So, I've written a few articles discussing this in different ways in the past, but I have been noticing more and more lately that the left is just completely and utterly insane. I mean, I know that we needed an overton window shift to the left, but considering what the left is becoming, I'm starting to think it has shifted too much. So, that said, I want to trace the left's journey over the past 10 years, from the lens of my perspective, and discuss exactly where they have been going wrong.
2012
So, I became left wing in 2012. And at the time, I felt like I was fairly extreme when I shifted left. I went from being a right wing tea partier, to agreeing with the left on virtually everything. I was unapologetically pro gay marriage. I supported abortion until birth, which is considered an extreme position on the left (I'm morally okay with it until 24 weeks but legally, I think until birth is a better idea given the problems of right wing legislation on the topic). I was a firm supporter of separation of church and state, and my new secular ideology at the time made me firmly left on social issues. Racial issues weren't very emphasized, nor were gender based issues. However, I was educated on topics like critical theory, and this made me fairly sympathetic to some perspective. Still, I never really did like the racial activists and feminists and SJWs too much, but guess what, in 2012, they were small minorities of the party no one took seriously, and the big divide between the GOP and the left was being insanely religious right and out of touch with reality, or being secular and having positions based on...you know, reason, and science, and facts. I mean, it really seemed at the time that reality had a liberal bias. Because conservative didn't know what they were talking about.
The recession seemed to prove the dems right on economics. While the GOP was for trickle down economics and cutting peoples' welfare in the middle of a recession to encourage the "job creators" to make more jobs, the democrats were for standing in and helping people, and providing safety nets for people. As an ex conservative, I didn't really like how the democrats did safety nets. They were old, inefficient, and rightly gave off the idea that government can't do anything right, but this just caused me to focus attention on improving safety nets as we got into future years. And of course, the ACA had problems too and I was never a huge fan of that. As I would learn, the problem was that these ideas didn't go far enough, not that government in itself was the problem. The problem was because the overton window was so right wing and dominated by conservatives, democrats went along with compromises that gutted these ideas and made them less efficient and piecemeal.This is something I'd work on in recent years.
As for socialism, NO ONE wanted socialism. Socialism was bad. Like, the democrats had to prove to everyone that they weren't socialist. And that they didn't want to turn us into the soviet union. Really, the USSR was a bunch of ideas that had failed that should never be touched again.
On foreign policy, the dems were once again in the right. We needed to shift away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and after decades of "we need to be tough and aggressive and belligerent", the democrats swooped in and saved the day, basically saying, no, we need to be reserved, work with allies, not get involved in interventionist wars. But, at the same time, we need to maintain our national security. Being left wing wasn't about being an anti american hippie, it was about simply not wanting to bomb the rest of the world to solve our problems. Honestly? I wanna stay out of most wars too. But at the same time, we do need to sometimes apply pressure to maintain our interests, especially vs Russia and China.
These were the ideas as I saw them back in 2012ish. And as you can tell, I'm a fairly mainline democrat here. So I feel like compared to what the GOP was offering (complete and utter insanity), the democrats were the guys on the right side of history here.
2013-2014
As we entered Obama's second term, I feel like the democrats lost their luster. Years of trying to compromise with the GOP has failed, and they were becoming largely feckless and ineffective. They would sit there talking about creating jobs, but it felt like nothing changed. I think that's the big thing. For many of us, the recession just never went away, and I continued my intellectual education on the subjects of politics. I started learning about the democrat's past in the 1960s, and how back then things were...better on economics. And how we got into this mess, and how the new deal paradigm was a good thing. And it seemed like we needed to go back to that somewhat. But at the same time, I also recognized that we couldn't just go back to the past. i came across UBI and understood that the past wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I started really systemizing our solutions, and I realized a UBI would be necessary to fix the system. For healthcare? I never liked obamacare, so I went with medicare for all. And it seemed like the whole college debt thing sucked given I was a college grad who entered an economy with no jobs, so I kind of see a problem with paid college, given how expensive it is. So I supported free college and debt forgiveness. To me, these were just solutions we needed. An evolution of democratic party politics as we saw them. A way of capturing the democrats' lost new deal past, but doing it in a way that appealed to people now. And I used left wing rhetoric at the time in order to sell this stuff. Like how the system was screwed, and that these were the solutions. Much of the left seemed to follow along with me as well here, as there was a lot of discussion about this stuff in this era, and it was all intelligent, academic, and well sourced.
