In my opinion, paradoxically republicans and their base aren’t so much against helping people, they just don’t want anyone to get anything.
It’s like playing with a three year old. They want you to play toy cars with them perhaps, but if you select a car they often get jealous and want to take it from you. Or maybe they get mad about how you play with a car, and tell you that that’s not how that one works. Even though there a plenty of toy cars and how I play with them has no effect on how they play with theirs. That can’t stand to forfeit any control.
Republicans see someone getting something and they get jealous and angry. No fair! Why should poor people get free stuff! It’s not that they relish people being deprived of things (perhaps naive of me to believe), it’s that like a child at a birthday party, they can’t handle watching someone get a gift when they “don’t”.
Long story short, republicans are poorly socialized and behave like toddlers. They’re bad at sharing even when it has no impact on their own personal well-being.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
That is the 14th amendment, it clearly states that if any officer of the United States [which can be civil or military] engages in insurrection, they cannot be elected for President.
So exactly how in the actual fuck is the "Chief Executive Officer of the Executive Branch of the United States" not an officer of the United States??
“We understand this is a hard one to swallow, but the Mossad handlers AIPAC lobbyists told us that the Palestinians all spontaneously killed themselves after blowing up their homes. On the one hand, that’s obviously bullshit. But on the other, they give us SO MUCH MONEY.”
Progressives are against it as can quite clearly be seen by the responses from Bernie Sanders, AOC, and other progressive (liberal) politicians.
Centrists and Conservatives seem to be placing a lot of emphasis on the it’s a complex issues and if you question Israel than you must be racist against Israelis.
The whole thing is frustrating, and we need to do better than blanket labeling “liberals bad” here because it reads really wrong…
Schumer also called for Netanyahu’s resignation two months ago.
When all but three House Republicans introduced a bill to sidestep Biden’s pause on arms, 16 out of 213 House Democrats offered support. That’s hardly support of liberals.
Reps. Matt Cartwright (Pa.), Angie Craig (Minn.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (N.C.), Lois Frankel (Fla.), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (N.J.), Greg Landsman (Ohio), Jared Moskowitz (Fla.), Frank Pallone (N.J.), Mary Peltola (Alaska), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), David Scott (Ga.), Darren Soto (Fla.), Tom Suozzi (N.Y.) and Ritchie Torres (N.Y.
Make note of their names and vote them out regardless, but stop with this party division nonsense and recognize that there’s an entire party that wants to see Gaza and Rafah nuked and paved.
Liberals are not inherently progressive or leftist in the least. They are rightist-enablers who value their means over the inevitable ends. At “best” they are “enlightened centrists” who are willfully ignorant about the consequences of their actions, and at worst zealously dogmatic about their sacred middle-of-the-road fallacy.
These are not merely politicians… they are regular people who have been trained to turn a blind eye to hoarding, power consolidation, and overt abuse of others. That is liberalism.
Liberal is opposite conservative in defining economic policy legislation in political ideology. Libertarian is opposite authoritarian in defining social legislation. The middle is considered centrist.
There are absolutely Democrats in Congress that fall into the category of centrist. Referring to them as liberals is simply inaccurate. Once seated, politicians no longer get to define their own political ideology. It’s determined by their legislation and voting record.
Your second paragraph is correct, but the first one is just regurgitated right-wing propaganda, spread as a weak attempt to shift the Overton window rightward☹️
That’s how I was taught to identify political ideology in Poli-Sci class. The right wing is on the line between conservative and authoritarian, where the left wing is on the line between liberal and libertarian. Libertarians (capital L) are on the line between libertarian and conservative.
Regardless of how you define it, it’s important to designate the difference between social and economic political ideologies. They are completely independent, which is why the further left/further right linear description of both is inaccurate and lacking definition.
Could you explain how the Nolan chart is partial to the right wing?
The whole “social/economic” axis is a gross oversimplification, though; and it muddies the relatively simple (and historical) distinction between right/left political ideology, which stretches back to the French Revolution.
