Why do so many of you buy into the left/right paradigm?

[Liberty]

Do you find it fun? Ya know, being on one team while tattering whoever is on the other team? Surely you do not think that there is any tangible difference between the American let and the American right...why instead not just look for issues and details you agree with personally rather than look for your opinions spoon fed to you? Help me understand this.

 

[lukelk]

Well the reason I think people buy into it, is there are only 2 options, and the repubs represent the consertives, and the left represent the progressives. other than that there really is no other choice.

 

[Liberty]

Well the reason I think people buy into it, is there are only 2 options, and the repubs represent the consertives, and the left represent the progressives. other than that there really is no other choice.

Yet on every ballot for every major election (Senatorial, Governor, President) there is almost always more than two choices. If people wished to seat the best person for the job, why then choose to neglect even a basic research into the platform of those without R and D by their name? I look at politics through a prism of government power, and I see republicans and democrats both equally ignoring major problems, growing government power where they *think* is warranted (neocons into war, democrats into welfare) while inflaming smoke screen problems...social issues, though important, are no where near as important as say, monetary policy. I do not understand how so many people can not see through it.

 

[MisterBeale]

For the answer you are looking for, I recommend you research and read some anarchist literature, specifically some Noam Chomsky. Here is a great article by, Robert W McChesney
Noam Chomsky and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism :: Robert W McChesney
Google it.

On the other hand, to be effective, democracy requires that people feel a connection to their fellow citizens, and that this connection manifests itself though a variety of nonmarket organizations and institutions. A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provide ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

. . . and . . .

In fact, Chomsky's greatest contribution may well be his insistence upon the fundamental democratic inclinations of the world's peoples, and the revolutionary potential implicit in those impulses. The best evidence of this possibility is the extent to which corporate forces go to prevent genuine political democracy from being established. The world's rulers understand implicitly that theirs is a system established to suit the needs of the few, not the many, and that the many therefore cannot ever be permitted to question and alter corporate rule. Even in the hobbled democracies that do exist, the corporate community works incessantly to see that important issues like the MAI are never publicly debated. And the business community spends a fortune bankrolling a PR apparatus to convince Americans that this is the best of all possible worlds. The time to worry about the possibility of social change for the better, by this logic, will be when the corporate community abandons PR and buying elections, permits a representative media, and is comfortable establishing a genuinely egalitarian participatory democracy because it no longer fears the power of the many. But there is no reason to think that day will ever come.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future. It is fitting that Noam Chomsky is the leading intellectual figure in the world today in the battle for democracy and against neoliberalism. In the 1960s, Chomsky was a prominent U.S. critic of the Vietnam war and, more broadly, became perhaps the most trenchant analyst of the ways U.S. foreign policy undermines democracy, quashes human rights, and promotes the interests of the wealthy few. In the 1970s, Chomsky (along with his co-author Edward S. Herman) began researching the ways the U.S. news media serve elite interests and undermine the capacity of the citizenry to actually rule their lives in a democratic fashion. Their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, remains the starting point for any serious inquiry into news media performance.

*market analysis indices

 

[Avatar4321]

There are plenty of differences. There are some similiarities too.

 

[g5000]

Do you find it fun? Ya know, being on one team while tattering whoever is on the other team? Surely you do not think that there is any tangible difference between the American let and the American right...why instead not just look for issues and details you agree with personally rather than look for your opinions spoon fed to you? Help me understand this.

You are repeating a tired, fallacious meme. There are significant differences between the Right and Left. Just start an abortion topic and learn for yourself.

With that said, I have been a barrel-chested Republican for most of my life. It is only in recent years I have walked away from voting GOP because my party has been hijacked by a crop of incompetents, supported by millions of UnConservative mindless drones drinking billions of gallons of bongwater and piss. If the emitter of information has a (R) after his or hier name, the hive mind minions swallow it, then parrot it incessently without ever critically analyzing it.

