On Reddit, I see a (quite small) number of folks who can’t really be boxed into a category, and “centrist” doesn’t seem quite right either. They’ll hold views that seem to be at the polar ends of both right and left. They may support universal healthcare, UBI, a ban on gun ownership, drastically reduced prison sentences, be 100% green on environmental issues, want ultra-high taxes on the rich, yet also be intensely anti-LGBT, anti-feminist, anti-affirmative action, hold quite racist views, be very militaristic, and religious. Or, it may be the opposite: they may be pro-LGBT, highly feminist, pro-social justice, etc. yet intensely pro-gun, want death penalty, want something like tyranny instead of democracy, favor harsher prison sentences, be surprisingly racist, be anti-Semitic, etc.
Of course, few people are truly 100% liberal or conservative, most people hold at least one view that is on “the other side”. But these folks seem to be on the more-extreme ends of both…..maybe “politically bipolar?”
One term that used to be used was Reagan democrats. They were democrats who wanted a strong social safety net (for whites only if possible), but who also supported the oppression of POC, women and immigrants.
Libertarian is another word. They support republican business interests and liberal social interests.
For me personally, I’m pretty liberal on almost everything except foreign policy. I’m very pro-Israel, and anti-Iran, anti-Russia and anti-China. So on foreign policy I don’t fit in with liberals and leftists who I agree with on 90% of other issues. I feel there are a lot of us on the left who have this massive divide. Some on the left embrace Islamism as a rejection of white western colonialism. But others of us on the left reject Islamism because we see it as a far right wing fascist movement that oppresses marginalized groups.
Another issue on the left is gun ownership. Some people on the left want more intense gun control to stop mass shootings. But others of us on the left want the public to be armed to defend ourselves against fascism.
Your mistake is assuming that every issue can be sorted into left or right. For instance, left wingers own guns. (Two of the bigger YouTube “gun” channels are run by guys that are not on the right.)
Somewhat facetious answer. But most of the people I know like that are from outside the US. It’s simply that not every political culture in the world has the same political policy spectrum as the US, particularly outside the English speaking world (it’s not identical across the English speaking world but it’s approximately the same IMO)
For decades I’ve wondered how people can consider themselves fiscally conservative and still vote for Republicans. I think it’s less that they believe contradictory views, but rather that they don’t pay much attention. They hear the rhetoric about spending and deficits and don’t check that the politician’s actions follow their words.
It may be they believe a bad Republican is better than a Democrat.
I would like to have serious discussions with intelligent people who vote Republican. Not the guy I encountered on FB, speaking of the killings in Minnesota, “They wasn’t good and they wasn’t murdered”. While I vote the Democratic ticket, I am in favor of gun ownership. I go to the range once a week and practice making holes in large pieces of paper. I do quite honestly believe that abortion law should be a state issue, but that would be like having slavery or a state religion state issues.
I once heard the term “salad bar extremism” to describe that sort of ideology. Like someone watched a bunch of extremist YouTube videos from all different political ideologies, and they pick and choose the elements that appeal to them to form their own ideology like someone picking items from a salad bar.
I think I heard it applied to someone who was in the news at the time, I think maybe the would be assassin who hid in the bushes at Mar a Lago? Like based on his social media posts he didn’t really fit neatly into one ideology, but rather he seemed to hold a bunch of random extremist views from both sides of the political spectrum like you described.
There are those that, when asked by those not in their inner circle, will espouse views that they think will satisfy/placate the asker. Sometimes you have to dig deeper to see which issues are actually being pushed.
As I mentioned in other threads, I’m technically a registered Libertarian, for a lot of reasons. I think it comes down to that despite labels, different people have different priorities on a lot of topics (which, yes is a duh statement). Democrats still, in general, are a pretty big tent. MAGA, which has more-or-less completely subsumed Republicans, is a very narrow, aggressively self-policing group.
The post-MAGA political wing of the Libertarians decided to largely ignore their own increased person freedom if it means they can secure power over others by emphasizing their freedom to do stuff to others, and to not pay for the benefits they get from association.
The libertarians (to the extent I am more than a “ghost”) who put priority on those social freedoms are largely voting in unison with Democrats, because, well, obvious. And the ones who are claiming “A bad Republican is better than any Democrat”… well, it’s increasingly obvious where their actual intentions lie despite their protests otherwise.
To summarize a prior thread on my political views, I’m all for progressive social liberty, and even increased social spending, but want to be realistic about how we need to pay for it by (IMHO) increasing the taxes on the wealthiest, eliminating various dodges, and cutting some of the grift and glut especially from our military procurement.
IE I say the painful parts out loud, which to be clear, a large number of Democrats do as well.
Right. Liberal gun owners don’t mind gun control laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals, like Bidens gun control legislation, but they dont want “bans” (stopping sales of “assault weapons” seem to be okay, but not bans), or such restrictive laws that their normal hunting or target shooting etc is curtailed.
Also abortion- even those on the left side are in favor of some abortion controls- like not in the 3rd trimester. Generally only RW nutcases want all abortion banned, which the MAGAs found out when such measures went to the polls. Even the Catholic Church allows a few exceptions.
I meant leftists. If I meant liberals I would have typed that. Leftist gun owners understand “assault weapon” to be a non-existent category, oppose restrictive laws that curtail their right to defend themselves from an oppressive government, while agreeing with common sense gun control laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals. This is a point where the left and the right almost totally agree, which is why it is not a category that fits the OP’s preconceptions.
There is a major problem with this idea, that pops up in non-mainstream news stories. Sometimes a woman has a failing fetus that they discover late in her pregnancy, and it is better for her to have it removed before birth. There have been cases where the fetus has actually been determined to have no heartbeat but in the heavily-restricted states, sometimes these women suffer very ill effects or lethal septicemia because the doctors’ hands are tied. Abortion restrictions are all about trying to control livestock women in a very personal arena that is really exclusively her concern.
Many of these “divisive” issues are not simple ones with clearcut answers, which is why we have “salad bar moderates” or hard to define people. Like, no one wants homeless people on their streets, but when you say that it is more cost effective to just offer everyone a place to live, people on “both sides” struggle with that idea.
