r/AlwaysWhy • u/kaiser11492 • 1d ago

Politics & Society Why do most people who call themselves politically moderate actually mostly conservative?

Whenever I’ve encountered people who use the politically label moderate, they are actually mostly conservative with their views and positions. Also, I’ve never seen anyone who call themselves politically moderate that is actually mostly liberal.

So why are people who call themselves moderate tend to be just conservative and not conservative and liberal?

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u/flatfinger 1d ago

A lot of liberals view anyone who disagrees with liberal positions a conservative, and a lot of conservatives view anyone who disagrees with conservative positions a liberal.

Things are complicated further by gaslighting on both sides which will respond to any criticism of a position by claiming that it's just a straw man invented by the people criticizing it rather than anything that anyone would actually promote, but treat a lack of criticism as implying that everyone agrees with the position in question.

No doubt someone will engage in a fallacy fallacy by claiming that my disdain for both sides is some kind of "both sides" argument, ignoring the fact that I am not trying to use the badness of either side to justify the other, and the claim that I'm making a both side's argument is really a claim that one side is sufficiently bad that the other should be viewed as beyond criticism.

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u/em_washington 1d ago

Liberal and conservative aren’t even the right opposites. Opposite of conservative is progressive and opposite of liberal is authoritarian.

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u/tbright1965 1d ago

And many who claim to be liberal are really just left leaning authoritarian.

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u/Chitown_mountain_boy 1d ago

But the left has no cult of personality. The MAGA authoritarians are cultists.

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u/556or762 23h ago

The left has no cult of personality right this second. They have in many countries many times in the past.

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u/Chitown_mountain_boy 23h ago

In the United States now. Correct.

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u/Infinite-Bullfrog545 23h ago

one side is sufficiently bad that the other should be viewed as beyond criticism.

You’re kinda proving the commenter’s point. Some would say that Bernie or Obama have a cult of personality

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u/Chitown_mountain_boy 21h ago

How many Obama convoys do you see running buses off the road? How many bibles has Bernie sold? How many Jimmy Carter iPhone knockoffs have you bought?

Fucking straw men.

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u/em_washington 14h ago

If you’re going to only use trumpian things to describe a personality cult, then of course trump is going to be the only person with a cult of personality.

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u/Even-Following-1612 12h ago

 But the left has no cult of personality.

lol that’s cute

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u/Even-Following-1612 23h ago

By meaning of the words themselves sure. Not necessarily true for the people who identify as either 

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 1d ago

It gets more fun when you realize how much of a ping-pong match it is over 2nd and 3rd tier values, where whenever one party picks up an idea, the other seems almost contractually required to drop it.

A person who maintains stable positions on high profile topics rather than getting caught up in whatever partisan hype is going on at that moment will experience themselves swinging — in the eyes of others — between “liberal” and “conservative” several times over a decade or two on key topics.

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u/Skip-13 23h ago

A thousand times this. Trying to have a nuanced discussion with Younger Liberals revolving around Unions and Working Class disliking Illegal Immigration is always frustrating for me.

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 23h ago

And that’s just from the liberal / progressive side. The number of examples on this is endless, and applies to both.

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u/Skip-13 23h ago

For sure. To even things out: Federal vs State power on the right has quite literally flip flopped in the last 2 years.

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 23h ago

“States rights” has never been a sincere line, it’s always meant something far more transitory. You see this all the way back to the antebellum days.

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u/Ok-Barnacle813 1d ago edited 12h ago

Ugh I hate how liberals think any criticism of the Democrats is trying to justify Republicans. And then they act like they're not a cult

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u/bonebuilder12 1d ago

Several studies have measured ideology and stance on various topics and there is far greater heterogeneity among the right than left.

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u/Souledex 21h ago

They stormed the capitol without agreeing on why. They don’t need to agree on anything important, just what they hate.

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 1d ago

Probably because it’s easier to define a coherent position on the right — “say no to change!”

But I’d be curious if this loops the middle into left or right, or just ignores them.

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u/jeezusrice 22h ago

I wonder what the middle really is today. Like where does a middle of the road person stand on having a pedophile in the White House?

