I wrote a whole 3 paragraph reply to this, but it crashed and now I'm too lazy to write it again.

But yes, this. "Everyone getting UBI and universal healthcare" is not far left. Far left is firebombing pharmaceutical companies or forceable seizure of private property to distribute amongst others, or enforced working arrangements to bring about equality.

What most Americans on Lemmy call "far left", I'd call "basic respect for your fellow man and the compassion to put others before yourself".

"Wow, both sides are killers."

"Left wing extremist; right wing extremist - I see no difference.", "For sure there is one", says the kangaroo, "left extremists burn cars, right extremists burn foreigners. And this makes the left extremists worse, because the car could belong to me. Foreigners, on the other hand, I don't own any"

German comedian Marc Uwe Kling in "the Kangaroo Chronicles"

I’m a centrist who hates extremists on both sides.

I'm just looking for an explanation of what constitute "extremes". Because I get mailers from right-wing organizers warning me of transgender book clubs and full defunding of the police happening next election cycle if I don't immediately throw my support behind the local GOP. But the folks on the far-left in my home town of Houston are only "radical" in the sense that they keep handing out food to homeless people via "Food Not Bombs" despite the city sticking volunteers with $2000 ordinance violations for being an illegal food vendor.

This bad tweet creates a straw man out of every group.

Get off Twitter. Touch grass. Go down to your actual in-person city council events and find out what the people on each end of the political spectrum are discussing right now.

Again, coming back to my home town of Houston, the HISD school board has been fully co-opted by the state government. One of the big issues in local politics right now is how to respond. Right-wing municipal leaders are running cover for the governor's decision and promoting judges/legislators in line with the state takeover. They're defending moves to cut in-school food programs, fire rebellious teachers, and spend enormous amounts of money converting libraries into detention facilities for "low-performing" students. The liberals and centrists are dithering and throwing up their hands, insistent that they have no power to do anything in the face of the state's takeover. Meanwhile, the Far Left folks are attempting to organize teachers and parents into an effective political opposition, to stage protests and walk-outs when administrators abuse their authority, and to formulate community education guidelines in line with a properly egalitarian system.

These are my "Far Right" / "Centrist" / "Far Left" options. Not randos with goofy profile pictures on some social media site, pretending to be Chad Right or Woke Left. But a bunch of retirees down at the public library handing out sandwiches versus the cops hassling them and shutting down their operation. Or the teachers trying to get class sizes down under 30 kids per classroom and ending the obnoxious Pearson-sponsored testing regimes versus some state-appointed administrators who have all come directly from the real estate sector and only care about making the school district lucrative to local business interests.

The folks in the middle - the ones with actual authority, anyway - are consistently do-nothings, more focused on self-promotion than any kind of policy goals and unwilling to stick their necks out on anything even remotely controversial for fear of a social backlash.

"Get everyone's needs met" is a core leftist idea, so what you've actually argued is that Democrats aren't particularly left wing.

I don't like saying they're conservative, either. That's a little too simplistic. Democrats tend to umbrella over a lot of different groups. But the core group isn't particularly leftist.

USA democratic are right wingers in Europe, lol