Again, the goal here wasn't "socialism". No one wanted that. We didn't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. Rather, we needed to move us into a new liberal era to replace the reagan era and its austerity politics.
I know UBI wasn't a commonplace thing here, but still. There was talk of minimum wages, and jobs programs, and I kind of knew at some point we could have a UBI vs new dealer type debate, and I would welcome it. it's what I wish America would be discussing, not, the common republican vs centrist democrat mentality we have in America.
On social issues, things didn't change much for me. And I felt comfortable among the left. The SJWs did get in spats at times, like gamergate, but for me, the goal was to just lay low and stay out of that stuff. I considered the hardline SJWs to be whackos. Like, well meaning, I get where they were coming from, but I just can't get that crazy over that ideology. I liked some aspects of their politics, but at the same time, it ain't my thing. I'd ally with them and make them part of my coalition, but honestly, they weren't to be the face of it. More like an extremist faction to be muzzled and then replaced with more rational and sane actors who could communicate with country better.
On foreign policy issues, not much changed either. I was mostly happy with Obama's foreign policy. He got us out of Iraq, he got Bin laden, he didnt get out of afghanistan, but he was seemingly winding it down. I get why some lefties were disappointed and how he didn't get out of both wars, and how he engaged in drone strikes and stuff, but honestly, I saw a need for that to some degree and largely respected it. So again, maybe not perfect, but largely happy.
2015-2016
This is where things started to go wrong. I'll explain my views on it. As I said, between 2012 and 2015, I had expanded my ideology and saw a need to take back the overton window from the right. I knew about party realignments from political science, and it struck me that we needed one. Politics as usual wasn't working, and we needed the left to take back its vision from the right. Also, it was 36 years since the previous realignment took place, and that's about normal for party realignments. I would have loved to have seen an Andrew Yang style candidate in this time, but looking at the options, it seemed to be Hillary, Warren, or Bernie. Bernie seemed to be just what I wanted. he talked about "socialism" a lot, and seemed to be trying to take back the label, but he didn't seem to be for literal socialism or communism. Dude just wanted a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, and free college. 2/3 of my priorities. Not bad, as Meatloaf would say. Bernie was never perfect for me, but he was a start. And I thought he was a well meaning guy who wanted to change the system for the better. He had the right combination of policies, and the tonal aggressiveness needed to create a party realignment, which is what I took his "political revolution" rhetoric to mean.
Honestly, if Bernie won the democratic nomination and the presidency, it would been the best outcome. The GOP was clearly in trouble since 2008, and was quickly radicalizing and turning into something worse and worse. It was what drove me out of the party and toward the left in the first place. Trickle down wasn't working, and on social policy the GOP was horrifying. It was looking very bad for the GOP by 2016, with some wondering if a presidential win was even possible, and as you can tell on my blog, I gave a huge edge to the dems through most of the campaign cycle. The GOP simply was losing its coalition, as it aged and wasn't being replaced by newer younger people.
But, things went wrong, badly. The establishment wanted Hillary, and its institutions plugged her full force. It was as if the entire thing was rigged for Hillary. And let's be honest, no one LIKES Hillary. Really. Very few people liked Hillary and she was the older candidate. But, the democrats were able to run a propaganda campaign to win over enough older voters to support her over Bernie, who primarily had support among the under 40 crowd. They were also extreme hostile to Sanders supporters, and tried to force them to vote blue no matter who, often antagonizing them. This led to increased tensions within the party.
Hillary was so opposed to the fundamental changes that needed to be made to the democratic party's DNA that she actually made up for it by elevating aspects of the party that shouldn't have been elevated. While I saw a need to be further left on social policy, mostly to counter conservative christian influence and their focus on anti intellectual policies, instead, Hillary went moderate on that stuff and appealed to the worst of the social left: the SJWs. As I said, to me, the SJWs had to be muzzled at all costs. Not that we can't understand them, or work with them, or implement some policies of theirs, but we cant give them a real voice in the mainstream of the party. It would screw everything up. Because here's the thing. They're polarizing, and nobody likes them, but them. But she used their politics to attack the Bernie camp, calling them Bernie bros, and used them to combat Trump, who was the opposite, a racist, sexist bigot. So...between Trump being a populist who "told it like it was" and made his campaign on being offensive, Hillary was this boring dry economic centrist who spat in the faces of sane lefties while elevating the worst of the social left as I saw it. We got our realignment, but rather than a Sanders revolution, we got a new culture war. We just won the last one! The religious right was losing. I wanted to double down, kick them out of politics for good, and have the dems be the voice of reason. Instead they became the voice for SJWs and obnoxious self righteous loudmouths everywhere.
