Unity2020

Yup. This.

Go back to 2001, I was the one being shouted down for arguing against the Iraq war bullshit.

At the splinter, most of the voluble and … hotheaded people on both sides left. The ones left are mostly the more mellow people. If you feel shouted down it’s because people’s attitudes changed with the more and more obvious bullshit from the GOP the last couple of decades.

I’m not saying I specifically feel shouted down. I’m wondering why the political section on this site is dominated entirely by strong left-wing positions. I understand that Trump has heavily hurt the brand of the right, but there are still centrist positions (both left and right) on most things in America and in the world, and I consider them valuable. Since liking games and movies doesn’t correlate with political position as far as I know, my assumption is that moderates just stay out of the political section altogether for fear of being mobbed.

Also, people are ashamed and hiding. That “suppression” is called shame.

I mean sure, except Trumpettes don’t have shame, as we know.

But we do see centrist/ right positions. Nightgaunt is a staunch proponent of third party votes because of certain conservative positions (while being disgusted with the GOP because he is a decent person, not a monster, but one who holds political Rubicons I strongly disagree with). There are others of a more conservative bent here as well. @Strollen is one.

The thing we don’t see is defense of the GOP. Even the more conservative members here are supporting Biden, because to do otherwise would require defending the indefensible. And even the more centrist and conservative members are still broadly of the ‘the GOP must be destroyed’ type.

See: the Lincoln project.

I strongly reject the premise of your accusation.

It appears that you’ve bought into the thinking that anything to the left of Lyndon LaRouche is a “strong left-wing” position.

There are plenty of moderates posting here and talking about moderate things.

I’m more a centrist than anything else. The problem is the former GOP, current Trump party, is one of the most far right parties on Earth. (no joke – there are only a few lunatic fringe parties in a few countries that are farther right) So even centrist ideas are seen as ‘radical left’ by followers of such a fringe party.

For example: if you think a discussion about common-sense gun control is a “far-left” discussion, then you’re just calibrated wrong.

And yet we have a whole thread about that.

If the racists say “This person is totally right on race!” then we know where to sort that person on the “Racist or not?” scale.

We have plenty of people whose views tend toward the middle who regularly post in these forums, and quite often.

The issue could be the belief that Bret Weinstein is a moderate.

He isn’t.

I mean, the basic problem with the article is that it is really fucking dumb. As others have mentioned, it leans heavily on the “both sides” fallacy, which has itself been ultra-common in the media over the last X years. Like, if you are looking at Obama/Biden and then Trump, and then back again, and then stroking your chin, and saying “these look exactly the same to me”, then people are correct to question your faculties. There are clear and obvious differences between the parties, and when the article starts off by saying they are both exactly the same, then people rightly dismiss the article as either A) really fucking dumb or B) purposefully disingenuous.

Anyway, that’s my hot take. As a thought experiment to you (@Bluddy) , what exactly would the Republican party need to do in order to make you think that maybe they are not equivalent to the Democratic party? Like, right now the bar is at 130K Americans dead, the traitoring, the anti-science, the titanic deficits, the crashed economy, and a host of other, marginally smaller ills that I will skip mentioning in the interests of space. What sort of American ruin would make you re-think your both-sides position?

I think a lot of the problem I have with this discussion is seeing the other side is evil. China is evil. It’s currently putting Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, harvesting their organs, forcing them to use birth control etc. I don’t believe that any mainstream political opponents in America are evil – not even Trump (though he’s not exactly mainstream). Using fiery rhetoric, such as “if you’re on their side, you must be racist and evil” doesn’t lead to anything but echo chambers.

America has a fundamental political problem, in that there is no viable path to more than two parties. As a result, both parties are highly unstable coalitions, where the constituent elements fight for power. Republicans have had the social conservatives dominate the party since about Reagan, but the party contains other elements that have grown in power since the financial collapse. They should really be in their own party, but instead, took over the Republican establishment. Democrats have the same problem with the progressive faction, recently represented by Bernie and co. The main reason Biden is the candidate is because they were afraid of a similar takeover to what they saw on the Republican side, and only Biden had the numbers to definitively take on Bernie, so the other candidates got out.

When you get such a situation of party takeover, you’re going to get different reactions by different people. Some Republicans tried their best to stop the takeover before it happened. Others switch to the other party, at least temporarily, to try and get the taken over party out of power. Others yet try to keep the interests of the party going, even if the person at the top happens to be a loon. More than anything, there’s no coordinated plan, because the leadership of both parties is weaker than it’s ever been, and the coalition is breaking at the seams.

At the same time, the Democratic party has become anything but a moderate home for those Republicans who want to cross over. Since it has its own intra-party war to deal with, and since Trump has just inflamed the fire, the party must cater more and more to the growing progressive sub-party. This in turn reminds any potential party converts that the system is zero-sum, making that decision harder.

He is surely right wing.

Under what definition of right wing?

Under the makes common cause with racist right-wing figures by reinforcing and amplifying their claims that there is a vast conspiracy to oppress white people definition of right-wing.

I think by most measures DJT is ‘evil’. Not just since becoming president, it’s been his entire life. It would be exhausting to try to document all the reasons. And a party which has been lockstep behind him deserves no rational person’s support.

I just can’t engage in a debate with someone trying to get us to agree that both sides are bad.

We’re way past that now. If that makes me, or this board, “far left-wing” to you, then so be it.

If you don’t believe Trump is evil, then your moral compass isn’t working properly. Don’t confuse constrained by others from acting on his worst impulses with doesn’t have those worst impulses.

What “center right politicians?” Is this just a rephrasing of “moderate Republicans?” a.k.a. “unicorns?”

At the moment there’s a center, represented at the moment by people willing to support Biden.

To right of that is a giant empty crater, long since dynamited to oblivion by the GOP’s efforts to consciously move the Overton Window and radicalize their base for 30 years.

And then waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off to the right of the crater are people who in 2020 actually call themselves conservatives, the right, Republicans, etc. These are people who all support Trump, either by their actions or by their extremely conspicuous silence. Yes, it’s absolutely true everyone on this board calls those people racists … because, let’s face it, Trump enablers are A-OK with racism.

There are no politicians of note still living inside that devastated crater between the center and the far right; any politicians who used to occupy that space have either taken a step to the center (Lincoln Project) or long since crawled out on the right side, willing to accommodate the Trumpists by holding their tongues and voting with Trump. This includes Collins and, yes, Romney.

The proposal requires power-sharing with the “center right.” Given there are no prominent center-right politicians to choose political candidates from - even Romney is covered with Trump taint now - what the proposal really mandates is power-sharing with the leftmost fringe of the extreme right-wing. I.e. with the “most moderate” racist-and-Nazi-enabler.

It’s transparently aimed at permanently protecting the very people who allowed Trump to triumph and who need to be sidelined. It’s the Susan Collins Preservation Scheme. Such proposals deserve to be treated with scorn.

As long as Letters To Cleo and Duke Silver are playing, I say we give this concert a try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1jUTCH-83U