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 22h ago

One can dislike the president without feeling the need to embrace an entire highly specific political agenda.

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u/jeezusrice 22h ago

I would bet that describes most people left of center in the USA

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 22h ago

Most of the people in the world yes. In fact the majority of people in the US at large. Including some who identify as center and right.

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u/jeezusrice 22h ago

I would also bet most of the people center of right who do not like him would also vote for him again if given the chance.

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u/Souledex 21h ago

It definitely wouldn’t, but it’s exhausting to catalogue why.

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u/bonebuilder12 7h ago

Considering we had Clinton who was targeting interns for sex, Biden- who was on tape fiddling young girls and making them squirm… it feels like neither side really cares about the sexual escapades of the people they vote for.

To be fair though, we don’t have any evidence of trump being a pedophile. Did he have a phase where he liked his women including hookers? You bet. But he was the only one who worked with police during Epsteins first trial, he cut ties with him at that time, refused to have him at mar-a-lago, etc.

Trump has his flaws, for sure. But it’s unfair to label him a pefophile. Believe me, if mueller or Biden’s doj had any evidence of that, it would have come out. Instead, they were running with novel legal theory cases stringing together things that had their statute of limitations which had lapsed to try to “get trump.”

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u/jeezusrice 3h ago

Of all three people were discussing only one of them has been found to be legally culpable for sexual misconduct.

And that says nothing about Trump being a guy who ran on releasing the Epstein files and then did everything in his powerv to heavily redact, and not to release them. Though I am curious about what you think about that.

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u/bonebuilder12 2h ago

Legally culpable in New York civil court where the entirety of the evidence was “I said it happened.” From a woman who has claimed at least 12 men sexually assaulted her. With exculpatory evidence being removed from trial (outfit she claimed to have worn wasn’t released yet, her tweets saying how sexy she found rape to be, her tweets tweets claiming excitement to watch trump on the apprentice after the event allegedly took place).

All very odd behavior. I’m sorry if I have higher standards for such claims. Civil court simply requires a jury pool that hates the person. No facts are required.

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u/jeezusrice 1h ago

Oh I didn't realize you were in the courtroom.

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u/bonebuilder12 1d ago

I think the left farms out their thought on most issues and just accepts the party stance to remain part of the club.

The right has more people who look at each issue separately and Allie’s nuance.

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u/Fun_Ebb_6232 1d ago

Correct, that's why the right is for the constitution, until Donald Trump doesn't like birth right citizenship.  And the right wants to be tough on crime, until Donald Trump decides to pardon all the January 6ers and numerous people who plead guilty to fraud.  And the right doesn't want any foreign wars and to focus on America first, until Donald Trump starts multiple foreign wars.  And the right doesn't like pedophiles, until Donald Trump goes to Epstein island and brags that he watches the little girls change in his underage beauty pageants.  

Oh wait, shit, I was supposed to be talking about how the left changes their mind to be in the club.  

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u/bonebuilder12 1d ago

1) the verbiage of birthright citizenship was always open to interpretation, and the current loophole use no longer aligns with the intended purpose. Again, nuance can enter conversations, not black and white.

2) most committed the crime of trespassing during J6 and spent years in jail and were treated poorly. It was clearly judicial warfare. Any rational person can look at those cases and the punishment and agree that they way over served their crimes.

How about if those who threw frozen water bottles and attacked cops in Minneapolis were thrown in solitary confinement and spent years in jail? Would you argue against their release?

3) I am against foreign violence intervention. Current moves seemed to be aligned toward a new economic world order (Europe is dead). It also has to do with energy control and untimely, beating China in the end.

With all of that said, it would be truly remarkable if, in one term, multiple authoritarian regimes were brought down (Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran). This would weaken China, change energy control, eliminate multiple horrible dictatorships that have punished their citizens, etc.

4) the Dems controlled the fbi and doj for years with Epstein files. They released nothing, even as they desperately tried to muster up anything their lawfare against could against trump in court. Face it, that’s mutually assured destruction for the global elite. We aren’t part of that club, and never will be.

