So all of these answers have some truth to them, but they are also missing a key factor. The heritage foundation exists because they are paid tons of money by billionaires to sit around and come up with ways to strengthen their dominance over society. The left simply doesn’t have many supporters with that level of wealth. While it’s possible to do this on a voluntary basis it’s a lot harder than getting paid to do it.
I am firmly convinced that left and right now longer actually exist. Instead we have a cyclops of oppression.
You’re not wrong.
The only time we see Democrats pretend to be leftist is when they have no meaningful power to enact change. They’re conservatives in sheep’s clothing.
I get why people downvoted this, but you’re not entirely incorrect. The two “sides” do exist, they just both happen to be on the same side and aren’t entirely opposites like “left” and “right” would imply.
Until we see a socioeconomic party platform that wants similar reforms to what is seen in the Nordics presently when it comes to policy, there’s no true “left” party in the US, IMO
I want you to imagine an indestructible box filled with all the world’s comforts. How do you craft it? How do you procure the materials to craft it? How do you search for the means to find the materials to craft it? Hard questions without a simple solution.
Now I want you to picture a decently sturdy box filled with some neat stuff. And now I want you to picture yourself bashing it to pieces. Pretty doable, right?
It’s easy to break something of value, it’s near impossible to craft the invincible. Especially when half of your team is actively bashing.
I agree with you that a large part of the problem is that destruction is easier than creation, but it wouldn’t be hard to get a lot of progressive things in if there were the political will for it. Appoint tons of progressive judges and start putting through huge increases in wealth taxes, climate and social programs, workers/union rights, scale back police power, etc etc.
But even if there were hundreds of leftist judges waiting in the wings, the dems are too corporatist to support stuff like that, so the best they can offer is some social programs that won’t upset the status quo too much.
Pretty much. If you want tangible change, locate your closest billionaire and eat them. If you just want a taste of the decent box, come to Europe.
Project 2025 is a report from a far right think tank, the Heritage Foundation that MAGA aligned groups are all pushing into the news cycle.
There are plenty of centrist, progressive, and/or left wing (the 3 camps that make up democrats) think tanks but those are producing 3 fairly different paths/goals - compared to HF’s singular message of “lets make a white christian nationalist state.”
So it’s easier to for them to build a critical mass of polling (1 high profile UltraCon idea vs 3 different voices out of the Democratic party). The media ultimately magnifies apparent support because extremism drives ratings/clicks and they’re all dependent on popularity to make money (or keep what funding they have in the case of NPR/PBS).
Edited for clarity.
I would really appreciate it if you found the time to edit this post and expand a bit more on your general thesis here.
I couldn’t really think of much to add, but I reworded it so the points aren’t so jumbled together.
Cause lefties can never agree on anything.
Because the lefties are essentially a loose coalition of every marginally sane political view that remains, containing the actual fiscal conservatives, the center, the progressives and the far left all in a single party.
💯 they’re not outnumbered, they’re less organized.
In a system rigged to support one party over another.
Fuck you, yes we can
Because when the right is in power they fall in line, and when the left is in power the fall in love.
Explanation, each left leaning congress critter and senate sloth has something they want to champion, something they usually got elected to do or fix… And they are wildly inconsistent within the party on how to do that. With the right being obstructionist cockwombles most of the time it then appear from the outside that left is incapable of getting things done.
That would be the President’s plan.
Biden has given policy points, but he is largely limited as, at best, he is expected to have a tie in the Senate.
We are also seeing this get written by others since the first Trump term saw a vacuum in policy and this is an attempt to get people on board beforehand so Trump’s second term is more effective when he goes all dictator.
This is the best answer IMO. There’s no counter because Project 2025 is one part party platform (which the Democratic Party will vote on its own at the convention), and one part formula to remake the executive branch to prop up the president as a dictator. Technically, the counter to the second part would be the Constitution, existing (read: not yet gutted by the current SCOTUS) legal precedent, and existing federal law.
Such “equally opposing forces” are purely media creations - there are no such things in actual politics. For instance, there is no such thing as a “far left” - it was purely created by liberal media to be a neat (but entirely fictional) “equally opposing force” for their shitty “both-side-ism” narratives.
Oh, there is definitely a far left. They’re just not doing the same kinds of things that the far right are doing, and they’re smaller by an order of magnitude.
By American standards, the Stop Cop City people are a ‘far left’ group; they’ve used violence (property damage, arson) in order to bring attention to their cause, and to try and prevent an injustice. OTOH, unlike the state’s actions against the far right, which is mostly just shrugging their collective shoulders, action against Stop Cop City has been pretty brutal.
