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Left/Right dichotomy is fake

Started by Sal1981, April 13, 2018, 07:10:09 AM

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Sal1981

I've used "the Left" to signify people on the social and progressive leaning political platform, while "the Right" have been the conservative and "family values", whatever that is supposed to mean. I don't find these to be contrasts, at least not anymore.

We have been lied to about these political spectrums, when it's really just collectivism versus individualism across the board. The people who identify with today's Left are for censorship, authoritarianism, and most of all; collectivism. While the Right has remained unchanged.

I reject these notions of the left and right political spectrum, in favor of a nuanced political picture. I don't think these method of slicing people up into camps benefits anyone other than serving the collectivists(!) who like no better than to force the "us vs them" mentality of either you're with us or you are against us.

I mean, what values do you espouse? Are you for government control or individual responsibility, why not both? Setting up such values as contrasts seem to be a divisive tool played by both sides, when there's really no side to pick, just what values one identifies with and how you put into action those values.

Collectivism gave us Communism, fascism, the gulags and kz camps of the 20th century which is why I think individual freedom and responsibility is so important.

So, do you think it serves a utility to offer up such sides? Or do you think, as I, that it should be about what values you identify with (and which values you reject for that matter)?

Baruch

#1
Being social doesn't mean being a Socialist.  But people are so easily swayed by words (you must buy the soap I am selling, and if you buy now I will send you this vegetable peeler for Free!).  Yes, definitely look at candidates as individuals.  I think we are too easily swayed by party affiliation (both have Deep State on their foreheads).  And good luck finding an honest candidate.

I am actually very close politically in substance to Cavebear, but not in rhetoric.  When I vote, it isn't rhetorical though.  Centrist, pragmatist, skeptic, optimist.  But not a regressive nor a progressive (current labels).  Those are red flags to excite the bulls and other bovines.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Sal1981 on April 13, 2018, 07:10:09 AM
I've used "the Left" to signify people on the social and progressive leaning political platform, while "the Right" have been the conservative and "family values", whatever that is supposed to mean. I don't find these to be contrasts, at least not anymore.

We have been lied to about these political spectrums, when it's really just collectivism versus individualism across the board. The people who identify with today's Left are for censorship, authoritarianism, and most of all; collectivism. While the Right has remained unchanged.

I reject these notions of the left and right political spectrum, in favor of a nuanced political picture. I don't think these method of slicing people up into camps benefits anyone other than serving the collectivists(!) who like no better than to force the "us vs them" mentality of either you're with us or you are against us.

I mean, what values do you espouse? Are you for government control or individual responsibility, why not both? Setting up such values as contrasts seem to be a divisive tool played by both sides, when there's really no side to pick, just what values one identifies with and how you put into action those values.

Collectivism gave us Communism, fascism, the gulags and kz camps of the 20th century which is why I think individual freedom and responsibility is so important.

So, do you think it serves a utility to offer up such sides? Or do you think, as I, that it should be about what values you identify with (and which values you reject for that matter)?

That is intriguing.  Can you offer more? 
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Sal1981

Quote from: Cavebear on April 13, 2018, 07:17:14 AM
That is intriguing.  Can you offer more? 
I was inspired mainly by a YouTube comment on this vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpg6P1PNWR8


Quote from: Bobby McdonaldActually, there is no Holy Political Spectrum with magical angel "wings" at all, Lindsay. It's a total lie. Nothing at all maximally separates Hitler's national socialists from Stalin's international socialists. Such ideologues were all calling themselves "progressives" back in the 1920s. We should stop promoting the Leftist myth of a bilateral political spectrum entirely. It's stupid. It only perpetuates the problem which rightly has people flummoxed when antifamaggots are calling Ben Shapiro a Nazi. That stupid myth about a "spectrum" dupes people into thinking that anyone who "leans in the direction" of American constitutional conservatism is somehow getting closer to becoming a Nazi. That's just stupid-as-shit.

