized racist political swamp.
msla 6y ago
Based on the party's position on immigration, the Democrats are far to the left of the European mainstream.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

AzzieElbab 6y ago

It is the media and short election cycles. The politicians who serve long terms(senate) generally get along with each other because they have to work together, while members of the house and the president must keep media frenzy since they are constantly in election mode. Also, if you pay attention - it is no longer left vs right, more like localism vs globalism. Of course media portrays localism as nationalism, and globalism as progressivism

krageon 6y ago

> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. Between radicalised parties it looks like that everywhere. When people have only two choices, by necessity each choice contains radicalised fringe elements. For some reason societal factors in the US give these elements a huge presence, which I don't really understand.

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
Its very simple for the other side to push their agenda and cater to their crowd "See , we told you the other side was crazy" 911 truthers & marxists have always existed, however its only when the "mainstream" of the other side chose to hand the fringe a megaphone, that they came to the fore. This was not done for debate or charity. It was to score cheap political points in the age of clickbait. Extra Bonus: they got to extrapolate the extreme over 50% of the US population, and by consequence, to expand their potential eyeball audience
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Interesting. That explains why all the crazies have the microphone lately. The mainstream of the other side is giving it to them, to use them as a freak show. And the reason it's blowing up now is because the media monopoly is over. Back when "the media" was ABC, CBS, NBC, AP, UPI, and then-centrist New York Times and Washington Post, nobody was giving the crazies the microphone, on either side. But when Fox and talk radio came on the right, and CNN on the left (and many of the former-center media moved left), then there were people with a slant, and therefore with a motivation to make the other side look silly. But these people (on both sides) need to reconsider what they're doing. They're making the other side look silly to the mainstream, but they're also helping the fringe of the other side recruit. That may not be a very wise policy...
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    I believe what helped Trump win was all the (left leaning) news sites covering him saying, “look how stupid he is”, but then some saw it and sided with him. By giving him a platform, they helped put him in power.

arethuza 6y ago

"This is not how politics work in the rest of the world." A lot of the debate around Brexit in the UK worked exactly that way - on both sides.

rndgermandude 6y ago
From my outside observer perspective of both US and UK politics the level of hatred and animosity in the US appears orders of magnitude higher.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Unfortunately, if you aren’t here on the ground floor in America, you are getting information from the news which has a tendency to only amplify the extreme cases that are “newsworthy“
JulianMorrison 6y ago
There was and is a lot of anger, animosity, and the assumption that the other side is bad or motivated by spite.
thu2111 6y ago
I feel that's disingenuous. It wasn't the same way on both sides. This kind of false equivalence crops up in a lot of places but it needs to be called out. Many high profile Remainers claimed Leavers were/are racist, ignorant, far-right, small minded, hated all foreigners, didn't know what they were voting for, were old and thus should have their vote be ignored, and worse. Leavers claimed Remainers were ... what? Afraid of independence? That's about the worst of it from what I can remember. There was not by any stretch of the imagination the same kind of smear campaign alleging terrible motives and terrible souls. And now this. Parler and Gab within a few months of each other. It's not left wing outlets getting hacked and dumped, is it? I'm afraid there's no equivalency here: whether it's the USA or UK, it's always the same: it's always the left attacking the right. They do not view opposition of any sort as legitimate any more and are determined to destroy conservatism by any means possible, both legal and illegal. Nothing like it exists in reverse.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. Weighted by population, and including the places where that attitude has been taken to it's logical extreme by the dominant faction actually suppressing it's opposition, it absolutely is how politics works in the rest of the world. It's not how politics works in healthy, multiparty democracies, but those are, globally, rather more the exception than the rule.

mfer 6y ago

> As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), Does anyone have a good global breakdown of political ideology? What we call the west (North America, Europe, Australia, etc) is about 20% of the global population. These are the sources I usually see. I’m curious about this stuff globally

evgen 6y ago
OP is radically incorrect regarding where US parties would fit on a global scale. There is actually a lot of good research out available in political science papers based on large-scale surveys conducted over decades that show the US parties to be close to the middle of the right and left respectively. If you removed health care from the equation (given how messed up this is in the US) then the two parties would actually shift a bit to the left when compared to right and left political parties in other western democracies. The past five years or so may have muddied the waters slightly with the impact of populism, but prior to this point they were not significant outliers.
- trentlott 6y ago
  > If you removed health care from the equation Removing a defining characteristic to force data to fit your model surely isn't good science
  - evgen 6y ago
    The US is a clear outlier compared to other western democracies in regards to public health policy. It makes little sense to try to map US healthcare debates to non-US political positions because it is almost unique. It is not about trying to fit a model, it is about removing things that add no useful information when it comes to points of comparison. And yes, it is good science.
- relaxing 6y ago
  Well, I would like to see their methodology. Obviously these are data points that are hard to assign categorical labels to, let alone quantifiable values. I’d guess that by looking at the wide spectrum of governance with an inclusive view of Western democracies, you could come to the conclusion that economically-liberal powers share much in common. On the other hand, when commentators make these comparisons they’re generally comparing a handful of exemplar Northern European democratic-socialist governments on a subset of hot-button issues (racial and economic justice, foreign policy, economic regulation, etc.) because that’s where the political action is.