By American standards, the Stop Cop City people are a ‘far left’ group;
That’s not “far left.” That’s just plain old bog-standard left - whether in the US or anywhere else.
action against Stop Cop City has been pretty brutal.
Again… just common-or-garden variety treatment the left has always received from the forces of the status quo - nothing “far left” about it.
There’s no such thing as a “far left” - and it’s critical that we push back on these kinds of propagandistic framing devices liberals love to use to demonize the left and provide cover for the right. I don’t think leftists realize how powerful and dangerous this basic type of propaganda can be.
That’s why I qualified it as far-left by American standards.
We’ve had far-left in the past, but student terrorist movements were largely left behind in the 70s.
but student terrorist movements were largely left behind in the 70s
The left has never left the use of force in the past - it is as available to us today, and as thoroughly justified, as it was in the 70’s… 1570s, 1870s or 2070s.
The willingness to use force doesn’t distinguish between a left and a (supposed) “far left” - the left is not a mirror of the right, and there is no leftist equivalent to a far right (which is purely distinguished by it’s proximity to, willingness to control and/or operate the state machinery of violence).
It’s not about spots on a silly “political compass” infographic and never has been.
What? There is no liberal media.
It’s all liberal media, Clyde.
Liberalism is the status quo… that’s the media you’ve been watching all this time, and that includes all the (so-called) “conservative” media, too.
People disturbed by things like project 2025 should become more active at local or community level politics, even to help with volunteering in small ways. You are your community and vice versa, we all have a collective responsibility of sorts.
Interestingly, many local positions are often staffed by incumbents or people who run unopposed.
That opposing force is the sheer amount of desperation people are putting into chasing voters to the polls
There isn’t an opposite manifesto because the opposition to Project 2025 is a big tent coalition of several groups that in a proper democratic system would be entirely different parties.
It’s a beast with 20 heads that all have to agree to make any significant movement in any given direction, and so all that this monster can agree to do right now is to keep keeping the other guy out and hope a resolution comes in the process.
Only sometimes one of the heads decides to be a privileged little twat and not even agree to that, and then gaslight everyone else about how they all made the twat decide to let the worse guy win.
Anyways the point is someone would have to beat down the egos of a lot of big names to unite the democratic coalition enough to put out a counterproposal to Project 2025.
You probably could do it too with enough being the biggest most confrontational douche ever seen in the DNC to literally everyone until you’ve successfully bowled everyone else over and browbeaten them into line, but congratulations now the only thing they’re more united about than The Project for All is how much they all hate you and want to ruin you so they can all go back to being the petty lords of their sub-partisan fiefdoms.
Problem is that this project is by an extremist group. It’s easy to agree on things if you think everything is on the table.
Second part is that the Republican party tends to focus on making sure that people are not educated about what any of the things they talk about mean for the people in the party. Instead they focus on creating the idea that they are under attack by some phantom enemies, going so far as using totally insane conspiracy theories and such and focus on how their policies will hurt those enemies that are the cause of all their current problems. And once people think they’re being attacked, they’ll give up anything to retaliate.
Then looking at the Democrats, you have a party for right-wing moderates. This party has very little appeal to anyone since most of the right-wing people in the country are enamoured by the extremists. So they don’t really have anything they can do that would appease their target audience all that much. I mean moderate conservatives basically want everything to stay exactly the same.
And the left wing half of the country basically has no party creating policy for them at all, and due to the electoral college and various other systems in place, there’s no room for more than two parties, and it’s extremely rare for a party to disband so that another can do much of anything.
Oh there’s an opposing force alright. It’s not quite legal, there’s a lot of blood involved, and currently is not justified. However, if it ever starts happening I think we will see it happen at some point.
I know there are some “liberal gun owners” out there… But I don’t think they’re in for a good time.
…whelp, it might be justified now.
Hitler underestimated his enemies too.
Leftists are famous for infighting and disunity.
There’s also no leftists in power anywhere in the US. Democrats are centre-right and are happy with the status quo and only paying lip service to the things their base cares about.
It’s time for a new amendment. It’s the only way things will actually change.
And what would this amendment say?
“The government shall not be shitty anymore.”
There, you’re welcome everyone!
Like, diametrically opposite?
Because there’s no money in it and no money behind it. Never will be either. Unfortunately.
Because it is the misdirection for Agenda 21.
Left and right both work towards the same direction. One takes in one way while the other takes from another, like lumberjacks on a two-man saw taking down a redwood.