Hitler's Nazis were reign-of-terror socialists every bit as much as commies are. You're getting a first-hand taste of just how fascist the international socialists are, right? Stalin didn't hate Trotsky any less than he hated Hitler. He murdered Trotsky. You can't hate somebody more than that. All socialists are Leftists and they are all fascists too. The term "Leftist" is properly only an historical allusion to an arrangement of seating in the French national assembly at the end of the 18th Century and there weren't even any "right wingers" back then either. There has never been a bilateral spectrum in reality:

There were simply so many French socialists in the French national assembly room that they occupied all the seats on the left. Everyone else had to physically sit on the right side of the room in a political potpourri. For example, Thomas Paine was neither a Jacobin nor a Montagnard, so he and the other Girondists had to sit in chairs on the right, next to monarchists and others with whom the Girondists had practically nothing in common. There was certainly an ideological Left thereâ€"i.e. the socialists occupied all the seats on the leftâ€"but there was no ideological Right at all and no spectrum. Neither is there such a spectrum today. We need to teach people to think outside of the Left's stupid rhetorical box. We've all been indoctrinated with a lie.

Pretending that the Left's Holy Spectrum exists only serves the interests of deceitful socialists who, for the political survival of their fascist ideology, need to keep people from recognizing that all socialists are group-thinking political witch hunters whose ideology inclines them toward launching reigns of terror against "deplorables". Leftists merely disagree among themselves as to the requirements for a socialist state to be sustainable. Basically, Hitler thought you needed a Super Race, with sloth bred out of it and virtue bred into it. Commies think that any race of peopleâ€"even blacks and Arabsâ€"can have their "deplorables" exterminated so as to make socialism sustainable even in a mixed-race society.

Socialists all have to address the problem of how to prevent a socialist society from degenerating into a nation of couch potatoes when everyone is purportedly to have all their basic material needs provided at no cost by a socialist government. Back in the days when Joe Kennedy was supporting Hitler's socialist movement, he was also sending his boys to England so they could be mentored by Fabian communists. That was thought essential for a well-rounded education in all strains of socialist theory. Nobody knew which type of socialism might work best.

Hitler was a progressive who admired Margaret Sanger's work in the area of eugenicsâ€"especially abortion. In the 1920s and '30s, eugenicists of all socialist strains collaborated in the development of strategies for the mass extermination of "deplorables" whose heads were deemed worthy of being lopped off into guillotine baskets...

youtu.be/PCHJVE9trSM (Hillary Clinton says Trump's supporters are a "basket of deplorables")

Nazis and commies used to set aside their disagreements over who the "deplorables" actually were when they wanted to work together on figuring out what ways of killing massive numbers of dissidents would be most economically efficient and most politically palatable.

This is why George Bernard Shaw sounds so much like Hitler here:
youtu.be/hQvsf2MUKRQ (George Bernard Shaw Defends Hitler, Mass Murder)

All Leftists are fascists. Since the days of the original Leftist Reign of Terror, which led to the rise of the first charismatic Leftist dictator (Napoleon), socialists have been on the cutting edge of coming up with the most politically viable ways of exterminating and otherwise shutting up massive numbers of political opponents. Their first tools where guilt trips, fear mongering and, for undesirables immune to such rhetorical devices, the guillotine and prisons. The Jacobins and Montagnards mainly disagreed only over the effectiveness of prisons. Thomas Paine was therefore extremely lucky to have been captured by Jacobins instead of by the totally brutal Montagnards...

German socialists later developed and applied the gas chamberâ€"a tool that is still used in Japanese cities for the mass extermination of stray dogs as if to remind us of the old East-West structure of the Axis powers:

youtu.be/4q1NBqMKBsQ (Japan's Dog Death Row)

Today's Euroweenie socialists have brilliantly developed the weapon of single-payer medicine for eliminating "deplorables" to a point where today's targets for extermination don't even have to know their heads are on the socialist chopping block. Here are socialists exterminating elderly men throughout the 1990s, for example:

5-year Prostate Cancer Survival Rates:
UK 51%;
Norway 63%;
Sweden 66%
Denmark 38.4%;
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 92.3%
Source: "Cancer survival in five continents: a worldwide population-based study" (Lancet Oncology, July 17, 2008) by Michel Coleman et al.

Elderly men generally don't pay income taxes the way they did before retirement and they use the healthcare system much more than younger men do. Therefore, elderly men stand in the way of a socialist state being sustainable, so you can see the socialists seizing old men's estates in those statistics. That wealth was then redistributed to younger skulls of socialist mush to keep the socialists' corrupt racket going. It's VERY INHUMANE!