I blame these core factors on Hillary losing the election. People will blame Russia, but that was largely an excuse. While Russia did try to influence things and play into the hatred of Hillary because Trump was quite frankly a better person to have in office for them given their imperial ambitions in eastern Europe (he's weaker and a total idiot), honestly? Even if Russia didn't do anything the core problems were there and everyone knew it. So on economics, instead of being a progressive champion of new ideas, Hillary was the obnoxious centrist who supported the status quo and thought everything was fine. And on social policy she was the obnoxious SJW who provoked a new culture war with the GOP, handing them a victory on a silver platter, because again, NO ONE LIKES THAT STUFF OUTSIDE OF A SMALL AND INSULAR MINORITY.
And again, I wanna emphasize. While Bernie was a "democratic socialist", efforts were taken by him and his supporters to distance themselves from the idea of communism and the failed states of the USSR and North Korea. He basically ran on social democracy and FDR's second bill of rights (a fitting "new new deal" even if it wasn't exactly what I would've done). And even the DSA seemed to have this attitude of "don't confuse us with those communist nuts, we're reformists who seek a decentralized and democratic approach to socialism."
On foreign policy, I would argue that that was the Bernie camp's achilles heel. A lot of anti war type people were attracted to the movement. But honestly? After Obama, it made sense to make some cuts to the military, as our budget is a bit bloated. And as long as the crap doesn't hit the fan, it ain't a big deal. I'm not looking for a particularly interventionist foreign policy. I just wanna defend ourselves and our interests while not doing much. Kind of a status quo of sorts. So while I admit the greens and the like were extreme in their 50%+ proposed reductions to the military budget, i agreed the military budget should be decreased somewhat.
2017-2018
So, if 2016 didn't screw up the left enough, this period is what really seemed to be the roots of it flying off the rails. It was like we entered the worst possible timeline, with Donald Trump winning the election.
The left started getting scary real fast. When Trump was inaugurated, the left rioted. Burned down storefronts. Started talking about assaulting fascists. I'm not saying that the right wasn't radicalizing in their own way which was scary, but I had given up on the right years ago by this point. But this is where I started seeing the mob behavior of the far left. The establishment called for censoring of "fake news", which included not just conspiracy stuff on the right, but also anti establishment lefties, while some of those anti establishment lefties started calling for vigilante violence against the right.
Me, i tried to stay sane through this. My own politics hadn't changed over the years on this issue. Whether left or right, I supported freedom of speech, and opposed censorship and vigilante violence.But, the left realigned in a bad way here, with elements seemingly calling for both. This is the new era of the SJW. Hillary had elevated them to popularity, and now they were THE force to be reckoned with as mainstream politics came to be about culture wars.
It was also an era of performative "resistance", whether it took the form of Nancy Pelosi ripping up a Trump speech, or some whistleblower in the white house talking about Trump's daily meltdowns, or SJWs simply being obnoxious. We entered a new phase of culture wars, and unlike the last, i felt completely alien and completely neutral. With me hating the far right for being well, offensive and becoming increasingly openly racist, and the far left descending into "you cant not be racist unless you're anti racist" group think. Like here's the thing. This stuff has never been a major part of my politics, either way. It's always been my blind spot, and it's always been something I just don't care about. I mean, nominally, I lean left, and I'd work with lefties on it, but to suddenly be REQUIRED to participate in their virtue signalling and actively take a side and to care as much as they did rubbed me the wrong way. So on social politics the left had completely lost the plot at this point for me.
On economics, the left remained divided. There was the side that wanted change, and the side that wanted the status quo. And the status quo won. As I saw it, the status quo was deeply unpopular with many people, with both the right and the left fleeing from it, leaving nothing but a relatively small band of "centrists" who happened to win democratic primary elections, but lost actual elections.
The left on the other hand, began to radicalize, shifting toward literal socialism. I think this is something the centrist camp doesn't understand. THEY LITERALLY UNDERMINED THEIR BASE'S TRUST IN ELECTORAL POLITICS. Seriously. Because the center was so reluctant to the left's demands, it caused many lefties to lose trust in the entire system. And this drove many of them to read leftist literature in the interlude between elections. And this led many of them to adopt literal marxist positions on things.
