34 years ago today, the #SovietUnion officially ceased to exist. December 26, 1991
Apologies to #tankies (not really) but it was a very good thing
Not liking the #Soviet Union has nothing to do with loving #capitalism or loving the #West, it's about despising #imperialism
Anyone who has a problem with my sentiment:
Talk to someone who lived in #EasternEurope or under the Soviet umbrella
We must defeat #plutocracy in the West
The Soviet way is not the way
Happy #SovietUnionCollapseDay
The best insight into politics that I picked up over this year was from a YouTube channel / podcast called “ what is politics?”
He reduces left and right to explicit behavior.
The left is distinguished by a government that confers equality social, political and in economic decision-making. Equality and prosperity are inseparable
The right wing is distinguished by a government that confers evermore decision-making power to wealth. They ask you to compromise freedom and prosperity
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
How does that framework explain the social right and social left?
@benroyce
what is the "social right"?
dimwits who say trans people don't deserve rights, for example?
these are merely morons and bigots used by agendas that rob them, but they don't care, because their ignorant hate is more important to them
@benroyce
What rights do you mean?
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
are you talking about my reference to trans rights?
then that is the simple fact trans people deserve their basic human rights everyone deserves
i only used it as an example because the "social right," the bigots and morons that they are, don't want that, and then they are used by plutocrat agendas because that's an easy aspect of their stupidity and hate to pander to
so this "social right" you refer to is nothing but loser zombies used for agendas
@benroyce
What exactly is it that the social right don't want, and why don't they matter for a definition of "left" and "right" political terms?
What about the social left?
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
@benroyce
I am asking you to defend your rejection of my terms.
I'm not sure what you are saying exactly.
I was asking @GhostOnTheHalfShell how the social spectrum is defined in the left-right framework he describes. And you butted in with a point. But I'm not sure what that point is exactly. That the social spectrum isn't real? Or what?
The point of the definition I am using is one categorizes people by their behavior:
A left-wing person is egalitarian. They do not tolerate one or a few dictating to the many.
Right wing person defines who is subordinate to whom.
I would hope I would not have to explain that the Republican Party is by every measure right wing. But the Democratic Party (leadership) is also right wing, because they sit atop a hierarchy of fundraising and political patronage.
..
The standard corporate business structure of CEOs and managers dictating to the rank and file what to do, when to do it and how long to do it and how much they’re going to get compensated for is right wing because by definition this is a dominance hierarchy.
A worker co-op would be the example of the opposite, but even here you would have to look at the actual political dynamics.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell
(Oops; I thought this got through, but it didn't)
Yes. That I understand. I was asking about the social aspect of the commonly accepted left-right spectrum.
For example the far-right's "queer people are inferior and degenerate" (as @benroyce might have been alluding to) is clearly authoritarian and anti-freedom. But the right-coded pro-life movement is less clear.
I guess *technically* not being allowed to take the life of a fetus is "anti-freedom", but it's not against any freedom that actually matters.
In a civilised society we curtail the freedom to take (certain) life. Exceptions include animals (for food, clothing, and other products made from their bodies, and for being pests, etc), and fetuses (for reasons ranging from convenience of the mother or father to the brutality of rape and the injustice of having to give birth to your abuser's child).
I would think that expanding that right to life and bringing about further equality is egalitarian and therefore Left, but apparently not according to commonly accepted ideas.
There is also, as your YouTube channel talks about, the authoritarianism of cancel culture and general anti-discourse sentiment on the "social left".
