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Comment by cnelsenmilt | Hacker News Reader

It's funny, because this should be a point of crossover for the (populist) left and the right. Basic nationalism on the one hand, "Buy Local" on the other. They all want the same thing, or close to it. The potential for alliance on economic topics like this is so blindingly obvious, and it's so frustrating that it gets derailed by "cultural" sideshows so that no one can talk to each other or realize they have the same interests ultimately.

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There is a framing in which they want the same thing, but each side wants to use a method to achieving that thing that is antithetical to the other. The left wants to achieve it by limiting the power of capital and corporations. The right wants to achieve it by limiting the power of democracy and restricting it to certain demographics. Each finds the other's method appalling.

That doesn't really align any more. Some of the largest, most powerful corporations are now led by ideological leftists, and right wing politicians aren't shy about attacking them.

Which corporations are you thinking of?

Some examples: Disney, Netflix, Salesforce (Marc Benioff used to host fund raisers for Hillary Clinton), New York Times. Larry Page made donations to Democrat candidates, 88% of Google staff made donations to Democrats so maybe we can include Google as well?

Disney has supported basic rights for LGBTQ+ people. This is one of those things which pretty much isn't up for debate anymore in most other developed countries. Beyond that, Disney has been solidly pro-corporate, anti-union, and generally right wing in its policies. I'm unaware of any stances Netflix and Salesforce have taken beyond similar support for LGBTQ and lip service to "racism is bad". Again, as far as I know, their economic stances are solidly anti-union, anti-worker, and pro-corporate.

None of those are "leftist".

Staff support is entirely different than institutional corporate support. Is Amazon leftist because one of its warehouses just unionized? No, it fought (and is fighting) that union effort tooth and nail. Similarly, Google has punished staff who were too open with their leftist beliefs.

Nor is support for the Democratic party "leftist". The Democratic party is split between neoliberals (who would be considered right of center anywhere else) and social democrats (who would be considered center left anywhere else) for the most part (with some rare Democratic Socialists who might actually qualify as leftist).

Hillary Clinton is a prime example of this. Anywhere but the United States, she would be considered solidly center right. It is only in the United States, where Fox News, et al have dragged the spectrum so far to the right that anything less than neo-fascist or anarcho-capitalist is considered left, where you could even pretend these corporations had a less than rightward slant.

Edit: I will note, this dragging of the spectrum is one of many, many reasons why I try to avoid spectrum based labels (left/right, etc) and stick to actual ideological labels. There is no single "leftist". There are Democratic Socialists, State Socialists, Communists, various flavors of Anarchist, etc who all get grouped together as "leftist", but generally don't agree on much. The other group of ideologies that get grouped with leftist are those supporting historically oppressed minorities - antiracism, antipatriarchy, and pro-lgbtq+ rights. Again, these are discrete ideologies and while people who subscribe to one often subscribe to the others, just as often they don't.

Similarly on the right, neo-facist, neoconservative, paleoconservative, evangelical theocrat, and anarcho-capitalist (the proper term for US libertarians) all get grouped together under the heading "right". When many of these ideologies are (or should be) completely at odds with each other.

But, but, but... can someone like her be wrong?

[3840x2160px jpg of Shannon Bream] https://gn-imgx.fubo.tv/assets/p14696422_i_h8_ae.jpg

[1080x1080px jpg of Shannon Bream] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f4/65/08/f46508d597bef8ddb558...

/me crawling back into his hide, making fox noises ;->

There is a common misconception that being willing to market products at LGBT people is "ideological leftism". Even worse is if they think supporting a center-right candidate like Hillary Clinton is "ideological leftism".

Am I the only one that thinks corporations really pulled a veil over the American people's eyes? And that Republican and Democrat parties really differ only on social issues, but when it comes to economics they both favor the corporations? My investing strategy has been to stay in the stock market until there is a constitutional amendment that forbids money in politics. Until then corporations will continue to buy the Senate and Congress (and Supreme Court too which is no longer a-political and thus can be bought)

Corporations and black money from rich people giving to american political parties does provide an endless pressure on both parties to cater to the needs of rich people and companies, of course. But it's not that simple. The republican party has been the party that supported large companies directly, but the populism of Trump and culture war pushed most recently by DeSantis in Florida shows they are happy to score points against say Disney. The democrats have been pushing for people to have nationalized health insurance if they want it, which would definitely reduce the power of corporations - at the same time the dems go along with needs of big business very frequently. Yet dems support unions, repubs are very against them.

I agree with you that the core of this is money in politics leads to money having too much influence with politics. On the supreme court, I think that republican federalism has control over the court, that's the clear place where the 'ideology' of dems would lead to different results. But this isn't a secret, the parties encompass multitudes of views, because we squish all views into two fairly narrow groups with our accidentally designed for two-parties political system.

The problem is that they are both lobbied / paid for / bribed by the same companies / interest group, which seem to have more long-term commanding power over the evolution of US society than the elected president, so whoever you end up electing won't make as much of a difference. Similar to the time of Standard Oil etc., the rules have changed less than one might think. Maybe the real dilemma in US politics is that there are only two parties that stand a chance (and they both kinda suck, at different magnitudes), it's maybe a problem related to the election system and zoning?

> this should be a point of crossover for the (populist) left and the right

There are people who are trying to bridge that divide. I recommend Breaking Points and the whole ecosystem they're trying to build around themselves.

If they want the same thing, the laws will get passed. What actually happens is that each side proposes laws that are not even close to acceptable to the other side, proving that they don't actually want the same things.

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