I think people on the left have a blind spot here, that the more suppression they use, the more division they create, and the more moderates and people on the right grow to resent them. I would have identified as a Democrat on pretty much every issue, but this authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas has just pushed me away from that side completely.
At this point both sides suck and I want nothing to do with either.
All of politics being one dimensional is one of the biggest lies ever.
During a majority government where a single party has enough votes, I generally agree with you.
Canada has essentially the same two party system as the US, with one of the two major parties winning literally every election in the last 100 years, and all but one election since the country's inception.
Occasional minority governments gave us some nice things, but that was decades ago, in a whole other world.
Canadian elections are cursed by FPTP much like the US is, and much unlike all the other developed countries that have true multi-party governance with some form of proportional representation.
Justin Trudeau made a campaign promise a few elections ago about replacing FPTP for a multi turn system and after being elected, promptly setup a sham study, which unsurprisingly found out that Canadian voters would be oh so confused if FPTP was to be replaced by a multi turn election system.
I wouldn't say Canada fares much better, in the long term. At least the Liberals are pretty benign.
I think it’s also perilous to collapse “Americans” into zero dimensions by speaking as if they’re one entity with one perspective. I would bet my house that a frighteningly many millions of Americans DO see it as one dimensional tribalism.
The problem is "good" is subjective. It was big news when the 2016 election was decided by as few as 78,000 votes, yet the 2020 election was now decided by as few as 45,000 votes [1]. The one thing everybody would agree on is that the country (and world) would look radically different today had the US election in 2020 gone differently.
And so we're living in a boat that keeps getting increasingly violently rocked back and forth, all based on who wins a coin flip. A bit of dysfunction to cool things (and people) down doesn't seem so bad.
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/how-2020-...
Yes, but herein lies the issue with any "downvote" mechanic. How it should be used compared to how it actually used is quite different.
The discussion on HN in general does not follow the guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
And on and on, the amount of comments in this thread alone that don't stick to the guidelines is too high, but I think the moderation team is very small (just dang?)
In 2020, the popular vote difference was slightly over 7 million votes, and it went the same direction as the electoral college.
> It was big news when the 2016 election was decided by as few as 78,000 votes,
It was big news, because the electoral college vote went against the popular vote, which had 2.8 million more voting for Hillary Clinton.
> A bit of dysfunction to cool things (and people) down doesn't seem so bad
Yep!
Heck, I think even some other planets might be affected. Perhaps the very Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way would shed a tear or two.
It's not working in the US at present.
So as a moderate you prefer DeSantis approach to Disney, his forbidding of speech in schools, etc.? He's not passing literal anti press and anti speech laws to piss off the MAGA base.
It's remarkable to me he so badly wanted props for punishing Disney for exercising free speech he forgot he's supposed to be pro business and anti big government regulation.
Suppression of speech has to push you away from far left and far right, so that should cancel out. Then, if you're really prefering all the other policies as you say, you could vote center left ...
Or -- vote Forward:
"Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials announced on Wednesday a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America's dysfunctional two-party system."
"The new party, called Forward and whose creation was first reported by Reuters, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate U.S. politics, founding members told Reuters."
-- https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-former-republican...
It's amazing how things change. In the past the left would have been happy to see the removal of subsidies to mega corporations.
When Orlando papers did the math, they showed it will cost the tax jurisdictions more to provide the services than it cost to waive the taxes and let Disney provide them to itself. Further, Disney is far from the only private town with the same arrangement; it's how Florida does it all over the state any time there's a big enough planned development, because that saves the government money.
Republicans should love this, because it proves government services privatized can cost the tax payer less.
That narrative was inconvenient to "the right" so didn't get talked about much because then the entire thing would just look astonishingly petty. And "the left" didn't really want to have to talk about how it saves towns money to privatize services. So that whole angle, swept under the rug by 'both sides'.
UPDATE
After posting this, I just saw this in Financial Times:
> Florida prepares U-turn on Disney's 'Don't Say Gay' punishment -- Lawmakers seek compromise preserving theme park operator's right to run private government
> By Christopher Grimes in Orlando, Florida (yesterday)
Since FT is paywall, found a Reason link: https://reason.com/2022/12/02/is-florida-giving-up-its-fight...
> In other words, this looks like it was never much more than a pissing match between DeSantis and Chapek, who drew the governor's ire when he sharply criticized Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay" law that censored discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. DeSantis signed the bill into law in March.
