Politics of the center. What is it?

So, you have no answer.

I’ve listened to professors that say you’re wrong.

 

You are correct. My idea of intellectual honesty is that my claims are not pulled out of my a**, and if called on something I am easily able to support my claim BECAUSE I DID NOT MAKE IT UP.

You on the other hand speak in vagueries that actually mean nothing concrete and cannot be proven because they are based on your gut feelings and carefully selected anecdotes that you THINK support your preconceived notions.

In no manner shape or form am I seeking your "personal attention". I do not care about you one iota. What I do care about is exposing blatant dishonesty, and I have more than illustrated that by catching you with your hand in the cookie jar making bogus claims about Republicans and white nationalism. Your entire rationale of never playing the "game" of supporting your claims with evidence provides a perfect opportunity to expose blatant dishonesty, and as such, you will continue to see posts of mine every time I catch you yet agin with your hand in the cookie jar. The fact that you do not realize how getting called on a point and not being able to produce that evidence shows your blatant dishonesty is of no consequence. It is there for others to see.

FWIW....One minute of difference on listed times can mean up to just under two minutes, and that is most certainly enough time to throw out a couple of related google searches. It is cute how you see no need to provide evidence of any claim that you make, now all of a sudden you want to start putting a timer upon MY google searches. Bless your little heart!

 

Two words describe your behavior I cannot use. Will not use them.
Let me condense it. You do not know much about White Nationalism. You never met any. You did not care enough to put in five minutes to learn about the topic about which you want me to prove something to you. You pretended you had, and asserted you had, in order to entice this interaction which has gone on for days. Then you call me out on intellectual honesty and tell me this whole exercise was NOT about you wanting attention.

.
Goodbye.

 

I have long since made my point, and am comfortable allowing the reader to decide for themselves. I see no reason to continue hoeing the same ground over, and over, and over and over...

Good day sir!

 

This article you've linked to is about as clear as mud,

I'm going to skip my the rest of my thoughts on this post for the moment to backup to the content in your post to which I initially responded. My intent here is to backup my assertion that,

You have a long long hike to backup your definitions of right and left as you attempt to lay them out in this completely specious and contemporary framework in this particular post - try again, perhaps?

Let me try to summarize your assertions and you are more than welcome to correct or clarify or revise any of these:

1) Right equals smaller government, except bigger defense government.
2) Left equals bigger government, except smaller defense government.
3) Socially we all know what it means to be Left or Right, but the main thing to point out is that the Left wants our guns.
4) Ted Cruz is representative of the farthest Right active politician, and as such represents these ideals:
4.1) Lower taxes which make for a better economy.
4.2) More spending on defense.
4.3) Passionately determined to force women to carry to term.
4.4) Mitt Romney likely represents the most liberal position of the Right.
4.5) Ted is just like Romney almost with the biggest difference being between their personalities.
5) Bernie Sanders bears the standard for the Left, and as such represents these ideals:
5.1) The Green New Deal.
5.2) Free College.
5.3) Sweeping Gun Legislation.
5.4) Government Control of Healthcare and 20% of the US economy.
5.5) Except for Bill Clinton.
5.6) Except for Jimmy Carter.
5.7) Power Grabbing.
5.8] Democratic Socialist Sniffer of Winning requisite of a Conspiracy among the more pragmatic Leftists to keep him from power
5.8.1) Conspirators support all of the above but deny the Democratic Socialist Label.
6) Prove that the Right has moved further Right versus the Left having moved further Left.
7) The Right is where it's always been
8] The Left is drastically trying to expand government.
9) An alternate view of events astounds you.

Well, just attempting to summarize your positions was quite frankly a bit tiresome, but having come this far I'll attempt to complete my argument.

This thread is about political ideology according to the title and the OP. Republicans are not necessarily equivalent to the Right and Democrats are not synonymous with the Left. Pat opened an open ended thread and I think you've fallen into the weeds in your response to it.

1&2)
Regarding the size of government, I personally don't consider the balance sheet to represent a full picture of the size of the government, but if it does, and if your 1 & 2 assertions are correct then you have argued in favor of a massive caveat with respect to "defense" funding. There was nothing defensive about My Lai, the WP bombing of Fallujah, AC-130U gunships wasting a Doctors Without Borders hospital, using Afghanistan as a bomb range to test fire the MOAB they dropped.

