When I talk about left/right just know I’m coming from a more western American perspective but I’m open to hearing other people from different countries perspectives on this.
I was generally raised very conservative in a religious house but as I’ve grown up I’ve definitely developed my own beliefs/ideals and would consider myself to be more apolitical. It seems like a lot of the left/right can never meet eachother half way, leftists think that all people even slightly leaning to the left are just dumb bigots while people on the right generally view leftists as being dumb sjws.
Both the left and the right also have insane levels of group think, on the left if you’re to even do much as make the wrong question or not be entirely educated on some niche marginalized issue you can be labeled a bigot. Similar can be said for the right, except people will just say you’re “going woke”
It’s all very unproductive. At the end of the day despite political differences I believe we’re all people and shouldn’t keep ourselves in eco chambers of people that parrot our exact same beliefs. If anything you should allow your beliefs to constantly be challenged so they can evolve along with your understanding of the world, at least that’s my perspective.
Do you think the divide between right and left is getting ridiculous?
Where it flies off the tracks and I lose objectivity is bigotry. In my mind, there’s no situation where someone is existing or living their life in the manner that makes them happy (provided it doesn’t cause direct, intentional, malicious harm to anyone else) that shouldn’t be ok with everyone. Like that’s violating Life Rule #1 of “Mind your own business; do you, and don’t worry what the guy next to you is doing.” That should be easy to agree on for anyone.
There should be no situation where one of these people just existing as they are or in whatever way makes them happiest is given a hard time, and there should be an objective understanding societally that it’s “YOUR problem/fault if you don’t like it.”
When I hear people talk about “anti-woke” stuff…. the opposite of “woke” (in terms of the bastardized meaning that Conservatives have given to it, not the proper original term) is “bigotry and discrimination”, and I really can’t even imagine a cogent argument to the contrary without being completely dishonest and disingenuous.
Like my very participation in politics is mostly based around stopping people from doing JUST THAT. That’s the biggest illness our society suffers from. I’m not here debating much in the way of tax policy or foreign diplomacy (until Trump’s embarrassing actions with Zelenskyy), I just want a society where people live and let live, and don’t discriminate or give dirty looks or harsh words to people operating differently than they do. I want all Americans to shut the fuck up and stare at their sneakers, don’t worry about what anyone else is doing or “culture” or any of that shit. This is life, anything goes, barring a small handful of things that would do harm to others.
I don’t typically care what Conservatives are doing as long as they keep it to themselves, the wrong stuff, anyway.
I’m probably making your point for you😅😂, but at this point in the timeline, more than any time in the past when I’ve been alive, Conservatives are harboring some beliefs where, no matter how I try to pretzel my brain or say “to each their own”, it’s like they’re ACTIVELY trying to do TERRIBLE things that will be harmful to people in some way or another, or at very least hurtful, and they’re not only doing it, they’re doing a touchdown dance when they’re done. Like it’s evil, and they RELISH IT. That blows my mind to smithereens, especially when they’re done turn around and claim themselves to be devout Christians, engaging in behavior that Jesus would never in a million years endorse.
And again, it feels like the cruelty of some of these things is THE POINT. It’s not even an attitude of “we understand this puts you in a tough spot, but we’re just doing what we HAVE TO do, there’s no animosity.” It sounds juvenile, but I just never thought I’d see Americans become so mean, and gleefully so, and I’m ashamed and embarrassed by it.
And so much of the established right wing narrative is straight up LIES. We no longer have a shared basis of fact to agree upon to have a debate over. Like they’re just telling me the actual facts AREN’T, and have made up this fabricated version of “reality” that they bring to the table, so I kind of just have to throw my hands up at that point. We’re trying to debate on what color to paint a house, but you’re all telling me brown is really blue, gray is really orange. How do I even have a rational conversation with that?
People are making up shit out of whole cloth and adopting it as their “reality” because it makes them feel better, or helps their argument, or I don’t know what it’s for…. I just know I can’t have meaningful, productive discussions with them. And it seems to be an epidemic, rather than a small faction. Like half the country just believes in a reality that simply isn’t true. It leaves you feeling helpless and hopeless.
There’s SO MUCH we can reasonably debate about in a society. But some things, when it comes to allowing people to live their lives, and looking out for equal human rights as the inalienable #1 priority as we should, should just not cross a sane and decent person’s mind to challenge.
And that’s where I feel we are now, some people are trying to make the undebatable a debate. And most of the counterpoints they make are also based on fabrications, so the debates are again dishonest and disingenuous, and more annoyingly, usually very poorly camouflaged as some more reasonable take when it clearly isn’t.
I miss old Republicans, lmao, the stiffs and nerds in the bow ties who just existed to say “slow down, how are we gonna pay for that?” They had their bigotries I disliked too, but they pale in comparison to the egregiousness of what we see today.