Fundamentally, rightism is about consolidating authority (which is composed of wealth and power).
Leftism is about ensuring the authority (wealth & power) remains evenly distributed.
Between the two (and at the extremes) is a complex web of ideologies. Liberalism focuses on allowances… so while it seems leftist at first glance, the outcome is that consolidation is allowed, encouraged, and even celebrated. Those are rightist traits and result in society shifting rightward.
There is no separation of social and economic policy in this paradigm, because they are tangled in complex, inextricable ways. For example, repression of civil liberties is a tool employed by those seeking to amass and consolidate power. Likewise, economics can (and will) also be manipulated by power-seekers in order to amass wealth and power… this manifests as a flip-flopping of policy in which their abuses must be allowed as “rights” as long as it benefits them, but those same “rights” must not be tolerated for any competition.
This is why liberalism falls into the center of the spectrum; it tolerates - even applauds - such abuses. Abuse is a feature of liberalism. Note how economic anarchism (i.e. anarcho-capitalism) leads swiftly to huge amounts of consolidated wealth (and therefore power) and so shifts all policy rightward, snowballing the entire time as it shifts.
Social policy does not behave in the same manner. A hands-off social policy does not result in consolidation of wealth or power. In fact, it has the opposite effect, so long as someones “freedom to” does not infringe on another’s “freedom from” (or vice-versa). This is sometimes colloquially called “the golden rule of liberty”. Shifting that balance is, as I said, a tool of rightists used to consolidate power.
All of that phone-tapped rambling is to say: means and ends are very different things and these two-axis charts, even if they were not originally intended to deceive, are now used almost exclusively for that purpose. They deliberately conflate the means and ends to make the consolidating actions of rightists appear less insidious than they actually are… to provide an illusion of freedom of opportunity in a system that has already been captured.
The majority of what you wrote aligns in agreement with my previous comment. There is a difference in Liberals and liberal economic legislation just as there is a difference between Libertarians and libertarian social freedom.
The right wing is the southeast line, promoting economic conservatism along with increased social legislation.
The left wing is the northwest line, promoting liberal economic support while protecting social liberty.
A Progressive would be placed furthest out on the northeast line, a Centrist in the center, and a Liberal between those two points.
We’re in agreement about what the left and right wings support. I still fail to see how what we have both described is not accurately represented on a two-axis chart.
Conflating harmful actions with lack of intelligence does everyone a disservice. To suggest that “stupidity” that is what makes people act badly undermines any real accountability. The causes of problematic behavior rarely have anything to do with mental acuity, and we can’t properly address harmful behavior while being so reductive about its causes. Carelessness, bias, hatred, greed, closed-mindedness, indifference – these are the traits that lead to oppression. Our intelligence is not the issue so much as our sense of compassion and justice.
A person can be unintelligent and still know right from wrong. There are people with cognitive disabilities who I respect a thousand times more than those who are supposedly more abled. They have stronger principles, seek to better themselves, and are committed to being good people. They are just capable of being sensitive and caring as everyone else. To imply that they aren’t is outrageous.
I wouldn’t say that capitalists do no work at all, that’s just a way to exploit people in the middle class to say the people on the lower class think they do no work and they are lazy.
It perfectly fits the metaphor because while the person on the right will tell a story about how when they started all they had was trees and a vision, it’s clear to see they were able to have that vision because of the tools that were handed down to them from the people before, that they selfishly hand removed from the equation not remembering they needed at least a scrap of iron and some fibers to make the vision seem reasonable.
The cartoon did not show that. He’s lying saying he did. He found the bridge therefore it’s his and the “you made this? I made this!” meme kicks in and here we are.
Come on now, you know the left panels would have said something about tax breaks for "job creators." You only wish they fumbled on their absurd message.
I absolutely despise the turtle-man, but I don’t like making fun of obvious medical conditions. This piece of shit has done awful things to our country, but I don’t wish him poor health.
Feinstein as well… I can’t stand her and pity her for remaining in office as an obviously ailing 90 year old kept in place to maintain a false bulwark.
