3 ms·

Is this what America has become? Every single anything of everything is "left wing" "right wing"?

by ulfw 4y ago

fullshark 4y ago
Not America, but online discussion.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Seems that way when watching from up here in Canada. Like somehow that country's intense obsession with football/team sports has taken over public discourse. And it's infecting discourse up here, too. It's awful reading comments sections. My team vs your team but framed around these ridiculous mis-characterized bundles of other people's opinions. ... Meanwhile there is practically no "left wing" in the United States mainstream... and hasn't been for a long time. Identity politics and cultural liberalism, sure. Stuff around the margins. Actual redistributive economics, unions, and worker's power? Not since Clinton. How stuff like the NYT or CNN got reframed by people as "left wing" is beyond me. If there's a concerted press attack on Musk, it's not by the "left wing"; it's by one wing of the established business class in the United States vs another. The fights around Trump are similar. Competing economic interests, areas of control, which are framed in the public mind as being about "left wing" vs "right wing" ideological issues, but in reality these are only tangential.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Pretty much all the "public discourse" you're seeing is a tiny bubble. Day to day life for the vast majority of people here is unchanged. As for your second point, you're playing a no true Scotsman game where the only real liberal is hyper focused on money. Identity politics has almost wholly consumed the attention of the American left. Even during a press announcement of a bill to legalize marijuana in MN, a good portion of the talk was about racial justice. CNN has recently sacked a number of people or cancelled shows to get away from the blatantly partisan content they were producing. The NYT has had a number of controversies recently over internal fights among editors and staff that their coverage wasn't biased enough. Meanwhile, redistributive economics marches on in the background. Trillions given out to everyone and anyone, plus long extensions of unemployment payouts during COVID. Municipalities playing with "UBI" schemes which are targeted at minority groups like BIPOC or gender non-conforming individuals. Union support is generally unpopular outside of some groups, because unions have some powers here that would be illegal in most other Western countries, and that gets abused. Of all of the "left wing" positions, expanding unions is probably the lowest priority for that reason. I'll bring it up every time the topic comes up, because it truly is that important: the SEIU tried to take money from government benefits paid to mentally or physically disabled people in MN, and if I'm not mistaken, they are doing so in other states. Unions in the US are not what people in other countries expect when they wonder why American union participation is so low.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    I don't think I'm doing a "no true Scotsman" thing, I don't think it's purism to try to use the meaning of words that held for a century to point out that the accusations about "left wing bias" in media, etc. are absurd. But I think we actually agree more than disagree: all the cultural stuff has taken the place of actual left wing politics. Because socialist politics in the west was defeated, politically, in the 80s and 90s. The "right wing" won. There's no real anti-capitalism left. People who might consider themselves left wing are really just playing with cultural shibboleths, acting out a part, because stating actual left wing opinions (e.g. "we should nationalize the oil industry") is so far out of the political mainstream that you can become absolutely ex-communicated for speaking these opinions in public. They're so dead, that you look like a crazy lunatic. And the corruption you're speaking about in the union movement, etc. is IMHO a product of that. They become ossified into guilds and mafia-like clubs (this has always been a pressure). Because actually within the union movement historically it was rank and file socialists & communists who were pushing the unions away from that kind of thing historically, and the lack of a principled radical movement in the unions leads directly to corruption. (Look up the Teamsters for a Democratic Union sometime, for an example) Socialism does not exist as a political force in the United States, unless you ridiculously redefine socialism to mean "anything government does." Is there a liberal media vs conservative media war in the US? Yes. I just think it's absurd to frame this around "left" vs "right". It again takes us back to these stupid football teams.
acdha 4y ago
It’s a natural outgrowth of the Republican Party’s tack towards previously extreme positions: they’ve drifted away from the mainstream on so many issues that adherents are either faced with admitting they’re wrong about many things or having to dismiss entire fields as part of some inexplicable poorly-defined “left wing” conspiracy which changes scope whenever necessary to attack opponents or defend allies.

