I think the two party system is ultimately to blame for this, though I have no idea what the solution would be. Up in Canada, we have three left-leaning parties, NDP, Liberal, and Green, which represent some very different political views but all have varying levels of representation in our parliament.
After living in the States a few years it's become clear that none of the 3rd parties are taken very seriously, and if you're not R you've gotta be D, and vice versa. For a country where I've met so many sharp and politically sophisticated folks, I think it's a bummer they have one binary choice when it comes to their national vote.
Within each party is where you find the subdivisions. Democrats have within them Socialists to classical liberals" and the Republicans have MAGA to traditional liberals. It's fluid though.
It's within the primary elections where you see the most interesting elections at times. Sometimes you'll get a challenger in a district where it makes sense, like when AOC took on an established classical liberal and flipped it, pushing the representation leftward while still being Democrat.
I don't think this is why. Look at the number of Bernie supporters. I think what's really going on is that the right-wing media has a strategy of shifting the Overton window by calling liberals "left" and those same liberals have little problem with that because they consider themselves left, not knowing any better.
It's not just the word liberal, which means something different for most Americans than its meaning in other countries. In Australia, the Liberal party is the conservatives who are allied with Murdoch.
The word "neoliberal" is also a problem.
It is used negatively and aimed at a broad swath of center-left to center-right.
But in other countries, the people called "neoliberals" would be understood to be conservatives.
Instead of using "n*liberals", we should be calling them "conservatives". Larry Summers, for example, is a conservative.
We should start using descriptive names. It is hard to confuse just who are the "money decides and confers authority" party from the "not everything is about money" party to "god speaks to me and says this is how you do it" party. Also those donkeys and elephants are pretty ambiguous as well. How about snakes and scorpions? Isn't that more descriptive?
This is a completely mistaken use of the word "neoliberal." Neoliberalism refers to a worldview that thinks in terms of market-oriented policies, global trade, privatization, etc. You thinking it has something to do with wokism or OK symbols is a perfect example of the word being used incorrectly.
Correct. I don’t understand why you’re being down-voted for stating something that’s so incontrovertible. Neo-liberalism is an economic philosophy that aims to turn back the clock on Keynesian (or New Deal for the other side of the Atlantic) policies and return to “laissez-faire” capitalism of the 19th Century.
It’s orthogonal to social liberalism (or “wokism”), i.e., one could be an advocate of privatisation of state services and just as easily be socially conservative or socially liberal.
Thanks for replying, some of the assertions didn't seem right now I see where you come from. I didn't classify ADL as neo-con. The Wapo article does say there are a few thousand far right soldiers, which I think is well known, it certainly isn't 20% of its army. The last quote is post on HN, which I dont think is proof of any official neo-con policy.
First, "neoliberals" aren't supporting any of this.
Second, your facts are wrong. The ok sign stuff was some very sensitive people pushed by foreign propaganda. Militias aren't the army. That's why they're militias. Like calling the Wagner Group the Russian Army.