What is worse is the false narrative offered by bigger versus smaller government in this context. The context of defense funding. Negating the idiocy with which the US reports its budget in terms of mandatory v discretionary outlays - defense, including homeland security and all associated VA type of outlays are easily the majority of US federal expenses. US military outlays exceed about the combined 10 military budgets of the next highest outlays by country on Earth.

So, I would offer that effectively - if your assertions were true, that the right, overall, does in fact support bigger government, if they support "defense" funding but the left does not.

3) You might need to clarify this more. As it is, all you've really asserted is that the left wants our guns.

Personally, I think your post goes fully to s after this point and addresses contemporary politics with a questionable cult-of-personality slant including your choice of characters and points of contention.

***
Challenges to our civilization are way too complicated to list as left, right and center, but it is kinda fun to try and give it a go. Ideally I aspire to be dead center. Having taken this quiz several times I come out a bit down and left everytime. How about you?

https://www.politicalcompass.org/test



***
On a separate note, I find it difficult to believe that someone who claims to closely follow politics has no idea of what white nationalism even means....

 

Sorry but this is all diatribe...

 

Most politics make people look stupid...

 

The operative point from that article was to find a reference to the cost of Obamacare over its first ten years. That much was quite clear. You can find other references if you so choose if you think its number of just under 2 trillion was incorrect. It wasnt however, so I fail to see your point complaining about the article. It clearly has a pro Obamacare bent, so it is not as if it is some biased right slant twisting reality. At any rate, if you have proof to the contrary, I welcome you to do so.

I have a much better idea, and this may be a novel concept for you... Instead of you putting my position into your own words with your connotation and breaking them out by disparate points and adding in a few of your own that I did not say....why not just let MY ACTUAL words put into a cohesive argument speak for themselves? What you have below is specifically designed to try to make it look like I was ranting disparate thoughts when in reality they are cohesive and follow a decidedly linear logic...

"A very simple yet accurate definition is that the Right wants a smaller government with the very notable exception of defense spending, and the left wants a larger government with the very notable exception of defense spending. Socially, we all know where each side stands, and it can very easily be argued that neither side has budged off their respective social positions even slightly, with the very notable exception of Democrats bolder attempts at gun legislation.

Lets look at the right. Ted Cruz is probably considered the furthest right active politician. Like all other Republicans since Reagan, he wants lower taxes in the belief that it will grow the economy, spur economic investment, and ultimately maximize government revenues. He wants to spend more money on defense, and is passionately against Roe V Wade. It is not as if he wants to lower taxes by 50% while other Republicans want to lower them by a couple points. His tax proposals are not any different than the whole of Republican dogma, and these positions are mostly indistinguishable from Reagan. Ted Cruz policy wise, is mostly indistinguishable from Mitt Romney, likely considered the most liberal Republican. The primary difference between Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz is their personality, NOT their political positioning.

Democrats on the other hand, you now have Bernie Sanders as the standard bearer. He calls himself a Democratic Socialist, and he advocates everything from the green new deal, to free college, sweeping gun legislation, all the way to growing the government to take over 20% of our economy which is healthcare. His policy positions are mostly in line with the rest of the Democrats, but the biggest difference is that these policy positions are NOTHING like the policy positions of Bill Clinton and most certainly not recognizable to Jimmy Carter. The power grab of growing the government that is in play now absolutely DWARFS that of the predecessors in recent decades. 20 years ago, there would be no way that a person proudly labeling themself as a Democrat Socialist could have ever sniffed winning the Democrat nomination, and now the more pragmatic Democrats need to conspire in order to ensure that he does not win because they know his self label could not win in a general election. They did not conspire because of his ideas which they all support, they conspired because of his label.

With all of that being said, what is your argument for the notion that it is Republicans that have drastically moved right, as opposed to Democrats whom have drastically moved left? From where I sit, I fail to see where Republican positions have changed much at all in regards to moving further right, while the Democrats have moved leaps and bounds trying to drastically expand the size of government.

The fact that you are trying to claim that it is Republicans whom have moved further away from the center is absolutely astounding to me."





