Political spectrum, Trumpism, and ideological semantics (Split from Covid-19 miscellany)

[Hermit]

Sanders proposed a 100% tax bracket.

Google says: "No results found for Sanders proposed a "100% tax bracket"

That is odd I googled it to. It took me less than 30 seconds to find one case:

Bernie Sanders on Tax Reform

Thanks for the link. I stand corrected.

What Bomb#20 forgot to mention is that the 100% tax proposal on income over 1 million was made almost half a century ago. Sanders is not exempt from the rightward movement of the Overton Window in the past five decades. And move to the right he did. At the time Sanders proposed the 100% tax rate he was chairman of the avowedly socialist Liberty Union Party. In 1977 he left it. The LUP has since dedicated a page on its web site denouncing him as a hypocrite who has sold out the working class and adopted a whole bunch of right wing policies. The Bernie Sanders who proposed a 100% tax bracket in 1974 is not the Bernie Sanders who appeared in the graphic of the lopsided US political spectrum in 2016.

 

[Swammerdami]

. . .
Yeah, right. No Trump supporters in Australia.
. . .

Sydney

That isn't what I said. The rest of the world is not as obsessed with Trump as you are personally.

I regard myself more concerned about Trumpism than obsessed with the man named Trump.

"Not every person in the world is American, Elixir." amounts to saying there are no Trump supporters outside the US, Metaphor. Your reply is quite ironic, because Elixir neither said nor implied that every person in the world is American. You see, there are plenty of right wingers outside the US who think the 2020 election was stolen because the Mango Menace said so.

Trumpism has started off in the US, but has become a global phenomenon just like Nazism was originally an exclusively German movement (you know, it being an abbreviation of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), but nowadays the label is rightfully applied to thousands of people who have never as much as set foot in that country or even just speak its language.

Anecdotally, it sure seems like Anglophilic countries follow American excesses like bad diet ("The countries in the world with the highest obesity rates are (in order) USA, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland" 6 out of 7 are English-speaking nations), hyper-capitalism, racism and now Trumpism.

Is this true? How popular is Trump in Continental (ex-Russia !) Europe?

 

[Metaphor]

I had a conversation with a colleague in the UK a few years ago. He described himself as very conservative. He said he aligned a little to the left of US Democrats. He commented that among the world's industrialized democracies, the US is seen a far right.

It appears to me that if you think the United States is 'far right', you have lost all sense of perspective.

 

[Metaphor]

AOC is left of U.S. partisan political folks. But the USA is hugely off center of global political views.

Really? How far 'to the right' of the 'global' centre is the US? How have you weighted South America, and Africa, and Europe, and Asia?

What kinds of policies do you think mark the 'far left', the centre and the 'far right'?

FYI, half the elected GOP in the House of Reps are fascists that tried to overthrow our election. America was one person, VP Pence, away from having the election successfully contested and stolen by the GOP. I know this seems so long ago that you can't remember it, but the Republican party has become polarized in its own right, between the partisans and the hyper fascist partisans. The GOP is barely even a political party that has actual political positions.

So, you quoted my post but answered exactly nothing. How far 'to the right' of the 'global' centre is the US? How have you weighted South America, and Africa, and Europe, and Asia?

What kinds of policies do you think mark the 'far left', the centre and the 'far right'?

 

[Hermit]

Anecdotally, it sure seems like Anglophilic countries follow American excesses like bad diet ("The countries in the world with the highest obesity rates are (in order) USA, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland" 6 out of 7 are English-speaking nations), hyper-capitalism, racism and now Trumpism.

Is this true? How popular is Trump in Continental (ex-Russia !) Europe?

Since the end of WWII the US has become increasingly influential in all aspects of the social fabric of many other countries. It is therefore not surprising that their lunatic fringes on the right will take some leaves out of the playbook of the lunatic fringes in the US. I am not sure how the size of the lunatic fringes elsewhere compare to that of the US (on a pro rata basis), but in Australia it is noticeably smaller.

Looking at the more mainstream political picture, approximately 40% of the US electorate would still vote for Trump right now. I doubt he'd attract more than 5 to 15% (depending on which Anglophile country we're looking at) anywhere else. So, from that angle he is nowhere near as popular outside the US.

 

[Toni]

I had a conversation with a colleague in the UK a few years ago. He described himself as very conservative. He said he aligned a little to the left of US Democrats. He commented that among the world's industrialized democracies, the US is seen a far right.

It appears to me that if you think the United States is 'far right', you have lost all sense of perspective.

If your perspective is the right wing of Australia, sure.