Some of them have gone so far to the right, everyone else looks like a leftie to them. No wonder Glenn Beck was able to convince them Nazis were lefties so easily. If Nazis are to the left of you, you are REALLY far gone!

So I am now...independent. A paleo-conservative without a party. Used to be, a conservative was the smartest person in the room. Now, an UnConservative is likely to be mentally challenged. They are an embarrassment. I wish Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin, along with the other lesser Manchurian candidates sent to destroy the Right would all climb aboard a plane and crash into the side of a mountain.

Bigotry on the Right is making a big comeback these days, too. That's...charming.


The Left has always disgusted me, and always will. With their knees calloused from smoking miles of federal dick, they have led entire generations of Americans into the bondage of co-dependence.

So what does that leave?

Oh, yes. Your vaunted third parties. Yeah, I just escaped from a party overrun with crazy people and you want me to join up with the Patient Zeroes of insanity?

I don't think so!

Nope. I will just wait right here, thank you very much. The silver lining in the dark cloud of madness over our country right now is that while it is very intensive, it is incapable of sustaining itself for long. A candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long, and all that.

I don't know if one or the other or both parties will self-destruct. I don't know if a newer, saner, more moderate major party will rise from the ashes. I don't know if the GOP will wake up with a giant hangover and a sheepish look on its face. But sooner or later, I will find a home again.



.

 

[Seawytch]

The place where the left and right meet is in thinking Libertarians have jumped the shark...just for different reasons.

 

[MisterBeale]

You are repeating a tired, fallacious meme. There are significant differences between the Right and Left. Just start an abortion topic and learn for yourself.

With that said, I have been a barrel-chested Republican for most of my life. It is only in recent years I have walked away from voting GOP because my party has been hijacked by a crop of incompetents, supported by millions of UnConservative mindless drones drinking billions of gallons of bongwater and piss. If the emitter of information has a (R) after his or hier name, the hive mind minions swallow it, then parrot it incessently without ever critically analyzing it.

Some of them have gone so far to the right, everyone else looks like a leftie to them. No wonder Glenn Beck was able to convince them Nazis were lefties so easily. If Nazis are to the left of you, you are REALLY far gone!

I think the difference he is talking about, for all intents and purposed, don't really make a difference in the historic direction that the nation takes, in terms of civil rights and civil liberties, economic policy, or foreign policy. The ruling elites don't really give a squat about divisive social policy issues. In the end, 1st and 2nd Amendment rights which all Americans agree on will have to be eliminated through an end run around the constitution via the UN.

I don't listen to Glean Beck. Has he claimed that the Nazi's were "lefties" or just that they were socialists? If he has claimed that they are socialists, then indeed, he was correct. But then, if he is trying to get his supporters to vote for the Republican party, that would be disingenuous, wouldn't it? Because Republicans are corporatists, and that is just a soft peddled way and easily digestible way of saying fascist in this county. It doesn't matter whether the nation is socialized by the state or by corporations, it still becomes socialized.
usmessageboard.com/politics/247384-anybody-but-romney-3.html#post5999692

Not many would argue that Obama care is socialism, correct? Yet is it European style socialism? No, not really. Why did it get so much democratic (small "d") support? Why do so many corporations support it? Why does our so called free market support it? Because it is fascist in nature. It is national socialism. Who is doing the socializing? The corporations. The Republican and Democratic party donors. To be sure, the Democratic party isn't much different. They just have a more international socialist appeal to them. They are much more in favor of having the government do more things than the corporations. But socialism is still socialism, no matter how you slice it. You are taking the responsibility away from the free market and letting either corporations dictate your choices, or the state dictate your choices. It is apparent you didn't Google search that article I recommended by Noam Chomsky.

Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed "capitalism with the gloves off." It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all.

It is precisely in its oppression of nonmarket forces that we see how neoliberalism operates - not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well. Here the differences with fascism, with its contempt for formal democracy and highly mobilized social movements based upon racism and nationalism, are striking. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision-making. As neoliberal guru Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, because profitmaking is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. (The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.)