Is this what America has become? Every single anything of everything is "left wing" "right wing"?

by ulfw 4y ago

Is this what America has become? Every single anything of everything is "left wing" "right wing"?

fullshark 4y ago

Not America, but online discussion.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Seems that way when watching from up here in Canada. Like somehow that country's intense obsession with football/team sports has taken over public discourse. And it's infecting discourse up here, too. It's awful reading comments sections. My team vs your team but framed around these ridiculous mis-characterized bundles of other people's opinions. ... Meanwhile there is practically no "left wing" in the United States mainstream... and hasn't been for a long time. Identity politics and cultural liberalism, sure. Stuff around the margins. Actual redistributive economics, unions, and worker's power? Not since Clinton. How stuff like the NYT or CNN got reframed by people as "left wing" is beyond me. If there's a concerted press attack on Musk, it's not by the "left wing"; it's by one wing of the established business class in the United States vs another. The fights around Trump are similar. Competing economic interests, areas of control, which are framed in the public mind as being about "left wing" vs "right wing" ideological issues, but in reality these are only tangential.

zdragnar 4y ago
Pretty much all the "public discourse" you're seeing is a tiny bubble. Day to day life for the vast majority of people here is unchanged. As for your second point, you're playing a no true Scotsman game where the only real liberal is hyper focused on money. Identity politics has almost wholly consumed the attention of the American left. Even during a press announcement of a bill to legalize marijuana in MN, a good portion of the talk was about racial justice. CNN has recently sacked a number of people or cancelled shows to get away from the blatantly partisan content they were producing. The NYT has had a number of controversies recently over internal fights among editors and staff that their coverage wasn't biased enough. Meanwhile, redistributive economics marches on in the background. Trillions given out to everyone and anyone, plus long extensions of unemployment payouts during COVID. Municipalities playing with "UBI" schemes which are targeted at minority groups like BIPOC or gender non-conforming individuals. Union support is generally unpopular outside of some groups, because unions have some powers here that would be illegal in most other Western countries, and that gets abused. Of all of the "left wing" positions, expanding unions is probably the lowest priority for that reason. I'll bring it up every time the topic comes up, because it truly is that important: the SEIU tried to take money from government benefits paid to mentally or physically disabled people in MN, and if I'm not mistaken, they are doing so in other states. Unions in the US are not what people in other countries expect when they wonder why American union participation is so low.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I don't think I'm doing a "no true Scotsman" thing, I don't think it's purism to try to use the meaning of words that held for a century to point out that the accusations about "left wing bias" in media, etc. are absurd. But I think we actually agree more than disagree: all the cultural stuff has taken the place of actual left wing politics. Because socialist politics in the west was defeated, politically, in the 80s and 90s. The "right wing" won. There's no real anti-capitalism left. People who might consider themselves left wing are really just playing with cultural shibboleths, acting out a part, because stating actual left wing opinions (e.g. "we should nationalize the oil industry") is so far out of the political mainstream that you can become absolutely ex-communicated for speaking these opinions in public. They're so dead, that you look like a crazy lunatic. And the corruption you're speaking about in the union movement, etc. is IMHO a product of that. They become ossified into guilds and mafia-like clubs (this has always been a pressure). Because actually within the union movement historically it was rank and file socialists & communists who were pushing the unions away from that kind of thing historically, and the lack of a principled radical movement in the unions leads directly to corruption. (Look up the Teamsters for a Democratic Union sometime, for an example) Socialism does not exist as a political force in the United States, unless you ridiculously redefine socialism to mean "anything government does." Is there a liberal media vs conservative media war in the US? Yes. I just think it's absurd to frame this around "left" vs "right". It again takes us back to these stupid football teams.

acdha 4y ago

It’s a natural outgrowth of the Republican Party’s tack towards previously extreme positions: they’ve drifted away from the mainstream on so many issues that adherents are either faced with admitting they’re wrong about many things or having to dismiss entire fields as part of some inexplicable poorly-defined “left wing” conspiracy which changes scope whenever necessary to attack opponents or defend allies.