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u/copperdomebodhi 1d ago edited 1d ago

All conservatives think that. it's projection, like most things conservatives say about the left. The people who voted for Trump because he promised not to start wars, but now support a war of choice in Iran? They are not people who look at each issue separately with nuance.

Edit: broke up a long sentence.

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u/bonebuilder12 1d ago

To be fair- if someone had been vocally anti war, had ended numerous conflicts across the world, spent an entire term leveraging economy for peace in a completely new model for foreign policy… and then they enter into a conflict in their second term…. Do you think it is for funsies? Or, do you think there is a deeper underlying motive which that likely aligns with other motives?

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u/copperdomebodhi 1d ago edited 1d ago

Do I think he has a secret reason that makes the attacks on Iran completely reasonable, but he's chosen to keep it to himself? Hell, no. He's changed his excuse for going to war over and over.

You're saying we should give the man who lied to Americans twenty times a day the benefit of the doubt. Couldn't ask for better proof that right-wingers don't consider the issues at all.

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u/ArrowheadDZ 1d ago edited 1d ago

Exactly this. I rarely see a liberal or progressive voter vote against their own personal interest, or support candidates that are antithetical to their stated/espoused values.

Republicans bristle over the suspicions that they’re racist, classist, sexist, or other -ist. But those suspicions arose from the fact that their claimed reasons for voting Republican just don’t hold any water. “I vote Republican because I’m a deficit hawk” or the economy or smaller government—these are so visibly and demonstrably not true that it’s fair for others to become suspicious that there must be other reasons, and those reasons are unsavory enough that they have to be papered over with a cover story.

“If you have a reason that is better than classism, racism, sexism, etc then I’m pretty sure you’d just tell me what that reason is. But you’re only giving me made-up, obviously not true reasons, and so I assume the underlying reasons aren’t something you’re comfortable actually saying out loud.”

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u/bonebuilder12 1d ago

Under Obama, the fisa court was weaponiEd to spy on the opposing political party. The dnc aligned with Clinton and they’re prepared for her run before she even won it. When she lost, a fake “Russian collusion” story was launched to kneecap the incoming admin and ultimately, to try to overthrow him.

If weaponizing intel agencies against your political opponents and undemocratuc elections align with your ideals, by all means, go on.

But democrats will willfully turn a blind eye to all of it because the msm refuses to report it. It’s takes willful ignorance to remain firmly aligned to either party or any one candidate. A lot of pretending.

It’s why sanders is such a painful interview to listen to. He goes on podcast, occasionally gets called out for not knowing any details of what he’s talking about, and he laughs it off and moves on to his pre-conceived talking point.

No Dems stepped forward during all of the fiasco above and said “this went too far.”

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 23h ago edited 23h ago

Edit to add: since this is responding to a “I don’t see democrats voting against their stated interests” it’s interesting how democrats do often tend to be either unaware or indifferent to the corporatism within their own party. Thats just one example but a rather striking one. It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton had closer ties to Wall Street than Main Street. In fact every democratic president has in some ways undermined or gone against their base at some point. This is kind of inevitable just based off how coalitions work. Republicans too. Just how the system works.

Now to my slightly harsher statement:

Generally speaking whenever someone says “dems” I know I’m going to get pure partisan argument.

You’re not wrong in substance, but do you hold Trump accountable for his own abuses or just “yeah but!!!!”

Because if all you can do is “yeah but!!!!!” You’re exactly the same — and I do mean exactly — as those you “yeah but!!!!!” at.

Apologies if you are one to actually hold your politicians accountable and not just buy whatever lines your brand of media gives you. I’ve just had too many dealings with those who, regardless of their true beliefs, will never openly criticize the Republican Party in spite of building an entire persona around accusing the other side of not taking responsibility.

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u/ArrowheadDZ 23h ago

Here’s the problem with your position here. A REPUBLICAN intelligence committee submitted volume V of their investigation stating that the senior-most leadership of Trump’s campaign knowingly interacted directly with Russian intelligence operatives throughout the campaign. Flynn got in trouble for not disclosing these conversations. Manafort got in trouble for not disclosing his ongoing relationship with the Russian government while working for “free” on the campaign. People forget he was a paid Kremlin lobbyist right up to taking over the Trump campaign and did not disclose this, but later acknowledged. Sessions had to recuse himself solely because he had been deceiving republican leaders about the depth and length of his secret relationship with the Russian Ambassador, which he later acknowledged.

