• abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    You just described a Leftist, in some ways. Disagreeing with both majority parties doesn’t mean you have to stand between “evidence-based” and “far-right”.

    There is absolutely no contradiction in being for police reform, and against riots lasting for days

    That’s being in the middle of the two positions. It’s not that there’s a contradiction, but that you just ate up the rhetoric that BLM protesting was all “riots lasting for days”. And “Police Reform” is a middle-of-the-road alternative to “follow the evidence, defund 90% of the police and have non-lethally-armed services do those things”. This fits our description of centrist to a tee

    There is no contradiction in being for gun rights, while also wanting limits on them

    Sure. I’m a leftist who feels this way. The “real center” here, though, would be the Democratic party, who still want less gun control than most civilized nations. Your view perhaps resembles the “the Right is so bat-shit insane that conservatives are confused for moderates”?

    There is no contradiction in wanting functional government services and universal healthcare, and thinking that free markets are effective

    I mean… yeah there is. If free markets were effective, we should be gutting all government services and regulatory bodies. Nobody actually believes free markets are effective. There are those who embrace the buzz-word without realizing it, and then there are those who want the free markets because they are ineffective and that the profit margins available to them are massive.

    There is no contradiction in wanting a more balanced budget, and government services to be funded

    Again, this is the formal Democratic position. The formal Republican position is called “Starve the Beast”, and it is for there to NEITHER be a balanced budget NOR be government services funded. I’m not making that up. On this view, you sound like a Democrat, but if you vote for Republicans on their economic stances despite matching Democrats, that makes you the middle of the two views again.

    The idea that there are only two sides in politics is a strange delusion created by your two party system.

    Obviously, but there are two sides to every issue. If we get back to the OP issue, it’s that one side has been screaming “climate change is real and permanent damage is imminent” and the other side has been screaming “climate change is fake and God loves us”. Centrists have been between the two saying “I know the meteor is headed for us, but my retirement is more important to me than the world still being around when my kids grow up”. We’ve been dealing with 40+ years of that. But yeah, that IS between the two sides.

    If you are left wing, and argue for left-wing policies in every case, that means you will also be argued with by somebody who believes political nuance and not just waving a party flag.

    The funny thing is that for 9 policies out of 10, most lefties just argue for the educated position against the “gut instinct” or “I know science says this but it worked for me” position. Hell, just look at the topic of parents hitting kids and it covers all the nuances of the leftist problem. Is the Left always correct? No. But the Right and/or Center is a broken clock in this. I think the Left is wrong on Gun Control and the Democrats are right. That’s about the only issue I can think of right now that the majority of the Left is wrong on. Not because I’m a leftist but because I’m educated in the issues.

    The right wing also shits on centrists because they think they are secretly left-wing since they argue with some of their stupider points as well.

    Not quite. They pretend centrists are the far left and shit on them, so that “moderate” really means “neocon but not seeking Handmaid’s Tale”.

    These people are not “secretly right-wing” and just don’t have the balls to say it. That is a horrendous take no matter where you fall on the political spectrum the only serves to limit conversation.

    Anyone who voted Trump in 2020 was either ignorant or Right-Wing, regardless of what they claimed to be. He is against fiscal conservativism, against modern medicine, and was caught red-handed working with Russia to steal the 2016 election. His presidency damaged the economy, but also focused that damage on states that net-provide resources for the country as a whole because they are Democrat. A person in New York paying an extra $10,000/yr in taxes with reduced overall QOL and COVID-dead family members “voting Trump anyway” is not a centrist.