The same picture
The same picture
44 comments
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Oh cool another "both sides are the same" meme. Daring today, aren't we?
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More like "the center isn't part of the left, but of the right"
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Eh it's more like "right wing people are masquerading as centrists because they want to get laid"
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It's unfortunate that you see it this way, but you do you.
I prefer to see it as a reminder of things like this:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/06/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joe-biden-not-same-party-094642
Both sides aren't the same, but there's a big chunk of Dems that are really close to the Repubs, then there are the Dems who are actually working for progress and change. (Which I hear there's an entire study about somewhere.)
There are also the Dems who only support progressive issues when they are convenient.
If what we want out of our Dems is something other than R-lite, it's a distinction to be highlighted more, not less.
For example, when Kamala spent most of her campaign courting R votes instead of D votes, which really didn't pan out well, I hear.
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Well there's the issue of defining things and crossing up a bunch of language, trying to smash multiple different points together.
The headline of the original post suggests concern that Joe Biden is basically the same as a Republican. In order to identify whether that is true or not, you need tofirst define what a Republican is and compare that against what the Biden administration actually did (executive orders, appointments, legislation supported and passed, regulatory changes, etc). Accounting, of course, for the checks and balances of the US Federal Government. So for example, Biden forgave hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt, but the conservative (Republican-appointed) Supreme Court shot most of that down. There were limits on what they could pass through Congress without a supermajority. This is even easier to do today because we have several months of Republican government to compare against and the changes are really obvious. You canook at the creation and catastrophic consequences of DOGE, or the foreign policy changes that have abandoned Ukraine and worsened the Palestinian genocide (the handling of Israel is probably my biggest criticism of Biden and Harris, but Trump has been far worse). Tons of government agencies are being refunded, there is a "war on woke". Critical infrastructure that keeps our food and water supplies safe are being abandoned. The EPA has been gutted. The IRS has been gutted and is essentially being forced to stop auditing the wealthy and focus on the poor instead. ICE is being weaponized against unions, trans people are being pushed out of the military, US citizens are being illegally detained and sent to El Salvador, the Secretary of Health is an anti-vaxxer who wants to create an autism registry, tarrif nonsense is destroying US trade, and I'm still waiting for the price of eggs to go back down. Claiming Biden is a Republican is only possible if you completely ignored both Biden and Republicans.
The blurb under the headline is almost completely irrelevant to all of that. It's starting to get to what the article is really about: individuals who self-identity as Centrist or Moderate whose values are truly conservative and often align heavily with the Republican party. Especially with regards to online dating. This is nothing new - it's a phenomenon almost as old as online dating, and may date back to printed personal ads or older (though much better data exists for online dating). Conservative men know that their mispgying views don't make them popular with women, so they are trying to hide that. These people don't have much to do with Democrats or Biden whatsoever.
And then in your response, you lost a picture-of-a-tweet claiming that "Democrats spent 4 years desperately trying to get "moderate" Republicans to break from Trump". First of all, with no source- this is just whoever owns that account saying shit. But if you stop to think about it- there were a ton of "traditional", non-MAGA Republicans disillusioned with their party going after Trump all the way back in 2016. Most of them have already broken from Trump after historically voting for people like Bush and Romney. It would have been foolish to ignore that contingent of people, so the Democrats were absolutely correct in running attack ads against Trump and his followers in red states trying to win those votes.
If the Dems had changed their policies to be more conservative and attract those voters, that would garner some heavy criticism from me. But they didn't. The only policy I can think of that I would criticize them for is their support of Israel, which is moreso because of their wealthy donors who want to do business there than any courtship of Republicans.
If you look at what he accomplished, or if you're lazy and just want to look at an outlet that evaluates presidents for you, there's pretty much unanimous agreement that Biden was the furthest-left president since FDR. Harris ran on a platform of essentially continuing that. And progressives chose to stay home on election day rather than vote for someone who isn't 100% in agreement with them on everything. And that's how you get fascism.
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I'd add to that list anybody who uses the term "common sense".
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To be fair, that's another thing that we seem to have allowed the right to take from us, just like the Gadsen Flag. Plenty of people use the term "common sense" without using it in the way recently popularized by US fascists.
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I don't think it's just that recent. Appealing to "common sense" has always implied that there's a true way of evaluating the situation that is just obvious without the need to think about it. It's about going with your first reactions and thinking no further. That is quite clearly a reactionary tendency and it has always been a driver of conservative politics. After all, what's "just obvious" is not a magical intuition but, more often than not, what aligns with the dominant ideology that you have absorbed unconsciously and hold to unquestioningly. And not questioning the dominant ideology but demanding people fall in line is an inherently conservative way to live.
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Generally, Conservatives believe that there is one correct worldview (which they may refer to as 'common sense') which is what unifies their ingroup and justifies ostracization of ourgroups. Liberals are generally more open to the idea of there being multiple correct worldviews.
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without using it in the way recently popularized by US fascists.
It was a campaign slogan for the Canadian Conservative Party too, as well as used heavily by Conservatives in my province during the last election. "Common sense" has always been a fig leaf for somebody wanting to believe they hold a majority view when that is not supported by polls.
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The irony of "common sense" being privatized and made worse in the process.
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"Centrism" has always been "conservative but I don't like people calling me on that".