...Thats what I said on the subject. Your summation of my words was nonsensical and intellectually dishonest, I will speak for my words, and you speak for yours. No more summing up each others thoughts in an attempt to mischaracterize their position. Deal?

The notion that you mischaracterize my statements and then invite me to clarify is nonsensical, when you can instead just copy and paste my ACTUAL WORDS.

LOL....Then why on gods green earth did you do it? There is this thing called the quote function on this site. You quote my words and they magically appear. Try it sometime. You pull this BS concept and then have the unmitigated gall to complain about the difficulty of the task?....LOL....YEESH.

Undoubtedly, it took you longer to craft your bogus characterization of my words, then it did for me to write what you were trying to twist/summarize.

You are correct that Republicans are not necessarily equivalent to the right and dems the left, however, you seem to not realize that a thread takes on a life of its own and various tangents and related concepts arise. The particular context of where I jumped in was when the OP later said... "Now then, your characterization of Dems doesn't compare to repubs, because the rads are not in charge but they sure as heck are in the GOP."

Do you see how me responding to that post now puts the context into the realm of Republicans and democrats, and in combination with the OP, that switches the argument to a discussion about left and right in the context of Democrats and Republicans? There are obviously exceptions with some right left dogma, but for purposes of short debates on a political chat board, Republican right/Democrat left most certainly suffices.

To me, it looks like you just like being overly contrarian in an attempt to throw around just enough sand so that no one can see. It does not appear to be a legitimate attempt to have an exchange of ideas.

A massive caveat indeed. Its size doesnt make it untrue however. It just makes it large, because yes, defense spending is an ENORMOUS part of the budget.

Mai Lai? Fallujah?....why are you talking about military battles? Military battles take on a life of their own once a war or military action has begun. Nobody is claiming that military tactics are a right or left issue. I think it is reasonably safe to say that both sides have entered fairly equal numbers of wars. It is definitely safe to say that the vote to authorize both Afghanistan and Iraq had overwhelming support from both sides, and hence cannot really be titled a right or left action. It had widespread support from both sides of the aisle.

Are you trying to throw sand around so that no one can see again? I am sensing a pattern with you.

What part of "with the NOTABLE exception of defense spending" did you not understand? I thought that statement was rather clear.

Republicans support bigger government in the form of defense spending. I thought that was implicit in my words. Democrats support bigger government in mostly everything OTHER than defense spending. I thought that too was implicit in my words.

It is as if you are trying to argue against the notion that Republicans want a smaller government in which case you would point out defense spending, but since I was savvy enough to correctly point out the contradiction from both sides in defense spending, you decided to argue as if I did not put in that caveat. My statement wasnt about Republicans good/Democrats bad....it was a realistic and operable definition of left and right without a value judgment being applied.

Are you referring to me saying..."Socially, we all know where each side stands, and it can very easily be argued that neither side has budged off their respective social positions even slightly, with the very notable exception of Democrats bolder attempts at gun legislation."?

You honestly do not understand this statement. Is it your contention that Democrats are NOT attempting bolder attempts at gun legislation? LOL...I do not think that is a controversial statement even a little. I would imagine that both left and right would happily agree with that notion.

I did however notice yet another attempt for you to falsely mischaracterize my words by saying left wants our guns, when in reality I gave a very measured non bombastic explanation that the left are making bolder attempts at gun legislation. Your summation purposefully made me sound like a gun nut, which simply is not the case.

Sincerely, are you trying to say that they are not seriously discussing bolder attempts at gun legislation?

Cult of personality slant? How so?

The topic was which side has moved further away from the center. Pointing to leaders from both sides is a logical means of trying to quantify that debate by looking at their respective policy positions. Such a tactic is imminently logical. Calling that a cult of personality slant does not make any sense.

I am 4 blocks below the line, and 2 blocks right of center. BTW...that chart is a well known Libertarian creation and is worded in such a way that an inordinate percentage of people will come up as Libertarian.


Challenges to our civilization? I am not sure what you mean by that statement, but I would posit that the left center right political spectrum has been in the political lexicon at least all of my adult life and probably far longer. With that being an undeniable reality, I do not understand why you are going to such great pains to act as if discussing it is futile. You can use my explanation, apply it to basically any economic political issue, and my explanation will predict the right and left position on that topic in the overwhelming majority of cases. There will be exceptions, but they are few and far between. Social issues are a bit harder to sum up in one sentence, but we all know the respective sides positions on various social issues. It is not a mystery.

