I am more centrist on social issues, in that I share mainstream opinions on gay rights, etc (I've always supported gay marriage). It's not great if you think I'm the big evil supremely ignorant person that you think is an enemy in sheep's clothing. Brandishing people with whom you presumably have much in common as evil makes it difficult to build a majoritarian political coalition.
The first issue I take with your comment. Politics is not a religion you need be fervently impassioned about, it's making a pragmatic choice.
Especially in the US, that means choosing between two corporatists, agreed. But this gives me very big "a lefty was mean to me on twitter and THAT'S why i vote for fascists now" vibes. I don't care what their ties to wall street are. I care which party is the better option for the working class. Which support things like a stronger NLRB? When you stop with the religious purity bs you can ask material questions about who is better for X. And the answer is always democrats if the X is anything but "the .1%".
>I am more centrist on social issues, in that I share mainstream opinions on gay rights, etc (I've always supported gay marriage)
Ok, you must be longggg out of politics or playing glib here. Supporting gay rights is NOT centrist. One party supports gay rights, the other is burning and banning books that mention gay people existing and calling trans people groomers. This is what i mean when I call centrism fucking evil. The sides are NOT comparable.
Saying "durrr but dey both take money so samsies???" is so ignorant and vacuous a statement as to be malicious from someone who has SEEN a college, which I presume most people here have.
>It's not great if you think I'm the big evil supremely ignorant person that you think is an enemy in sheep's clothing
Big evil? Nah, probably not.
>supremely ignorant
Yeah. Much more likely you are. If you think supporting gay rights is a "centrist" position, you are not paying attention.
>Brandishing people with whom you presumably have much in common as evil makes it difficult to build a majoritarian political coalition.
No, the literal fucking fascists in our midst gutting the voting rights act, removing polling stations in democratic counties (look up harris county voting), gerrymandering to the point 65% votes gets you 35% of the legislature, trying to literally stage a fucking coup, deny vaccines, climate science, etc etc etc, are the f'ing problem. If you are a centrist comparing them, you are complicit in their fascism, or supremely ignorant. Which are you?
My view on political parties in general is they all have a constituency, they work to serve that constituency to the extent they must to continue being voted in, and morality beyond doesn't have much to do with their behavior. To the extent parties can maintain the vote of their constituencies / coalitions by demonizing the other instead of actually delivering, all the better. I've watched things quite closely for many years and all I conclude is parties are amoral entities. I don't pay as much attention to the theater now as I used to, but I know what's going on.
I don't have loyalty to any party, but I do make the pragmatic choice you're speaking of when elections come around and even donate to candidates, usually in Democratic primaries. I've voted for green or other candidates in the general elections for the past few cycles, though it doesn't matter in my district.
As for lefties being mean to me, trying to impute that I'm stupid, ignorant or fascist or complicit in this or that, I don't really care. My feeling is it reflects worse on them than me. I don't have to reduce all of reality to some Manichean conflict between good and evil. I find I like living in the world more without having to view roughly 50% of the population as horrible monster people who are voting for evil.
So is support for abortion, but what party is passing anti choice laws?? Don't make the mistake of excusing those who vote for fascists because they claim not to support the things republicans do in office... That is the issue of centrists.
Missing the only important bit because of some polls. What they do. The laws they pass. I do not care what republican voters say they support in a poll. If you vote for republicans you vote for evil, for death. From ectopic pregnancies of those who can't access medical care to excessive covid deaths, eg medical workers who got it from the maskless hog who ended up in their ER. Republican voters are not excusable people because they say they support some less than evil shit sometimes in polls.
If you can recognize the need to at the end of the day be pragmatic why do you give a fuck what the polls say they support? The only thing that matters is what those in power do. And republicans are going after something ~70% of the public support in birth control access. So i don't care what they say they support. The fascists they vote for do evil.
>I don't have to reduce all of reality to some Manichean conflict between good and evil.
Again this hand wavey platitude acts like I'm not talking about a material reality. A real political party. One that empowers climate change denial, vaccine denial, voting rights restrictions, bans on women's medical autonomy, trans discrimination, book bans, etc etc etc I could go on. This is not some philosophical exercise on good vs evil this is a cold hard recognition of the material evil that the conservatives are in the US. That said to be clear I make no statement on any conservative s/ism outside of the US.