> Florida has hundreds of special tax districts like Reedy Creek, but DeSantis seized on Chapek's criticism and framed the whole thing as a culture war fight against a corporation that had received special privileges from the state. Chapek's criticism of the new law amounted to "provocation, and we're going to fight back," DeSantis said in April as he signed the law undoing Disney's special status.
> But most of that was a wild exaggeration. As Reason's Scott Shackford wrote in April, the special tax and governing status granted to Disney in 1967 aren't so much privileges for the corporation as they are gifts to the local governments surrounding the Walt Disney World resort. If the special status were revoked, Orange and Osceola counties would become responsible for providing mandatory public services—including basic infrastructure like water supplies and emergency services like fire departments, all of which Disney currently self-operates and self-funds within Reedy Creek—to the massive resort. It would effectively put local taxpayers on the hook for essential services that Disney used to pay for itself.
> "Any contention that DeSantis is eliminating some sort of 'special treatment' for Disney comes with it the perhaps mistaken assumption that the two counties suddenly in charge of all of this infrastructure will somehow make the park better and not worse. In reality, putting Disney parks at the mercy of two different counties with different laws will be a huge mess for everybody involved, and that's the point," Shackford wrote. "It's not about what's fair or what's best for the citizens in the area. It's about punishing political foes and centralizing government power (a very nonconservative approach) to do so."
> Friday's report that lawmakers are preparing to back down from those proposals only seems to confirm that conclusion.
Imagine a scenario where a corporation was talking anti-left stuff in a blue state. E.g. immigration, unions, etc. Would the people not be entitled to revoke their special privileges because they don't like what they are saying? This is the real test.
I'm actually not sure, but its interesting to flip the actors political affiliation to check for fairness.
Many of DeSantis’ politically motivated actions target counties/municipalities that overwhelmingly voted for a different candidate. The majority of “South Florida” is made up of diverse, densely populated, areas that lean slightly left of center. “North Florida” by comparison is sparsely populated and leans heavily right. Yet, for some reason the state government feels the need to consistently subvert the will of the people by preempting local governments and municipalities. Repeatedly overriding the will of the people in those areas.
In this case, it's clearly only an issue a state could deal with.
> consistently subvert the will of the people by preempting local governments and municipalities
Do you have some examples?
As if a coffee company HQ'ed in Seattle, WA was going about and trying to do union busting.
Or how about a large logistics and e-commerce company HQ'ed in the Seattle and its union busting attempts.
Everything bad in politics has come from the downward cycle of political parties censoring each other.
It takes a lot of courage because the defenders of free speech, to also defend the right for those to campaign for the destruction of free speech. Things become really bad when exceptions are made to restrict the free speech of those campaigning against it.
You can see how easily people can fall into the trap though, because humans can only take so much abuse while being attacked by people they are inadvertently helping.
Now that Musk is in charge of Twitter, you start to see them take more interest in free speech and the importance of it.
> his forbidding of speech in schools
Garcetti 2006 - legal free speech only applies to private citizens not public employees.
The will of the people of the state should democratically determine what should be taught and what should not.
If creationism was to be taught in schools, I would certainly want the right as a private citizen to campaign against my children having to listen to that crap, without being impeded by "free speech" (a good way to evaluate free speech is to think about things you agree with and disagree with and see if you are happy with the law both cases).
> DeSantis approach to Disney
This is a interesting case indeed. Hacker News at its best when I have an excuse to dive into a case I'm not familiar with.
Personally, I think their speech is not being restricted by the new law. And the law is the will of the people.
As a voting citizen, would I really want to be denied being able to enact a law because a company complains about it's free speech rights? Probably not. I don't relate as much to a corporation than I do to an actual person - regardless of what the law says.
The retaliatory aspect is interesting though - and I would defer to the supreme court for this.
You're just arguing that he doesn't really believe what he says. Why communicate in words at that point?
That's why school should focus on teaching skills and not interpersonal issues. Overloading children with 50 genders is just nonsense and confuses them.
The same applies to Disney movies for minors.
> that because his statements were made pursuant to his position as a public employee, rather than as a private citizen, his speech had no First Amendment protection.
I'm a moderate
Democrat ... authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas
both sides suck
Of course cynicism is non-falsifiable, and there is no coherent notion of a moderate or independent in American politics, because there exists no coherent political position between democratic and republican policy. Anyone claiming to exist in this middle space is in practice a republican, just without the conviction that's typical to that party's base.