 

[Toni]

Anecdotally, it sure seems like Anglophilic countries follow American excesses like bad diet ("The countries in the world with the highest obesity rates are (in order) USA, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland" 6 out of 7 are English-speaking nations), hyper-capitalism, racism and now Trumpism.

Is this true? How popular is Trump in Continental (ex-Russia !) Europe?

Since the end of WWII the US has become increasingly influential in all aspects of the social fabric of many other countries. It is therefore not surprising that their lunatic fringes on the right will take some leaves out of the playbook of the lunatic fringes in the US. I am not sure how the size of the lunatic fringes elsewhere compare to that of the US (on a pro rata basis), but in Australia it is noticeably smaller.

Looking at the more mainstream political picture, approximately 40% of the US electorate would still vote for Trump right now. I doubt he'd attract more than 5 to 15% (depending on which Anglophile country we're looking at) anywhere else. So, from that angle he is nowhere near as popular outside the US.

I'm not so certain that the US is home of right wing fringe movements/individuals. I think that probably all nations, all parts of the world have some such. In the US, it was mostly squelched down during the latter part of the 60's, with beginnings earlier in the 50's and earlier than that in WW II which saw integrated armed services fighting together. The military, ironically, is a great equalizer. So is war.

The latest round of right wing political views/right wing authoritarianism has been fanned into new life by the likes of Rupert Murdoch, an Australian import. Of course, he would never have succeeded if there weren't those of his ilk who were waiting to see and hear their world views reflected back to them and amplified. After all, in my lifetime, there were segregated lunch counters and movie theaters and it was very unusual to see a mixed race couple in public, or a gay couple, either.

Let us not forget that Nazis arose in Europe and there was a rather big war fought over it. Even in the Allied nations, there were those sympathetic to the Nazi cause and remain so. There are cowards and idiots everywhere you look. There is racism in every nation, with some being decidedly worse than others. The same with sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

 

[Hermit]

Anecdotally, it sure seems like Anglophilic countries follow American excesses like bad diet ("The countries in the world with the highest obesity rates are (in order) USA, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland" 6 out of 7 are English-speaking nations), hyper-capitalism, racism and now Trumpism.

Is this true? How popular is Trump in Continental (ex-Russia !) Europe?

Since the end of WWII the US has become increasingly influential in all aspects of the social fabric of many other countries. It is therefore not surprising that their lunatic fringes on the right will take some leaves out of the playbook of the lunatic fringes in the US. I am not sure how the size of the lunatic fringes elsewhere compare to that of the US (on a pro rata basis), but in Australia it is noticeably smaller.

Looking at the more mainstream political picture, approximately 40% of the US electorate would still vote for Trump right now. I doubt he'd attract more than 5 to 15% (depending on which Anglophile country we're looking at) anywhere else. So, from that angle he is nowhere near as popular outside the US.

I'm not so certain that the US is home of right wing fringe movements/individuals.

Just as well I said nothing of the sort, then.

 

[TomC]

I had a conversation with a colleague in the UK a few years ago. He described himself as very conservative. He said he aligned a little to the left of US Democrats. He commented that among the world's industrialized democracies, the US is seen a far right.

It appears to me that if you think the United States is 'far right', you have lost all sense of perspective.

It appears to me that you believe you understand the USA and our political landscape. I don't think you do.

I realize that U.S. media has a way of dominating the global situation. That makes people who don't really know what's going on think that they understand the USA better than they really do.
Tom

 

[Swammerdami]

I realize that there are racists, and fools ripe for being bamboozled in every country. And I realize that no developed country surpasses present-day America in gullibility for right-wing politics.

My question is: WHY are some of these bad traits particularly severe in English-speaking countries?

One possible explanation is isolation. France and Germany are in close proximity to each other, and to Slavs, Italians, Dutch and Spaniards. Diversity breeds a broader world-view. Australia and the U.K., on the other hand, are surrounded by water; Canada is adjacent to no country but another English-speaking country,

Much of the right-wings' hatred is directed against immigrants. 15% of France's population is of non-European ancestry, and the far-right candidate got 34% in the last Presidential election. Will the right-wings in Continental countries grow in strength as demographics shift?

Genetics may play a role, but that would require, at best, another thread.

Or perhaps the shared language makes countries more susceptible to English-speaking liars like Trump or Murdoch.

What is the reason? Is this alleged connection even valid?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I realize that there are racists, and fools ripe for being bamboozled in every country. And I realize that no developed country surpasses present-day America in gullibility for right-wing politics.

My question is: WHY are some of these bad traits particularly severe in English-speaking countries?