throw0101a 6y ago

> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. Actually, it is. It's just in places that you probably don't want to live in: > Donald Trump’s Republican party has become more illiberal and retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years, a study has found, with its rhetoric shifting closer that of authoritarian parties ruling in Turkey, Hungary, Poland and India. > The research by Sweden-based V-Dem Institute highlights what it calls a “global trend” where “the median governing party in democracies has become more illiberal in recent decades”. * https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/gop-trump-republican-democrats-authoritarian-hungary-austria-india-poland-turkey-b1343847.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio... * PDF: https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/b6/55/b6553f85-5c5d-45ec-be63-a48a2abe3f62/briefing_paper_9.pdf https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/b6/55/b6553f85-5c5d... By 2014 it was the GOP that had become more-right and the median with the Democrats hadn't change much from preceding decades: * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-polarization-is-asymmetric-and-conservatives-are-worse/373044/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-pol... However since then it appears that Democrats have become more-left.

skinkestek 6y ago

> ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), For readers who are not aware immediately, note that parent here uses far-right correctly. It is quite correct in this setting, but has been misused to describe nazism for quite a long time so if one thinks parent is comparing Republicans to Nazis that is (hopefully) not the intention. (Hitler was more of a pragmatic centrist, leaning to Socialism early as seen by the party name, but having no qualms cooperating with the industry either).

Schiendelman 6y ago
Have you been missing the Nazi flags the Republicans fly? The Nazi symbol in the stage of their event? There are openly Nazis in the Republican party.
- jki275 6y ago
  Stop it. There was no fucking nazi symbol on the stage at cpac. If you want to take a tiny group of extremists that are not accepted by a group and pretend they represent a group, we can do that the other way also.
  - Schiendelman 6y ago
    The CPAC stage was, indeed, a Nazi symbol. The question is whether it was intentional or not. And the Charlottesville protestors did use that symbol: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/12/flags-and-other-symbols-used-far-right-groups-charlottesville https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/12/flags-and-oth...
    - jki275 6y ago
      One can always find whatever bullshit one goes looking for. Nobody at CPAC made up a stage out of a nazi symbol. Some people made up a narrative to fit a false conclusion they created and produced in the media.
      - 6y ago

matheusmoreira 6y ago

Politics are the same everywhere. There's always an enemy and they're always dehumanized. It's always about empowering yourself and your group at the expense of everyone else.

banannaise 6y ago
The ideology you're describing is fascism. Power for power's sake, enemies for enemies' sake. That these look like the politics everywhere should scare the hell out of all of us.

dangernous 6y ago

“ America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans” Calling democrats center right by worldwide standards is a bit of a stretch. If you are comparing to worldwide, please remember a large majority of the world are still socially far right by American standards, take women’s rights and gay marriage for example. If you are comparing to the West, democrats are far more left wing than much of Europe’s parties (apart from maybe Sweden), most social justice movements originate from the states and these are in-line with the democrats policies.

frr149 6y ago

I am afraid this is far more common. At least Brazil, Spain and the UK are exactly like that, if not worse.

reallydontask 6y ago
Can't speak for Brazil, but in the UK this trend has been greatly exacerbated by Brexit. Spain is indeed closer to the US in some ways as the legacy of Franco is very hard to forget by both sides, which causes all manner of weird things
- lbebber 6y ago
  In Brazil it has been exacerbated by the legacy of the military dictatorship, openly defended by the current president, and lately by the high number of deaths caused by COVID and the reactions (or lack thereof) to that.
  - cfcosta 6y ago
    That's revisionism, the political rift was already there at least from the second Dilma government.
    - lbebber 6y ago
      Well I did say "exacerbated", not caused by it hahah

mbeex 6y ago

> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world. On the contrary, a strengthening of this very pattern can be observed everywhere.

scotty79 6y ago
Is it progress?
- mbeex 6y ago
  It is. But unfortunately, most people are not willing to separate the concept of progress from something that is magically inherently good. Same as with evolution or agile development :-)
  - scotty79 6y ago
    Progress is not always good but it's not inevitable like evolution. Regress is entirely possible. I know too little about history to say if two party system is progress or regress.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

> by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans) OhBoyHereWeGo.jpg It's stupid to try and condense the political ideology of the US (or almost any nation) down to one spectrum and then try and map that onto the rest of the world when we (and the rest of the world) have a lot of ideology based on "well party X took position Y because party V had position W back in year Z and they needed to be opposite and it stuck around". What's left and right is mostly a figment of historical coincidence, not any sort of ideological consistency across a party. Shall we do a survey of immigration and gun control policies across Europe to drive the point home? If you don't like that option we can survey the social safety nets and freedom of expression in Asia.