I kind of flirted with a few of these ideas during this time period, trying to work with the left to build a coalition, but for me it had to be a form of reformist, decentralized, democratic market socialism. Again, I was trying to avoid being associated with the literal communists because as far as I'm concerned, no one sane wants that. And when I talked to socialists, and listened to people like Richard Wolff, who I had listened to for a while going back to 2013-2014ish, I thought that the whole goal was, yeah, let's not get wrapped up with literal bad forms of socialism. Let's maybe look into good forms.
I never took socialism particularly seriously. I mean, market socialism via a coop model seemed like a novel idea that could work, but it was never the end all for me. I had found my end all solution with UBI several years prior. So I just bolstered my normal politics with it, thinking hey, on top of that stuff I've always been for, we can maybe try this too. I was trying to steelman my own arguments with additional policies, acknowledging weaknesses leftists pointed out in my policies.
But again, never super committed to the idea, push comes to shove, if my pre 2016 idea had to go, or socialism, socialism would go.
On foreign policy, I did notice the far left was heading toward a train wreck. They were screaming about every war we were in, and much like with the cultural identity politics, I didn't care. I mean, I KIND of agreed with the left that we needed to do less overseas, but not to the insane degree they did. Like they wanted no military at all. Still, foreign policy is something I dont put much attention into so I didn't care. If anything the neolibs were too hawkish on stuff for my tastes.
2019-2020
So, this is where I started having schisms with the hard left too. As you guys know, in 2019, I started taking Andrew Yang seriously. And he had the views, more or less, that I had all along. But as I talked about him in my normal left wing circles, accusations like "grifter" and "neoliberal shill" became apparent. I tried to convince people Yang was the real deal, embodying values I've held for years all along, and trying to maintain a coalition within the left, but they didn't want to hear it. Of course, some in the Yang camp were similarly antagonistic within the Yang camp. And honestly, I saw points on both sides.
To some extent, the hard left had become deeply distrustful of the establishment, because of their treatment in 2016. I got it, I went through this too. But they seemed so rigid to be like "anything but Bernie is bad", where they would purity test yang on ideas like not being pro $15 minimum wage or pro medicare for all. On some issues I could give him a pass. No one is perfect. And I can see UBI as an adequate replacement for those policies. But on others, I kind of understood, like Yang did waffle around on healthcare in ways I did not approve of at the time.
What disturbed me more was how they unfairly attacked UBI as an idea. I mean i've been pro UBI from the beginning, and Yang's UBI had flaws, but it wasn't terrible. But they started making arguments about how UBI would lead to inflation and how it's bad because it replaces welfare, and these arguments just seemed terrible and seemed to reflect a growing ideological difference between myself and the rest of the left. Again, UBI and Yang's ideology was roughly equivalent to what I always wanted. So to see them start to attack yang from the left bothered me a lot.
It also seemed to be that some of these guys started revealing intentions for literal socialism. Which again, I was NEVER for. At best it was market socialism if we had socialism at all, but even then I just never viewed it as important. To me, it wasn't important. Because a form of socialism that is acceptable isn't a big deal, and the "big deal" kinds of socialism are scary to me.Still, given the actual policies Bernie offered, I was convinced to stand behind him. Maybe his base was losing it, but he himself seemed fine. And while I didn't always agree with everything he proposed, the same could be said of Yang at the time.
As far as the centrists, they just basically "hello fellow kids-ed" their way to the nomination, faking support for progressive policies while keeping their coalition of older well off boomers, as well as minorities who they appealed to hard through idpol. And their strategy worked, and between that, and some organization between the various centrist candidates, they were able to beat Bernie using a similar mix of emphases that they tried in 2016.
And despite the Bernie-Yang schism, both candidates were treated equally badly by the establishment, essentially minimized, pushed to the periphery with their ideas ignored or mocked. I think this is what the Berners seemed to ignore. Bernie, Yang, both enemies of the establishment. Both want changed, both ignored.
The problem here is the democrats' coalition of minorities and older people works. Older people vote in large numbers, and are mainly old school centrists who don't want much change, and POC seem to only care about politics if it affects them directly. So, that leaves people who want actual ideological change to be the minority of the party. And this leaves the democrats to be this cringey, unpopular centrist party that seems to have an unstoppable primary coalition, but a weak general election coalition.
