About once a month I am struck by how useful the way we categorize political beliefs is to the people in power, and how damaging it is to political discourse otherwise.
Are you right wing? Wait - conservative? Or are you a liberal? Are you a "leftist" - or is that a liberal? Are centrists liberals? Or are they right wing? Or conservative?
Your answer may determine what other people assume you want, based on their *own* biases, no matter what else you tell them explicitly.
Artemis
in reply to John • • •This is a huge frustration for me: I find myself having to deny the "liberal" beliefs that people attribute to me one-by-one, when I try to have a conversation about something
"But you're liberal: don't you believe in xyz?"
A) I didn't say I was "liberal" b) nope, I don't & I never have.
Example, if you say you believe that we can provide for everyone's needs collectively people will immediately go "I can't believe you trust the GOVERNMENT," & it's like...who tf said I do?
John
in reply to Artemis • • •@artemis
The combination of fuzzy definitions + strong biases makes political conversations fraught for basically *anyone* on the real left.
And that's because "left" and "right" are the most inane and meaningless words for one of the most important and complex aspects of human society that anyone could have picked.
Violet Madder
in reply to John • • •It meant something useful in France when everybody knew who was sitting where in the assembly, and why.
Been a while.
John
in reply to John • • •*Any time* language has been manipulated to the point where it ceases to have clarity of meaning, you can find powerful people behind the manipulation.
That's because *they* hold the reigns of our media establishment, and can define and redefine words as they choose - especially if those words have already been shaken loose from any common meaning.
John
in reply to John • • •This is most obvious in the "liberal" or "left" debacle that routinely bamboozles otherwise smart people, but has been used for decades to conflate "conservative" and "far right" as well.
Other examples include things like "terrorist" and "criminal", which are so flagrantly used as to have no real meaning beyond "bad because we said so".
You can see it with the political class' selective use of "protester" and "rioter", as though these two words have no substantive difference in meaning.