thamidolide 6y ago
Anyone who is genuinely left wing will easily recognize that neither party in the US represents their interests.
- Delmania 6y ago
  Correct, the Democrats are a weak willed party of centrists more concerned with maintaining the status quo as opposed to implementing progressive legislation that will help people. The GOP has become a cult of personality.
  - jejones3141 6y ago
    The Democrats had their cult of personality in the Obama years.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      At least he was a better role model.
      - vinger 6y ago
        Any response that begins with at least... should remain in kindergarden. No one is a role model.

threatofrain 6y ago

In the US, a majority of GOP voters believe that Democrats stole the election, and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Here is a pollster that is respected by US conservatives: https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2020/most_gop_voters_still_don_t_think_biden_was_elected_fairly https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ele... Many also believe that patriotic violence is acceptable to protect the legitimacy of democracy. What kind of conversation do you have when people believe their democracy was stolen from them? There is no way at this point for the GOP to safely retreat from the position that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. To do so would be political death.

wayoutthere 6y ago
> What kind of conversation do you have when some people believe you condone the cheating of democracy? A conversation with my friends on the left about how important gun ownership is when the right is armed to the teeth, and last summer showed the police won’t protect the left from right-wing violence. We have to do it ourselves, which means acquiring firearms and training with them. The US is headed towards a civil war. Pretty sure it’s unavoidable at this point, though it’ll take some years to play out. Biden pushing strong gun control could be enough to do it.
gurukhaider 6y ago
Have you already forgot the russia collusion fiasco, and all the "not my president" talk. Heck, even crooked shillary said Trump was illegitimate and now you think this s*it is something new. Of course half of the US won't accept Biden since why would you accept someone who deeply hates you and your values.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  Biden doesn’t hate anyone; he’s basically a republican minus the silly cult of personality. His actual political values align with the GOP from a decade ago. Anyone trying to paint him or Harris as “far leftists” is confused at best and probably trying to manipulate you. The far left has no party that represents them; the democrats pay lip service to progressive policy but aren’t willing to spend any political capital to actually do anything about it.

arianon 6y ago

"The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content. Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on anyone antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be confused with or mistaken for the others. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party. Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. Emotionally the enemy is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specifically political sense of the word. Thereby the inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses." —Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. [emphasis mine]

piokoch 6y ago

I disagree that Democrats are center-right. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are definitely left wing, even for European standards. But you might be partly right. One of the reasons for that are rules of political marketing (rarely politicians have enough courage to ignore them). One of those rules says that you need to differ and polarization is good. You want to win? Show how different you are. Another rule is that people don't vote with their brains but with emotions. So stirring emotions is needed. Humiliating your opponent is a good recipe for high emotions. Social platforms are magnifying differences, emotions, so there is no much more left. As a result democracy is not in the greatest shape now, some would even argue that it resembles more democracy of Roman Empire from triumvirate times (it was only a facade for the mob that was manipulated by those with power) than system that John Stuart Mill or Alexis de Tocqueville had in their minds.

TulliusCicero 6y ago
No, most of the stuff Bernie and AOC advocate for are considered fairly centrist policies in western Europe. Universal healthcare coverage? Paid parental leave? These are the norm in western Europe, they're not radical in the least.
- folknor 6y ago
  In my country, the party (and we have representatives from ~20 parties that are in nationally significant seats of power, 9 parties in the national assembly) that is considered the most "right-wing" actually supports _expanding_ the universal healthcare (EDIT: specifically, they want it to include dentistry, which we currently pay for except for in rare circumstances.) It's not a centrist policy at all - the parties (I think there are two, one of which is probably the Libertarian party) that don't support it here don't hold _any_ elected seats on any level. Not even a single city council seat in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere. So yeah, this is the norm. I'm not saying this to argue, I'm saying it to reinforce you (hopefully that's obvious) :-)
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago

swiley 6y ago

There's a lot of money spent convincing us to hate each other because it's one of the most effective ways to change our behavior.

jariel 6y ago

US animosity (i.e. firings for utterances of a word, lambasting any org. that doesn't meet certain criteria as 'White Supremacist', politicians blatantly lying about the election and running procedural coup attempts, lying on every Tweet) - is not really a left/right thing. It's mostly raw pathetic populism, incited as much by the press as any other group.

shrimpx 6y ago

This type of anti-American sentiment is boring and old-hat. I often hear it made by Europeans who still insist EU countries like France and Germany are so much better. In reality EU is a polarized racist political swamp.

msla 6y ago

Based on the party's position on immigration, the Democrats are far to the left of the European mainstream.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]