I just looked it up. It says it is a group of militant white people who espouse white supremacy and advocate enforced racial segregation.

I could have guessed the white supremacy part, but without googling it I did not specifically know that they advocate enforced racial segregation.

If this is so prevalent...Who are these people? Where are they? Why have I never met one? Why do they not ever show up on political chat boards such as this to espouse their views and push for enforced segregation? In the context of the person who brought it up and said something to the effect of 'add in a heaping helping of white nationalism', I wholly disagree with that assertion. We were discussing political positioning on the left right spectrum. That subject is most certainly not reflected in the policy positions of anyone of note on the right. His claim was silly and at its very core, also dishonest. When you see people talking about white nationalists, it is almost always a leftist. To everyone else, it is basically a non issue. In a nation of 330 million people, there certainly are not enough of these people that it is worth discussing them as frequently as leftists seems to bring them up.

 

More say Trump is a fascist dictator wannabe

Madeleine Albright. "Will we stop Trump before it's too late." The New York Times. April 6, 2018.

Daniel Altman. "This is how every genocide begins." Foreign Policy. November 30, 2017.

Samir Amin. "The return of fascism in contemporary capitalism." Monthly Review. September 2014.

Associated Press. "Obama: Protect democracy or risk taking path of Nazi Germany." CBS News online. December 9, 2017.

Peter Beinart. "Why Trump supporters believe he is not corrupt." The Atlantic. August 22, 2018.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat. “An American authoritarian: The Republican presidential candidate is not a fascist, but his campaign bears notable similarities to the reign of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.” The Atlantic. August 10, 2016.

Roger Berkowitz. "Why Arendt matters: Revisiting 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'." Los Angeles Review of Books. March 18, 2017

Noah Berlatsky. "The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism." NBCnews.com. May 27, 2018.

Mark Bickhard. " The scary parallels between Trump and Musollini." Rawstory. March 21, 2017

Joan Biskupic. "Trump's sustained attacks on American rights.' CNN.com. May 27, 2018.

Aaron Blake. “Stephen Miller’s authoritarian declaration: Trump’s national security actions ‘will not be questioned.” Washington Post. February 13, 201

Paul Blumenthal. "This stunningly racist French novel is how Steve Bannon explains the world. Huffington Post. March 4, 2017.

William Boardman. “Constitutional crisis deepens as Trump fights checks and balances.” Reader Supported News Online. February 11, 2017.

Tom Boggiani. "Trump sucks his followers in by using the language of fascists: Yale linguistics expert." Rawstory. May 25, 2019.

Christopher Browning. "Lessons from Hitler's Rise." New York Review of Books. April 20, 2017.

Christopher Browning. "The Suffocation of Democracy." New York Review of Books. October 25, 2018.

Jonathan Chait. "The Republican Party's gearing up for war on the rule of law." New York Magazine. October 30, 2017.

Isaac Chotiner. “How much do the early days of the Trump administration look like the Third Reich?” Interview with historian Richard Evans. Slate. February 10, 2017.

Issac Chotiner. “Is Donald Trump a fascist? Yes and no.” An Interview with Robert Paxton. Slate. February 10, 2016.

Isaac Chotiner. “Too Close for comfort: how much do the early days of the Trump administration look like the Third Reich?" Interview with historian Richard Evans." Slate. February 10, 2017.

Sarah Churchwell. "American fascism: It has happened here." The New York Review of Books. June 22, 2020.

Chauncey DeVega. "Are white people ready to bail on democracy? These researchers say the danger is real." Salon. August 2, 2018.

Chauncey DeVega. "Soldiers of the boogaloo: David Neiwert on the far right's plans for a new civil war." Salon. May 18, 2020.

Lee Drutman, Larry Diamond and Joe Goldman. "Follow the leader: Exploring American support for democracy and authoritarianism." Voter Study Group. February 2018.

Lee Drutman, Larry Diamond and Joe Goldman. "Testing the limits: Examining public support for checks on presidential power." Voter Study Group. June 2018

The Economist. “America’s system of checks and balances might struggle to contain a despot.” February 4, 2017.