Equipped with this perverse understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship - all in the name of the democratic free market - formal democracy was restored in 1989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e., so long as it isn't democracy.

I understand what you are saying. Much of your complaints have been echoed before by both William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan. You must understand the Hegelian Dialectic and how social engineering works. It isn't the political parties that control the destiny of nations, it is the political elites. Well, actually, just elites in general. There are cultural, scientific, and economic elites. But it is the "non-profit" foundations that engage in "social-engineering" that attempt to shape the fabric of our society. Did you go to a government school? Did you go to a school that had to abide by government dictates about what you must be taught? How did those parameters come about? These idea shapes our thoughts, our ideas, and consequently our attitudes about policy.

Something to think about. . .

“Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.” ~ MALCOLM X

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
~Vladimir Lenin

Who's teaching your kids, the state, the church, the television, pop music, video games, or you?

 

[MisterBeale]

The place where the left and right meet is in thinking Libertarians have jumped the shark...just for different reasons.

They both need to shut off the TV, the radio and pick up a book. If they spent even a quarter as much time reading they would know the Democrats sold out the country's future with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and the Republicans shirked their responsibility when they dismissed the Reece Committee.

"Jumped the shark" Need I say more Fonzie?

 

[chikenwing]

Do you find it fun? Ya know, being on one team while tattering whoever is on the other team? Surely you do not think that there is any tangible difference between the American let and the American right...why instead not just look for issues and details you agree with personally rather than look for your opinions spoon fed to you? Help me understand this.

You are repeating a tired, fallacious meme. There are significant differences between the Right and Left. Just start an abortion topic and learn for yourself.

With that said, I have been a barrel-chested Republican for most of my life. It is only in recent years I have walked away from voting GOP because my party has been hijacked by a crop of incompetents, supported by millions of UnConservative mindless drones drinking billions of gallons of bongwater and piss. If the emitter of information has a (R) after his or hier name, the hive mind minions swallow it, then parrot it incessently without ever critically analyzing it.

Some of them have gone so far to the right, everyone else looks like a leftie to them. No wonder Glenn Beck was able to convince them Nazis were lefties so easily. If Nazis are to the left of you, you are REALLY far gone!

So I am now...independent. A paleo-conservative without a party. Used to be, a conservative was the smartest person in the room. Now, an UnConservative is likely to be mentally challenged. They are an embarrassment. I wish Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin, along with the other lesser Manchurian candidates sent to destroy the Right would all climb aboard a plane and crash into the side of a mountain.

Bigotry on the Right is making a big comeback these days, too. That's...charming.


The Left has always disgusted me, and always will. With their knees calloused from smoking miles of federal dick, they have led entire generations of Americans into the bondage of co-dependence.

So what does that leave?

Oh, yes. Your vaunted third parties. Yeah, I just escaped from a party overrun with crazy people and you want me to join up with the Patient Zeroes of insanity?

I don't think so!

Nope. I will just wait right here, thank you very much. The silver lining in the dark cloud of madness over our country right now is that while it is very intensive, it is incapable of sustaining itself for long. A candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long, and all that.

I don't know if one or the other or both parties will self-destruct. I don't know if a newer, saner, more moderate major party will rise from the ashes. I don't know if the GOP will wake up with a giant hangover and a sheepish look on its face. But sooner or later, I will find a home again.



.

I hear ya,you should try living in new york state make it that much harder.

But the sad fact we have 2 realistic people to choose from,and we should vote regardless if you have only ashole A or asshole B as a choice.

 

[MisterBeale]

I hear ya,you should try living in new york state make it that much harder.

But the sad fact we have 2 realistic people to choose from,and we should vote regardless if you have only ashole A or asshole B as a choice.

