I consider myself a pragmatic progressive. I tend to have views considerably farther left than the Overton Window allows but will make great efforts to support more moderate politicians when i must (I am also well-versed in Duverger’s Law).
The OP seems to employ some seriously false equivalence. The far right and far left are not the same in any way and as soon as a “centrist” starts to claim that they are equally offended by both extremes, it is a sure sign their opinion is uninformed pig shit.
It amazes me how often people complain about the supposed anti-white-main bias, and ideological purity tests, of the left.
I’m a liberal registered-Democrat middle aged white man. Have been all my life
And I’ve spend many many hours debating politics with people from all over the political spectrum… in real life, on the SDMB, on Reddit, and on Facebook (among other places). I live in the bay area and have some cousins who are WAY off on the extremes of the hippy left.
And I can not remember EVER feeling like I was being disrespected/shut down/ignored/whatever either for being white, or for being male, or for being insufficiently-left. I mean, there have certainly been some heated arguments from time to time, but I genuinely can’t remember feeling that the message was “you are not welcome on the left”.
And yet, I fairly often see rants such as the one in the OP, bemoaning how extreme and rigid “both sides” are. I genuinely believe that there is some extremely clever online social media manipulation going on, in which someone realized that the politics of the right in the current era of Trumpism are indefensibly odious to large numbers of not-super-politically-active Americans, and came up with the clever strategy of loudly and frequently talking about how extreme and odious “BOTH SIDES” are, repeating it over and over until it’s a mantra. And a reassuring mantra it is, because everyone likes to feel that they’re one of the few who is intelligent and aware enough to see behind the curtains, to be an Independent Thinker. But, ironically, that very understandable desire is what’s leading them to fall for this very clever bit of misdirection. (How coordinated/intentional this manipulation is, if it exists at all, is unclear…)
MaxTheVool has it right. As shown by some of my posts at SDMB, even I have been manipulated by such pernicious right-wing propaganda. (My excuse? I’m dependent on Internet.)
Before becoming a hermit, my experiences were very similar to Max’s. (I even lived in Santa Clara for a while!)
There are two other active threads lamenting the fact that the left is being wedged apart by half-truths and “identity politics.” Some of this damage is self-inflicted. But much of it is fomented by cynical lies propagated by social media.
As evidence that “the left” is being victimized by right-wing propaganda, one need look no farther than OP. OP calls himself a middle-of-the-roader, and then lists political stances, all of which position him perfectly with the majority of the Democratic Party, not at all what most of us would consider to be “in the middle.” Not one of the specific policy stances that this “middle of the roader” presents has even a whiff of “conservatism.” He even supports reparations for slavery.
And yet, he calls out “leftist demonization” and lumps AOC with Breitbart. Apparently he’s been barraged by half-truths and outright lies from the right, and has fallen for the lie that “both extremes are the same.”
I sympathize as I have also been a victim of the propaganda barrage. Fight it, Yankees 1996 Champs! Don’t even click on right-wing news sources. Just assume most of the anti-left views you hear are lies. Even a glance at the impeachment hearings should assure you that every single person still clinging to the “right” is now a morally bankrupt liar.
(Some on the left aren’t helping. Senator Warren got painted into a corner and forced into a wealth tax. Silly and “extreme”? Probably. Just ignore it — it ain’t happening. It’s clear from your OP that you see which Party is closely aligned with your priorities and which isn’t.)
Forced into ? Increasing taxes on the überrich (and corporations) is a strict majority position in both parties, among Americans of all ages, stripes and affiliations, across the board (tables 15 and onwards). And of course, even Warren’s proposed wealth tax is a minuscule increase compared to the way taxes were from the 30s onwards (note that this graph stops at Obama and doesn’t include Trumps further cuts). The same is true in the UK (substitute Thatcher for Reagan) as well as France & Germany (although in those two latter cases the evolutions have been less drastic/marked).
And yet the only policies ever *actually *argued by politicians (right OR champagne left) are which services to cut, defund or privatize in the next round of “austerity” measures ; the same mock consternation at progressive policies requiring funding and handwringing about how to pay for such pie-in-the-sky utopias. Weird how that happens.
I don’t think anyone should be proud of being middle-of-the-road any more than they should be proud of being left or right; the best is weighing up individual issues objectively.
Bear in mind that there’s nothing special about the middle; given that the middle of the political spectrum in the US might be Left, Right, Center, or impossible to place, when compared to other countries or historically.
As a full disclosure, I can’t remember the last time I agreed with the GOP on any issue where they took a different line to the dems, but that’s not because I’m of the left, its because the GOP circa 2019 is fucking batshit.
My impression, quite possibly faulty, is that Warren painted herself into a corner by refusing to admit that taxes on the middle class would rise under her M4A. When she finally presented her plan it included a wealth tax, AND a new tax on businesses related directly to their OLD health payouts. All to avoid the rising-middleclass-tax meme.
Both of these proposals strike myself and others as ill-advised. (I’m not opposed to a wealth tax on principle, but in practice creating a whole new tax with humongous reporting requirements and incentives for evasion would be a dreadful idea. Just increase existing income taxes, and make them more progressive.)
But debating her ill-advised wealth tax is a pointless diversion — it ain’t happening.
(BTW, is it true that Bill Gates threatens to vote Trump over Warren if Warren doesn’t drop her wealth tax idea? If so, I retract everything good I’ve ever said about Gates.)
Not really, but in a *really *bullshit way still. He tweeted that he’d paid around 10 billion dollars in taxes all told and would be happy to pay 20b but if Warren asked for 100 he’d “have to do some math”.
His estimated total wealth is 107b so naturally most people jumped on the “we think living on 7 billion dollars is doable-ish” snarky bandwagon. My fave take however was a Twitter user who did the actual math on the state of his fortune under Warren’s stated plan. The takeaway was that, assuming he didn’t spend a cent or earned a cent from now until forever (an absurd premise of course), he would still be **234 **before the tax took him below a total worth of a billion dollars, and at 358 would have to sell his house.
Don’t get me wrong - I do think that, as far as rich-as-fuck people go, Bill Gates seems like a good dude, and he does a lot of philanthropic work that is of value. But that doesn’t change the practical fact that for any single person to have that much power, that much control and impact over other people’s lives, that much more of a voice compared to anyone else… is completely and fundamentally fucked up (especially when you add the notion that the way he amassed that fortune was not exactly on the up-and-up to begin with).
Radicals hack out the trail and clear the campsite. Progressives build the cabins and start the campfires. Liberals show up after the hot showers have been installed.
Medicare itself could not possibly work, we were assured of that. Could never afford it, no question. And then it was there, and somehow we still found a trillion dollars to piss away on stupid and futile wars. So, go figure.
Bernie Sanders got kicked out of a commune for laziness as a young man. I can’t imagine Warren or Sanders doing any manual labor. They are the very definition of entitled elite.
You maybe should do a little research before credulously swallowing conservative talking points about progressive candidates. Warren, for example, waited tables in her aunt’s restaurant starting at age 13 because of squeezed family finances due to her father’s health problems. She also raised two children as a stay-at-home mother and subsequently part-time student, and if you don’t think the job of primary childcarer and homemaker involves “any manual labor”, it’s easy to see you’ve never tried it.
Sanders, from a lower-middle-class Eastern European immigrant family, famously worked at a variety of jobs including carpenter in his twenties and thirties. You think carpenters don’t do any manual labor?
You’re probably socioeconomically closer to the “definition of entitled elite” yourself than either Warren’s or Sanders’ family was.