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This was some good context from @Ekybio@lemmy.world in cross post :
Found the source:
Okay I read the source now and what I found funny is the part where people describe how "moderates" on dating apps are just conservatives. An observation I can regard as true in my experience, they are just self-aware enough to not be dismissed outright, but not self-aware enough to actually change a thing about themselves and become a better person.
Remembering how dating apps for conservative people tend to go down (only dudes, because what chick would engage with those guys...), I find it funny to see this echoed here again. There is, after all, no middle ground on most social issues anymore and we do good to see moderates as just another trick of conservative rebranding to obfuscate what they truly are.
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they are just self-aware enough to not be dismissed outright, but not self-aware enough to actually change a thing about themselves and become a better person.
That really covers the whole ball of wax, doesn't it? This is exactly the attitude I have towards someone who describes themselves as a political centrist in any context.
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How does this meme have 85% up vote ratio? Is this lemmygrad?
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There are definitely similarities, but one side is overtly racist and evil. They are most certainly not "the same."
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Not saying they are, and neither is the article referenced in the meme.
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OP never lived in the south with brown skin.
Like comparing soccer mom's in SUVs to the Waffen SS.
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Here is the original study. He shows that on certain issues of governance, the far right and far left are more similar than the center.
He also cherrypicks 7 data points out of hundreds (from 2008-2014) to support his conclusion. He provides no criteria for inclusion of these particular data points.
The authors of this article (found here) also equate Joe Biden with centrism, providing no evidence. Would he really rate his views as a "5" or "6" on a scale from 1-10, as these authors suggest? I doubt it, but like the authors of this article, I simply do not know.
Using another metric of his positions suggests that he would be around a 2, making it irrelevant to this study, which focuses on only 5-6.
I'll stop here because this comment is already better researched that the article in the meme.
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Thank you for at least responding to what was claimed instead of something that was not. I have some nipticks (such as sussing out why those criteria were chosen - seems pretty clear to me), but I'll dig into your links!
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No way
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I would like to point out for all the libs in the audience, that this includes many/most of you. The article specifically points out Biden. Which would include his supporters. It would also include Hillary and Kamala and their supporters. "Moderates" are centrists who want a strong right wing. "Centrists" are closeted right wingers. Progressives aren't apart of this but you're close enough that I bet there's some overlap.
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In a two-party system like the US, assuming all supporters of a particular candidate share their ideals is folly. There's a major difference between being someone who actively describes themself as a "moderate" or "centrist" and somebody who just happens to be a voter in a flawed democracy.
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Voting for democrats isn't going to end the two party system
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The article specifically points out Biden.
Can you link the cited article? OP didn't.
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Fearful and stressed people yearn for order and hierarchy. Neoliberalism has fucked the working class around the world opening the door for conservatism and far right politics.
The free market is not the answer to everything.
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44 comments
Yeah, everyone knows that if a moderate like Kamala Harris or Joe Biden had won the election, they'd still be sending anyone who vaguely looks like an immigrant to a Salvadoran concentration camp, throwing dissidents in jail, crashing the economy by levying tariffs on every other country in the world, letting insurrectionists out of prison, turning federal law enforcement agencies into secret police, persecuting and calling for the extermination of LGBTQ people, accepting bribes to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts from authoritarian regimes, abandoning Ukraine and Gaza by cozying up to strongmen like Netanyahu and Putin, letting organised labour be crushed into oblivion by refusing to enforce federal labour law, appointing unqualified morons into Cabinet, and dismantling every consumer protection agency in the US.
Yeah, these are all things that Harris or Biden would have done.
While you can say that the ship of state, or more Americanly, the car of state, doesn't tend to move forward when moderates or conservatives are in charge, the reason is because moderates don't know how to release the handbrake or shift the car out of neutral while conservatives stole the catalytic converter, drained the engine oil, and insist that refueling the car is DEI.
Kamala Harris would undoutable be accepting open bribes for the Qatari government of a 747 jumbo jet which she'd still own personally after her term in office. I'm sure we'd also be stocked up on KAMALACOIN too. The HARRIS GOLD CARD for immigration preferential treatment would certainly have happened. Canada, Europe, and our other allies around the world would absolutely still be citing and recognizing the end of American leadership around the world. Tim Walz would have demanded Zelensky say "thank you" to Harris during their White House meeting. Yeah, certainly both sides are the same. /s
You guys are really on a roll with these strawmen, keep them coming!
edit role/roll whoops!
Biden sacked the heads of four Ivy League Colleges, sent riot police to crush Palestine encampments and demonised anti genocide protestors as anti semites. He supplied near infinite weapons and political cover to enable mass murder in Gaza, carried out illegal bombing campaigns in Yemen and bear hugged Netanyahu even when the ICC issued arrest warrants.
Liberal corporate media like the New York Times happily spread Hasbara propaganda about rapes ('screams before silence") and beheaded babies to manufacture consent for genocide.
Trump is no angel but Biden and liberal apparatchiks in the media set the tone for the clampdown on civil rights with their insane support for israel
Yes, and if that's the only issue that matters to you, and you ignore the impact on all those other people, I guess that's fair to say they are the same. But does all that extra suffering serve a purpose? Are you volunteering yourself to bear any of it, or only others?
Nobody claimed that Biden was a perfect president or even a particularly good one. And Harris was certainly deeply flawed in her positions in many ways. But saying that those two are no different from Trump is like saying that a plumber who just stands there and watch your pipes leak is the same as a plumber who bashes them open and floods your house, because neither of them actually fixed the leak. Obviously one is way worse.