Why Does the Political Right And Left Feel the Need to Demonize Each Other ?

[Darth Richard II]

26 minutes ago, Squab said:

Its important to remember that anyone to the right of about Michael Moore is literally a Nazi, especially here.

Yes God forbid I call the people holding NAZI RALLIES who proudly call THEMSELVES NAZIS, Nazis.

[Altherion]

12 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Yeah I assume you were and are alluding to immigration and affirmative action.  I stand by my original post.

You can stand by anything you want, but it doesn't make it sensible. If, for example, there is a fixed number of places at elite universities and a significant percentage of them are allocated based on immutable characteristics, the people who do not fit the "affirmative action" criteria are undoubtedly worse off. Such policies inevitably screw over a fraction of the poor.

[Squab]

1 minute ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yes God forbid I call the people holding NAZI RALLIES who proudly call THEMSELVES NAZIS, Nazis.

Not sure why you would be calling on something that doesn't exit to forbid something but, I agree, Trump is literally Hitler and anyone who even almost supports anything he has ever said is a racist misogynistic Nazi (excuse the tautology but its true).

[Darth Richard II]

7 minutes ago, Squab said:

Not sure why you would be calling on something that doesn't exit to forbid something but, I agree, Trump is literally Hitler and anyone who even almost supports anything he has ever said is a racist misogynistic Nazi (excuse the tautology but its true).

We'll I'm glad we agree then.

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Altherion said:

If, for example, there is a fixed number of places at elite universities and a significant percentage of them are allocated based on immutable characteristics, the people who do not fit the "affirmative action" criteria are undoubtedly worse off. Such policies inevitably screw over a fraction of the poor.

Wow, how many "nos" for this?  No, there is no percentage of them that are allocated based on immutable characteristics.  And no, they undoubtedly aren't worse off and the policy undoubtedly doesn't screw over any fraction of the poor.  Racial quotas were abolished with Bakke (1978) and even points systems were abolished in Gratz v. Bollinger (2003).  The only thing that remains is the court acknowledging universities have a compelling interest in promoting racial diversity.  If racial minorities are not admitted, that admission would almost certainly go to a rich white applicant at elite universities.  Poor white applicants have the same chance (i.e. very little) at admission with or without affirmative action as it currently stands.  There is no zero-sum game. 

[GAROVORKIN]

6 hours ago, Squab said:

Its important to remember that anyone to the right of about Michael Moore is literally a Nazi, especially here.

I shudder to think  what political discussions online are going to be like  20 years from now if the current trend of polarization continues. 

[GAROVORKIN]

7 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Craster.  

Its how we get things like the Scalise shooting.  But he deserved it right?

Sure we could have a nicer more civil society without demonization.  But theres a lot of incentive to not compromise.  Better to rule in hell....

James T Hodgkinson who did the shooting was a Bernie Sanders supporter. 

There is way too much hate in our society and it's a disease infecting both right and left. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

37 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 

There is way too much hate in our society and it's a disease infecting both right and left.

I fucking give up.  Fuck this stupid lame ass shit.  

I again challenge you to actually contribute something other than these bullshit false equivalencies.  

[Rippounet]

10 hours ago, Altherion said:

Mostly, but far from entirely. For example, the left in both Europe and the US is in favor of increased immigration

No.
It's the bullcrap you read over at Breitbart's, but reality is far more complex.

In the US it seems to have been forgotten that George H.W. Bush was very much in favor of the The Immigration Act of 1990. Let's remember what Republicans had to say about immigration back in the eighties:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok
As far as Europe is concerned I don't know about all countries, but in France both right-wing and left-wing governments have been attacking immigration these past three decades (starting with socialist Mitterrand's second term in the eighties).

What could be said is that today the right tends to push for harsher limits on immigration and even deportations for undocumented immigrants while the left is pretty much in favor of the old status quo.
You could also say that the left tends to favor welcoming refugees, but again that's not exactly a partisan issue, unless you think the EU and Angela Merkel are left-wing - which they are not.

The attempt to redefine left and right depending on their positions on immigration is one that comes from xenophobes who want to see this at the top of everyone's agenda. The white supremacists and neo-nazis over at Breitbart's first and foremost, needless to say.
You're in very poor company on this one Altherion.

10 hours ago, Altherion said:

Likewise, the left makes its distinctions regarding the weakest based on immutable characteristics such as race and gender (well, nearly immutable, anyway) and if some individuals among the weakest happen to be on the wrong side of those distinctions, they're actually far worse off than they would be without the left.

lol, no.
Repeating that assertion again and again won't make it true.