So it's basically, "If you're not with us, you're against us?"
It's so absurd as a statement, no one does a 180 "because free speech".
Both parties are so clearly distinct that if you claim to be something in the middle you'd better explain what you mean. But I'm not an american, I could be wrong, I just watch the show from the outside and sometimes it's sad.
> But I'm not an american, I could be wrong
They won't necessarily switch from D -> R or R -> D. They will often switch to a 3rd party or Independent. Over time they may eventually find their way into supporting the opposite major party. Occasionally they will switch directly from one major party to the other. Just depends on the issues and where people are at in their lives.
Single issue voters, like those who only vote for/against abortion, are literally throwing aside every other issue. It’s a disservice to themselves and a disservice to others who have to live with their decision.
In fact, I would argue those least likely to switch parties are the single issue voters (esp. gun control or abortion) since the parties have not shifted on those issues. Whereas blue collar whites have been abandoning the Democratic party in droves lately despite that being their home for a century. It started after Clinton signed NAFTA, but has really excelled over the last 5-10 years.
Also, a lot of people vote a split ticket where they support people form different parties depending on local/state/federal or even if they just don't like a candidate in their preferred party (see the difference in votes for Walker and Kemp in Georgia for instance).
This feels like a universal to me that applies to both parties.
And I’m sorry, “authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas” is pure propaganda. No mainstream left leaning politician is actually perusing such an idea, it’s a boogeyman created by the right and by the looks of things it’s working great.
Of course, that commonly ends up mostly meaning "speech I hate".
There are extremes in every political movement, no doubt. I don’t deny that there are people on the left out there protesting against “hate speech”. There are also people on the right that are out and out racist. I think choosing whether to vote Democrat or Republican based on either of those extremes is a poor choice.
OP said:
> I would have identified as a Democrat on pretty much every issue, but this authoritarian suppression
So we’re not talking about vague “leftists” here, we’re specifically talking about the Democratic Party. You’re going to have a rough time arguing they are campaigning on authoritarianism.
Saying this as someone who is progressive. It’s definitely a relatively progressive field, but maybe not as much as you’d think!
I find the tweetstorm format to be not particularly coherent, and I haven’t followed the story closely enough to know who the actors are, but Ro Khanna (a Democrat) is one of the names I recognize and he seems to be against the censoring.
Blatant, let me repeat in caps, BLATANT partisan censoring was happening at Twitter going so far as election interfering which is illegal in the US.
More than one smoking gun here and yes this is a huge story. I doubt we'll hear much out of it on CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC oligopolists.
Thinking that this isn't happening, particularly by parties during an election is massively naive. How Twitter responds to it, and whether there was any undue pressure made by those parties would be a scandal, but "VIP account has a direct line to higher ups" is nothing.
If Twitter was doing all of this at the behest of the Biden Campaign, does that not count as some kind of in-kind donation?
If Twitter was doing all of this at the behest of Trump's executive direction, does that not count as some kind of 1A violation?
If that's the metric when why isn't Fox News and all the right wing media, and online Republican commenters not in-kind donations?
if this is our metric (and it very well could be) then every industry ever needs to be investigated--i guarantee you religions are massively guilty of this. we don't have to look far at all to see churches loudly preaching for one party right now. i guarantee you we'd find all kinds of instances with politicians from oil rich states. and i guarantee you countless other industries will be as well.
im sure elon himself has direct lines to many politicians. honestly i think this is a path we should explore with all monied/influential folks and politicians. lets mitigate quid pro quo with these people.
>i guarantee you we'd find all kinds of instances with politicians from oil rich states.
This is a dangerous subject, but KSA obviously does this all the time and it's not any different than Russian tomfoolery on social media, or what all these people did with Twitter, but we all just sort of let it happen because reasons. It's honestly disgusting.
and i think we’d all win.
direct lines of communications, closed door meetings, etc… between religious leaders and candidates are widely known and id love for us to scandalize this and insist on some clarity and bring down all involved in anything sketch.
direct lines of communication, meetings etc… between oil execs and politicians is also widely known. i’d love to insist on some clarity and bring down all involved in anything sketch.
same with elon too. since the immediate realm we’re in surrounds twitter execs, i absolutely think we need to know which political influencers, politicians, and aspiring politicians he’s been in touch with and what exactly they’ve been discussing. this is absolutely 100% relevant to this exact tweet thread. twitter execs communicating with politically active people.
i can almost guarantee we will uncover all kinds of shady things happening across the board. we all can win here.
