I got done going through Mike Duncan's history of Rome again. Hearing about left and right sounds just like optimates vs populares. A bunch of people who imagin

I got done going through Mike Duncan's history of Rome again. Hearing about left and right sounds just like optimates vs populares. A bunch of people who imagine they stand for something, but really its just about power and status. I remember wanting to understand what really made these people tick. Why would Pompey split with Caesar? It can't be because of some stupidity like left/right axis -2000 years. The left right dichotomy is so absurd these labels are just emergent blobs of people split by some hyperplane in idea space projected down to some unreal left-right axis. Hearing people say, "Musk an an alt right proto authoritarian" doesn't feel like it describes Musk. Its just about reaching into the current cultural axis and labelling someone else "other" It's just optimates/populares, blues/greens, fascists/commies, left/right all the way through history. Doesn't seem coherent at all. It almost seems like the most important thing is for the label to be devoid of any meaning, so that the "labelled" dont inherit any constraints. Oh that policy you propose, isnt "right wing", who cares, right doesn't even mean anything independent of the proponent who labels themself as right. So propose any policy and simply assert your membership in the category as fact. The bludgeon is labelling anything you don't like as "opposite label" so that the idea is associated with bad label and the bad people you hate. the semantics is irrelevant its all syntax.