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In France we have a saying “Si t’es pas de gauche, t’es de droite” i.e “if you’re not a leftist, then you’re on the right wing” meaning that if you do not explicitly reject the paradigm supported by the right then you’re implicitly accepting it and thus indirectly support right wing and conservatism.
The problem is they have all been extremely successful at demonizing the alternatives. People are hesitant to even think about left ideas because they have been told their entire lives that they are evil.
Most Democrats don’t realize that capitalism relies on actual slavery… presently. They don’t know that the products they consume revolve around supply chains that even include child slavery. They don’t know the actual effects of US imperialism, regime change, and third-world exploitation. They don’t know that an estimated 40% of US agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants — modern slaves, with no human rights. I’m not being hyperbolic at all, but I suggest everybody do their own research.
Democrats are propagandized to not want to come to terms with the fact that even first-world workers are slaves. They may not be “owned”, but damn near — everybody is getting a raw deal under capitalism besides those that extract the vast majority of value, wealth, power, influence, and control.
Democrats are subjected to intense campaigns that include gaslighting, propaganda, and coercion, while critical facts and the actual reality is veiled to them.
Even US military policy and the reserve currency is designed to exploit emerging markets. The reason the US can print so much money every year to fund all its programs is because other countries are required to trade in USD so will buy it even though its being inflated so much, and if they decide to trade in something like gold dinars they get overthrown.
Well well well.
They are the same as early-2000s Republicans.
They are not the same as 2025 Republicans, who are literally thieving, murderous Mussolini-emulating fascists.
To be fair, still Republicans… just two decades apart.
I’ll admit Trump is a lot clumsier about saying it out loud, but 2000s Republicans were absolutely on the same wave. Being virulently anti-anyone-dark-than-an-italitan, actively eroding free speech, and hating anyone who worked for a living has been standard conservative shit since at least the 1800s. If anything, the 2000s Republicans had more of a war-boner to boot. Trump did in fact bring the facism home a fair bit more openly, but let’s not mistake a new hairdo for a new political movement.
The early 2000s Republicans are the same people as 2025 Republicans.
Some of them changed their beliefs. They moved right - or were moved right by an incredibly effective decades-long propaganda campaign.
And some of them didn’t change their beliefs at all - they’re simply more emboldened to express beliefs that weren’t acceptable twenty years ago.
Give it twenty more years and Democrats will be where Republicans are now.
The current Democratic party is basically the Reagan Republicans with more emphasis on civil rights.
US politics have skewed further and further rightward for the last 50 years. On a global scale, Democrats are firmly center-right.
Bernie Sanders and AOC are barely left of center for the rest of the world, but in US politics they’re “off the deep end.”
They’re center right afaict but ok
dick Cheney endorsed kamala
Yeah, but 2000 Republicans blamed Russia for all their problems. And 2025 Democrats blame Russia for… Oh.
They are not all the same. Notably absent are John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Even Mitch McConnell is kind of gone, with at least one foot out the door and much reduced influence. Meanwhile, thereva lot of newcomers that were brought in by the tee party and Trump, most notably Trump himself.
Their complacency makes me feel like they’re just making people feel like they have a choice
My hero!
What values are you talking about? You must have limited them to something like you shouldn’t eat cockroaches.
Found the source:
Okay I read the source now and what I found funny is the part where people describe how “moderates” on dating apps are just conservatives. An observation I can regard as true in my experience, they are just self-aware enough to not be dismissed outright, but not self-aware enough to actually change a thing about themselves and become a better person.
Remembering how dating apps for conservative people tend to go down (only dudes, because what chick would engage with those guys…), I find it funny to see this echoed here again. There is, after all, no middle ground on most social issues anymore and we do good to see moderates as just another trick of conservative rebranding to obfuscate what they truly are.
There is, after all, no middle ground on most social issues anymore
There never was, unless you consider supporting desegregation but not interracial marriage a middle ground I guess.
Okay I read the source now and what I found funny is the part where people describe how “moderates” on dating apps are just conservatives. An observation I can regard as true in my experience, they are just self-aware enough to not be dismissed outright, but not self-aware enough to actually change a thing about themselves and become a better person.