If so, what Biden's team did is not an issue.
That's not illegal election interference in the slightest.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598827602403160064
The government is not supposed to be censoring people's speech, however they are effectively doing just that using a layer of indirection.
(Matt himself acknowledges that both parties had tweets taken down, his evidence for bias is apparently that Twitter employees donated more to democrats https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598828932395978752?s=46&...)
Surely Twitter still has the data in an archive somewhere, but it’s not clear from the thread that Matt knows what the content of these tweets was.
overview of 2022 mid terms for technology: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.php?ind=B&Bkd...
Twitter specifically: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/recipients?toprecip...
FTX: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/ftx-us/summary?id=D00007369...
I don't know what anybody expects, though. Tech workers tend to be young, affluent, educated city-dwellers, and that demographic is strongly and increasingly inclined toward supporting Democrats. Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco, a liberal city in a heavily Democratic state. There's no conspiracy at work here. Republicans could choose to try to appeal to tech workers if they wanted.
The Biden campaign, which became the government, perhaps in part due to the assistance provided, requested and received assistance. If the campaign wasn't the government and didn't have the power to compel assistance, why did Twitter help?
I thought that was the smoking gun.
On the other hand, where Republicans have political power, they are using it restrict speech and rights, by law.
"Both sides" are not the same.
These people keep blaming some vague magical power for the reason Hunter stories never went anywhere, but the real reason no one talks about them isn't censorship, it's because they're literally non-stories. It's just revenge porn videos of a known drug abuser.
To call this "authoritarian censorship" is honestly mind boggling.
I'm not here to claim that people working at Twitter are unbiased. Everyone has bias. But also, there's extrinsic bias in what they're dealing with, in the sense that "both sides" aren't doing the same things. One trick is to behave egregiously and then when called out for it, claim bias.
This is a good time to plug 3rd parties and candidates. Organised pressure to make the situation better is more important than winning elections - even if they don't get voted in they may force change for the better. At some point the best options amongst two evils is still too evil to tolerate.
Yea, Democrats are annoying sometimes, but the situation we're in has consequences for a lot of people.
> At this point both sides suck and I want nothing to do with either.
I wish I could say that. For a lot of us, we can't say that. The Democratic party might be pissing you off, but the Republican party is truly harming millions of Americans. The Republican party is no longer John McCain and Mitt Romney. I have my issues with them, but both seem to genuinely care for people and want to make America a better place. Today, so many seem to want to weaponize hate.
I guess I'd ask you what you think the Democrats should do differently while protecting women, Black people, LGBT people, and other minorities. I guess I don't completely know what you mean by the Democrats having an "authoritarian suppression of speech and ideas". In most of my experience, it's been pushing for more inclusive language and not being mean to people while Republicans are forcefully trying to censor a lot of topics as they ban books and pass "don't say gay" bills. Is it that Democrats think Ye (Kanye West) shouldn't be given a massive platform to hate on Jews? Is it that Democrats think places like Netflix and SNL shouldn't pay Dave Chapelle millions to hate on Jews and trans people? I'd note about this is that the instant anyone says something bad about White people or men, Republicans all line up to say that they shouldn't have a platform to say that. Republicans try to "cancel" people just as much as Democrats do.
I think it's also important to note that there are differences between government restriction on speech and social condemnation of speech. People use speech to organize. Sometimes that's great and other times you get Nazis. There is a pretty big concern in many communities over the increase in violent attacks from right-wing groups. These are groups that are pushed forward by many main-stream Republican commentators and many Republican politicians. Sure, they'll say it should stop just short of violence, but it's an effective strategy.
I'm not arguing that the government should control speech, but any respectable person or organization should probably not promote Nazis. Would you hire a Nazi to give a speech at your company about their ideology? If you owned a newspaper, would you hire a Nazi to do your editorials? If you didn't, are you suppressing their speech? If you published a letter from a Nazi and put a big warning alongside it that your newspaper condemned the views expressed by the letter, are you suppressing that speech?