Who told you to vote regardless of if you don't like the candidate? Let me guess, the media and the schools. You were socialized to believe that is your duty, correct? It adds legitimacy to the corruption. If you vote for them, they get to do as they please. Bullshit. If you don't like any of the choices, don't vote. Then protest and take action when the leaders you do have are tyrants. THAT is the way our government is intended to work. If we are not given candidates that are acceptable, don't vote, and participate by other means until the system changes.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk"]George Carlin Doesn't vote[/ame]

 

[Mac1958]

.

Intellectual laziness. A feeling of "belonging". Narcissism.

.

 

[g5000]

At the end of Animal Farm, the men look more like the pigs, and the pigs look more like the men.

I see this happening to a degree with the major parties. Long ago, the Democrats were accurately pegged as the "tax and spend" party and have never been able to shake that label.

But the GOP has become the "borrow and spend" party.

Two legs good, four legs bad.

.

 

[Politico]

Why do so many of you buy into the left/right paradigm? Because the other option is to think for themselves. That makes them uncomfortable.

 

[eflatminor]

Do you find it fun? Ya know, being on one team while tattering whoever is on the other team? Surely you do not think that there is any tangible difference between the American let and the American right...why instead not just look for issues and details you agree with personally rather than look for your opinions spoon fed to you? Help me understand this.

"I think it might be important to point out that this country is a one-party country. Half of that party is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn’t make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians."

-Hugh Downs

 

[Harry Dresden]

Well the reason I think people buy into it, is there are only 2 options, and the repubs represent the consertives, and the left represent the progressives. other than that there really is no other choice.

there are always other choices....

 

[Freewill]

I buy more of a "no left" paradigm.

 

[Erand7899]

You are repeating a tired, fallacious meme. There are significant differences between the Right and Left. Just start an abortion topic and learn for yourself.

With that said, I have been a barrel-chested Republican for most of my life. It is only in recent years I have walked away from voting GOP because my party has been hijacked by a crop of incompetents, supported by millions of UnConservative mindless drones drinking billions of gallons of bongwater and piss. If the emitter of information has a (R) after his or hier name, the hive mind minions swallow it, then parrot it incessently without ever critically analyzing it.

Some of them have gone so far to the right, everyone else looks like a leftie to them. No wonder Glenn Beck was able to convince them Nazis were lefties so easily. If Nazis are to the left of you, you are REALLY far gone!

I think the difference he is talking about, for all intents and purposed, don't really make a difference in the historic direction that the nation takes, in terms of civil rights and civil liberties, economic policy, or foreign policy. The ruling elites don't really give a squat about divisive social policy issues. In the end, 1st and 2nd Amendment rights which all Americans agree on will have to be eliminated through an end run around the constitution via the UN.

I don't listen to Glean Beck. Has he claimed that the Nazi's were "lefties" or just that they were socialists? If he has claimed that they are socialists, then indeed, he was correct. But then, if he is trying to get his supporters to vote for the Republican party, that would be disingenuous, wouldn't it? Because Republicans are corporatists, and that is just a soft peddled way and easily digestible way of saying fascist in this county. It doesn't matter whether the nation is socialized by the state or by corporations, it still becomes socialized.
usmessageboard.com/politics/247384-anybody-but-romney-3.html#post5999692

Not many would argue that Obama care is socialism, correct? Yet is it European style socialism? No, not really. Why did it get so much democratic (small "d") support? Why do so many corporations support it? Why does our so called free market support it? Because it is fascist in nature. It is national socialism. Who is doing the socializing? The corporations. The Republican and Democratic party donors. To be sure, the Democratic party isn't much different. They just have a more international socialist appeal to them. They are much more in favor of having the government do more things than the corporations. But socialism is still socialism, no matter how you slice it. You are taking the responsibility away from the free market and letting either corporations dictate your choices, or the state dictate your choices. It is apparent you didn't Google search that article I recommended by Noam Chomsky.

Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations. In fact, we know that fascism is vastly more complex than that. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is indeed "capitalism with the gloves off." It represents an era in which business forces are stronger and more aggressive, and face less organized opposition than ever before. In this political climate they attempt to codify their political power and enact their vision on every possible front. As a result, business is increasingly difficult to challenge, and civil society (nonmarket, noncommercial, and democratic forces) barely exists at all.

It is precisely in its oppression of nonmarket forces that we see how neoliberalism operates - not only as an economic system, but as a political and cultural system as well. Here the differences with fascism, with its contempt for formal democracy and highly mobilized social movements based upon racism and nationalism, are striking. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision-making. As neoliberal guru Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, because profitmaking is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. (The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.)

Equipped with this perverse understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in 1973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship - all in the name of the democratic free market - formal democracy was restored in 1989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e., so long as it isn't democracy.

I understand what you are saying. Much of your complaints have been echoed before by both William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan. You must understand the Hegelian Dialectic and how social engineering works. It isn't the political parties that control the destiny of nations, it is the political elites. Well, actually, just elites in general. There are cultural, scientific, and economic elites. But it is the "non-profit" foundations that engage in "social-engineering" that attempt to shape the fabric of our society. Did you go to a government school? Did you go to a school that had to abide by government dictates about what you must be taught? How did those parameters come about? These idea shapes our thoughts, our ideas, and consequently our attitudes about policy.

Something to think about. . .

“Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.” ~ MALCOLM X

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
~Vladimir Lenin

Who's teaching your kids, the state, the church, the television, pop music, video games, or you?

A famous general once said that you go to war with the army that you have, and not the one you wish you had. Politics is no different, you work with the political structure that exists, and not the one that you wish existed. My politics are based on some very long lived principles, and I vote according to those principles.

First, is the strong belief that the Constitution of the United States of America is the best contract between a people and their federal government, that has ever existed in human history. Defending that contract is the primary duty of every citizen. The fact that we have allowed politicians and jurists to tear at that document, does not discredit the document, it discredits the abusers, and those who sit by and allow them to do so.

Second, is that individual Americans, acting in their own financial and social interests, have built an economy and a social fabric, second to none. That no government or bureaucrat is smart enough, wise enough, or honest enough to do a better job at it. And, every time they try, they screw it up, bigtime.

Third, is the knowledge that political power is like fire, helpful when well controlled, but highly dangerous when out of control. Consequently, political power must be difused as much as is possible, and held, as much as possible at the local level, where citizens are better able to contain it.

Fourth, is the absolute fact that no honest man, who is indebted to another, is as free as one who is not. When indebted to government, or dependent upon government, freedom exists only at the level that government dictates. You want the goodies, you toe the line.

Neither major political party meets all of my standards, but the Republican party comes far closer than the Democrat party. I can either play the game with the politics that exist, or I can sneak off into the corner and throw a snit.

 

[Dot Com]

Do you find it fun? Ya know, being on one team while tattering whoever is on the other team? Surely you do not think that there is any tangible difference between the American let and the American right...why instead not just look for issues and details you agree with personally rather than look for your opinions spoon fed to you? Help me understand this.

I agree. The Court has basically put political positions up for sale to the highest bidder. The dirty secret is that both candidates recieve money, oftentimes, from the same company for instance Boeing. They do this so that no matter who wins, they can call in their marker as it were. Sad. If you want to see which politician belongs to which corporation, go here : OpenSecrets.org: Money in Politics -- See Who's Giving & Who's Getting

 

[SniperFire]

Do you find it fun? Ya know, being on one team while tattering whoever is on the other team? Surely you do not think that there is any tangible difference between the American let and the American right...why instead not just look for issues and details you agree with personally rather than look for your opinions spoon fed to you? Help me understand this.

"I think it might be important to point out that this country is a one-party country. Half of that party is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn’t make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians."

-Hugh Downs

World Peace and Ending Hunger are good ideas as well.

Libertarian will never be anything more than 'ideas.'