this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I do listen to "both" sides! That's exactly why I'm a leftist!
I don't get why centrists think that you have to be "centrist" to listen to both sides, or why doing so makes you a centrist.
The same reason most smart non rich Republicans say they're Libertarians: so no one will give them shit.
Thing is, any reasonably person has by now realised that the Venn diagram of Libertarians and Conservatives is nearly a circle.
Exactly.
For America I'm what used to be a centrist, but now unfortunately I would be considered far left. I hate what we have become. Vote blue!
Green is better but not enough people even know about the Green party that it would be viable
It's not even just that people don't know about the green party, it's that we are stuck with a voting system that is inherently biased against 3rd parties being viable.
If we can switch to a better voting system like STAR or approval, it would be far better for the green party.
And the existing parties would have to compete for once, which would go a long way towards making them not dumpster fires.
The Greens are horrible on their own merits. Any third party in the US needs to start out saying the voting system must be changed. If they don't, that's a good sign they're a combination of a grift and useful idiots. The Greens rarely talk about it unless someone else brings it up first, and they quickly try to change the subject after mumbling a few things about it.
Another sign is that they don't try to build up support over time from local and state races. Greens occasionally run candidates for state congress, but for the most part, they show up for a Presidential run every 4 years and disappear.
Their historical anti-nuclear stance has exasperated climate change. They held back something that would have been very useful to mass deploy 20-30 years ago (although I do think the economics have changed, and it's no longer the right option for new rollouts). The German wing of the party is currently cheering on the dismantling of perfectly good nuclear reactors in exchange for much, much dirtier sources.
Nader's campaign in 2000 absolutely did torpedo Al Gore (and no, you don't have to convert every Nader voter in Florida to Gore for this to be true). He kept power out of the hands of one of the most genuine public servants to run in recent history, and gave power to a trainwreck of an administration that was 180 degrees away from their stated goals.
Greens need to get serious or fuck off.
The Democrats are nominating a genocide denier though. Similarly to pretty much every election for the last 50 years. (Not genocide specifically, but a candidate with major issues in their beliefs). Voting blue simply allows them to continue ignoring us. It also lends legitimacy to the winner. If the 2020 election had seen Biden win 15% to Trump's 10%, that'd be a much better case for Biden being an illegitimate president. When you do average things, you get average results. There is zero reason to think voting blue is ever going to fix any of our problems, because it hasn't so far.
I honestly don't think I can vote blue after this gaza fiasco. I know someone whose entire family in gaza were wiped out by American munitions. How can I talk to that person after voting for the guy that put those weapons there.
How would voting Republican be better, though?
I'm not, I'm gonna vote 3rd party. I'm in a very blue state already, so it won't really achieve anything but at least I won't be voting for genocide Joe.
Ok, but why did this suddenly happen? Have you ever voted? Which President wasn't in power when the US was off killing people somewhere else?
(There is a common tactic amongst the right to convince left-leaning voters that 'both sides are the same' so people don't vote for the 'Left' parties. Yes I am aware the Democrats in the US are not left wing, but I hope you get my idea.)
Yeah I voted for Biden last election. Obviously I knew that he was in power while the US was vaporizing brown children in the middle east, but I didn't really fully process how horrifying that was until it happened to someone closer to me I guess. I know that both sides aren't the same, but like they're both so awful. One of them is genocide, and the other is genocide while undermining queer rights in the US. I might be just thinking emotionally instead of logically, but I can't bring myself to vote for the genocide candidate.
And I think that at the very least threatening to not vote for Biden will force him to change his foreign policy. If we're sitting here saying "still vote blue next year!" then what motivation does Biden have to change anything? We know he won't do it out of the goodness of his heart, cause he's a fucking horrible person, so we have to try to scare him.
I think it's a difference in how we define words. If we focus on our common ground, first, then we are more likely to listen to each other. To a person who identifies as centrist, a person who calls themselves liberal might appear to be on the fringe of society IF the so-called centrist (who may even actually be liberal) is within a community where they are surrounded by more conservative voices.
Being with my husband has taught me that how we individually define words matters a lot more than we think. He and I grew up in very different circumstances and will often argue different points and then get extremely frustrated at each other for not understanding what we mean. Sometimes I'm thinking "what is he saying, that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about" only to realize that the way he defines a word, phrase, or idea is completely different to my definition.
If you want someone to truly listen to you, you first have to be open to discovering what's important to them and how they are expressing it
Yeah, as it turns out, when you actually hear out both sides, it becomes very clear that one side is, for the most part, completely full of shit. And that the other side barely pays lip service to their supposed beliefs, even though they're somewhat correct.
If you start out right in the middle, and then every time you find out that you're wrong about something, change your mind on that topic, overtime you'll shift further and further left. Not to say being the most left is correct, but the vast majority of correct answers to topics lie to the left of Democrats, while most of the obviously false ones lie within the beliefs of establishment Dems and Republicans.
I don't like being categorized as a leftist because being a leftist now is just being radical and crazy and I certainly don't want to belong to this category. So leftists as we see them certainly don't listen to both sides, that's for sure (or those people aren't numerous enough to have a party we can look for, whatever the country you're talking about). So I would like to call myself a centrist, as it should mean that you listen to both sides, but centrist are apparently right wings who don't assume being right wings. That's why I generally don't answer anymore because all categories are fucked up and I don't seem to belong to any of them: none of them are able to have rational and nuanced opinions and solutions, whatever the subject.
What I think doesn't make me anything. I want an armed population AND domestic spending. Most importantly I want to have the means to draw a line between myself and everyone else and defend that border when someone comes along to twist my arm.