After Hitler made national socialism politically nonviable in the West, the international socialists were faced with an existential crisis: They desperately needed to separate, in the minds of the unthinking masses, their ideology's historical association with the Nazis. They did this first by suddenly calling themselves "liberals" instead of "progressives". They also ramped up this "Left-Right" bullshit we're all indoctrinated with today.

This new paradigm insidiously smeared the reputation of civilized American constitutional conservatives with the stench of Hitler's socialist failuresâ€"this despite the fact that conservatives' ideology, centered as it is around individual autonomy, has actually always been anathema to ALL forms of socialism and other tribal group-think.

We need to stop promoting this Left-Right myth if we want a civil society. It's demonic and only breeds the kind of stupidity where Bernie's thugs are going around branding conservative Jews like Ben Shapiro as "Nazis".

We have a real education crisis today and it needs to be addressed immediately. The Left's Political Holy Spirit does not exist. There is no evidence for its existence. There are no wings.

I don't agree with everything Bobby writes, but it has marked the tipping point in which I reject the political spectrum being divided into sides.

Also, I'm not so sure values can be so easily pinned down to one of the political spectrum that is used to the Left or to the Right. This is easily recognizable by something like an abortion-endorsing Republican, where, of course, people think that since it's a Republican, the person must necessarily be pro-life and therefore dismiss such notions as an oxymoron. Who decided such contrasts? If I say I identify with classical libertarian values, does that necessarily mean I'm totally against gun control? Says who? What do people even mean when they identify with a certain ideology?

I think people can use labels, sure, but it should be with the caveat that they're labels and are superficially descriptive at best.

I have taken the 8values (at https://8values.github.io/ ) political test, but even for most of the questions, I felt like they weren't indicative of my core political values, that these 8 dimensions could so easily be cut down to a spectrum. So, I'm weary of these kinds of left/right dichotomies.

Cavebear

Quote from: Sal1981 on April 13, 2018, 08:06:33 AM
I was inspired mainly by a YouTube comment on this vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpg6P1PNWR8


I don't agree with everything Bobby writes, but it has marked the tipping point in which I reject the political spectrum being divided into sides.

Also, I'm not so sure values can be so easily pinned down to one of the political spectrum that is used to the Left or to the Right. This is easily recognizable by something like an abortion-endorsing Republican, where, of course, people think that since it's a Republican, the person must necessarily be pro-life and therefore dismiss such notions as an oxymoron. Who decided such contrasts? If I say I identify with classical libertarian values, does that necessarily mean I'm totally against gun control? Says who? What do people even mean when they identify with a certain ideology?

I think people can use labels, sure, but it should be with the caveat that they're labels and are superficially descriptive at best.

I have taken the 8values (at https://8values.github.io/ ) political test, but even for most of the questions, I felt like they weren't indicative of my core political values, that these 8 dimensions could so easily be cut down to a spectrum. So, I'm weary of these kinds of left/right dichotomies.

I've never been comfortable with labels, though I have often felt forced to adopt one to make it easier for others to "understand" me.  I'm more situational that idealogical.  Some ideas from the Right make sense, some from the Left make sense.

But the link sends me to some dedicated conservative twit.  Can you check it please?
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!


Sal1981

Quote from: Cavebear on April 13, 2018, 08:21:13 AM
I've never been comfortable with labels, though I have often felt forced to adopt one to make it easier for others to "understand" me.  I'm more situational that idealogical.  Some ideas from the Right make sense, some from the Left make sense.

But the link sends me to some dedicated conservative twit.  Can you check it please?
I've already watched that - she explains why she doesn't call herself as a leftist anymore and gives reason as to why.

Cavebear

Quote from: Sal1981 on April 13, 2018, 08:22:03 AM
BTW, these are the 8values result for me:

https://8values.github.io/results.html?e=57.9&d=68.6&g=66.5&s=81.3

That is a very different site and comports more with my understanding of reality.  Which causes me to wonder about that other link you offerred.    Accidental links are often the truest gaze into the mind of another.

I saw what you really think...  You slipped.  And I am not impressed!  That previous link that you tried to hide is one of the most hideous things I have ever witnessed.  I withdraw any positive statement I made about you.  Deception is not grounds for long-lasting agreement.

