First off, I don’t base my views on “what Americans are like” with what people post online. Just about everyone I know personally has just gone off the deep end it seems.
People I’ve known for decades who were “right of center” have now drifted to the far right. Where they used to support separation of church and state, small government, etc. they now want the government to tax the poor, establish a Christian ethnostate, and are openly talking about “the coming revolution”. Meanwhile, most everyone I’ve known who is leftist wants the government to disarm them, claims to be pro-LGBT but blindly supports any Muslim country and blindly hates Israel, and thinks Joe Biden is the “greatest president EVAR”.
Am I just in a weird bubble where 95% of the people in my life are politically and philosophically dipshits? Does anyone else experience this with people they actually know? I feel like I’m going crazy when I can be talking with a “leftist” about trans rights in Texas and then the very next conversation is about how wholesome they think the average Palestinian is in Gaza. Is there anyone else who’s at least left of center and recognizes that religious zealots in the Middle East want to kill you and shouldn’t be supported and religious zealots in YOUR OWN FUCKING COUNTRY want to kill you and you shouldn’t disarm yourself?
Just what the fuck is going on in this country? There’s so much disinformation and paid trolls that I don’t base these views off what’s online. I just run into the exact same lunacy with nearly everyone I’ve known my whole life.
Ashamed American here. The “center” has been shifting right for decades now. Since before my birth, gaining momentum in the Nixon administration with the advent of work sponsored healthcare.
PAC money has driven politicians to make decisions based on their donors and not the will of the people. This creates a legal bribery system. And as the oft mis-attributed quote goes, “fascism is the marriage of corporations and state.”
The average person is too consumed by making ends meet and trying to find a modicum of substance at the end of the day to be bothered by politics. The others are distracted by the clown show our politicians put on for us.
Only the super wealthy can affect change. https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained
The two party political system and the Electoral College (the representative voting body) ensure this stays in place and that third party votes will only cause one of the main candidates to lose.
I am highly left here. In Europe, I’d probably be considered center-left with a focus on humanitarianism. I consider myself a secular humanist. With that, I stand with the people above all else before party, religion, or heritage. Humans first, then arbitrary affiliations.
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I wish I knew more people like you as well. We all need support in these times.
All the data I’ve ever seen suggests that its the left thats been slowly moving, and the right has been largely anchored where it started for decades (this ignores trump and post trump, which might change that?). It’s a bad thing that the right has remained anchored on horrible positions, but its a different problem.
I don’t know where you’re getting your data but the only rigorous analysis I’ve ever seen of political polarization is based on DW-NOMINATE scores, and it does indeed confirm that it’s the right wing that’s been drifting right.
Link: https://goodauthority.org/news/polarization-is-real-and-asymmetric/
Show me the data.