Essay talk:Gaming the language: the US political spectrum

I welcome critical ideas to improve this essay here, as well, of course, as any commentary anyone has to offer. human^{be in} 15:22, 13 June 2007 (CDT)

I think the moderate lane should be the biggest lane. Also, if you look at the elections in 2006 the "left" side ended up winning most of the seats. So I don't see why the Right lane is so big compared to the Left. --¿ Sta’le ? 17:57, 13 June 2007 (CDT)

The moderates have four lanes, right and left each two, loonies each one. Broadly speaking. In the first image (the "reality" image).

I know that the second image contradicts reality. That's my point. It is, however, the "self image" of America as reported (and knuckled under to) by too much of the media and too many of our politicians. Remember, the spin on that election (!!!) was that the GOP wasn't conservative enough and that the Dems entered the vacuum and ran a bunch of conservatives (!!!) !!!.

I will try to make this clearer in the essay - thanks! human^{be in} 20:30, 13 June 2007 (CDT)

Actually, the way I (and a lot of the left blogosphere) see it generally is opposite of what you've described. The line has been moved further and further to the right, defining more and more extreme views with the term "moderate". Meanwhile *everything* left of that line is defined as looney. So in order not to be defined as a looney leftist, you have to take what would normally be an extreme right position, cramming more and more people into a narrower "lane". --Kels 19:56, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

Sure, that's another way of describing what I am trying to illustrate. Just requires a different analogy, or a different description. In the bottom picture, anyone holding any left view at all gets crammed into the far left loony lane. The six or so lanes the "right" get to spread out over covers a very narrow range of views. This image attempts to show the way the spectrum is portrayed in the media and by politicians. Then they pretend the yellow lines are in the "middle" of the bottom picture, leaving all but the most reactionary "on the left" idea-wise. It's insane, but it is the way they have played the game. Think of all the "Democratic" politicians with a whole host of neo-right talking point stands where they feel they can't be caught out being "lefties" - tough on crime, cutting taxes, building up the military, etc. (and how many dare to be clearly pro-choice or pro-civil rights these days?) Thanks for the commentary, though, I might need to add a thrid diagram, and a lot more text. human^{be in} 20:53, 14 June 2007 (CDT)

@Human Just so you know, it still says "work in progress". —Fake News™ (talk/stalk) 18:39, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I think I get Human's analogy, but I still think it's needlessly complicated.

In a nutshell: Americans have developed the conviction that whatever politics the Democrats stand for is left-wing or liberal (leading to a conflation of "leftist" and "liberal"), and that whatever politics the Republicans stand for is right-wing or conservative ... just because it intuitively makes sense that in a system with two major parties, one would be left-wing and the other right-wing, and the parties traditionally label themselves as liberal or conservative regardless of their actual policies.

Moreover, any kind of genuinely left-wing politics has been redefined as "loony left", even including European social democracy (conventionally classified as center-left), and modern liberalism in the American sense – also known as progressivism, essentially social liberalism, a political ideology that's classified as center-left or even purely centrist – as a left-wing movement, and is often caricaturized as "loony left" as well. Free-market or classical liberalism, an ideology classified as right-wing in political science, has been renamed libertarianism and redefined as "moderate"/"centrist". Conservatism in turn, a decidedly right-wing ideology, is viewed as "moderate right-wing", despite the way most American conservatives are not particularly moderate – especially compared to European conservatives, many of whom are center-right Christian Democrats – and their ranks include a fair share of individuals who are very far to the right in every sense. Only the most extreme and embarrassing of them may be branded and ostracized as part of a "loony right" (especially far right tinfoil hats like Alex Jones).

However, at this point, the "loony right" is barely acknowledged as extreme anymore in America and has increasingly been normalized, and the establishment of the two major parties has shifted even further right. The US political spectrum now only ranges from neoliberalism over classical liberalism to conservatism, with every other ideology more or less marginal in practice, especially to the left of this spectrum. As the Democratic establishment is now closest to neoliberalism, but also includes proponents more similar to neocons, and the Republican establishment pays only lip-service to classical liberalism and ranges from traditional conservatives and neoconservatives over Christian fundamentalists to proto-fascists, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the United States has now two effectively right-wing parties, one moderate (center-right) and one largely extremist (far right). As a result, Americans who call themselves centrist tend to be right-libertarians or conservatives and decidedly right-wing, just not far right altogether.

Economically in particular, America's establishment has always been firmly dedicated to capitalism, despite the compromises under FDR, and European social democracy has been virtually unthinkable, let alone any form of genuine socialism; rather, it has consistently opposed and fought any manifestation of socialism, and any experiment attempting to implement a non-capitalist economy. Nowadays, traditional left-wing politics are effectively insignificant in the country, with Bernie Sanders the lone exception (predictably, he is not proposing to get rid of capitalism, but transform it back to something similar to FDR's New Deal, or even European social democracy, as genuine socialism is considered unimaginably radical by most older Americans).

The end result is that what is 1: Far-left / 2: Hard-left / 3: Center-left / 4: Centrist / 5: Center-right / 6: Hard-right / 7: Far-right elsewhere basically ends up re-labeled 1: Loony left / 2: Loony left / 3: Loony left / 4: Loony left / 5: Left-wing / 6: Centrist / 7: Right-wing in the US. --79.220.58.238 (talk) 17:36, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Okay, it's probably more precise to say that both Democrats and Republicans have always followed the "free market" ideology of (classical) liberalism essentially, with the Democrats only being influenced by social liberalism. Warren fits that paradigm, while the Democratic establishment has increasingly de-emphasized the influence of social liberalism, to put it cautiously, while the Republicans have moved squarely into conservatism, pandered to Christian fundamentalism and are even flirting with fascism. Classical liberalism amounts to ignoring minority issues, or granting them rights on paper at best, rather than using the government to actively oppress them. Being a "centrist" or "moderate" in the US amounts to being a classical liberal or conservative, i. e., well on the right.

This and this image put it better than a thousand words. --79.220.58.238 (talk) 21:46, 9 April 2020 (UTC)