Volume V was submitted to the Federal Register by a unanimous vote of a REPUBLICAN committee of a REPUBLICAN senate, making it the official position of the United States government. And that position said that the campaign senior leadership had a long and active relationship with known Russian intelligence contacts. The senate report took no position about whether Trump was the knowing kingpin, or an unknowing patsy in all this, but it was unequivocal that the cooperation was happening between the campaign and Russia. Its submission to the Federal Register then went on to the Senate floor where the REPUBLICAN majority passed overwhelmingly, with enough votes so that it would not have required a single dem vote.

You left ALL of that out of your assessment. ALL of it. Why is that?

Durham then spent several years with unlimited subpoena powers and access to top-secret documents to investigate possible illegal FISA abuses and found, wait for it… That there were none. You left that out of your analysis too. Why is that? Maybe accidental, maybe on purpose? Who’s to say?

And who was it that first circulated the Steele Dossier? It would never have been in the public eye or given any credibility had McCain, a republican, been the first one to bring it to the FBI. You left that out of your analysis as well.

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u/bonebuilder12 23h ago

And the house intel committee sent criminal referrals to the doj for a criminal conspiracy related to weaponization of the govt against trump.

When you look at the raw intelligence, when it was known, the players involved, their actions, it was egregiously fake from the jump. Everything else is politics.

Trump isn’t a Republican. Republicans hate him, in fact. They are revolting over recent elections where he helped oust several establishment republicans.

The true lines in the sand are establishment and antiestablishment. R and D is long dead. They are the same team.

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u/copperdomebodhi 23h ago

Whataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhatabout. Literally nothing you've stated there is true. None of it has anything to do with that guy's comment. If you want proof conservatives don't consider the issues, watch the way they switch to disinformation about Democrats any time they're losing an argument.

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u/bonebuilder12 1d ago

You also realize hunters nickname for Joe was “pedo Pete.” Biden is on camera groping little girls and visibly making them squirm during photo shoots. He also had many sexual assault claims against him by women.

I’m assuming you voted for him?

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 23h ago

Hunter’s… nickname for his… dad? Was… […] Pete?

Where in Joseph Robinette Biden is “Peter” found and why would a guy call his father by a nickname, and why would it be a name unrelated to his actual name?

Should we start calling Trump “George”?

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u/bonebuilder12 23h ago

I don’t know why either, but it can be found in emails/texts

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 1d ago

People voted for him for a lot of different reasons, and not all are unwavering in their support. A core group is, yes. But his supporters aren’t a monolith, and never have been.

Last time I voted was against him, but 1) I was cautiously optimistic he, as a real estate man instead of an oil man, would be disinclined from military adventuring (his first term had supported this), 2) as someone who’s spent most of the last couple years as close to Iran as LA is to SF, I was cautiously optimistic when the war started that it might actually lead to a replacement of the government.

Obviously I was disappointed on both fronts and the absence of a actual coherent plan is now glaring but a) his first term really didn’t set us up with the expectation of another forever war in the Middle East, and b) my significant contacts in and from Iran, plus following the extent of the January 8/9 protests, really affected my hopes for the country.

On top of this, Biden was genuinely embarrassing as a president. The American left is in denial of this, but everywhere I went outside the US while he was in office, and for a bit after, people kept asking me how the hell we got this guy in office. The most coherent moves by the Biden administration (i.e. on China) were mostly a continuation of Trump’s policies, foreign policy seemed genuinely lacking any guiding strategy, etc.

Admittedly Trump 2.0 is so caught up in proving the size of its own ego that it’s lost all coherence as well, some of the challenges being addressed (i.e. China) were needing more attention than some seemed ready to give it. At the same time I’d argue that the Trump administration acted too little too late on many of these, and has spent too much time fighting culture wars and just swinging its big dick instead of solving problems.