Geoff Eley. "Is Trump a fascist?" Historians for Peace and Democracy. Summer 2017.

Ellen Grey Ellis. "The internet protocols of the elders of Zion." Wired. March 12, 2017.

John Feffer. "The Trump dystopian nightmare: Nucelar war, climate change and a clash of civilizations are all on the horizon." Alternet. March 12, 2017

Reza Fiyouzat. "Trump in perespective: Fascism or just more barbarism?" Counterpunch. March 12, 2017.

Mark Follman. "Trumpocracy: Tracking the creeping authoritarianism of the 45th president." Mother Jones. December 4, 2017.

John Bellamy Foster. "Neofascism in the White House." Monthly Review. April, 2017.

John Bellamy Foster. "This is not populism." Monthly Review. June 2017.

Richard E. Frankel. "Here is how Donald Trump becomes a dictator." Raw Story. October 5, 2018.

Richard E. Frankel. "A professor of German history explains the true horror of Trump’s response to Charlottesville." Raw Story. August 16, 2017.

David Frum. “How to build an autocracy.” The Atlantic. January 30, 2017.

Megan Garber. “‘First they came’: The poem of the protests, Martin Niemöller’s lines, written just after the Holocaust, argued against apathy—and for the moral connectedness of all people.” The Atlantic. January 29, 2017.

Masha Gessen, “Autocracy: Rules for survival.” New York Review of Books. November 10, 2016.

Henry Giroux. "Donald Trump's fascist politics and the language of fascism." Raw Story. November 18, 2018.

Henry Giroux. "Facism starts with words - and Trump has a startling romance with the rhetoric of dictators." Raw Story. January 11, 2018.

Henry Giroux. " The Hardening of Society and the Rise of Cultures of Cruelty in Neo-Fascist America." Counterpunch. March 17, 2017.

Henry Giroux. "Neoliberal fascism and the echoes of echoes of history." Truthdig. August 2, 2018.

Henry Giroux. "Rethinking the normalization of fascism in the post-truth era." Tikkun. April 1, 2019.

Amy Goodman. “Noam Chomsky: Trump's victory recalls memories of Hitler & fascism's spread across Europe.” Democracy Now. Interview with Noam Chomsky. December 6, 2016.

Van Gosse. "An 'illiberal democracy' if Trump wins again." Organizing Upgrade. May 14, 2020.

Rosie Gray. “The nationalist right is coming for Reince Priebus.” The Atlantic. February 14, 2017.

Zoltan Grossman. "Fascism denial ignores some inconvenient truths." ZNet. October 29, 2018.

Andrew Gumbel. "Is This Fascism?" Los Angeles Review of Books. July 24, 2017.

Alexandra Hall. "Controversial Proud Boys embrace 'Western values,' reject feminism and political correctness." WisconsinWatch.org. November 26, 2017.

John Haltiwanger. "'There need to be mass protests': Authoritarianism experts say time is running out for Americans to stop Trump." Business Insider. February 12, 2020.

Bernard E. Harcourt. "How Trump fuels the fascist right." The New York Review of Books. November 29, 2018.

Josh Harkinson. “The dark history of the White House aides who crafted Trump's ‘Muslim ban’: Here's how Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller have been boosters of Islamophobes and white nationalists." Mother Jones. January 30, 2017.

Josh Harkinson. “Meet the white nationalist trying to ride the Trump train to lasting power: Alt-right architect aims to make racism cool again.” Mother Jones. October 27, 2016.

Thom Hartmann. “It can still happen here: Donald Trump, Ben Carson and the “American fascists” among us. Sinclair Lewis feared demagoguery and a corporate ruling class. The right is bringing his dystopia to fruition.” Salon. November 4, 2015.

Head Space Blog. “History repeats itself: National Socialism – past and present: The psychology of Nazism.” February 15, 2016.

Chris Hedges. “Donald Trump: The dress rehearsal for fascism.” Truthdig.com. October 16, 2016.

Chris Hedges. "A Last Chance for Resistance." Truthdig.com. March 19, 2017.

Chris Hedges. “Make America ungovernable.” Truthdig.com. February 5, 2017.

Aleksander Hemon. "Trump’s nationalism advances on a predictable trajectory to violence. His supporters will kill when they’re told to." The Intercept. May 2, 2020.