I'd also note that speech has real-world consequences. People used speech to create the political will to suppress Italian and Irish immigrants. People used speech to build coalitions to keep Black people enslaved. Nazis used speech to get the power to murder two-thirds of the Jews in Europe. Bad ideas should be fought against. Not all ideas are equal or equally good. Some ideas are evil and we need to make it known that they're evil ideas. Again, I'm not saying that the government should control speech, but I do expect good politicians to speak out against evil ideas and to call the people promoting those ideas bad. Hitler was a very bad person and Ye is a bad person for promoting Hitler as good. That's not suppression of speech. That's noting that Ye is supporting evil that should be opposed.
I genuinely understand that it's difficult to know where the line should be, but I'd also note that the past was never a bastion of free speech. You needed to be wealthy to publish things in the past. Most people didn't have free speech beyond who could hear them at the pub. In the 21st century where our communication is often less in-person, what does that mean for platforms like Facebook or Twitter which are kinda like newspapers, but also kinda masquerade as a personal communication device (or a common carrier as some people argue they should be)? What did it mean when newspapers controlled information and only some ideas were pushed by the newspapers with the biggest circulation? What does it mean if the in-person communication of yore is replaced by the Facebook of today?
I'd also note that speech always had consequences. People have always been "canceled" when a powerful person or their community decided that their speech was wrong - Senator Sumner argued against slavery and was beaten half to death on the Senate floor by pro-slavery Senators. During the American Revolution, lots of people faced dire consequences if they said something that might have sounded too loyalist. People have always lost jobs because they said something a higher-up didn't like - or something a third party didn't like who had power with one of their higher-ups. People have been fired for coming out as gay. Are we talking about the same consequences that have always existed and have often been wielded (and continue to be wielded) by the right?
If you have constructive ways the Democrats could be better, I'm open to hearing them. I guess I'll close with hoping that you'll think of the LGBT people, women, Black people, and others in your life that will be harmed by today's Republican party. I hope you'll value us more than you're pissed off by Democrats. I want my life to be worth more than your resentment. I don't mean that as any kind of slight against you or anyone else - I understand how hard it is to vote for someone who genuinely pisses you off. I just truly hope that you'll choose me. I don't really know how else to say it. I like my life, I want to continue living it, I want to be protected by my government with the same rights as everyone else and not persecuted by it. Please choose me.
Reorient the gun control efforts around the statistical realities of how guns are actually killing the most people. Throwing away all their political capital on banning semiautomatic rifles, in a ‘maximum success’ outcome, would prevent something like 2% of all firearm related deaths. I did some napkin math a couple months ago and children are more likely to die of leukemia than in a school shooting. No doubt school shootings indicate a moral failure in our society, but if you wanna budget out your political capital to do the most good, that’s not the place to look.
Drop the attacks on 2A and watch how much wind you take out of Republican sails. Dems love talking about how racist the Republicans are, but stick an AR15 in a Black woman’s hands for a photo op and boom she’s elected. Have someone run on a slogan “tax the rich and don’t take my fucking guns”. See what happens.
Disclosure: I don’t own guns, have never owned guns, and don’t really expect to.
Just realize you bee-lined straight into partisan politics. Speech policies need to be above that.
Understanding the perspective and desires of those voters (rather than just the impression one hears from social media and the news) is important to then figure out how to appeal to prevent them being alienated.
I sometimes lurk in a far(!) right internet forum and even there the vast majority also want to protect women, black people and LGBTQ people and think their policies will improve things.
I mean every individual has different concepts… plenty who aren’t racist but super homophobic. And plenty of religious folks doing good community work and hot hurting anyone (assuming no one came out to them in the church!) So while conservatives vary a lot, it just doesn’t seem the party itself tries to reflect that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/business/media/new-york-p...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bi...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/ratcliffe...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-twitter-limit-sharing-...
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924506867/analysis-questionab...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hunter-joe-biden-ema...
When the Washington Post finally looked at it, it was pretty tainted, and about the only conclusion you can draw is that there are some authentic emails on it, but that doesn't make the device authentic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/now-warni...
Really we probably need to fix all censorship issues first somehow.
Most of the disenchanted voters from the Democratic/Republican parties can agree on policies that the libertarians abhor. For example, many of us would support foreign aid to Ukraine, but the LP takes an isolationist stance.
I've almost completely detached from all news because none of it passes even the stuffiest nose in a sniff test.
My two favorite realizations: - Data is the best liar. - You can get -one- expert to say literally anything.
You can always find one expert with an opinion that matches what you want to say.