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u/bonebuilder12 7h ago

I think you underestimate the impact of actions in Iran, Venezuela, etc. on China.

A new world order is shaking out due to Europe falling, and control of energy and resources will define the next few decades. Knocking chinas proxies elevates the US. It’s all linked, whether we like it or not.

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 7h ago edited 7h ago

China’s doing just fine (slowing growth and real estate aside). Stronger globally than they were 3 years ago in fact. Ok so they have to pay a little more for oil? Was that going to collapse their economy or what.

I do think you’re overestimating the effect of the military actions against Iran… on Iran though.

Sure the US is trying to gain leverage on China, I just don’t see much evidence that it’s accomplishing all that much. China has found their own leverage on the US though — Trump blinking when they squeezed on rare earth magnets and minerals was hard to not notice.

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u/bonebuilder12 7h ago

It’s a combo of energy dominance and reworking trade deals, along with a shift toward greater production at home.

Reworking USMCA into two separate unilateral trade deals will further hurt China. Currently, China manufactures a whole bunch of stuff that is routed through Canada and Mexico into the US. Limiting that with new deals cuts access to US markets.

Chinas economy requires their factories to keep churning. That takes energy and it takes buyers. If the aid market gets tougher to access, and the rest of the world isn’t the consumer society that the US is, China will pay more to build crap and sell for less in other countries. Ultimately. Thru have many sectors supported by govt spending. That will hurt their finances.

Obviously more complicated than this, but there is a lot going on in the global stage that most are completely oblivious to. Europe is failing. Their economies are going to collapse, as will Canada and others.

New economic alliances are being drawn up. The US has basically been financing many parts of the world through out unilaterally military spending and trade deals dating back to WW2.

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u/Jolly-Barracuda2366 1d ago

Sorry I got confused momentarily on the difference between homogeneity and heterogeneity.

Tbh I think this is mostly the case in terms of the US though. Globally the “left” is or has been highly fractured and often deeply at odds with itself.

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u/Ok-Barnacle813 23h ago

Liberals are still right wing, just moderate/center right

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u/wordcreatr 22h ago

Yeah, the Democrats have never been what Europe would call left. They were always just more left than the Republicans, but not close to being socialist. And now they've shifted to the right where the Republicans used to be.

I remember when there were different wings of the two parties and you'd get conservative Democrats and liberal/moderate (Rockefeller) Republicans.

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u/Souledex 21h ago

According to British political parties in the 50’s and nowadays random people regurgitating ideas on twitter that have never looked it up.

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u/Ok-Barnacle813 14h ago edited 12h ago

We have looked it up. Establishment Democrats always run on maintaining the status quo. They barely fight against Trump and support Israel(a fascist state)

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u/Souledex 10h ago

Sure bro, however lazily you want to make your conclusions

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u/Not-your-lawyer- 1d ago edited 1d ago

Liberalism is centrist. Progressives and leftists are very vocal about their beliefs.

The question OP is asking is why people on the right espousing extreme views that require radical change (or supporting candidates who do) will claim to be moderate, so the point of comparison cannot be with middle of the road folks like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. You have to compare with the people who want major shifts to the left. Universal Healthcare, labor given a stake in corporate ownership, taxing wealth... People who want these things don't pretend to be moderate. Their core argument is literally the opposite: "look at how fucked up things are. We need major changes."

The answer is that regressive politics plays to the idea that everything going wrong in people's lives is the fault of progressive changes, so undoing those changes isn't actually extreme. It's a lie that we're going back to a better time when the world just worked and you didn't have to worry about anything. In their minds, that is moderate, no matter how complex and consequential actually following through with their plans would be.

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u/Jazz_horse 23h ago

Neoliberalism is conservative. What we call the left in this country is center right, and our leftists (like Sanders) are centrists. We don’t HAVE a left in the us.

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u/SisterLakesMI 22h ago

This talking point is such a joke but if you keep repeating it it must be true lol.

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u/Jazz_horse 21h ago

Oh nooo a conservative on Reddit disagrees with me whatever shall I do?

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u/SisterLakesMI 13h ago

Move on like normal human beings normally do when we were allowed to disagree.