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See, moderate Democrats are just right wing. Republicans are closer to fascist. Your whole political spectrum has been wandering to the right for quite a while now. “Radical left” Democrats would be centrist anywhere else.
Ratchet theory: Republicans push things to the right, Democrats prevent movement to the left.
This is what I’ve been saying about US politics for a long time. They’ve got two parties - the far right, and the batshit crazy right.
Nha man the US has politic spectrum, it has only right or left, democrate or replublic. People are either for Trump or against Trump. /s
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.
Seems a bit suspect and authoritarian…
Does it work in reverse? If not, why not?
My first thought was, that’s just GWB’s “if you are not with us you are against us”, with different words.
I see what you mean and when I first heard that saying I thought so too. That’s why I developed a bit after. In my opinion it does not mean “if you’re not with us you’re against us in an irreversible manner” at all (I don’t fight against individuals, I fight against a toxic ideology). To me, it mostly aims to denounce the fact that centrists are actually right wing people who don’t admit it. And, at least in France, the situation tends to confirm that : Macron was officially “neither on the left nor on the right” and it has become clearer and clearer that he is, in fact, completely on the right end of the political spectrum (if not worse for some of our ministers like Retailleau who clearly carries a far right ideology).
In the Netherlands we are lucky that we have actually have a spectrum you can choose from. I am not that versed in the France political system, but I don’t believe in that you are either left or you are right.
I think most people can agree with statements from both the left and the right. At least if they get room to express that.
If you look at left and right political in the Netherlands than there is also an issue. The left generally wants higher taxes for the rich and more income for the poor. The right generally want lower taxes for businesses and want to pay the poor less money to compensate that or something like that. Neither side will focus on the middle class, but currently in The Netherlands it’s the middle class who pay the most taxes percentage wise. (The loss of govern ant benefits, increases the percentage you are taxed in this calculation).
I do believe that there are a lot of good politicians who can parade as somebody else while campaigning and then doing other things after they are chosen. That’s why you generally want more than one person to make decisions. However having 225 people who decide the direction of the country is not working either …
I’m not sure it’s a winning argument that’s all.
Most people aren’t political if they don’t have to be, the only time they think of politics when they have to vote or something is taken from them.
To call them the opposite of what you are just because they feel like they are unsure because they haven’t thought about it as a way to shame them into your position is to lose them and play into your opposition’s hands - “these crazy people are calling you Nazis/Communists”.
Two sides can play the centrist card to grab the unsure while driving a different agenda - I don’t see what’s stopping the left.
Eg Most people are not aware of how much damage France is doing in west Africa through proxy colonialism - if you ask them they’ll probably shrug. If you ask them to vote on it they’ll pick someone that seems somewhere in the middle. Are they colonialist oppressors? Seems like a far fetch.
Now try to strong arm them into a position, how do you think it’s going to go?
I’m not trying to cause or win an argument, I’ll stop here.
I think the French saying is a response to rising Fascism. If Fascism is taking power in your society and you do not directly and explicitly oppose it, then you are at the very least going to be tacitly supporting it. By definition, centrism cannot fight Fascism, because it will always “both sides” the problem, which ultimately only benefits the Fascists. This is what we are seeing now in the US with the Democrats. The only realistic opposition to Fascism in this scenario is Leftism.
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.
My main issue with the far left parties in The Netherlands is that they seem to have no understanding of how the tax system works. They would increase social benefits and tax income and houses more. I have seen plans that if they went ahead with it would be taxed even more, but I already get no financial benefit from the government and we make below the median income.
Of course there are more points that they are better at and this post isn’t about NL, but still. I believe that there are a lot of people who don’t get financial benefit from left parties winning or from right parties winning. Unless they get rich. And then the more conservative option feels closer to home so ofc people vote more for that. That’s why you see so many conservative right governments in the west.
At least that’s my theory and one of the reasons why I try to vote on competent progressive middle people. At least when possibile.
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.
The entire US system is built on top of consumerism. Not saying we are better in NL or Europe, but the US really exploded the consumerism and abused the angelo saxton mindset. Well and the US has been corrupt for a while, probably since it was founded that doesn’t help either.
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.
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.
1800s?
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.”
It doesn’t help that the US has a two party system in practice and that people really vote for a person and not for their ideals.
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!
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.
Middle ground on social issues: “Separate but equal”
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.
I experienced this recently with a coworker who talked himself in circles about how he cared about facts and logic and agreed with both parties on different issues. But…he spat out Republican grifter speech over and over (basic biology!) and talked about how he watched these “debate me” idiots online who showed how Democrats “barely ever back up their arguments with logic” while the Republicans apparently do (you probably know the ones, they’re famous grifters but I don’t remember their names), as if these guys wouldn’t simply edit out everything but the most extreme people to use as evidence for their claims.
I have a line from a song I like to use when talking about these sorts of people: Spread the facts out like a fan on the floor, throw away the ones that make you feel bad.
Cognitive dissonance is a requirement for this kind of thinking.
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Someone go get that guy complaining about ‘bothsiders’ on lw last week.
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.
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!
Our current system does not reward that extra hard work. The wealth distribution slow is barely perceptible for the bottom 97% of the population. When ~100 people hold half the country’s wealth, there’s none left for anyone else regardless of how hard you grind.
Exactly, that’s why I’m saying it’s a left wing thing to actually make it so that working more means getting more
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 exploiting 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
but they don’t
agree withknow anything about “the left” so they’re to the “right” of them.FTFY.
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.
She also has an MEd, which is a Master’s in Education. I think people like the one you’re replying to skim her Wiki and read it as Med, as in Medical, which is hilarious.
I think people like the one you’re replying to skim her Wiki and read it as Med, as in Medical, which is hilarious.
I hadn’t thought of that. You’re probably right.
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.
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.
Well well well.
What values are you talking about? You must have limited them to something like you shouldn’t eat cockroaches.