At least Feinstein stood for righteous causes at one point. McConnell has done more harm to this country than just about any other single person in the past few decades.
Nah. She cargo-culted that when she was running for office, much like hillary and all the other democratic politicians from that era. None of them were on the right side of history at the time. They ret-conned it so that gullible fools would say vacuous statements like “At least they stood for righteous causes.”
They should both step down. They are not serving their constituents like this, yet they cling on for their own benefit. Now we need to scrape them off the hill like barnacles off a boat.
I consider myself a secular humanist. I believe in equality for everyone even if they don’t believe in that for me. I am not without nuance and get pissed off, I call out people’s bullshit, but I stand for a basic minimum: do no harm.
You know what, you’re right. While we’re at it, I think people who criticise Hitler are too quick to forget that he died by suicide! He was going through a lot! Where is people’s humanity? /s in case it wasn’t painstakingly clear.
This may make me a bad person, but here we go: I don’t give a fuck if he is sick. I honestly hope he suffers. He deserves it. That horrible piece of shit has ruined the lives of millions of people, and is continuing to do so today. The America’s (and therefor the world) would be better off if he was dead.
I absolutely despise the turtle-man, but I don’t like making fun of obvious medical conditions.
No one’s making fun of the medical condition, they’re making fun of the evil sack of shit with the medical condition, because he’s an evil sack of shit, not because he has a medical condition.
This piece of shit has done awful things to our country, but I don’t wish him poor health.
Why not? The longer he lives, the longer he does evil. Ideally, we’d have a functional system that blocks evil sacks of shit from coming into power; or at the very least, upon the revelation that someone in power who turns out to be an evil sack of shit, a functional system that removes them from power. That’s not the reality we live in though, so the least extreme flicker of hope we have is that evil sacks of shit die spontaneously via stroke or heart attack or meteor strike or asphyxiation after falling head first into the tank of an outhouse… wishing poor health on evil sacks of shit should be encouraged.
Feinstein as well… I can’t stand her and pity her for remaining in office as an obviously ailing 90 year old kept in place to maintain a false bulwark.
Less evil so much as she’s simply a tool for actual evil; but tbh, kinda same as above, maybe barring the outhouse bit. She needs to be removed, and longer she refuses the more she solidifies her legacy as being a tool for evil. Whether or not she has the mental capacity to be aware of that is moot; ideally our system would remove someone in that condition to make space for someone who’s actually capable of doing their job… but we don’t live in that ideal, so again we’re left just waiting for a stroke or something.
It’s shitty. It’s fucked up. It feels dirty. But I refuse to give an ounce of sympathy to evil people or their pawns just because they’re sick, or old, or senile, or distraught over the death of their pet hamster-- none of that shit matters. What matters is that they’re evil or enabling evil; and that they’re in power. Which is a fucking problem.
I honestly don’t know much about her beyond her current drama; but the point I was making was that even if she was the most benevolent and impactful leader to ever grace this planet with her literally flawless policies: it doesn’t matter. The second she can’t do her job, she needs to get the fuck out.
The condition he is suffering from obviously makes him completely unfit not only for office but for any job. As long as he insists on clinging on to power, it is perfectly fine to ridicule him for his condition.
He could retire and get treated and noone would care one bit about his disease, but he himself insists on stepping into the spotlight while suffering from it, all on account of his insatiable lust for hurting others and the feeling of power which that provides him.
Fuck him and go whatever disease it is that he is suffering from.
Agreed. I’m not happy to see him short circuit. I’m pissed that he is doing this and still not stepping down. Feinstein too. But I think she’s too far gone to even understand anything about the world around her, plus she didn’t dedicate the past 20 years to subverting democracy to consolidate power like Moscow Mitch did. I think he understands where he is and what he would be giving up by stepping down, and he’s too selfish to do the right thing for the good of the country he supposedly serves.
Mitch should retire so he can spend whatever remaining time he has left fucking himself with the same enthusiasm with which he sweatily fucked America.
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