There’s a great part in the book 1984 where they talk about how the elite 1% control everything and 85% are just living off the scraps. The remaining 14% see themselves as prospective elites, though they live only marginally better than the 85%. The elites promise that if only they defend the 1% hard enough, and do everything they’re told they should do, then one day they might be let into the elite crowd.
I think George Orwell was describing centrists as that 14%. The defenders of the status quo.
I think that, in the “Global North”, the % is higher. It’s a bit tricky to define the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” class.
Swing
And a complete miss
Ah yes, the “You must always stand 100% behind ALL the political positions and decisions of my party, even the most extreme ones, or you are just the same as the worst examples of the other party.” argument.
Even if one party is clearly worse than the other overall, it’s still a messed up way to think. No one is above criticism.
This is completrly dishonest.
No political parties were mentioned whatsoever, and I’m curious which party you think reresents the “left”, because no Western country has a legitimate left wing party present in their effective two-party systems.
No mention of loyalty either, to any people or groups of people, and certainly not blind loyalty. No mention of supporting positions at all.
What do you hope to gain from such a blatantly disingenuous comment? I’m honestly baffled.
Using the word “political party” might have been a misnomer of my part. By “political party” I meant the positions generally associated with the left and the right. And the whole point I’m trying to make is that the idea portrayed in the comic makes a case for blind loyalty to the ideologies of the political “side” that you identify with. This is the kind of attitude I am firmly against. This forces people into boxes that very few people truly fit in.
No, this does not make a case for any blind loyalty to “political sides”. And this talk of “boxes” shows a rather naive view of the actual political landscape. There are fundamental beliefs about the world that underlie right wing political positions that are, by their very nature, absolutely in opposition to the fundamental beliefs underlying left wing political positions.
People for sure aren’t monolithic, and there are variations, that’s true, but you won’t catch a left wing person beliving anything remotely right wing. They’re incompatible. They might disagree about violent revolution, or they might lean towards or against the role of the state, but one thing you won’t find is someone arguing for capitalism. And on the other “side”, you might find arguments for or against regulation, arguments for or against certain taxes, you’ll find conservatives and you’ll find liberals, but you certainly won’t find anyone advocating for socialism. Antithetical.
And do you know where this “centrism” actually lies? Between the liberals and conservatives.
People can have political opinions that are considered left wing on some subjects, and opinions that are typically right wing on other subjects. They can even have political opinions that tries get the best of both sides, where it can apply.
You can support gay rights while supporting private gun ownership. You can support a capitalist system while demanding for it to be better regulated to prevent abuse and compensate for its shortcomings with social programs. You can promote immigration while still maintaining rules and regulations on the immigration process.
For crying out loud just read the wiki on the Left-right political spectrum where they explain perfectly well what centrism is and how it takes place between the left and right. Maybe your interpretation of what centrism is doesn’t agree with that. But that’s just your opinion.
People can have political opinions that are considered left wing on some subjects, and opinions that are typically right wing on other subjects. They can even have political opinions that tries get the best of both sides, where it can apply.
Did you even read what I wrote? No. This isn’t even remotely possible. It’s like trying to be anti-gun and pro-gun at the same time. Stop trying to twist your incorrect view into being correct.
You can support gay rights while supporting private gun ownership. You can support a capitalist system while demanding for it to be better regulated to prevent abuse and compensate for its shortcomings with social programs. You can promote immigration while still maintaining rules and regulations on the immigration process.
None of these pairs are a mix of left and right wing views. Lefties generally are for gun ownership, for instance, because you need to be armed if you’re gonna have a revolution.
For crying out loud just read the wiki on the Left-right political spectrum where they explain perfectly well what centrism is and how it takes place between the left and right.
Why don’t you do that? Because it doesn’t.
Maybe your interpretation of what centrism is doesn’t agree with that. But that’s just your opinion.
This is not “just my opinion” any more than the law of gravitation is “just Newton’s opinion.” These are pretty set in stone facts. You just don’t like being wrong.
The left is against hierarchy in general. The right supports hierarchy in general.
All left wing positions come from a desire to break hierarchies. Every single one.
All right wing positions come from wanting to preserve hierarchy. Every single one.
You can’t support the right to private property while also wanting to abolish it! It can’t be done! You can’t go left and right at the same time!
