Because what the US considers left (universal health care, helping the poor, school lunches and affordable education) is considered middle of the road normal stuff in Europe and other developed countries.
Even the historical, biggest right wing party in Denmark would not remove any of the things you mentioned, except school lunches.
A lot of people have left-leaning economic views ( tax the rich ) but there’s basically no political or media representation of those views. ( because the rich run the media and government )
This is the correct answer.
There is social liberalism to satisfy mainstream liberalism but there is little to no representation on behalf of fiscal liberalism.
I think you’re confused. Fiscal liberalism is typically a right-wing proposal.
Easy: even if you vote for Bernie that’s still at best center-left. The US just really, really leans right overall: there’s center-right (democrats) and far-right (republicans) and that’s about it.
You guys are so afraid of socialism no party dares venture the true left.
Americans being afraid of socialism is proof that propaganda works. It’s literally for the people.
As does decades of systematically defunding education. The decades of leaded gas/paint by prior generations probably weren’t helping…
Joe Biden is now the Nickelback /Big Bang Theory of Presidents.
There’s nothing really bad about him, nothing really great, but they’ve been told to hate on him, so that’s what they’ll do.
Ill hate his fucking guts as long as I live for his handling of Israel and Gaza
Fair enough.
I think your statement is true in a purely national sense. We’ve had better but we’ve had worse. Globally, he’s majorly dropped the ball and caused too much suffering to ignore.
the genocide doesnt count?
nothing really bad about him
Uh, except his racism? FFS, we can demand better.
Here in Czechia, we had socialism a few decades ago. Pretty much everyone old enough to remember it hates it.
Socialism is not a ‘one thing’ . It’s a concept as a whole. You can have good or bad socialism and everything in between.
The world is far more nuanced than that.
Do you have working examples of good socialism?
I’ll give some examples of great implementations of socialism that drives welfare in today’s democracies, as I personally believe that socialism can’t exist without democracy, as it’s one of the core values of the concept, that’s it’s controlled by the people.
One of socialisms ultimate goals are also equality, which my examples will show.
- Free education
- UBI if you get fired
- UBI for old people
- UBI for students
- Free health care (duh)
- Free dental (normally only till age of 18 today)
- Basic insurance paid by the government
These are just the big ones that really helps to make sure that very few people are actually poor and are getting desperate because of it.
Also, it’s always important to say that socialism and capitalism are NOT mutually exclusive. It’s perfectly normal to have all these concepts from socialism in a capitalist country.
I think we can agree that a country with 100% capitalism or socialism is not the best way to go.
Good explanation. Just one nit to pick over word choice: “Capitalism” is not a synonym for “free market”.
Capitalism is a separate ideology that champions (even romanticizes) the acquisition and hoarding of wealth at all costs. It leads to trusts, monopolies, stifling of competition and, eventually, the death of the free market.
In other words: Socialism and free markets are compatible. Socialism and Capitalism are not.
And a good chunk of our parties are now far far right.
Added bonus: it’s not just socialism that we’re afraid of. We fear tons of things now. We’ve become a nation of fear and boiling hate under the hood and it’s truly toxic.
Yes, I’ve been working to leave for a few years now. My children shouldn’t have to grow up in a culture of barely surviving, anxiety & fearful people scrabbling over scraps left to us by the ultra wealthy.
I left 6 years ago and don’t regret it for a minute.
Where did you move to?
Netherlands
Because the American left would be considered right wing in most of the world.
The Democrats would be the conservative party in my country. The Republicans would be watched by law enforcement for fascistic tendencies, or already outright illegal.
Which country?
Germany. We learned our lessons about fascism. The US didn’t, and if they don’t get their acts together, they soon will. Then may God help us all.
and yet we both have a significant problem with neo-nazis and right wing fascism.
and its because, despite laws and common sense, media goes easy on them and gives them a soft hand.
Didn’t the CDU dominate Germany for decades? Christian Democrats are much more socially conservative than the American Democratic party. Weird flex, not okay.
CDU is center-right.
I would not rate the German CDU as more conservative than the US Democrats, at least not significantly.
It’s really as simple as this. The left in countries like the UK and Ireland would be radical to the US.
Google the term Overton window
Oberton I think
If you’d have googled it, you’d know it’s overton
Happens to the best of us
No, they were right the first time.
Yeah, I know, so I was expressing empathy to the oberton commenter.
Because there is no party available to elect, who care for the workers/people.
You have a system that is designed to take money from the poor and lower class and give it to the rich. You don’t have proper workers rights, spend about twice the amount for healthcare compared to an European person and get substantially less out of it. People work more than 40h/week in more than one job and can’t make ends meet… There are vast rural parts that look more like a third world country. Everything is made for commerce and nobody cares for LGBT people or women unless there’s some money or publicity in it.
And you have about 2 parties who both participate and stand for that scheme.
I agree. In my opinion there are two huge dominating factors.
First is the almost ubiquitous winner-takes-all election structure in the US, leading to the two party system. There is, bar none, no fair competition in US government at a level high enough to matter.
Second, the lack of term limits allows certain people in certain positions to perpetuate momentum. In part this happens by hand picking successors through brute-force out funding the competition (in part due to the economic disparity that others in this thread have mentioned).
Sure. Also silly tactics like Gerrymandering need to stop.
I’m not sure if these are the most pressing topics.
I think for one lobbyism needs to go for good. It’s deeply undemocratic to give people money and then they’ll pass your laws. And not the ones that’d benefit the people who elected them.
Maybe the members of the senate should be exchanged. Seems to me they’re playing kindergarten games all day, blocking everything instead of doing their job.
And media is a big part if a democracy. And the media situation in the US seems beyond bad. People need actual information to make good decisions who to elect. Not a show filled with emotion where two old men compete against each orher like in a staged wrestling match.