I agree completely. "[We] shouldn’t keep ourselves in eco chambers of people that parrot our exact same beliefs. If anything you should allow your beliefs to constantly be challenged so they can evolve along with your understanding of the world."
Also understand that legacy media should NOT be trusted... at all! It is an echo chamber of propaganda that creates an illusion of consensus. "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum..." Noam Chompsky
The best thing to do is talk to people, listen, ask questions, do research, read books on important topics. Don't be afraid to look into information that you are told is false or forbidden. Make up your own mind instead of being told what to think.
I don't want to sound like a partisan ideologue because I am not. But from my observations, I have seen the left go bat shit crazy over the past couple of decades.
I actually have liberal values. I believe in things like peace, love, open-mindedness, tolerance, human rights, fairness, justice, liberty and freedom, distrust of authority, and anti-aggression. But what passes for left or liberal these days is, to a great extent, antithetical to those values.
I was never a conservative. I never voted Republican until 2016 when Hillary was the Democratic nominee. And again in 2020, when Kamala was the Democratic appointee. The Democratic party is the opposite of my values. It is neoliberal and aligned with neoconservatives. It is in league with globalist organizations like the WEF and UN. It is the party of authoritarianism, war and oppression. Not that the Republican party is much better.
But Trump is different. I still don't trust him but he is doing some amazing things like appointing JFK jr and Tulsi Gabbard, both former Democrats.
From 2002 to 2016, I was surrounded by liberal Democrats. At that time, those were my people. But they started losing their minds in the 2010s. As a consequence, I started meeting other people, including many who identify as conservative. And I was surprised to find that many of them shared more of my values than did modern liberals and Democrats. Yet Democrats, began referring to conservatives as racist, white supremacist, misogynist, homophobic and you name it.
I have become very weary of liberal's attitudes. Just see how they have invaded GAG since the election with all their TDS inspired questions, snarky comments, MAGA this and MAGA that, with no acknowledgement of faults with Democratic politicians or policies. They don't seem to understand hypocrisy or irony. I don't understand why they think sanctimony and divisiveness helps anything.
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Anonymous
(45 Plus)
1 y
Hate is real. Some people are tired of it and others stir it. You get an antagonist in office and it amplifies.
It is so out of control. It's unreal. When they ran from our State office and they win, then go to Washington and that's when they become part of the good old boy system. They're going to do as they're told so that way they collect that $250000 every year. And then retirement benefits are just fantastic
Five hundred and seventy something Federal elected officials And then another 3000. Just politicians And not one of them dares to stand up to be great
When? I vote , I vote for a leader Somebody that's gonna Represent my state and myself and all the people that live here to their best abiwith. You not falling line and becoming follower
It's not about the people anymore. It's about democrat republican
And doing what you have to do for your party Not the people That they were elected to do so for.
But now with secret Societies special interest groups The rich businessman
That's the only people that they're representing because they're They are the ones that are giving money To be re elected
Politicians do not represent the people of their states any more. They represent. Special interest groups that have cash
You can be elected walking to office with a hundred dollars in the bank And I guarantee it by the end of your term. Your walking out of there was over a million dollars in the bank.
Have become pawns that's it They rally together To keep their donors happy
The donors supply republicans and democrats , both with money
But what it's all about is each party Watch to make the other party look bad so they get more money from these people
They are destroying our country and we are allowing it to happen
I would agree with you that you should be open to other thoughts and in much of the political discussion I have, I am more interested in the values people hold. Not that most people hold vastly different values but they do put different weightings on values.
I am all for humanitarian immigration into my country (Australia) and to give some poor bastards a chance of a better life but I am against self selecting queue jumping illegals and fully support interning them on Nauru when they despoil one of our beaches by stepping foot on it.
Another person might put more value on succoring unfortunates and less value on national sovereignty than I do though they agree we can't take everybody. Exactly the same values are in play but we just weight differently.
As a conservative I am more interested in what works well for society. The left seems more theoretic and thinks there can be a 101 genders. Their is a religiousosity to the Left that I will never accept. As soon as gay marriage was accepted they moved on to 101 gender theory.
I think the Left's evolving social theories is what is causing most of the divide. At the moment they are quite extreme.
A lot of it just comes down to our dumb political system. We have one of the worst-constructed republics in the world.
Our first past the post system with optional voting basically ensures extremism is the endpoint of our politics. The most extreme political voices are virtually always the most engaged, and have the highest turnout -- especially in the primaries. Which is what determines the national political configuration.
Since the extremists are the ones who vote in the primaries, you get some very weird voting dynamics. The general public votes in the general election, and they tend to want a more moderate candidate, as a rule. But the extremists try to vote in the most extreme candidate they can in the primaries, and often succeed. The Democrats won 2020 purely on the basis of ignoring the primary election and putting Joe Biden on the ballot. It wasn't that the general public loved Joe Biden; they were just craving who they perceived as the most moderate figure.