The Overton window in the US stems from center-right (Democrats) to extreme-right (Republicans) so if you're in the middle of that you're firmly a conservative.
Don't believe me? Example: we've got the ongoing threat of a strike tby rail workers who want paid sick leave. They currently have no paid sick leave. Calling in sick will come off their vacation days. It may even get them disciplined and fired. They asked for 15 paid sick days. Some in Congress wanted to compromise and give them 7 days.
Over the last few years the rail companies have furloughed ~30% of their staff to the point where covering sick staff is a real problem. They've so far made $20 billion on profits this year. The excess profits have routinely been used in share buybacks and dividends.
Biden, who claims to be pro-labor, has sided with the rail companies in directing Congress to use an old law to rob these workers of their right to industrial action and mandate a contract. With no paid sick leave.
How can anyone with a straight face in good faith argue there is any leftist power in politics when Democrats side with capital and routinely go out of their way to eviscerate labor and the progressive elements of their party?
> I think people on the left have a blind spot here
So you've made two false premises here:
1. There are peeople on the left in politics. As I noted above, this is a falsehood; and
2. The "left" is a monolith and wanted to suppress the Hunter Biden story. This is right-wing propaganda because conservatives treat Trump like a cult leader who is above the law.
Speaking as a leftist (FWIW), I don't care about Hunter Biden. Throw in jail. Hilary too. I don't think Twitter should've blocked the NY Post story but ultimately it's a nothing burger because there's nothing of substance on this laptop. If there was it would've been passed on to law enforcement instead of being passed raround right-wing operatives (to the point of destroying any chain of custody) in an effort to smear the administration and nothing came of it, which is why they just fell back to the old playbook of pedo allegations.
> ... people on the right grow to resent them
People on the right already call people on the left groomers, pedos and criminals.
> ... this authoritarian suppression of speech
What suppression? Everyone knows about this story. The only "suppression" (which, again, I personally disagree with) is you couldn't share a link to one post on one site (Twitter). to believe this is "authoritarian suppression" belies successful right-wing propaganda.
> ... both sides ...
Bothsidesing American politics does nothing more than show how normalized right-wing ideas have become (and how far right the Overton window has swung). You have the former president espousing QAnon conspiracies, election denialism at every level of government and white supremacy (which is a core tenet of the Republican Party and America's founding and history) spilling over to where the likes of Kanye are saying the quiet part out loud, Elon Musk tweeted (then retracted) a conspiracy about Paul Pelosi and his attacker and the #1 "news" program in US openly pushing Nazi propaganda (ie Tucker Carlson and the Great Replacement Theory).
Bothsidesing this doesn't make one enlightened or "above the fray".
This is something Europeans have been saying online since at least the early 00s. It might be worth splitting it up into "social" policies and "economic" policies.
Democrats are a socially very left (dissenting views are not allowed), economically right party. republicans are a socially right, economically very right (taxation is theft) party.
I understand that inclination but you cannot separate economic and social policy.
Example: consider post-WWII development in the US. The GI Bill gave cheap loans and college education to returning servicement but not if you're black. The rise of the automobile lead to the explosion in suburbs, which became completely car-dependent. These suburbs and the required infrastructure (eg roads) were government subsidized. This allowed some to build up generational wealth.
In building those roads (and the Interstate system) these tended to divide communities along racial lines and in many cases wiped out minority communities.
Further you had redlining.
Once segregation was officially outlawed you had a bunch of communities that became effectively segregated because black people couldn not afford to live there (because restrictive zoning drove up prices) but black people had been denied the ability to build up wealth.
That's an example of what people mean by systemic racism.
Likewise, economic policy creates over-policing and mass incarceration that predominantly affects the poor and economic policy has made sure that black people are disproportionately affected.
> Democrats are a socially very left
I disagree. Biden was the architect of Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill that ushered in mass incarceration and over-policing shows where Democrats stand: in the same place Republicans are, which is protecting capital and capital owners.
Literally the only reason people accuse Democrats of being very far left is the support of trans people. I would urge people to really examine their feelings here and really ask themselves why they think not being transphobic is an extreme position.
You don't have to agree with it.
Democratic politicians generally lean substantially farther right than their voters.
"Centrists" typically take the position that Democratic politicians are too left-leaning. This puts them very far to the right of the Democratic voter. It puts them much closer to... Republicans.
The current Administration is the one forcing rail workers to accept a deal that doesn't give them what they want and forces them not to strike.