I'd say it is much more is Eastern Europe. Putin et al, have been helping normalize it in Western Europe, US, Canada through social media. Origin wise, there are certainly domestic sources, and the Internet has helped to coddle these groups of people into thinking they are right. Add social media (and Putin trying to lower the tide to elevate Russia) and it has added gasoline to the fire.

 

[Hermit]

I realize that there are racists, and fools ripe for being bamboozled in every country. And I realize that no developed country surpasses present-day America in gullibility for right-wing politics.

My question is: WHY are some of these bad traits particularly severe in English-speaking countries?

They are not.

 

[Toni]

Doesn’t that depend on what you mean by broader world view? I’m thinking, of course, of the rise to power of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.

I’m all for diversity and a firm believer in the checks and balances built into the US Constitution. I’m also aware that, in the US and I strongly suspect in Europe, many immigrants are much more socially conservative. I am struck, over and over again at how that plays out in US politics. Conservatives decry advancement and immigration of those who are not white ( but not nearly so much as those who are descended from enslaved people in the US), are less comfortable with the LGBTQ community, tend to decry reliance on welfare and other forms of government assistance. Test, in many ways, immigrants are philosophically closer to the conservative world view. In the US, Democrats are much more welcoming to those of diverse backgrounds, racially, religiously, culturally, ethnically. They tend to be the party that pushes for inclusion and tolerance and if civil rights for all people—-and are also much more welcoming to immigrants.

 

[Bomb#20]

Anecdotally, it sure seems like Anglophilic countries follow American excesses like bad diet ...

...
Looking at the more mainstream political picture, approximately 40% of the US electorate would still vote for Trump right now. I doubt he'd attract more than 5 to 15% (depending on which Anglophile country we're looking at) anywhere else. So, from that angle he is nowhere near as popular outside the US.

Well, since the thread topic seems to be whom should be accused of being some sort of quasi-Nazi, it must be pointed out that an Anglophile country is a country whose people admire the English. A country whose people speak English is an Anglophone country. [/wordnazi]

 

[Hermit]

Anecdotally, it sure seems like Anglophilic countries follow American excesses like bad diet ...

...
Looking at the more mainstream political picture, approximately 40% of the US electorate would still vote for Trump right now. I doubt he'd attract more than 5 to 15% (depending on which Anglophile country we're looking at) anywhere else. So, from that angle he is nowhere near as popular outside the US.

Well, since the thread topic seems to be whom should be accused of being some sort of quasi-Nazi, it must be pointed out that an Anglophile country is a country whose people admire the English. A country whose people speak English is an Anglophone country. [/wordnazi]

Could it possibly be the case that Swammerdami was aware of this when he wrote 'Anglophilic'?

 

[Bomb#20]

The policies proposed by the likes of Sanders and Cortez are no more radical than the ones actually in place in the US during the 1950s. Might seem far left to you, but they were mainstream then.

Sanders proposed a 100% tax bracket.

Google says: "No results found for Sanders proposed a "100% tax bracket"

That is odd I googled it to. It took me less than 30 seconds to find one case:

Bernie Sanders on Tax Reform

Thanks for the link. I stand corrected.

What Bomb#20 forgot to mention is that the 100% tax proposal on income over 1 million was made almost half a century ago. Sanders is not exempt from the rightward movement of the Overton Window in the past five decades. And move to the right he did. At the time Sanders proposed the 100% tax rate he was chairman of the avowedly socialist Liberty Union Party. In 1977 he left it. The LUP has since dedicated a page on its web site denouncing him as a hypocrite who has sold out the working class and adopted a whole bunch of right wing policies. The Bernie Sanders who proposed a 100% tax bracket in 1974 is not the Bernie Sanders who appeared in the graphic of the lopsided US political spectrum in 2016.

Three things:
(1) Most successful politicians know how to play their cards close to their chests when it's politically advantageous. The fact that Sanders stopped advertising his unsaleable idea that makes him look like lunatic fringe is therefore not evidence that he stopped believing in it.

(2) The same link (thanks, AM!) that informed us his proposal was from fifty years ago also informs us that he has much more recently advocated a universal single-payer national healthcare system, a cap on the home mortgage interest deduction, and a wealth tax. Those policies were in place in the 1950s, you're saying?

(3) Now that you stand corrected and know your "With a start like that I can't be bothered reading the rest of your post." comment was derived from your own Googling limitations rather than from any error on my part, would you care to finally talk about Ms. Cortez? Cortez proposed universal healthcare, a minimum wage three times higher than in the 1950s adjusted for inflation, a federal guarantee of a job and affordable housing, and meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources. Those policies were in place in the 1950s, you're saying?