You ALMOST me going.   A shot at centricism.  Well done crappist.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Sal1981

Quote from: Cavebear on April 13, 2018, 08:37:51 AM
That is a very different site and comports more with my understanding of reality.  Which causes me to wonder about that other link you offerred.    Accidental links are often the truest gaze into the mind of another.

I saw what you really think...  You slipped.  And I am not impressed!  That previous link that you tried to hide is one of the most hideous things I have ever witnessed.  I withdraw any positive statement I made about you.  Deception is not grounds for long-lasting agreement.

You ALMOST me going.   A shot at centricism.  Well done crappist.
What other link? Do you mean the quoted Bobby Mcdonald YouTube comment?

Hydra009

Quote from: Sal1981 on April 13, 2018, 07:10:09 AM
We have been lied to about these political spectrums, when it's really just collectivism versus individualism across the board. The people who identify with today's Left are for censorship, authoritarianism, and most of all; collectivism. While the Right has remained unchanged.
As a leftist who's pretty strongly in the individualist camp and adamantly opposed to censorship and authoritarianism (and I'm pretty sure I'm far from alone in that regard), this makes for a very bizarre read.  Late April Fools joke?

Sal1981

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 13, 2018, 08:59:05 AM
As a leftist who's pretty strongly in the individualist camp and adamantly opposed to censorship and authoritarianism (and I'm pretty sure I'm far from alone in that regard), this makes for a very bizarre read.  Late April Fools joke?
The point is that the dichotomy left/right doesn't explain nuanced views.

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Shiranu

#11
QuoteCollectivism gave us Communism, fascism, the gulags and kz camps of the 20th century...

Collectivism has also given us social welfare, stronger economies (countries in Europe that rank higher on the collectivist scale also rank higher in economic growth), and support for amazing feats like putting a man on the moon ("We" had to beat "them") or other massive social projects.

Individualism mean while has given us dictators that only care about themselves, corporations that put their wealth over the good of society, and a society that doesn't care for it's neighbour nearly as much as it should.

The point I'm trying to make is not that collectivism is good and individualism is bad, but rather that they both have goods and bads. I don't believe that is all individualism has to offer, and I don't believe everything collectivism has to offer is good either. There is certainly a lot of room for the individual to pursue their agenda, but overall a society that cares about the society is a more efficient one than one that cares about the individual first.


Edit: I will say this; individualism also gave us Ayn Rand and libertarians. That in its very nature sure make one question just how inherently sane individualism is.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Gilgamesh

Quote from: Sal1981 on April 13, 2018, 09:31:49 AM
The point is that the dichotomy left/right doesn't explain nuanced views.

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Exactly.

Was hitler left or right?

Well, his economics were left - and socially he was right, and so this would land him in the center. Billy next door just has moderate views on prettymuch everything, and so he is center also. Hitler and Billy are both centrists, despite not having similar belief systems in the least. If the left-right spectrum cannot say with any accuracy what someones views are no matter where they fall on the spectrum, it no longer serves the purpose of its very existence. It's fallacious.

Baruch

Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

Quote from: Shiranu on April 13, 2018, 11:20:51 AM
Collectivism has also given us social welfare, stronger economies (countries in Europe that rank higher on the collectivist scale also rank higher in economic growth), and support for amazing feats like putting a man on the moon ("We" had to beat "them") or other massive social projects.

Individualism mean while has given us dictators that only care about themselves, corporations that put their wealth over the good of society, and a society that doesn't care for it's neighbour nearly as much as it should.

The point I'm trying to make is not that collectivism is good and individualism is bad, but rather that they both have goods and bads. I don't believe that is all individualism has to offer, and I don't believe everything collectivism has to offer is good either. There is certainly a lot of room for the individual to pursue their agenda, but overall a society that cares about the society is a more efficient one than one that cares about the individual first.

Unions gave us social welfare.  Are the D people promoting unions?  The best social welfare is a good job at a good wage.  Federal workers get that, because of unions.  That has gone bye-bye in the private sector since 1980.  Union voters controlled the D party from FDR until LBJ.  Then the 60s happened, and it all went to shit.  Unions got blamed for wage inflation and non-competitive industry.  The government and corporate leaders were innocent, I tell you!
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.