Of course, he ended up having some of the most atrociously pro-corporate, anti-human / "green" policies in history. And then the dude had the gall to talk about how we were subjecting ourselves to out of touch billionaires on his way out... lol
But yeah, overall? It is pretty ridiculous, but it's there for a reason -- less because the general population has become more polarized or extreme (although they have), and more because the populations in the extreme have become somewhat larger, large enough to tip the primaries.
Most people are stupid and have a heard mentality. It's instinctive for humans to have that heard mentality. Banding together and working as a group or tribe is what allowed our species to survive for the past million years. Survive the ice age, prehistoric large animal attacks, and attacks from other groups or tribes. You're not going to change their minds, you can't fix stupid. Don't subscribe to their bullshit or let it affect you, let it roll off you like water on a duck. Just keep doing your own thing and keep thinking for yourself.
I see a lot of people on the right actually doing research, presenting evidence, discussing evidence collectively to get multiple opinions and analyzing it with critical thinking skills, openly criticizing one another when things don't check out, applying the 72 hour rule on many topics before speaking about topics publicly because it takes time to gather evidence and do diagnostics to determine what is really real. In contrast I see the left spew propaganda mindlessly that they are spoon feed by mass media and ignore all evidence due to their lack of mental faculty. The divide between right and left really just boils down to intelligence and lack thereof.
Yeah, maybe.. It's just another form of insane tribalism.. But while there is a divide, it's definitely not equal.. The left attacks and demonized the right at every chance they get.. While there are popular figures on the right, and it's become a sort of popular "counter culture", the left has dominance over the media and the overall culture.. Much of the reason for the divide is because the left leaning media has vilified the right so much that it's created animosity and extremist on both sides.. The right is basically a more of a responder at this point.. Not that they're completely innocent though.
Let’s put it this way. Joe Rohan. Elon Musk. RFK Jr. All are more conservative or centrist/independent now.
With the most famous quote among them being “I didn’t leave my party, my party left me.”
They were all previously Leftist, as you’d like to put it. The left just keeps going so insane with their policies and beliefs that it led to a red wave that took the Congress, the senate, electoral, and popular votes.
The left is the most divisive even amongst their own.
When certain big time celebrities all moved to blue sky. They ended up checking themselves into mental institutions because of the harassment they received by making the transfer over from X. The left eat their own. They represent the unhinged minority at this point.
If they even eat their own like that, how could you ever expect any proper “working together” between their direct opposition and them?
The whole system of being right or left is purposely being set up to make everyone go in a certain direction.
If you have always been a right minded person and for some reason you aren't seeing eye to eye with right any longer, you will automatically join the left side because those are the only 2 options you got.
Its a very clever but at the same time a terrible system mainly because is creates dividence among right minded people and left minded people which prevents people from coming together as 1 big united population.
The elites are calling it the "divide and conquer" strategy which they use to control the population and keeping us imprisoned under their power
Our FATALLY FLAWED constitution is responsible. There are many many more systems of government and methods of voting that don't produce extremism like ours does. Parliamentary democracies are vastly superior to the fucked up mess that we have. Multivote & ranked choice systems are SO MUCH BETTER. Nonpartisan electoral commissions and public campaign finance are needed too. We can fix it we just don't have the will and certain groups in our society view the Constitution like it was handed down from God when it's actually a suicide pact.
The divide is stupid, we should come together on common ground & common interest. We are American, just by being American there should be no fighting between each other.
It is uncalled for and letting personal grievance get in the way is absurd. I don’t want to hear “they do ____” or “they do____”. Cut the bullshit, compromise & come together on the basis of American.
I'd say it's the divide between the uneducated/uninformed and the educated/media literate people. I mean, you have to be a fucking idiot to believe that schools run operating rooms with doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists to perform covert sex-change operations on minors!
Yes the divide is crazy. It's gotten to the point where there's fake news on both sides and we're demonizing each other thinking everyone is crazy radical left or right when really the majority of us would be somewhere around the middle if we just talked to each other respectfully.
We have always been The Divided States Of America. The Civil War never really ended. Why is anyone surprised we are back at the same crossroad again?
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Anonymous
(30-35)
1 y
You're absol6 right. Which is why each of them should stop trying to force their views into law and force the other side to comply. We can talk and try to persuade each other, but most of these laws should not be federal. Leave it up to the states to mKr local laws.
The real divide is probably not as bad generally as the media makes it out to be. A lot of people may be left or right leaning, but are actually more in the middle.
Yeah we need to ban democrats. After all, it was the democrats who wanted slavery to continue and the democrats who are 70% atheist who want to take away everyone else's rights to obey God.
It has been for a while and definitely getting worse. It’s lack of respect. It’s no longer about preference, it’s about enemies, hate and perceived good and evil
The problem with the political divide in the US is because the government is too big. The bigger government gets the more important politics are; because it effects more of your personal life.
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