This is DEEPLY VALIDATING thank you
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As it should be! After all, self-validation is far more important than winning elections.
and being condescending to leftists especially when they are correct and it makes you annoyed you can’t come up with good rhetorical counter arguments that hold together logically… is the MOST important!!
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Some of them genuinely seem to be in some weird form of denial I can’t understand. I lost a friend from his slide during covid who would fit this. Self identified moderate who only ever defended right wing views and the worst of the grifters.
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Someone go get that guy complaining about ‘bothsiders’ on lw last week.
The study doesn’t match the headline.
Seriously. The rhetorical shift:
Study of American men’s self-reported political affiliation shows that “moderate” aligns pretty closely with “conservative.”
Headline assigns “moderate” political affiliation to Joe Biden, to suggest that Joe Biden’s policies align closely with “conservative.”
Biden campaigned on being the most progressive president in U.S. history. Did he deliver? Not on all metrics, but whatever it is he did, he wasn’t a secret conservative pretending to be moderate. The most you can accuse him of is being a moderate pretending to be progressive.
Biden was a fundamentalist catholic who thought homosexuality was a sin and abortion was murder.
Everything he did that could be considered progressive he did as a compromise to his own values - that’s what makes him a moderate.
That’s exactly the type of person this article is talking about.
Eh I’ve spoken to Biden personally about gay rights, dude’s not bigoted and leans into the progressive catholic church. His wife being a physician doesn’t see abortion as murder I don’t think. His conservative tendencies are that he’s establishment - he thinks he’s still playing the same football game they’ve been playing since he was a kid. He’s neoliberal as hell as is the entire Democratic leadership, which turns people off.
His wife being a physician
She isn’t though. She’s an Ed.D (her doctorate is in education) not an MD.
A catholic fundamentalist will only support marriage as a universal right when not supporting it becomes a liability, for the same reason catholicism and christianity writ large legitimized and supported the institutions of slavery and segregation for far longer than they were publicly popular for
Biden, for all his notable progressive compromises, will drag his feet against doing anything insufficiently popular, no matter how unjust the alternative is.
“Men on dating apps who say they’re moderate are conservative”
First, we knew that. Second, Biden is not on a dating app.
You mean that the “hot senators in your area” ads are just scams!?!
Well, uh, which app do you have installed? I hear Grindr has trouble during the CPAC conventions.
Do you have a wide stance in the airport bathroom?
(Btw, these are the same people outlawing porn one state at a time.)
You sure about that?
Segregationist Biden is a moderate?
“I’m a liberal on health care because I believe it is a birth right of every human being—not just some damn privilege to be meted out to a few people. But when it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother. I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body. I support a limited amnesty, and I don’t think marijuana should be legalized.”
Actions speak louder than words:
Definitely wasn’t disagreeing with you haha
“experts say” is a bullshit phrase
You can verify Biden’s racist and segregationist past, or just look at his administration’s complicity in war crimes.
Joe Biden Didn’t Just Vote for the Iraq Invasion—He Helped Lead the March to War
Domestically and internationally he wasn’t a moderate.
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I never said he was. Quit making assumptions and have a conversation.
I think this also has to do with how “we” refuse to speak of left and right as actual sets of ideals as opposed to relative positions. As far as voters go they see themselves as centrist because they aren’t far right fascists so they’re to the “left” of them, but they don’t agree with “the left” so they’re to the “right” of them. Their actual beliefs though would make them conservatives and so right wingers…
As far as politicians, they just want to get elected and the Bidens of the world know they can’t win as Republicans especially today.
People who call themselves centrist, are uneducated in regards to political terms. They don’t know what they are talking about, but assume they do and they never go out of their way to educate themselves on these matters.
Or they know exactly, but are straight up lying. Either way it means talking to those people is a waste of time.
but they don’t
agree withknow anything about “the left” so they’re to the “right” of them.FTFY.
Right, most of these idiots don’t have a clue what the Left actually is.
Most of these idiots believe in what the left would have the chance to propose if they hadn’t been brainwashed into believing that the left is communism is evil.
Social security? Accessible healthcare? Being able to live a comfortable life? Working hard leading to an appropriate reward?
What comes to my mind is, that it’s great when people who work hard get rewarded, but that should only be an extra, not a necessity for a good life. And working too hard shouldn’t be glorified, there need to be limits.