Which brings us to the social policy. Socially, the dems have well gone past losing the plot here, adopting insufferable identity politics and divisive rhetoric to force Americans to take a side on an issue many otherwise wouldn't care much about. It's like they're trying to lose people honestly. Of course the GOP is just as bad with their white grievance politics these days, but still. Even on issues I'm largely in support of, like abortion, the democrats just go full throated "IT'S A WOMAN ISSUE, AND MEN AREN'T ALLOWED TO HAVE OPINIONS". As a pro choice man, PLEASE shut the frick up. Because you're alienating even me with that rhetoric. jesus. How bad do you have to be to lose people who agree with you? Not that I became pro life just because a feminist screamed at me, but you understand how I just retreat into a corner of "I dont care any more" because of this crap, right? Again, the social justice stuff is alienating. The dems had it right being like "we need to stop these crazy people from using their religion to dictate peoples' lives", but now it's just totally lost the plot at this point.
I know Biden was once again, a bit more moderate, sometimes to the point of being tone deaf the other way, but this view of the left is alienating, even if not in charge. These guys are just turning off more moderate, sensible people, who aren't as extreme as them. And again, if we go back to 2012, I was probably more solidly left then. So now for me to suddenly become moderate in just a few years, it's insane.
And of course, on foreign policy, while Biden was largely intelligent, the left wasn't. I looked at Hawkins' idea to gut the military by 75% and was like "that'll never work". Of course i was just protest voting based on economics, so it didn't matter at that point. But seriously, in reality, my idea of a military spending cut is like 20-25%. Anything more than that could compromise our national security. Gotta keep ahead of China and Russia after all. But yeah the left doesn't really understand that.
2021-2022
So now we get into the more modern era, and the tonal shifts I've been making over the past year on here. And this is where the left has gotten even more insane.
First, let's get the centrist camp out of the way. They're a lost cause. Their coalition of older boomers and gen X combined with identity obsessed POC is just unstoppable from the inside. They're so insufferable, so convinced that they're right, and they're letting Biden winning go to their head despite sweating bullets when the results were coming in and it looked like Trump might actually win (he almost did). Well, guess what? 35% approval rating. That's what. No one likes these guys outside of that part of the country.
But honestly, I wanna focus more on the left. The left has....just lost it. The Jimmy Doreites as I like to call them, who were originally Bernie or Busters, have morphed into an extremist coalition. They crap on everyone and everything. yang is a grifter. AOC is bad because she wouldn't force the vote. The squad is useless. Nothing is ever good enough.
Many of these guys, through 2020 and beyond have settled into spreading the same fake news COVID crap that the right does. Pushing ivermectin and vaccine skepticism. Casting doubt over the efficacy of mask wearing. Hating on fauci. It's obvious at this point these guys have no morals than just hating on democrats just because. I hate on democrats for being corrupt establishment figures pushing a status quo no one wants, but these guys just hate on the left for its own sake. So they completely lost it there.
Then you have the "leftists". Any time I mention UBI or Yang, the disagreements have become more extreme and stark with them screaming ITS NOT SOCIALISM!!!11! Uh...so? Again, socialism was never a huge goal of mine and I flirted with it at best. But these guys want literal socialism. THen I get in arguments with them about UBI and they fall flat on their face either arguing for large command economies, jobs programs, or economically unsustainable ideas that they clearly didn't do the math on.
I'm also seeing a lot more flat out USSR apologia since 2020, where now these "socialists" start defending the USSR and China, etc. Again, I never wanted that stuff, and it's scary to see the left now think this is a good idea. I think there are problems with capitalism too, but unlike them, I believe they can be fixed within capitalism. Specifically by my "new new deal" policies. And while I can add onto them in some minor ways to go for a much wider scope of ideas to fix the economy, these guys reject sound policy in favor of utopian fantasies that can never work.
This is exactly the kind of loopy ideas that I hated on when I was conservative. I mean, again, it's simple. Just don't be for literal communism and we'll be fine. We can talk UBI, we can talk medicare for all, heck we can even discuss jobs programs. But once we start getting into literal command economy crap, it's like, holy crap no.
Like, if anything, I've moderated recently in 2021. I reworked my ideas, and preferred UBI with a more moderate agenda over a more extreme one with no UBI. Because without UBI you just have a bunch of band aid fixes anyway to me. Not even socialism "fixes" the economy for me. Because that's not what my idea of "fixed" is.
Socially, the modern left also fits the strawman idea I had as a conservative. The loud obnoxious virtue signalling involving BLM, trans policies, and other things is obnoxious. The left wants to push a culture war and punish people who don't agree with them, cancelling anyone who doesn't agree with them.
Again, for me, what drew me to the left was I didn't want our social policy to be dictated by a bunch of religious fanatics who want to control what people do based on some 2000 year old book. I just wanna be able to do what I want, man. And to give others that ability too. But this new authoritarian left based on social justice politics is just crazy. Again, they're just driving fence sitters to the right.