I will not continue a discussion on a concept with someone who uses his own definition of the concept and cheery picks the arguments he wants to respond to to make it sound valid and the attempts gaslighting like you did. All this after ironically accusing me of being dishonest. Good day sir.
This is not “my definition”. You just never bothered to learn the definition. I also did not “cherry pick” - i responded to every point you made.
You’re missing their point.
Wanting regulations on Capitalism is still a right-wing ideology. Capitalism itself is right-wing.
Secondly, the left and right are not a bunch of random incoherent thoughts aligned for no reason that people can freely pick from, but a set of underlying values and conclusions that support each other. Gun ownership is not a left/right concept, as it doesn’t concern the Means of Production and who owns them in any way.
Centrism expresses itself in developed, Capitalist countries as liberals who are in between fascists and Social Democrats, not between the left and the right.
Bang on, my friend.
You can’t just say that the “left and right are a bunch of random incoherent thoughts aligned for no reason…” right after affirming that Capitalism is a right-wing ideology without directly contradicting yourself. And furthermore that point, you omitted the other half of my argument that one can support capitalism AND support social policies at the same time, which are contradictory in basic ideology, but can still be used together.
You’re right, I can’t say that, because I didn’t. I said the opposite.
Social policies are not leftist. You can have right wing social policies. Left vs right is Socialism vs Capitalism.
I’m more than willing to talk more, but you’ll have to actually read my comments first.
Now you’re showing either extreme dishonesty or an inability to read. They didn’t say the left and right are random incoherent thoughts. They implied that’s your position, which it seems to be, and said this isn’t the case.
Supporting capitalism while supporting social policies is not a contradiction. That’s the basic platform of new liberalism, and is an example of the capitalist order asserting its primacy. As the other guy said - adding regulations to capitalism means preserving capitalism. Adding social safety nets to capitalism is shielding capitalism from criticism.
The mere presence of Capitalism does not itself define the left/right spectrum. How capitalism interacts with the spectrum is actually pretty nuanced. The actual solid foundations of what defines left versus right is whether the system should preserve old institutions of heirachy. Originally they were monarchists but facing that they became simply the gentry and then the investor class. The core conceit of the whole thing that is public facing is that some people earn power and power should only be weilded by those who earn it (As far as actual meritocracy goes it’s something of a grift. What counts as “earned” counts as the amalgamation of what your predecessors owned and hoarded and passed down). What it generally means is upholding a sort of empire building conqueror mentality where past gains can be seen as nothing but legitimate - it presupposes there is a correct and incorrect weilder of power. The rich deserve their influence and the poor should suffer. Anything that “artificially” attempts to correct this curve is not just unnatural but going to stir up some sort of rot that will cause social weakness. “Conservatives” are generally conserving this aristocrat structure. Every generation basically changes their presentation to seem more appealing to the masses but that’s it’s underlying structure.
Leftist structures tend to look at the dissolution of those structures. It asks to create something like a universal humane. It presupposes that we try and upset and disolve the mindset that any one person deserves either incredible misery or perfect comfort backed by power. It looks at lateral ways of looking at things like wealth and minority inequalities as being to the injury of a true meritocracy. Existing inequalities are flaws in need of correction or at least some form of gentle leveling off to allow equal participation in society where those of merit can actually succeed. It concerns itself with the idea of “public goods” and tends to be pro-democratic but it isn’t always. The meditations on things like money and capitalism run a gamut between communist ideas of manual state manipulation of assets with very little independently held property existing at all, to socialist worker lead co-op structures where businesses are democratically steered and profits divided amongst the producers… To just a highly regulated version of capitalism where capstones create enough incentive to motivate but not to snowball. Wealth is redistributed via programs or things like a universal income to alleviate issues poverty holds for society. It’s actually called Market Socialism and technically speaking it is on the leftist spectrum.
What ties each era’s incarnation of the left/right spectrum into a continuity is the relationship of heirachy to social structures. Basic rule, if it attempts to scatter existing power it’s left if it tries to consolidate existing power it’s right. If a regulation stops food producers from being able to put sawdust and alum in food for instance that is removing a choice from someone to allow a consolidation of money at the expense of the health and wellbeing of others. It stems from a leftist notion that there exists a baseline public responsibility that outweighs a personal right to exert your position’s advantages against that good. It is working in inside a capitalist structure but it’s still left.
