4 ms·

I think that's broadly true: both sides want America to fail when the other side is in power in order to prove they're right.

gcanyon 6mo ago
I don't want "the other side" to fail, and I absolutely don't wan the U.S. to fail when they are in power. I want the U.S. to succeed, and for "the other side" to be competent and fair.
krsw 6mo ago
Classic enlightened centrist take. One side yells when the other dismantles the institutions that let the country work, so both sides are equally bad.
- californical 6mo ago
  Both bad, and one is more bad than the other. They’re not equally bad but they are both very bad
  - chipsrafferty 6mo ago
    Yes the US is more bad, agreed
  - disillusioned 6mo ago
    This is a bit like saying a hangnail and a gangrenous amputation are "not equally bad but they are both very bad". One is literally chopping things off to permanently alter them. The other is, at times, uncomfortable and frustrating. The false equivalence of doing the "both bad!" song and dance serves to so radically under-emphasize the absolute wanton, orders-of-magnitude-worse levels of corruption and evisceration of norms of one side by reducing it to "more bad than the other but they're both very bad." It allows the window to shift to normalize the sort of destruction of systems we're seeing by hand waving away how "the other guys aren't great, either!" It's borderline discourse malpractice at this point, and should be called out as such.
- rootusrootus 6mo ago
  The enlightened centrist take is not entirely wrong, though. The left definitely has some blind spots, among them their purist dedication to perfect morals and a willingness to tell anyone who does not perfectly agree to piss off. While the right is comfortable holding their nose when white supremacists hang around because it gets them a bigger coalition, the left will excommunicate someone for saying out loud that they think trans women are not exactly equivalent to biological women. This shrinking of the coalition is how we ended up enduring another Trump presidency. Not to mention the complete fiasco that was the 2024 presidential race. We should have thrown out the entirety of DNC leadership several levels deep for letting that happen.
  - cestith 6mo ago
    There’s a bit of a duality about perfect agreement within the voters for the party’s candidates and somewhat within the party membership itself. Yeah, there’s a lot of telling each other to piss off. There’s a lot of jockeying for the platform and the primaries. But come the general, it’s a minority of the voters who will sit it out or vote for a minor party. Sometimes it’s a large enough minority to hand things to the Republicans, though.
  - crote 6mo ago
    A massive problem in the US is that the completely broken two-party system has essentially killed the political spectrum. People more-or-less vote against the party they dislike more, not for the party they want. To see any form of change you need someone like Trump to completely take over a party in one go and kill the old one from inside. From an outside perspective the US does not have a political left. The policies proposed by the Democrats are roughly in line with the mainstream right-wing parties in the rest of the world. A mainstream left-wing party would look an awful lot like someone like Bernie Sanders - and we all know the Democrats would rather platform a wet paper towel and lose than see him gain any kind of power!
drfloyd51 6mo ago
Strong disagree. One side is clearly interested in helping others simply because they need help. The other is clearly interested in help others that they can relate to (look like themselves) and have earned the right to help (such as believing in the right god.) or only helping people that can help them back.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- NoMoreNicksLeft 6mo ago
  Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are. And we can even falsify this hypothesis a bit... such people would, I speculate, be more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping. They'll tend to arrange the help in such a way as to garner the most publicity. And, most of all, they'll allocate their efforts such that they're vocal about how they're the good guys doing all the helping more than they're actively helping. Just to make sure everyone notices.
  - ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
    > Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are Being awesome because you help those in need? How horrible! > more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping This is a common and tired talking point: "virtue signalling". It often comes from people who are less helpful than others, and resent how more helpful people receive accolades. Their own personal judgement about whether something actually helps isn't authoritative, and is usually motivated reasoning anyways.
    - ryandrake 6mo ago
      "Government shouldn't help people" is such a bizarrely popular take in the USA.

gcanyon 6mo ago

I don't want "the other side" to fail, and I absolutely don't wan the U.S. to fail when they are in power. I want the U.S. to succeed, and for "the other side" to be competent and fair.

krsw 6mo ago

Classic enlightened centrist take. One side yells when the other dismantles the institutions that let the country work, so both sides are equally bad.

californical 6mo ago
Both bad, and one is more bad than the other. They’re not equally bad but they are both very bad
- chipsrafferty 6mo ago
  Yes the US is more bad, agreed
- disillusioned 6mo ago
  This is a bit like saying a hangnail and a gangrenous amputation are "not equally bad but they are both very bad". One is literally chopping things off to permanently alter them. The other is, at times, uncomfortable and frustrating. The false equivalence of doing the "both bad!" song and dance serves to so radically under-emphasize the absolute wanton, orders-of-magnitude-worse levels of corruption and evisceration of norms of one side by reducing it to "more bad than the other but they're both very bad." It allows the window to shift to normalize the sort of destruction of systems we're seeing by hand waving away how "the other guys aren't great, either!" It's borderline discourse malpractice at this point, and should be called out as such.
rootusrootus 6mo ago
The enlightened centrist take is not entirely wrong, though. The left definitely has some blind spots, among them their purist dedication to perfect morals and a willingness to tell anyone who does not perfectly agree to piss off. While the right is comfortable holding their nose when white supremacists hang around because it gets them a bigger coalition, the left will excommunicate someone for saying out loud that they think trans women are not exactly equivalent to biological women. This shrinking of the coalition is how we ended up enduring another Trump presidency. Not to mention the complete fiasco that was the 2024 presidential race. We should have thrown out the entirety of DNC leadership several levels deep for letting that happen.
- cestith 6mo ago
  There’s a bit of a duality about perfect agreement within the voters for the party’s candidates and somewhat within the party membership itself. Yeah, there’s a lot of telling each other to piss off. There’s a lot of jockeying for the platform and the primaries. But come the general, it’s a minority of the voters who will sit it out or vote for a minor party. Sometimes it’s a large enough minority to hand things to the Republicans, though.
- crote 6mo ago
  A massive problem in the US is that the completely broken two-party system has essentially killed the political spectrum. People more-or-less vote against the party they dislike more, not for the party they want. To see any form of change you need someone like Trump to completely take over a party in one go and kill the old one from inside. From an outside perspective the US does not have a political left. The policies proposed by the Democrats are roughly in line with the mainstream right-wing parties in the rest of the world. A mainstream left-wing party would look an awful lot like someone like Bernie Sanders - and we all know the Democrats would rather platform a wet paper towel and lose than see him gain any kind of power!

drfloyd51 6mo ago

Strong disagree. One side is clearly interested in helping others simply because they need help. The other is clearly interested in help others that they can relate to (look like themselves) and have earned the right to help (such as believing in the right god.) or only helping people that can help them back.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
NoMoreNicksLeft 6mo ago
Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are. And we can even falsify this hypothesis a bit... such people would, I speculate, be more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping. They'll tend to arrange the help in such a way as to garner the most publicity. And, most of all, they'll allocate their efforts such that they're vocal about how they're the good guys doing all the helping more than they're actively helping. Just to make sure everyone notices.
- ImPostingOnHN 6mo ago
  > Quite a few on one side seem to want to "help others" so they can demonstrate publicly how awesome and righteous they are Being awesome because you help those in need? How horrible! > more interested in the appearance of helping than in the substance of helping This is a common and tired talking point: "virtue signalling". It often comes from people who are less helpful than others, and resent how more helpful people receive accolades. Their own personal judgement about whether something actually helps isn't authoritative, and is usually motivated reasoning anyways.
  - ryandrake 6mo ago
    "Government shouldn't help people" is such a bizarrely popular take in the USA.