And on foreign policy, well, the same people who are screaming at my ideas for not being socialism while defending literal murderous regimes are, in the current crisis, seemingly defending Russia because their idea of politics is "American imperialism bad". They blame NATO for expanding and claiming those who want to sanction Putin are asking for WWIII. Uh, no. Putin is literally Hitler right now, and honestly, the international community needs to send a strong message about that. Period. Stop simping for literal dictators simply because it's not American dictators.
Conclusion
Like seriously, I look at the modern left and it's literally like some looney tunes strawman from my conservative days. On social issues they're militant SJWs, or as I liked to call them back in the day, "feminazis". On economic issues they're calling for literal communism. And on foreign policy their politics is literally based on the sentiment of "hating America".
Seriously. The modern left is a joke. This isn't what I signed up for when I left the GOP. Maybe I don't want a party that is the opposite. That wants literal white supremacy and a theocracy on social policy. That wants free market style social darwinism on economics. That is so jingoistic that any sign of criticizing whatever imperialist wars WE get involved with means we "hate America".
CLEARLY, there needs to be a middle ground between the two.
Socially, I just wanna do whatever I want as long as I'm not hurting others. I want a social policy that's pro science, and libertarian when feasible. I want abortions. I want gay marriage. I want guns. I want weed. I want prostitution. I want people to identify with attack helicopters if they want, as long as they dont make me have to affirm whatever stupid fetishes they're into.
On economics, I want neither trickle down style social darwinism, nor communism. I want a 21st century version of new deal social democracy based on yang style human centered capitalism. UBI, Medicare for all, etc. Maybe some Bernie policies too. But generally speaking, i wanna stick to social democracy mostly. Capitalism works. It's just a flawed system that needs a lot of fixes to work. Socialism isn't the answer.
On foreign policy, I want something that reinforced and supports international institutions like NATO and whatever the pacific equivalent might be, but that doesn't engage in imperialist wars that arent necessary. I want to criticize the wrong things my country does, without hating everything we do either.
Like really. Why is that so hard? The far right and the far left are both insane, and at this point, I'm just this huge radical centrist, but I guess I have to be.
And no, that doesnt make me a neolib. Neolibs are center right on economics. They're the middle between the right and social democracy. I'm more in line with my version of libertarian social democracy.
Maybe I align with mainstream libs more on social issues and foreign policy issues. But I doubt it on social issues since even moderate liberalism is infected with SJW ideology. I'm just more a rational centrist on that.
Honestly, I blame the failures of this liberal center on the left radicalizing. if they had just moved left in 2016, and made the changes they needed to make, none of this would've happened. Seriously, we wouldnt have needed to see this insane level of polarization that we're seeing in American politics. All of this is happening because of freaking Hillary Clinton, and her version of enlightened centrism sucking. Because of her, and because of Trump running on the republican ticket, the two parties have gone to the extremes on social issues, each fighting culture wars with one another. The far left lost faith in mainstream politics and morphed into socialism. The far right remained as right as ever. And on foreign policy the far left developed insane anti american rhetoric and seem to be the equivalent of the peaceniks from the 1960s who spat on vietnam vets, while the right is literally as jingoistic as Russia is being right now (ie, bordering on fascism, if not being literally fascist).
By 2012-2016 standards maybe I was to the left of them. Thats why I identified as being left. But considering what the left has morphed into, nah, I'm just like, another form of moderate. Maybe center left, but not crazy. What we call center left isnt center left, they're center to center right. And the left is just the far left now.
If this is how we had red scares and mccarthyism and the rise of Reagan, I understand that now. I mean, that's the big issue I have with this form of left. It's gonna cause a backlash, and that backlash might mean 40 more years of center right politics that serves no one. That's what im scared of. The left is so fractured now that it's going in all of these directions, and most of them arent good. The center is too center, the left is too left, and the center left is nonexistent. This is why Trump is probably gonna win by a landslide in 2024. I don't want it to happen. I hate Trump with every fiber of my being, and believe the dude is unfit for office. But just you wait, he's gonna win, because the left can't get its crap together.
And you know what? They might win the culture wars. because most americans are closer to them, than they are either faction of the left. And they're just better at politics. The left sucks at politics, and they suck at messaging. Again, because either too far center and tone deaf, or too far left and falling into every right wing stereotype people have about the left. It's a joke.
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