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

[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.

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

Well, let’s be honest: you’ve *read* about left wing social developments in America through the lenses of right wing and sensationalist media ( based on the sources you link).

You really have no idea what life in the US has been like over the last however many years you’ve been alive.

I can only write about what I have seen over my years as a female, straight/cis small town/rural roots has seen.

Indeed there has been a lot of progress and indeed, now there are plenty who wish to dismantle that progress because it’s a lot easier than trying to figure out next steps forwards towards greater and truer equality.

 

[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.

Well, let’s be honest: you’ve *read* about left wing social developments in America through the lenses of right wing and sensationalist media ( based on the sources you link).

You really have no idea what life in the US has been like over the last however many years you’ve been alive.

I can only write about what I have seen over my years as a female, straight/cis small town/rural roots has seen.

Indeed there has been a lot of progress and indeed, now there are plenty who wish to dismantle that progress because it’s a lot easier than trying to figure out next steps forwards towards greater and truer equality.

Oy gevalt.

Do you remember when Hillary Clinton was against same-sex marriage before she was for it?

Do you think same-sex marriage was a left-wing development or a right-wing development? I'll answer for you: it was left-wing. So when same-sex marriage became the law of the land, that was and is a policy that is left-wing.

What policies do you think are far left? Leftist?

 

[Toni]

Only an idiot does not realize that Clinton. ( either) are not progressive by any except a far right winger’s perspective —or convenience.

 

[Metaphor]

Only an idiot does not realize that Clinton. ( either) are not progressive by any except a far right winger’s perspective —or convenience.

Oy gevalt. I did not use the term 'progressive'. I did not say Clinton herself was 'progressive'.

I asked if same-sex marriage was a left wing cause or not. Was it?

I also ask: what policies do you believe could be called 'far left'? What policies 'left'?

 

[Toni]

Civil rights have, indeed, been seen as ‘left wing.’ In the US, progressive is seen as left wing. Unfortunately.

My impression is that Australia is somewhat to the right of the US in most regards, aside from the embrace of universal give. Funded health care. So, with respect to Australia, the US is somewhat less right. Compared to many European countries, the US is definitely to the right of say, Great Britain, France, or Germany. But to the left of the former Soviet countries and other Eastern European countries in certain respects. For instance, racism and antisemitism seems more pronounced in Poland.

 

[Metaphor]

Civil rights have, indeed, been seen as ‘left wing.’ In the US, progressive is seen as left wing. Unfortunately.

So, they're not left wing? Are they right wing? Are they centre? Outside the scale?

You still haven't answered my questions. Was same-sex marriage a left-wing issue? Was it championed by the left? When states tried to change their constitutions to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional, did you consider that a right-wing move?

 

[Bomb#20]

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.

Exactly. You stretched the bow beyond the breaking point; and you did it because you needed to to make a case for the "rightward movement of the Overton Window". It's ludicrous. It's painfully obvious that the Overton Window has been moving leftward. For the love of god, in the fifties you could end your career by saying capitalism should be abolished; today you can end your career by saying everyone's life matters! The standards for what's considered mainstream and what's considered radical have moved leftward on pretty much every topic except how progressive the tax brackets should be -- which of course is where you got the notion that Sanders and Cortez are mainstream by 1950s standards, and why you posted that cartoon that ignorantly equates socialism with high tax rates. The high tax rates in the fifties were an anomaly. They didn't reflect relative leftistness of the economic system, or of the culture, or of the Overton Window. They reflected the circumstance that we still had a phenomenally expensive world war to pay off!

That said, and also allowing that Sanders and Cortez are the leftmost politicians in the US, they are not far left.

I.e., they aren't far left relative to you. You're a leftist too. I'm a centrist, which makes them more far left relative to me than relative to you. If you have some objective criterion for saying where the origin of the spectrum is, I'm all ears.

Be that as it may, those two are far from the leftmost politicians in the US. They aren't even the leftmost politicians in Congress. Take a look at Bowman.

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.