Also, just in case you didn't know, racial discrimination of any kind is forbidden by law in France and the only government that tried to change that was Sarkozy's (ministers Rachida Dati and Rama Yade were pretty much the first official examples of racial affirmative action in French history).
That is, the most right-wing government the country has ever had.
Kind of puts a dent in your narrative, doesn't it? Or are you going to try and say that Sarkozy/France is an exception to the rule?

10 hours ago, Altherion said:

All of that said, you are right: the left does favor the weakest... but what you left out is that they do so at the expense of the middle class rather than that of the rich. The latter do quite well for themselves whether the left or the right is in power.

If nothing changes for the rich then by definition the left is not in power. The main thing the left is supposed to be about is progressive taxation. Any party in power that does not at least attempt to raise taxes on the rich is more centrist than leftist.
BTW that's usually how the US Democratic Party is viewed throughout the world and by political scientists.
F*** even François Hollande at least pretended to try to raise taxation on the highest income bracket to 75%. And he is universally considered to have been a fake leftist in France because he didn't actually do it *!* Who was so unpopular he was the first president of the 5th Republic to have to give up running for a second term.

To some extent what you say could be seen as true in the US I guess. IF you completely forget that what hurt all Americans the most was still the policies of the Republican Party. In other words, if you forget about everything the Republicans did, I guess you could say the Democrats hurt the middle-class.
You'd have to be seriously biased to reach such a conclusion, of course.

[Jo498]

47 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

If nothing changes for the rich then by definition the left is not in power. The main thing the left is supposed to be about is progressive taxation. Any party in power that does not at least attempt to raise taxes on the rich is more centrist than leftist.

Exactly. I fully agree. By this criterion the left has not been in power in most western countries for a very long time. No matter what the name of the ruling party/coalition was, the rich have been getting richer since 30 years or more and at least in the last 15-20 years this process has often sped up and was accompanied by a deterioration of living standards, pensions etc. not only for the "poor" (say the lowest 20%) but for the lower 60% or so in many countries. That is, the "Left" has not even managed to hold up the social democratic compromise of the 1950-80s: leave the rich quite rich, but at least improve the lot of the poor and the "normal" employed lower middle/working class.

But Altherion is not wrong that there is a considerable portion of the modern "pseudo-left" that is preaching water and solidarity with the world's poor from cushy academic or government positions and does not seem to care for the "ordinary" people in their own countries. (In fact they ignore or often dtetest them because of their prole taste and values.) While the latter witness their situation becoming every more precarious and the could not care less about millions of chinese having become less poor in the last few decades. They only see these people preaching water and drinking wine and this helps the rightwing populists (who are not any better and also prefer wine but at least claim to care for "Joe sixpack") immensely.

In fact, we now have France, Holland, Italy, Germany, Austria and maybe more as examples of the mainstream parties self-destructing (or at least considerably weakened) because no matter what their names and traditions they have for 20 years or more practised neoliberal internationalism without giving a damn about the lower 70% or so of their populace (and also enforcing progressivist social values not shared by the dumb proles). The tragic thing is that this has only strengthened the (extreme) right who could drew many of the Deplorables to them and the more traditional leftists have not been able to profit from the weakness of the centrist/pseudoleft (maybe Melénchon and Corbyn are counterexamples to this trend).

I also think that further above you did miss a very important distinction among the "Right". The "new populist right", i.e. Front National, AfD, the rightwing parties in Hungary, Poland etc. (I am too lazy to look up spellings) and probably also the so-called alt-right (although I don't know if this is not only a bunch of posers on the internet) is very different, at least in their claims, from the mainstream Republicans in the US or the mainstream Tories or the German CSU. They are often anti-free-trade, nationalist, at least on paper for some restriction of international capitalism (sometimes with a good measure of antisemitism thrown in) etc. That is, they are not simply the party of big business.

[Darth Richard II]

Ha. Yeah can see that. Also my spelling and typing IS bonkers lately. I need to cut back on the soda.

[Kalbear]

13 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Well if he said not even two people tried to make a deal w the Others there'd have been no comment.

Fair enough, I honestly forgot about Craster and was talking more about general regions, not specific people. But yes, you're right - the guy who keeps a slave ring of his daughter-wives and rapes them constantly and gives half the offspring to the Others is comparable to what we're seeing now. Thank you. 

[Rippounet]

6 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Exactly. I fully agree. By this criterion the left has not been in power in most western countries for a very long time. No matter what the name of the ruling party/coalition was, the rich have been getting richer since 30 years or more and at least in the last 15-20 years this process has often sped up and was accompanied by a deterioration of living standards, pensions etc. not only for the "poor" (say the lowest 20%) but for the lower 60% or so in many countries. That is, the "Left" has not even managed to hold up the social democratic compromise of the 1950-80s: leave the rich quite rich, but at least improve the lot of the poor and the "normal" employed lower middle/working class.

