So, I've talked about obnoxious leftist gatekeeping over Israel Palestine, and it happened again. I rejected the idea that Palestine is a "unifying issue" for the left and that people who claim such don't speak for me, and some leftist interjected calling me a conservative for supporting Biden's foreign policy and said I should join the GOP and try to bring them back from the brink.
First of all, ya'll realize I LEFT the GOP for a reason, right? And it wasn't a small disagreement over a specific policy issue, it was a rejection of an entire worldview and corresponding political philosophy.
The fact is, I have little to nothing in common with the modern GOP on any issue. The person who pushed this claimed that because Obama claimed to be to the right of the likes of Nixon, I'm a conservative, but it seems like people don't understand political alignments. Eisenhower and Nixon were a brand of liberal republicans that no longer exist, and haven't existed in decades. And while I did have SOME common ground with Nixon, like, ironically, supporting a UBI and a public option healthcare system, the country soundly rejected those guys as "too liberal" for a reason 40+ years ago, and their views haven't been relevant since.
The fact is, the modern GOP is in the image of Ronald Reagan, with the modern GOP getting more extreme with each new conservative movement such as the tea party and Trumpism. I left during the tea party, so now the GOP is even more beyond the pale for me than when I left them.
Really, what exactly do I have in common with the right on anything? The closest positions I likely resonate with the right on are immigration where I'm this weird 50-50 moderate on the subject, and guns, where I'm like center right and recognize some regulation should exist, but not a ton.
Beyond that, what exactly do I have in common with the right? On social issues, they're basically christian nationalists, and have been for literal decades. Again, this crap started in the 70s and 80s with Pat Robertson and moral majority. My secular humanist political ideology was formed as a rejection of their values. I have zero in common with them.
On economics, my human centered capitalist economics are built out of a rejection of trickle down economics. And while there are occasional weird conservatives who like UBI, my version is far more progressive than theirs.
And on foreign policy, I also reject the hyper aggressive neocon mentality of the GOP of my era. Ya know, the one that saw fit to just suspend civil liberties, say you're with us or against us, and supported just invading countries with no justification or exit strategy. The one whose supporters sing songs like "bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb iran" and talk about turning the middle east into a "glass parking lot." I know that my support of israel isn't "leftist" in a marxist or postmodernist sense, but I also ain't an adherent of those ideologies.
The fact is, my views have virtually nothing in common with the modern republican party. or the republican party of 10 years ago. Or even 40 years ago. You would literally need to go back to Eisenhower and Nixon to find any agreement at all and quite frankly those conservatives were ideological traitors to their movement. They were moderates trying to navigate the new deal era in the same fashion that bill clinton and the "new democrats" tried to navigate the post reagan era of the 1990s. In other words, those werent "real" conservatives. They were moderates who lived in a totally different world with a totally different zeitgeist.
Speaking of which, yes yes, I know some conservatives are also becoming more populist and isolationist on foreign policy. And I would say these weirdo free palestine leftists, while disagreeing with them on this specific issue, seem to have a lot in common with this segment of the right.
I mean, it's like we're undergoing this weird horseshoe theory at times where the extremes are becoming more united despite being on different ends of the spectrum, forcing the center to defend themselves at the other political "pole."
And sadly, that's what I'm afraid of, in terms of realignments. Extreme populist right and populist left joining forces, with the liberals joining with the neocons. Maybe that's what's going on here, where I'm shifting back to the center, recognizing both the far right and left as inherent threats to the country's stability. This isn't the realignment I hoped for.
The fact is, that's where these real ideological divides are happening on the left. The far left and the center left are becoming increasingly at odds, with the same happening on the right. Except the right is extreme, and now the left is becoming extreme.
Admittedly, it's possible I helped create this monster. When I pushed left of the democrats, I just wanted universal healthcare and UBI though, I don't want this weird marxist/postmodernist left just ruining everything. Because those guys are quite frankly idiots and make our entire side look bad.
If anything, I'm to the point that I think sane liberal lefties need to take back the left from the far left. And the same has to happen on the right.
But honestly? The right isn't my fight any more. Again, my ideological views just soundly reject the modern right on every level, while my views are basically just mainstream liberalism with more left wing economics. So if anything I BELONG on the left, and weirdos like the ones who said this are the ones who we need to take the party back from.
Heck I've already written an article about this months ago. How convenient.
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