Some people just want to work harder than required though (I’ve got a workaholic uncle but he just loves his job, my FiL spent his career working 60h/week in research out of choice…) and they should be rewarded accordingly, but as you say, working a full time schedule is already hard enough, it’s not normal that people can’t live comfortably doing that!
Don’t underestimate the appeal of racism. The biggest barrier to the expansion of the US social safety net is the fact that many, many white people would willingly vote to make themselves poorer, so long as they kept an income advantage over black people. Many white voters would rather vote themselves into penury rather than see one black person get any form of government assistance.
That’s all part of the brainwashing, look at what Trump sold them, the end of the elite’s hold over their lives… That’s a left side message! I’m 100% sure the vast majority of them wouldn’t care about the race of beneficiaries if they were given the chance to understand that both them and black folks wouldn’t be the ones paying for it, the actual elite would be, but media would never give them that chance.
It’s not brainwashing though. It’s a cynical, evil, but rational attempt at race- and gender-based privilege and affirmative action. White men enjoyed massive affirmative action for the entirety of the nation’s history up until very recently. All the good jobs were arbitrarily assigned to white men; they didn’t have to compete with the majority of the population. They had an artificially-high opportunity for success simply handed to them from birth.
Racism and sexism are evil, but they’re also rational. This isn’t just dumb idiots being exploited with false promises. It’s a racial and gender group coming together and saying, “we’re going to come together and vote ourselves unearned privilege and opportunities. We will use the power of our votes to raise ourselves up at the expense of everyone else.”
Racism isn’t irrational; it’s just evil. Racism and sexism are perfectly materially rational. They’re a conspiracy by one group to give themselves unearned opportunities, power, and wealth. Dismissing it as “brainwashing” just completely misses the point of racism.
They’re brainwashed into believing that the enemy is people like them except for their skin color and not the rich white men exploring both them and their perceived enemy. These people aren’t born racist, but they’re born at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
The wrong side of the road, that’s what it is.
That goes for all sides frankly
That looks like an article in regards to a study. Is there further information? Would be really interesting to read the full thing
Sorry I only found the meme. Sounds it should be googlable.
Someone else in the comments provided this
The entire issue with “the middle ground” is that it’s based in relativistic politics which is a complete non-stater since their goal is specifically to not to commit enough to any action such that it actually succeeds. There’re no thoughts behind those eyes, just a weird and bad compromise because they don’t understand anything and are just barely good enough people to not go 100% into hating minorities.
Yes! These people don’t have strong enough opinions to change things, therefore they support the Status quo, which is conservative.
Who the fuck cares? Biden isn’t in office anymore. Judge by what he accomplished instead of pretending you all know him personally.
Right now we have a literal fascist in office. Something tells me that’s a bigger issue. We can play the blame game all day, but unfortunately what’s done is done and the time to take action is yesterday.
But the problem is that this is the exact problem that led to the fascist taking office. The most historically unpopular president plagued by every possible crime and scandal, and the democrats run a Republican. That is why they keep losing. They keep people even remotely left of Republican, like Bernie and AOC, at arms length (at best) from the party, while propping up Joe Biden and Nancy pelosi (almost literally). And then they keep saying “this is the most progressive ticket in history!”
They’re selling out any possible goodwill hey had. Which was very little, if any. And then they turn around and point the finger at us. All while capitalizing on the fascists taking office and capitulating to their agenda, while the talking heads go on to and say “the problem is the party got ‘too woke’ and forgot about the everyday Americans!”
They have clearly failed at this since running a fake progressive in Obama, who also proved everything by running a legitimately progressive campaign in 08 and won by historic numbers. I’m not going to say it was the money behind the party that made them stop even pretending they give a shit…but it was (most likely). They are not a legitimate opposition party. And when the choices are between one of two, well that’s a massive fucking problem. And they’re not addressing it.
So, yes. There is a fascist in office. But if this foundational problem doesn’t get solved and the dems keep moving right (while the OW concept of “right” has shifted so far away from center), then the fascists will continue to radicalize, pulling the entire Democratic Party rightward with it.
That is a problem that needs to get solved before we can get a fascist out of power. Unless we’re talking…like, gonzo style.
We just need an entirely new system.
The Democrats will never be truly progressive and they will always tease at being socialist. They don’t even address major crises, like the housing crisis, the health care crisis, or the economy — they sit there and gaslight us while playing the blame game to excuse their inaction.