And you need more parties. And they need to get like 10-15% of the votes. For example a party addressing the young people who complain that they never can afford to buy a house like their parents were still able to buy. A party catering to the people who don’t live in the big cities. The farmers and rural people with different needs. A party who stands for the lower class people, the workers. Maybe something green, repairing the power grid in Texas and adding some more solar in the sunny south to the oil.
This image from 2020 sums it up decently…
Also: you guys messed up the colors for the parties, red is for left leaning parties, blue is for right leaning. But I guess that is just the US being the US, like temperature, weight and distance units.
I guess because they switched positions a long while ago.
Wait, Reps used to be left of Dems?
The Republican party was Lincoln’s party. Look at were they stand now.
For 30 years it was the same way as the UK, based on the system. It wasn’t until Gore v Dubya that the NYT printed it in colour with red being republican. The reason? Both red and republican start with R… They really knew their audience!
Because liberals are just center of right. If you go too far left things become better for workers and not the ruling shit heads.
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Allow me to enlighten you by illustrating how both sides are absolutely not the same
Some highlights:
There is a stark difference in the means with which the two groups engage in acts of extremism. In a study evaluating Left-Wing and Right-Wing domestic extremism between 1994 and 2020, there was one fatality as the result of Left-Wing extremism, versus 329 fatalities resulting from Far Right extremism in that 25 year period. [5]
The Far-Right movement is the oldest and most deadly form of domestic terrorism in the United States, and The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism found that the Far-Right is responsible for 98% of extremist murders in the U.S. [24] Furthermore, for nearly every year since 2011, Far-Right terrorist attacks/plots have accounted for over half of all terror attacks/plots in the United States. [21]
In the U.S., Right-Wing extremism was responsible for two-thirds of all failed, foiled, or successful terror attacks in 2019, and was responsible for 90% of attacks in the first half of 2020 alone. [21] Since 2013, Far-Right extremism has been responsible for more terror attacks/plots than the Left-Wing, ethnonationalism, or religiously motivated attacks/plots. [21]
These are excerpts from a blog post of mine, but I have ads turned off and do not benefit in any way from it.
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Did you read any of that?
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One death from left wing extremism in 25 years, versus 329 from the right, 32900% more. To say that this is the “same shit” is clearly absurd. We aren’t discussing the merits of the middle ground. You seem to be suggesting that just because something is labelled as “extremist” it is automatically bad, regardless of what it actually is or what harm it causes.
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Extremism is not good or bad, just like being in the middle is not good or bad either. What matters is what’s correct.
For example, between being pro-fascism and anti-fascism, anti-fascism is both extreme and correct.
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No. Completely different and entirely incompatible.
When you go far left, you have ideologies like Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism, all ideologies that oppose unjust hierarchy and advocate for the good of all.
The far-right is completely different from the far-left, because the far-right has ideologies like fascism and feudalism. This is an inherently violent, reactionary position found to uphold the status quo, ie the division of power, via absolute measures.
These are not the same.
This simply means you’re either a liberal or a fascist.
Other people have already posted good answers so I just want to add a couple things.
If you want a very simple, concrete example: Healthcare. It depends on how you count, but more than half the world’s countries have some sort of free or low cost public healthcare, whereas in the US, the richest country in the history of countries, that’s presented as radical left wing kooky unrealistic communist Bernie idea. This isn’t an example of a left-wing policy that we won’t adopt, but of what in much of the world is a normal public service that we can’t adopt because anti-socialism in this country is so malignant and metastasized that it can be weaponized against things that are just considered normal public services almost like roads in other countries.
A true left wing would support not just things like healthcare, but advocate for an economic system in which workers have control over their jobs, not the bosses. That is completely absent.
Also, this meme:
It’s glib, but it’s not wrong. Both parties routinely support American militarism abroad. Antimilitarism in favor of internationalism has been a corner stone for the left since the left began.
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Yeah, but no one lives in your world but you. In the real world, you’re so hilariously off the mark.
i constantly run into leftist who wouldn’t hesitate to brand me a phobe of their convenience ,none of the right leaning people i interacted with does this… anecdotal i know.
Maybe the leftist has a point because you actually align with the right? Crazy, I know, but I’ve seen this argument play out irl more than once with some rightoids that loved to pretend their politics weren’t right aligned.
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You don’t need to engage with fascists, they’re not going to listen and they’re sure as hell not going to learn.
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“I constantly complain about anyone left of Thatcher and have reactionary social views, the people who agree with me don’t criticise me. Curious!”
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Uh huh, of course.
So it’s pronouns right? that’s what’s got you worked up?
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You just confirmed its pronouns.
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If the party I vote for in Germany would be one in the US they probably would be banned for being communists or something like that while here they’re a widely accepted part of the goverment.
Which party is that?
Lol, and it’s not even our leftest party :D
Good choice thoughIt doesn’t feel like a good choice, just the least bad one
Doesn’t sound that different from the US’s Green Party, honestly.
Because all the true is gone.
There’s no leftist party, nothing Socialist in the least. The furthest “left” you go is the DNC, which is liberal, and therefore right wing. The furthest right you go is the GOP, which is fascist.
A few years ago I would have agreed with this statement. But lately, I’ve seen a change described in several press articles and news pieces. The younger generations in the US demand true social justice and aren’t afraid to say they’re socialists, against capitalism or consumerism. It’s a burgeoning revolution of course, since the establishment is still in control of traditional political parties. But this crack in the old broken system could bring about positive change in the long run. At least I hope so.
Compared to the rest of the first world countries, our farthest left candidates are relatively moderate.
Examples of true left would be codeterminisn in Germany and banning tuition fees in Finland.