Do tell. What have Sanders and Cortez done to strongly support the capitalist system?

Your comment on Sanders resembles an argument from incredulity.

How do you figure that? By all means, quote the definition and show how my comment satisfies it.

 

[Hermit]

I asked if same-sex marriage was a left wing cause or not. Was it?

Support for same-sex marriage is spread across a fair range of the political spectrum. It is not restricted to the left wing. Humanitarians and mainstream liberals are among its supporters too. I personally know a number of practising Catholics and protestants who regard same-sex marriage as a right for anyone who wants one.

I also ask: what policies do you believe could be called 'far left'? What policies 'left'?

The Bolsheviks were far left. They wanted to bring about communism, the abolition of privately owned means of production, by means of armed revolutions. Slightly less far left were the Mensheviks. They aimed at the same destination, but sought to get there by gradual parliamentary reforms.

 

[Metaphor]

Support for same-sex marriage is spread across a fair range of the political spectrum. It is not restricted to the left wing. Humanitarians and mainstream liberals are among its supporters too. I personally know a number of practising Catholics and protestants who regard same-sex marriage as a right for anyone who wants one.

I did not ask if it was restricted to the left wing. I asked if it was left-wing. I hold many opinions that are left-wing. I am not, however, left-wing.

Are you of the opinion that practising Catholics and Protestants are not or cannot be left wing or hold left wing views on at least some topics? I can assure you that Catholicism now is nearly nothing like the Catholicism of the 1950s. It is significantly further to the left, even where the official canon law remains the same. Indeed, social welfare (just not communism) is a central concern of the Catholic Church (at least rhetorically).

And Protestants! Protestants have female and trans and "non-binary" and openly gay clergy. Was that common for Protestantism in America in the 1950s? Some Protestant denominations married same-sex couples before it was a legally recognised union in the United States, as you point out. And you think that isn't a left-wing position?

The Bolsheviks were far left. They wanted to bring about communism, the abolition of privately owned means of production, by means of armed revolutions. Slightly less far left were the Mensheviks. They aimed at the same destination, but sought to get there by gradual parliamentary reforms.

So: the far left is only about having a certain kind of economy, is that right? So you are excluding all non-economic issues from the definition?

If not, what are some left-wing social positions? What are radical ones? Has the United States moved leftward or rightward on social issues since the 1950s?

 

[Swammerdami]

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

'Anglophone' is the word I wanted. My error-correction circuits are not functioning well these days. (Sildenafil helps with the other problem; would it help with this too?)

. . .
(3) Now that you stand corrected . . . 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 . . .

[I assume Ms. Cortez refers to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.] It might not affect your particular agenda in this sub-debate, but taken out of context, the comparison between minimum wages is misleading.

First, note that in "REAL" dollars the Federal minimum wage peaked in 1969 (at about $12/hour in 2022 dollars), and has declined on balance over the past 53 years. That's shameful whether somebody said that somebody said whatever or not.

Second and more significantly, minimum wage has declined hugely as a "share of the pie." While a wage of $12 would match the 1969 minimum in real dollars, due to steady growth in "productivity" a wage of about $30 would be needed to match the 1969 minimum relative to GDP per capita.

[Again, I realize that these comments may be irrelevant to Mr. Bomb's thesis in the sub-debate, but I didn't want the misleading wage comparison to stand.]

 

[Hermit]

Support for same-sex marriage is spread across a fair range of the political spectrum. It is not restricted to the left wing. Humanitarians and mainstream liberals are among its supporters too. I personally know a number of practising Catholics and protestants who regard same-sex marriage as a right for anyone who wants one.

I did not ask if it was restricted to the left wing. I asked if it was left-wing.

Support for same-sex marriage is not left wing precisely because it is not exclusive to the the left wing. Humanitarians and mainstream liberals are among its supporters too.

Are you of the opinion that practising Catholics and Protestants are not or cannot be left wing or hold left wing views on at least some topics?

Practising Catholics and Protestants definitely can be left wing or hold left wing views on at least some topics. Read the Wikipedia's article titled Christian left.