We need progress towards solutions, and they can’t even address the issues. How can they work towards solutions if they can’t come up with any?
The Progressives and Democratic Socialists who once voted Democrat (or who voted Democrat anyway) probably care a lot that they are disenfranchised by Democrats.
Judge by what he accomplished
Getting said literal fascist elected by doing fuck all to solve the problems he said he would, gave said fascist a pass by assigning a mealy mouthed investigator, and hanging out in the race long enough to help depress turnout?
We can play the blame game all day, but unfortunately what’s done is done and the time to take action is yesterday.
We also need to understand why we got to this place, and saying “who the fuck cares” just emboldens the Dems in power to keep trying the same shit that doesn’t work.
The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee called for using far-right candidates “as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right.” Clinton’s camp insisted that Trump and other extremists should be “elevated” to “leaders of the pack” and media outlets should be told to “take them seriously.”
Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and mainstream media also played a pretty big role in Trump’s rise to power back in 2016.
Yep, I’ve bitched about that for the better part of the intervening 8 years. Still not sure if the establishment learned the right lesson from 2016.
Most people aren’t even aware. I’ll keep pushing that fact even if it angers people.
We all loosely share responsibility for Trump rising to power and maintaining said power, and the best way to remove his power is to pull the wool away from everybody’s eyes.
The Democrats do not represent the people or workers and they will not fight for anybody or anything besides capital. No matter how progressive they brand themselves in the future or how much they claim to want to fight oligarchy.
They have zero plan or power — they are not serious actors and my assessment of them has nothing to do with purity testing. You are either focused or solutions or you are not. We need solutions imminently — we need a new system.
Well, they’re the only other game in town unless you want to sit back and let the fascists take power because people stayed home like they did this year, our hands are pretty much tied come election day. And that is a fact I will keep repeating as long as people refuse to understand that our country is run via electoral politics and no amount of sitting out will change that.
I’m all for getting better candidates on the ballot, but when the only alternative is naked fascism, telling people to stay home or not vote for them is a great way of shooting your pet causes in the foot.
Well clearly we are already almost at a breaking point just 112 days after the start of Trump’s presidency. He is ignoring due process and established rights, he is foregoing his oath to uphold the constitution, and everybody in the administration is openly breaking laws left and right. The administration is also arguably in criminal contempt of court.
Personally, I don’t think we’ll even make it 2 years into the presidency before protests of a massive scale or a collapse.
1/3 of the country doesn’t vote in the presidential election, 2/3 are propagandized or coerced into voting for the duopoly. There are many, many people who voted for Trump that likely don’t approve of him now. There are many, many people who voted for Kamala who likely didn’t actually endorse her, they just didn’t want Trump.
If a revolution or similar event is going to happen, it’s during this presidency. Otherwise there will be no facade of democracy left to participate in when the next election is supposed to come around. The Democrats aren’t going to save us, the answer isn’t to sit back — the answer is to create a new system.
We also need to understand why we got to this place, and saying “who the fuck cares” just emboldens the Dems in power to keep trying the same shit that doesn’t work.
We already know how we got here, which is why it doesn’t help anything to bitch and moan about how “both sides suck”.
Quit your bitching and infighting and blaming everyone else, and focus on what we can do now.
How does it solve anything beyond the shortest of terms to keep seeing salvation in a party thats been creeping right in line with the Fascists for half a century?
What will your opinion be in another 5-8 years when the Democrats have followed the Overton window into calling for extralegal deportations of naturalized citizens and Republicans are just calling for the whites to shoot the non-whites in the street with impunity?
“Better support the Democrats, they only want to deport those people to foreign prisons not execute them on the sidewalk! Get that both sides crap out of here!”
-You in 5 years, probably.
We can co-create a new system as this one falls apart.
We already know how we got here, which is why it doesn’t help anything to bitch and moan about how “both sides suck”.
Clearly, given how the power structure is doing things differently, right?
Quit your bitching and infighting and blaming everyone else, and focus on what we can do now.
Yeah, try to get the establishment to understand a lesson on what failed and have them finally back policies that will encourage people to show up so I don’t have to spend 6 months begging people to vote for them because they fucked the dog yet again?
