Right! I think I knew that at the time, but I had forgotten the genesis of Colbert’s joke.
Colbert sort of reversed things, right? Rove was saying that they will make their own reality and Colbert turned that around to say that reality has a left bias.
Anyway, leave it to the Trumpists to live up to the worst parodies of the right.
Sigh, Rittersport, your comments about trump are right on. For this season at least, reality does have s liberal bias, as someone else already pointed out. Trump (and his ilk) have pushed me so far out of how I used to think, I almost don’t recognize myself.
MERGE with Mexico, yeah I know, lots and lots and lots of problems and hurdles, but its a damn sight smarter than building our own version of the Maginot Line.
The economic policies of the right? Hell no, maybe its time we stripped the American Aristocracy of their power before it gets even more difficult and they really do return us to a state of feudalism.
Holy crap, that was a bit out of nowhere, who am I and what have I done with the real me.
I think I’m gonna leave this as is. Its too surprisimg to me and I wrote it. Long journal entry about this tonight.
The fact that this is what you believe liberals are like demonstrates the problem conservatives have with reality.
I don’t really recall any Democrat’s slogans being particularly “racist”.
The reason Trump and MAGA are portrayed as “racist” is that Trump has a history of instituting racist policies in his real estate dealings and much of his MAGA election campaign and entire presidency is hinged on building a gigantic wall to keep out Mexicans and other “bad hombres”.
Don’t forget he placed full-page ads in four major NY newspapers calling for the execution of five black and Hispanic kids accused of the rape of a white woman. (Gee, I wonder why she deserved such vigilantism on her behalf, but not all the other victims of 1980s urban violence?)
And even when they were shown to be innocent, he just doubled down.
Trump supporters (and conservatives in general) will never forget Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley. They are still shitting bricks over what happened to the Covington youth. But they are perfectly fine with a president who slandered five teenagers and used the media to call for their death. “Innocent until proven guilty” is only assumed when you’re a rich white guy, I guess.
(Imagine if President Obama took out full-page ads accusing the president of treason and calling for his execution. Emergency rooms all over the country would be full of MAGA-hatted grandpas having rage-induced heart attacks.)
There is a lot of whig histiography in some liberal circles. But history does not have a direction. One hundred years ago socialism was the future and the only question was would it be communism or fascism? One famous person came back from the USSR and said I have seen the future and it works. Now, both fascism and communism are in the dustbin of history.
In the US much of the progressive movement was against race mixing and for eugenics. Now no public figure would admit to holding either idea.
Back in the 1960s Nasser gave a speech about the muslim brotherhood and mentioned making women hear the hijab and the audience laughed at the ridiculous idea. Today most women in Egypt wear the hijab.
So, what you are saying is that progressives, when they find that their approach is not working to achieve the goals that they desire, make changes to their platforms and tactics to take that into account?
I think the point is that what we consider ‘progressive’ is a shifting definition. So, those early 20th century people would say that the world inevitably progressed toward some utopian ideal. Their ideal though is not what happened. Similarly, we might posit that we’re progressing toward some utopian ideal, but what we consider progressive now might not be considered progressive in the future. So when we say the world bends toward something, all we’re really saying is that the world has changed, and is likely to change in the future.
We should always be moving towards an utopian ideal. If we ever claim to have reached it, then we are almost certainly lying to ourselves about the fascist state that we have found ourselves in.
The goals of progressives should be changing, as some goals are achieved, other goals are revealed, and some goals are invalidated.
That’s a feature of progress, not a bug, that it requires both diligence and vigilance to keep improving things against inertia and stagnation. We either move forward, or we move back, there is no such thing as keeping things the same.
The majority of the world now lives in an amazing utopian ideal compared to what conditions were like just a couple hundred years ago. It is this working towards progress that enabled that.
If we had decided that enough progress had been done, and that all our goals were achieved, say 50, 100, 500, or even 1000 years ago, then we would not be where we are today.
The left believes in science, education and facts.
The right wants alternative facts. It doesn’t work that way.
Facts don’t give a shit if you believe them or not.
Facts are facts. They have no inherent political bias.
I think what the saying implies is that those on the left adhere more to fact-based thinking than those on the right.
Whether that’s actually true may be debatable, but it’s how I interpret the meaning of the phrase.
Indeed!
You are correct that "history does not have a direction. Apparently, neither does “current events”.
The USSR may not longer exist, but China has certainly been growing in power over the past decades and they are a lot closer to “communist” than to Western democracy.
Maybe not “fascist”, but certainly right-wing nationalism is on the rise in the United States, Europe and the UK.
Plenty of countries have socialist leanings. In some places, it seems to work (Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand, Belgium). Some places…not so much (Venezuela).
And let’s not forget that Western capitalism does not seem to be working for a lot of people.
The system leans conservative, it discourages risk taking.
However in the mainstream, right vs left debates in the US, the modern right seems detached from reality on a wide range of metrics.
Also the overall motion of society as society becomes richer and more educated seems to be towards leftism both economically and socially. There are steps back, but the overall trend seems to be there.
When it comes to science, I trust liberals over conservatives almost every time. Man-caused climate change, etc.
When it comes to human behavior, though, I trust conservatism more. Things like how appeasement does not work (re: Neville Chamberlain WWII), what incentives drive people to do or not do things, the inherent differences in gender (equality does not mean equal characteristics, etc.)
Trickle-down economics! That was a good one!
You might recall that Chamberlain was a Tory. And who is sucking up to dictators these days - liberals or conservatives?
Neville Chamberlain was the head of the Conservative Party. It was the left in Britain that was saying Hitler had to be stopped.
The same was true in America; the Republicans were generally isolationist and the Democrats were generally the ones saying Hitler was a danger.
wait what? Conservativism by definition means inaction, or the resistance to action and change. Progressivism by definition is the action by which things change and improve.
Don’t let a subset define the group. While it seems true that most (all?) climate change deniers identify as conservative (including some very high profile examples). It is not true that all conservatives are climate change deniers. It is my experience that most recognize that change is happening, and a significant percentage even admit that humans may have had a role. They do disagree with progressives about just what should be done. And since the current global economic community is linked to the production and consumption of fossil fuels, it should be quite clear to everybody that progressives and conservatives working together are required to “fix the problem”
Not counting the lunatic internet fringe; noone I know of (conservative, progressive or moderate) denies there are differences in the genders, generally. “Gender equality” requires that you do not judge an individual based on the generalities of their gender. Let’s say that I have some jobs to fill that require strenuous physical activity. What I should not do is label that as a “man’s job” because men tend to be bigger and stronger than women. There are plenty of women strong enough to do the job; just as there are plenty of men who are not. There may be legitimate reasons to oppose gender equality (tho, I don’t know what they are) believing that progressives think that equality means equal characteristics is definitely not one of them.
mc
The more simplistic explanations for human behavior which are socially accepted at one time are ones that don’t stand the test of progress. Past and present the myths which prominently come to mind for me would be associated with religious traditionalism and an ethos such as, “Life is tough, deal with it” prescribed to all. Now there are theoretical frameworks associated with the progressive humanities which miss the mark because they too are overly simplified in what evidence is discounted or erroneous for other reasons, and that’s how it’s been for a long time.
If you’re thinking of pacifism and socialism, conservatives are consciously resisting these and I think should human progress/technology reach a certain point, it is possible the dream of such ideals could be vindicated. At the same time, intelligentsia tuning out some of the hard knock wisdom conservatives may have to offer could detour humanity on an unenlightened course.