 

[Metaphor]

I had a conversation with a colleague in the UK a few years ago. He described himself as very conservative. He said he aligned a little to the left of US Democrats. He commented that among the world's industrialized democracies, the US is seen a far right.

It appears to me that if you think the United States is 'far right', you have lost all sense of perspective.

If your perspective is the right wing of Australia, sure.

No: my perspective is of somebody who has seen left-wing social developments in America go from 'inconceivable' to reality during my lifetime.

 

[Metaphor]

I had a conversation with a colleague in the UK a few years ago. He described himself as very conservative. He said he aligned a little to the left of US Democrats. He commented that among the world's industrialized democracies, the US is seen a far right.

It appears to me that if you think the United States is 'far right', you have lost all sense of perspective.

It appears to me that you believe you understand the USA and our political landscape. I don't think you do.

I realize that U.S. media has a way of dominating the global situation. That makes people who don't really know what's going on think that they understand the USA better than they really do.
Tom

It appears to me that you believe merely claiming epistemic privilege is a way to answer my questions. It is not.

 

[Metaphor]

I asked Hermit some questions but it appears he does not want to answer them.

When graphics like the one Hermit posted are silently approved, when Bernie Sanders is described as 'slightly left of centre', what policies and people do you think count as 'left wing', or 'far left'? I understand the argument is that there is no far left (in presidential candidates? Federal politics?) but even if there are no far left federal politicians, there must be far left policies that you have in mind to help define the left and far left. What are those policies?

It also seems to me that the people who call current/former elected politicians 'far right' (as that graphic did) do not appear to comparing any of them to history. There are many social issues I could name in which the US has incontrovertibly shifted leftward on from its inception. For example, same-sex marriage went from inconceivable to reality throughout the United States. Before that, the decriminilisation of same-sex sexual activity occurred. Is there some sliding scale that when a left-wing position becomes mainstream, that it's as if it never was left-wing in the first place?

Federal politics aside, several cities in the United States entertained or partly implemented policies like "defund the police". This policy is radically left wing. Of course, it has been abandoned or revised because defunding the police is cloud cuckoo land insanity, and ordinary people already knew it, and the far left came to know it or at least came to know they couldn't defend it.

 

[Hermit]

The policies proposed by the likes of Sanders and Cortez are no more radical than the ones actually in place in the US during the 1950s. Might seem far left to you, but they were mainstream then.

Sanders proposed a 100% tax bracket.

Google says: "No results found for Sanders proposed a "100% tax bracket"

That is odd I googled it to. It took me less than 30 seconds to find one case:

Bernie Sanders on Tax Reform

Thanks for the link. I stand corrected.

What Bomb#20 forgot to mention is that the 100% tax proposal on income over 1 million was made almost half a century ago. Sanders is not exempt from the rightward movement of the Overton Window in the past five decades. And move to the right he did. At the time Sanders proposed the 100% tax rate he was chairman of the avowedly socialist Liberty Union Party. In 1977 he left it. The LUP has since dedicated a page on its web site denouncing him as a hypocrite who has sold out the working class and adopted a whole bunch of right wing policies. The Bernie Sanders who proposed a 100% tax bracket in 1974 is not the Bernie Sanders who appeared in the graphic of the lopsided US political spectrum in 2016.

Three things:
(1) Most successful politicians know how to play their cards close to their chests when it's politically advantageous. The fact that Sanders stopped advertising his unsaleable idea that makes him look like lunatic fringe is therefore not evidence that he stopped believing in it.

(2) The same link (thanks, AM!) that informed us his proposal was from fifty years ago also informs us that he has much more recently advocated a universal single-payer national healthcare system, a cap on the home mortgage interest deduction, and a wealth tax. Those policies were in place in the 1950s, you're saying?

(3) Now that you stand corrected and know your "With a start like that I can't be bothered reading the rest of your post." comment was derived from your own Googling limitations rather than from any error on my part, would you care to finally talk about Ms. Cortez? Cortez proposed universal healthcare, a minimum wage three times higher than in the 1950s adjusted for inflation, a federal guarantee of a job and affordable housing, and meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources. Those policies were in place in the 1950s, you're saying?

OK, you're right. Stating "the policies proposed by the likes of Sanders and Cortez are no more radical than the ones actually in place in the US during the 1950s" stretches the bow beyond breaking point.

That said, and also allowing that Sanders and Cortez are the leftmost politicians in the US, they are not far left. They are comparable to the main stream politicians of the Nordic countries between the 1960s and early 70s - social democrats who combined strong support of the capitalist system with a comprehensive and very effective set of social welfare policies.

Your comment on Sanders resembles an argument from incredulity.