Clive Irving. "It is happening here, Trump is already early-stage Mussolini." The Daily Beast. June 30, 2018

 

Professors often profess for the ideology that allows them to keep their jobs. Academia, particularly the soft subject side is notorious for loony left dominance.

 

So? In your own words, why?

 

Constitutionalism is the very center of American politics. You likely call it conservatism, but, what it's conserving in our Constitutional Liberal Democracy. The core of the center, the root of it's very essence.

​

​

 

NYT is a Left Wing Propaganda and Disinformation Rag. The Very Center of American Politics is at the intersection of the Constitution and the Truth.

​

 

Your reply is as I predicted. How utterly predictable you are.

Here is the original comment at the start of this subthread, giving me the idea you didn't even read it as much:

For you, there is no proof. I could link to scores of published essays by prominent people, scholars, opinion leaders, etc., each of whom describe in detail examples Trump's fascistic tendencies whereupon, taken as a whole, the characterization of Trump as a 'wannabe dictator, is a reasonable one, and you will, without reading any of them, assert than all of them are written by looney leftists and thus they are not worthy of your attention.

See what I mean? There is no point in rebutting the likes of you. Your counter argument is incompetent.

Since all you can give is an incompetent counter argument, there is no point in further discussion.

You are not interested in learning why so many scholars have written on the subject.

You have reduced scholarship down to triviality.

Therefore, mediocrity becomes you.

You are dismissed.

 

It takes several books to convey to you the knowledge of this particular truth. Start by reading the essays. Trump is a complex figure.
There are no simple black and white, 25 words are less, answers to give you that will convince you of a particular truth about this man.

I have traveled that path, and I have done so because thirst for that knowledge.

IF your mind is so closed that you do not, that you are not curious, that you assume you are correct, fine, let it go.

I cannot convey to you in 25 words enough to convince you on this point. It's a journey you'll have to travel on, I've given you the brick road
to travel on, all you have to do is take it.

If you don't want to, then let it go.

 

Where is this “prediction” - we need a fact checker - STAT!

So, you got nothing but piss-ass personal digs eh, “Mr. Scholar”? Sadly “scholarship” has become “woke or go broke” for many academians - which is why you had no trouble finding “me too” articles.

 

You apparently believe that reposting your own post refutes my summary of your points?

 

Too bad that you are so sad. Personally, I am a rather happy, optimistic individual.

 

Kind of sad, but entirely within character that so many conservatives have become so anti-intellectual. I have strived all my life to know about more and more things. I have often used the line, “ You are what you think, and the more you think, the more that you are”. But that seems to be the antithesis of conservative thought.

 

The New York Times is the center of US politics. Maybe the Associated Press. It is how we know how off center outlets like FOX News are. They get the same stories off the wire as everyone else, but distort them badly. When we go back to the source, usually someone working under hire or contract from AP, UPI, Reuters, the Times or other such news gathering organizations, it is obvious how FOX distorts the news. NewsMax is worse. Sinclair owned ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliated stations also similarly distort the news.

 

Ever been to college? The hard sciences are dominated by liberals. The whole STEM project has become a liberal enterprise. The promotion of eduction of the the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics is a liberal endeavor to bring back to America what Republicanism has been killing off. How sad that scholarship has become such a threat to conservative thought.

 

Of course. CONTEXT MATTERS. My original post was not long. Your summation shortened nothing. The sole purpose of your "summation" was to take it out of context and twist/spin what was said in my short post. Doing so was intellectually dishonest.

The fact that you did that and THEN complained about how tiresome it was to create that summation, did give me a hearty chuckle. For that, I thank you!

The irony is that crafting the original did not take long at all. Intellectual dishonesty on the other hand, is apparently very tiresome.

 

Nope. The purpose of my summary was to show to you that I read your post, what it meant to me, and to offer an itemized list of points for you to clarify.

 

We have already spent far too much time on this topic. I reposted the brief original and returned the proper context. Problem solved. I see no reason to continue belaboring the point.

 

Thanks, because my summary of your post was spot on, not dishonest and you cannot defend your post without resorting to ad hominem attacks on my character. But you've been here since '08 so I guess PF gives you a pass on the ad hominem posts that you've dribbled all over this thread.