• njm1314@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    They only say that because they’ve been trained to by conservative media. Just because education is bad doesn’t mean reality is different.

      • Nate Cox@programming.dev
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        3 months ago

        Yep, many people complaining about semantics here don’t realize that when the US calls something “the left” they aren’t referring to “leftism”, they are referring to a metaphorical graduated chart where democrats are on the left hand and republicans are on the right.

        “The left” on this chart is anyone leaning towards the Democratic Party, where “the right” is anyone leaning towards the Republican Party.

        It’s frustrating that we let this become a dividing topic, because it is pedantic at best.

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          And what’s annoying is conservatives certainly bicker, but are generally very unified.

          True leftists seem so hellbent on distancing themselves from “liberals”. All they are doing is sowing division, in what conservatives consider a binary landscape.

          • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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            3 months ago

            Close; true leftists are hellbent on disillusioning liberals of the notion that they’re contributing anything by simply voting every 4 years for the democrat du jour.

            The political goals of leftists involve a lot more than simply defeating republican opponents, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the majority of casual democrats. What’s more; leftists have an understanding that reactionary political movements don’t simply go away when you vote them out; they are created by real material conditions that need to be addressed, else they will return the next cycle having gained more momentum.

            Liberals are either comatose leftists who are dragging progress to a halt, or reactionaries in denial who would rather a reactionary movement take over than see the hierarchical structure of their country change, even marginally.

                • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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                  3 months ago

                  And there aren’t differences between factions of the conservative end of the spectrum?

                  This is my exact point: the whole left-scented side of the spectrum eats their own. The right doesn’t.

                  • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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                    3 months ago
                    • RHINOs
                    • NeverTrumpers
                    • Libertarians
                    • NeoCons
                    • MAGA Republicans

                    Yea, sure, the right certainly does not do any infighting. They are a unified monolith with no divisions.

                    Edit: liberals and leftsts are allies in the same way the Soviets were aligned with West against the Nazis. As soon as the fascists were defeated the West turned on the Soviets to wipe them out. This ‘but we’re friends’ attitude is just willfully blind to the reality that liberals are hostile to leftists, just not while they actively need them to help resist fascists.

          • seahorse [Ohio]@midwest.socialOPM
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            3 months ago

            We’re distancing ourselves from libs because we don’t want the same things for the most part. Besides getting trump out of the picture we’re rather different.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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          3 months ago

          People will casually remark “that’s just they way they’re using the word, no point in arguing” and then never stop to ask why and to what end.

          The reason US politics operates along that dimension is explicitly because of the way their electoral politics work. It’s not simply a matter of it being the common usage, it’s also a core part of what capital L leftists are critiquing when they say ‘liberals are not left wing’. Democrats are dealing in exactly the ideological framework that is the target of leftist opposition, it isn’t sufficient to lump everyone on the democratic side into a single category.