That’s more of a philosophical, vibes-based approach than a practical, structural, economic outlook, and since it must be applied to each case individually within the context that it was applied, it ceases to be a universal measure.
The commonly accepted Socialism/Capitalism divide, ie anti-hierarchy/pro-hierarchy, is more practical for day to day analysis.
You are the sucker
What sucker? There’s a sucker? Wrong thread, maybe. We’re not discussing gullibility.
It’s always fun to listen to some Americans labelling Dems as commies.
This is obviously not the same view as OP, but based upon the comments I thought I could throw a light on where “the world” places Dems and Republicans on the wold political scene. Ish…
So where would the people identifying themselves as left or right be?
The illustration is not analogous. The first picture is based on the perception that centrists have of themselves, the second is the reality of that perception. It’s a metaphor. Humor does not always follow logic, crazy right?
This incongruity model can explain why older adults do not comprehend jokes as frequently as younger adults. Due to declines tied to the aging process, older adults may not have the cognitive resources needed to create multiple representations, to simultaneously hold multiple ones in order to detect the incongruity, or to inhibit the first one that was activated. Getting the joke relies on working memory capacity and control functions. However, when older adults succeed in their efforts to do these things, they typically show greater appreciation of the joke than younger adults do and report greater life satisfaction than those who don’t see the humor.
Interesting read on why sometimes we don’t get the joke.
Same place. This cartoon is nonsense.
Note: This comment.
Edit: You have to be dumb to get the joke. If someone has to explain it to you, you’re too smart to understand it, and it ceases to be funny.
Whether it is funny or not funny, I don’t see the joke itself, or the point. Is the point you are making that both left and right are equally irrelevant to the inequality shown in the second panel?
The ✧˖°.joke✧˖°. is that centrists believe themselves to be intellectually superior to the petty squabbling of the Left and the Right. The reality of North American politics is that Centrists represent the status quo. So if the status quo is rich people get to exploit marginalized communities, Centrists are propping up the capitalists instead of remaining impartial and above all of the noise. The humor is that Centrists are delusional and make bad faith false equivalencies.
It’s really not as hard to parse as you’re making it seem.
This is like saying that economically centrists are to the right of the left. Which is like duh. It is quite obvious why people miss this point, it looks like no point and the second panel is not different from the first in this respect. But I want to thank you for explaining the intent behind this cartoon.
I also disagree that centrists represent the status quo. It depends on the issue. Take Supreme Court, for example. It is clearly on the right side. Take taxation of the income brackets. It is clearly on the left side (one of the most progressive taxes in the world), but on the taxes for things like capital gain, it is clearly on the right. And so on. But that’s different discussion.
i’m a true neutral in the way that i let the entropy of society take over and say fuck it, nothing matters
politics is a horse race, and america is in dead fucking last, so how does my iota of participation impact any significant amount to the ongoing—here’s that word—enshittification of the public political climate?
edit: alright cool, bad take, i might reconsider this one
deleted by creator
equating political centrists to elite supporters
I find it funny that the same group of people who believe trickle down economics doesn’t work also insist that trickle down policy will work because of “lesser evil” and “best option”.
Some of us enjoy not bootlicking a party 24/7 expecting it to solve problems simply because it isn’t the one that is pure evil.
Like I can bet my entire life savings Biden’s national train plan will go absolutely nowhere because Obama’s national train plan went absolutely nowhere. Yet every doofus and their mom are on here telling me I should appreciate baby steps for wasting my tax money (for the nth time) and not criticize Biden because he needs to beat Trump in the elections.
Yeah no thanks. If the best he can bring to the table is more hot air, he’s not doing enough for his constituency at all.
Yeah no thanks. If the best he can bring to the table is more hot air, he’s not doing enough for his constituency at all.
And yet you would compare that to the opposition…hmm.
No one is expecting Biden to give them treats because Trump is bad. Your false equivalency betrays how unclosely you’ve been following the discourse.
I’ll go ahead and presume you know that some billionaires see themselves as marginalized, stepped on by society to take their hard-earned wealth away and spread it to leeches that haven’t worked a day in their life.
Were they to see this picture, they’d see themselves at the bottom.How they see themselves is irrelevant to how they are. A lack of perspective doesn’t make them right.
Huh?