While there is much overlap, the Christian left is distinct from liberal Christianity, meaning not all Christian leftists are liberal Christians and vice versa. Christian anarchism, Christian communism and Christian socialism are subsets of the socialist Christian left, although the Christian left also includes more moderate Christian left-liberal and social-democratic viewpoints.

The Bolsheviks were far left. They wanted to bring about communism, the abolition of privately owned means of production, by means of armed revolutions. Slightly less far left were the Mensheviks. They aimed at the same destination, but sought to get there by gradual parliamentary reforms.

So: the far left is only about having a certain kind of economy, is that right? So you are excluding all non-economic issues from the definition?

No, and no. The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks wanted to change the economic system in order to solve non-economic issues.

Has the United States moved leftward or rightward on social issues since the 1950s?

The United States moved toward liberalism, particularly when it ratified the voting rights act and other civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Beginning with Richard Nixon's presidency it began backsliding. Democratic presidents were not particularly successful at slowing the trend, let alone reversing it. Bill Clinton was not even interested.

 

[Toni]

Civil rights have, indeed, been seen as ‘left wing.’ In the US, progressive is seen as left wing. Unfortunately.

So, they're not left wing? Are they right wing? Are they centre? Outside the scale?

You still haven't answered my questions. Was same-sex marriage a left-wing issue? Was it championed by the left? When states tried to change their constitutions to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional, did you consider that a right-wing move?

I consider civil rights, which includes gay rights as human rights and don’t see it as properly belonging to the left or the right. There are plenty of conservative ( right) gay people.

As far as legislatively, yes, progressives or left of center pushed harder for gay rights.

The definitions I was taught many years ago are that conservatives ( right wing) tend to want to preserve the stays quo or return to the status quo of earlier times.

Liberals ( left wing) seek out change.

 

[Bomb#20]

I also ask: what policies do you believe could be called 'far left'? What policies 'left'?

The Bolsheviks were far left. They wanted to bring about communism, the abolition of privately owned means of production, by means of armed revolutions. Slightly less far left were the Mensheviks. They aimed at the same destination, but sought to get there by gradual parliamentary reforms.

So let me see if I've got this straight. Mensheviks and Bolsheviks want the same economic system; the difference is Mensheviks also care about human rights and about letting the people who'll have to live in that system get a vote on when or if to implement it. I.e., Mensheviks are normal people and Bolsheviks are fascists. So you're arguing that being fascist means Bolsheviks are further to the left?

 

[TomC]

The definitions I was taught many years ago are that conservatives ( right wing) tend to want to preserve the stays quo or return to the status quo of earlier times.

Liberals ( left wing) seek out change.

I see this as internally contradictory.

Taking the 2016 Presidential election as an example.
Clinton wasn't advocating any radical changes. Trump was.

Clinton was about unifying the country under a vision of improving things in small incremental steps.
Trump was about huge changes, like Walling out central American immigrants. Ending the U.S. status as "A Nation of Immigrants".

I see Clinton as the Conservative. But Liberal* doesn't fit Trump. I see him as a Progressive.
Tom

*Liberal doesn't fit much of anyone in the current USA political landscape. Maybe people like AOC and Sanders, but mostly not. The slavers of the Founding Fathers were notorious liberals. Like Thomas Jefferson.

 

[Toni]

The definitions I was taught many years ago are that conservatives ( right wing) tend to want to preserve the stays quo or return to the status quo of earlier times.

Liberals ( left wing) seek out change.

I see this as internally contradictory.

Taking the 2016 Presidential election as an example.
Clinton wasn't advocating any radical changes. Trump was.

Clinton was about unifying the country under a vision of improving things in small incremental steps.
Trump was about huge changes, like Walling out central American immigrants. Ending the U.S. status as "A Nation of Immigrants".

I see Clinton as the Conservative. But Liberal* doesn't fit Trump. I see him as a Progressive.
Tom

*Liberal doesn't fit much of anyone in the current USA political landscape. Maybe people like AOC and Sanders, but mostly not. The slavers of the Founding Fathers were notorious liberals. Like Thomas Jefferson.

