Work Reform

Centrists: Let's meet in the middle and dismantle half of elections, eh?

We don't have a large, cohesive, left party. There are people who are certainly left in the USA, but we have no real representation out of a handful of congress people.

From the 20th century, we have the ideological war against USSR to thank for that. It started all the way back with Wilson. After WWII, the threat of nuclear annihilation was a powerful tool for nationalism. (I'd learn only recently that a first strike was far more likely to come from US than USSR, and we had some dangerous war hawks in power.)

Before that, after reconstruction came redemption and corporate interests took over both parties.

Before that, roads, schools, bridges, libraries and such were socialism giving the working man benefits to which they didn't contribute (we just contributed all the labor). Yes, they called it socialism even back in the 19th century.

Do observe that adherence to neoliberalism in the EU (which is essentially corporatism with extra steps) is driving the rise of far right movements even over there. And when the tech-bros and white Christian nationalists over here are done bleeding the US dry like its private equity, they'll be headed over there with their vast wealth to do the same thing.

American 2 party system is so fucked that anything left of rabid, far right fascism is considered far left

A lot of centrists, are frankly, kind of weak minded. A lot are not necessarily more right leaning but they don't exactly have strong conviction. A friend of mine is right leaning on immigration and economics but at the same time he voted for the social democrats in his country because of over a decade of right wing government and supports Palestine. Some are centrists for the sake of being centrist it seems.

The problem as to why many centrists sound right leaning is because the right captured prominent media platforms, and a huge part of its audience are lonely folks who are susceptible to misinformation, which my friend falls into. Many don't become firmly on right but that doesn't matter for the right wing billionaires funding the media platforms. It's about sowing enough doubt to prevent forming a united front against the billionaire-Epstein class.

Sounds like you're mostly conservative, with a desire for others to feel good about themselves.

The Danish conservative party is pretty close to your requests, except for the degree at which you seem to be pro immigration

I'm firmly left and have started to see your perspective a bit more recently. I think we tend to generalize groups of people by their bad examples, which is also done to and by centrists.

I'm thankful for the perspective of reasonable centrists, who are able to look at the reality of a situation and judge fairly, to add nuance and build bridges. What affirmed me in my group think for a long time was radicalized centrists, who are more interested in equating left and right regardless of circumstance, than in grasping problems with an open mind.

But I think I understand how that happens. It's frustrating for many leftists to have to choose between two options they don't agree with, center and right, so some become blind to their differences and fall into group-think. Maybe it is the same for centrists, some of which also start to portray all left and right as dumb ideologues and themselves as above criticism from other worldviews.

So I agree with you. We should think about singular choices more than about sides. And frankly, I really enjoy finding common ground with people from different walks of life recently.

I hate the idea of bending backwards just to fully accomodate whims of other people

Care to give an example when you have ever really needed to bend over backwards?

But not these ones, better ones.

Social workers? Yes. Police as we know them? Nope. Proper education and mental health services will solve 99% of the problems. Most crime is unresolved personal issues and taking care of people will take care of the problems.

Just enough to kill the untermenchen and keep people from objecting to my atrocities where I can hear. That's such a reasonable thing I don't know why they're complaining there are too many.