Yeah, we completely agree on this.
I would point out however, that inequalities generally don't grow as fast under the "pseudo-left" so it's at least the lesser of two evils.

6 hours ago, Jo498 said:

But Altherion is not wrong that there is a considerable portion of the modern "pseudo-left" that is preaching water and solidarity with the world's poor from cushy academic or government positions and does not seem to care for the "ordinary" people in their own countries. (In fact they ignore or often dtetest them because of their prole taste and values.) While the latter witness their situation becoming every more precarious and the could not care less about millions of chinese having become less poor in the last few decades. They only see these people preaching water and drinking wine and this helps the rightwing populists (who are not any better and also prefer wine but at least claim to care for "Joe sixpack") immensely.

Except I've never actually read or heard any politician preach "solidarity with the world's poor." I've seen some pseudo-economists who kind of do that, and they were definitely on the right-wing internationalist neo-liberal side of things... I even have an interview of such a guy on my computer from the Adam Smith Institute, self described as "Britain's leading free market neoliberal think tank" that advocates the end of the welfare state and quotes Reagan on its website.

Sure, left-wing politicians and organizations will help refugees and immigrants and demand that they be treated humanely. That's a given, and it's part of what the left is supposed to stand for (protection of the weakest members of society). But that is different from calling for an increase in immigration. From what I can tell, both right-wing and left-wing governments have been responsible for such increases throughout the West and the accusation that the left is somehow responsible for this seems like a cheap right-wing soundbite that I've yet to see evidenced.
Unless you count opposing deportations as supporting an increase in immigration - which it isn't.
It seems to me that because the left seeks to protect minorities once they have immigrated it is somehow accused of being responsible for mass immigration in the West.

6 hours ago, Jo498 said:

I also think that further above you did miss a very important distinction among the "Right". The "new populist right", i.e. Front National, AfD, the rightwing parties in Hungary, Poland etc. (I am too lazy to look up spellings) and probably also the so-called alt-right (although I don't know if this is not only a bunch of posers on the internet) is very different, at least in their claims, from the mainstream Republicans in the US or the mainstream Tories or the German CSU. They are often anti-free-trade, nationalist, at least on paper for some restriction of international capitalism (sometimes with a good measure of antisemitism thrown in) etc. That is, they are not simply the party of big business.

Because it's a meaningless distinction. Big business is big business whether it is internationalist or nationalist. Nationalist big business won't help the middle or working-classes any more than its internationalist version.
These guys are still on the right. Marine Le Pen for instance was clystal clear about that in several interviews and deliberately avoided going in the direction of national-socialism. They will act as if nationalism is better for the average citizen, but it's a completely baseless assertion.

 

[Darth Richard II]

Well Trump DID say he would date his daughter.

[DanteGabriel]

40 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Fair enough, I honestly forgot about Craster and was talking more about general regions, not specific people. But yes, you're right - the guy who keeps a slave ring of his daughter-wives and rapes them constantly and gives half the offspring to the Others is comparable to what we're seeing now. Thank you. 

Craster is a real libertarian dream come true.

[Yukle]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well Trump DID say he would date his daughter.

Yeah... I really don't get how that line has been so overlooked. Like... if my husband said that about either of our kids I'm pretty sure I would actually vomit.

[all swedes are racist]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well Trump DID say he would date his daughter.

lol

[Yukle]

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Because it's a meaningless distinction. Big business is big business whether it is internationalist or nationalist. Nationalist big business won't help the middle or working-classes any more than its internationalist version.
These guys are still on the right. Marine Le Pen for instance was clystal clear about that in several interviews and deliberately avoided going in the direction of national-socialism. They will act as if nationalism is better for the average citizen, but it's a completely baseless assertion.

Thinking about this, I think it's a good point.

Large businesses have a habit of trending toward being international anyway. The reason that they want to remove regulations and protections is nothing to do with it being good for economics, but good for them in the short term.

The right-wing has always had an enormous flaw in its economic assertions: What happens when growth stops? They're always going on about growth. Well, there will come a time - simply as a function of maths - where growth stops. There will be literally no more people possible, no more people to sell to as they already have the product, no more to give them that they don't already have. All that will happen is that people sustain their needs - but there will no longer be any change in this. It'll never grow or shrink, it'll just remain as it is.

There is no end-goal for the right-wing panacea of a perfect world. It's always just making more growth. The left-wing panacea is a world of distributed wealth, "Each to their own abilities, each to their own needs." It's possibly not taking the worst parts of human nature into account, but it is at least a plausible end goal.