Trump is hardly liberal much less progressive. He is far right wing, openly sympathizes with Nazis and White Supremacists. He is extremely pro-(his) business interests.

Clinton (both) are cast as left leaning liberals by rightward as a scare tactic. Both were/are centrists. Obama was a pragmatic centrist in terms of his presidency.

Biden is actually fairly progressive. More so than I would have dated hope. I see Warren as a progressive but she’s hardly very far left. Neither is Sanders, no matter what the cool kids want to believe.

I will agree that at their extremes, far right and far left are not terribly distinguishable. Both head deep into authoritarianism and I think Trump fits there very well, on the right side.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The definitions I was taught many years ago are that conservatives ( right wing) tend to want to preserve the stays quo or return to the status quo of earlier times.

Liberals ( left wing) seek out change.

I see this as internally contradictory.

Taking the 2016 Presidential election as an example.
Clinton wasn't advocating any radical changes. Trump was.

Clinton was about unifying the country under a vision of improving things in small incremental steps.
Trump was about huge changes, like Walling out central American immigrants. Ending the U.S. status as "A Nation of Immigrants".

I see Clinton as the Conservative. But Liberal* doesn't fit Trump. I see him as a Progressive.

Well yeah, as long as you ignore his plan to "Make America Great Again" which is a very conservative sentiment and presume that undoing progressive change is actually progressive, then yeah, toss that dictionary into the shredder and Trump is a "progressive".

 

[Bomb#20]

. . . Cortez proposed universal healthcare, a minimum wage three times higher than in the 1950s adjusted for inflation . . .

[I assume Ms. Cortez refers to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.] It might not affect your particular agenda in this sub-debate, but taken out of context, the comparison between minimum wages is misleading.

First, note that in "REAL" dollars the Federal minimum wage peaked in 1969 (at about $12/hour in 2022 dollars), and has declined on balance over the past 53 years. That's shameful whether somebody said that somebody said whatever or not.

Second and more significantly, minimum wage has declined hugely as a "share of the pie." While a wage of $12 would match the 1969 minimum in real dollars, due to steady growth in "productivity" a wage of about $30 would be needed to match the 1969 minimum relative to GDP per capita.

[Again, I realize that these comments may be irrelevant to Mr. Bomb's thesis in the sub-debate, but I didn't want the misleading wage comparison to stand.]

Excuse me? How the hell do you figure it's "misleading" for us to have been talking about the 1950s instead of setting the comparison point at whichever year you pick? Why is the peak year the only level that matters? You appear to be applying the ratchet principle. You understand that the ratchet principle is not a feature of logic but of leftist ideology, don't you?

Second and more significantly, the equilibrium market rate for a given type of labor is the labor's marginal effect on revenue. Mandating a higher wage does not magically make it rational for an employer to pay more for it than it increases her revenue, and thereby take a loss on every hour of work she buys. And minimum wage increases do not change worker income by making employers irrational. They change worker income by increasing the market rate for labor -- i.e., by increasing labor's marginal effect on revenue. They don't do this by magically making workers more productive. They do it in two ways: by incentivizing employers to substitute high-impact workers or automation for the low-impact workers they currently employ, and by relying on the law of diminishing returns. (Increasing consumption of an input diminishes the marginal return from that input; reducing consumption of the input increases it. The law simply pushes the market to a different point on the supply-and-demand chart.) Which is to say, minimum wage increases change worker income by kicking the least skilled workers out of the labor market.

So why is our failure to make the poorest workers even poorer to a degree we haven't matched since 1969 "shameful"? Aren't leftists supposed to care about the poorest workers? The reason minimum wage increase is a leftist issue in the first place is because leftists by and large are idiots. If you want to make the economy nicer to poor people at the expense of richer people instead of at the expense of even poorer people, then increase the EITC, or shorten the work week, or guarantee a public sector job to anyone who wants one, or institute a universal basic income. Increasing the minimum wage is hardly the dumbest way to go about it -- collectivizing the means of production is -- but it's on the dumber side of the spectrum.

 

[marc]

A lot of the republican politicians and MAGA idiots I would say are regressive. They want big changes, but changes that would regress us to the gilded age. Little to no regulations, no unions, no anti-monopoly laws, no income tax, corporations pretty much able to do what they want, and who gives a shit what minorities or women want?

 

[Swammerdami]

Wealth and income inequality, which continue to increase, are a major problem, both socially and economically, in today's America. Even many or most "right-wing" economists and policy-makers acknowledge this.

Apologists for this inequality like to point out that today's poor, by SOME measures, are richer than yesteryear's poor. (For starters, most Americans carry a phone with compute power that sold for hundreds of millions of dollars a half-century ago!) The reasons why this is not a satisfactory rebuttal have been given in other threads.

. . . Cortez proposed universal healthcare, a minimum wage three times higher than in the 1950s adjusted for inflation . . .

[I assume Ms. Cortez refers to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.] It might not affect your particular agenda in this sub-debate, but taken out of context, the comparison between minimum wages is misleading.

First, note that in "REAL" dollars the Federal minimum wage peaked in 1969 (at about $12/hour in 2022 dollars), and has declined on balance over the past 53 years. That's shameful whether somebody said that somebody said whatever or not.

Second and more significantly, minimum wage has declined hugely as a "share of the pie." While a wage of $12 would match the 1969 minimum in real dollars, due to steady growth in "productivity" a wage of about $30 would be needed to match the 1969 minimum relative to GDP per capita.

[Again, I realize that these comments may be irrelevant to Mr. Bomb's thesis in the sub-debate, but I didn't want the misleading wage comparison to stand.]

Excuse me? How the hell do you figure it's "misleading" for us to have been talking about the 1950s instead of setting the comparison point at whichever year you pick? Why is the peak year the only level that matters? You appear to be applying the ratchet principle. You understand that the ratchet principle is not a feature of logic but of leftist ideology, don't you?

Hunh? Gibberish much? Nobody said that the peak year was the only one that mattered; but it was the obvious comparison to make my point. I didn't bury this "cherry-picking" — if that's what you think it was — see the "peaked" which I've emphasized for you in the quote.

I understand that somebody might have said something to somebody else who said something about the 1950's. I don't care, as I clearly implied in my post. I explained why the statistic, at least viewed in isolation, was very misleading. I wanted to correct any residual confusion in the thread. Only this and nothing more.

Second and more significantly, the equilibrium market rate for a given type of labor is the labor's marginal effect on revenue. Mandating a higher wage does not magically make it rational for an employer to pay more for it than it increases her revenue, and thereby take a loss on every hour of work she buys. . . .

This is over-simplified but anyway it's irrelevant to our sub-sub-debate since I was neither supporting nor opposing minimum wage. I was simply calling attention to the misleading statistic.

. . . If you want to make the economy nicer to poor people at the expense of richer people instead of at the expense of even poorer people, then increase the EITC, or shorten the work week, or guarantee a public sector job to anyone who wants one, or institute a universal basic income. Increasing the minimum wage is hardly the dumbest way to go about it -- collectivizing the means of production is -- but it's on the dumber side of the spectrum.

Well! It sounds like you and I agree on something for a change. I've made the same point in my previous posts, though I've managed to do it without labeling "leftists" as "idiots." And sometimes Congress must seek the best legislation possible, rather than the best possible legislation.

 

[Metaphor]

The United States moved toward liberalism, particularly when it ratified the voting rights act and other civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Beginning with Richard Nixon's presidency it began backsliding. Democratic presidents were not particularly successful at slowing the trend, let alone reversing it. Bill Clinton was not even interested.

So the United States is not 'liberal' and has been moving away from it since the mid 1960s? So the US is more right wing now than in the 1960s? And a view or policy is only left wing if it is exclusively held by the left?

What is a far left policy? A leftist policy?