My favourite part about the quote from Marx, "Each to their own abilities, each to their own needs," is that if you told anyone it was in their constitution they'd love it. Tell them it's from Marx and they'll say it's stupid. In short, people agree that it's a worthy ideal, but are freaked out by Marx's ownership of it. I also like reminding people that the concepts of "socialism" and "capitalism" as defined in today's terms were invented by Marx. However, he described capitalism as a blueprint of what not to do in human society. So hard-core capitalists actually follow Marx's instructions.  

[Martell Spy]

47 minutes ago, Yukle said:

Thinking about this, I think it's a good point.

Large businesses have a habit of trending toward being international anyway. The reason that they want to remove regulations and protections is nothing to do with it being good for economics, but good for them in the short term.

The right-wing has always had an enormous flaw in its economic assertions: What happens when growth stops? They're always going on about growth. Well, there will come a time - simply as a function of maths - where growth stops. There will be literally no more people possible, no more people to sell to as they already have the product, no more to give them that they don't already have. All that will happen is that people sustain their needs - but there will no longer be any change in this. It'll never grow or shrink, it'll just remain as it is.

There is no end-goal for the right-wing panacea of a perfect world. It's always just making more growth. The left-wing panacea is a world of distributed wealth, "Each to their own abilities, each to their own needs." It's possibly not taking the worst parts of human nature into account, but it is at least a plausible end goal.

My favourite part about the quote from Marx, "Each to their own abilities, each to their own needs," is that if you told anyone it was in their constitution they'd love it. Tell them it's from Marx and they'll say it's stupid. In short, people agree that it's a worthy ideal, but are freaked out by Marx's ownership of it. I also like reminding people that the concepts of "socialism" and "capitalism" as defined in today's terms were invented by Marx. However, he described capitalism as a blueprint of what not to do in human society. So hard-core capitalists actually follow Marx's instructions.  

We solved the growth problem, actually. Sell people things they do not need. Shady medical practices are common in U.S. right now. Practice rent-seeking behavior. Encourage consumer debt, then package the poor suckers and sell them off like you are trading souls. Trick young people into worthless degrees. Whatever it takes to keep the wheel going.

[Rippounet]

39 minutes ago, Yukle said:

Large businesses have a habit of trending toward being international anyway. The reason that they want to remove regulations and protections is nothing to do with it being good for economics, but good for them in the short term.

Honestly I have a hard time believing that the current global economic system is truly fair anyway. Large corporations backed by their national governments tend to find ways to twist WTO rules and the like. A nation-based system would simply make the balance of power more obvious and would benefit the largest corporations backed by the most powerful governments even more.

39 minutes ago, Yukle said:

The right-wing has always had an enormous flaw in its economic assertions: What happens when growth stops? They're always going on about growth. Well, there will come a time - simply as a function of maths - where growth stops. There will be literally no more people possible, no more people to sell to as they already have the product, no more to give them that they don't already have. All that will happen is that people sustain their needs - but there will no longer be any change in this. It'll never grow or shrink, it'll just remain as it is.

Yeah, I think we're already pretty close to that in the West. Even the service industry will probably start shrinking now because of the internet and all the related technology. There'll always be new technologies of course, but with automated factories it's doubtful it will create enough jobs to replace the ones lost, and thus it won't help the purchasing power of the masses.

We're fast reaching the "one-fifth society" mentioned in The Global Trap:

Quote

In particular, the book is known for defining a possible "20/80 society". In this possible society of the 21st century, 20 percent of the working age population will be enough to keep the world economy going. The other 80 percent live on some form of welfare and are entertained with a concept called "tittytainment", which aims at keeping the 80 percent of frustrated citizens happy with a mixture of deadeningly predictable, lowest common denominator entertainment for the soul and nourishment for the body.

So yeah, the right doesn't have that much to propose to solve tomorrow's problems. As gratifying well-paying jobs become scarce something will have to be done to keep the masses under control. Divide-and-conquer strategies will only achieve so much, and even the most hardcore libertarians will come to realize that you just have to provide something for the billions of the lower classes.
Universal basic income, virtual reality, and drugs is my guess. You can add sex robots, genetically engineered catgirls, and other creepy futuristic stuff for the lulz and perhaps a trip to Mars or Titan for the most adventurous.
I don't think it'll even be that bad tbh. At some point in that story capitalism will simply cease to be relevant, though humanity will no doubt be left with a two-tier society as a result for a few centuries at least.
All of you reading this will long be dead anyway, unless you transfer your consciousness to the digital hivemind where you can live in eternal peace watching Star Wars XXVII, return of the revenge of the son of the last Jedi.