Damn. So, no right wing government exists or has ever existed will ever exist or could ever exist. What a clever model you dreamt up. No wonder you find it so easy to defend establishment Democrats. Everyone is just as good as everyone else if just put in the right context. You are certainly right about the math. It’s a pretty damn useless way to model the world though.
So, no right wing government exists or has ever existed will ever exist or could ever exist.
No “-wing” government exists except in relation to something else. That’s a fundamental feature of reality. The current US government is more right wing than I would like. It’s more right wing than most of Europe. It’s more right wing (though not by as much as you think) than the US population would like. It’s less right wing than Saudi Arabia, or the Taliban.
And, of course, not all governments map perfectly to the left-right dynamic as we view it in the West. It’s a mostly useful metric though.
And, of course, there’s a difference between what people would want if they could wave a magic wand and make it so, vs what the people will support as politically achievable. That’s a big thing the Left fails to realize about the more centrist Democratic majority: yes, we want universal healthcare. Yes, we want strong unions. Yes, we want equal treatment for all under the law. Yes, we want higher taxes on the rich. Yes, we want monopolies broken up. A lot of us (maybe a majority?) even want worker ownership of the means of production. But we recognize that given the strong opposition to any progress, it’s just not possible to get those things immediately and without reservation. We advocate advancing towards those things as quickly as is practically feasible, while preventing backsliding from the opposition.
So asking people “what they want” without the context of what is feasible will give you answers that seem to support more radical Leftists when in reality the people giving those answers are going to vote for Harris, Biden, Warren, Pelosi, Obama, Newsom, etc. and not whatever random no-name 3rd party candidate the Socialists or Greens or whatever the flavor of the day is puts up.
Damn. So, no right wing government exists or has ever existed will ever exist or could ever exist. What a clever model you dreamt up. No wonder you find it so easy to defend establishment Democrats. Everyone is just as good as everyone else if just put in the right context. You are certainly right about the math. It’s a pretty damn useless way to model the world though.
No “-wing” government exists except in relation to something else. That’s a fundamental feature of reality. The current US government is more right wing than I would like. It’s more right wing than most of Europe. It’s more right wing (though not by as much as you think) than the US population would like. It’s less right wing than Saudi Arabia, or the Taliban.
And, of course, not all governments map perfectly to the left-right dynamic as we view it in the West. It’s a mostly useful metric though.
And, of course, there’s a difference between what people would want if they could wave a magic wand and make it so, vs what the people will support as politically achievable. That’s a big thing the Left fails to realize about the more centrist Democratic majority: yes, we want universal healthcare. Yes, we want strong unions. Yes, we want equal treatment for all under the law. Yes, we want higher taxes on the rich. Yes, we want monopolies broken up. A lot of us (maybe a majority?) even want worker ownership of the means of production. But we recognize that given the strong opposition to any progress, it’s just not possible to get those things immediately and without reservation. We advocate advancing towards those things as quickly as is practically feasible, while preventing backsliding from the opposition.
So asking people “what they want” without the context of what is feasible will give you answers that seem to support more radical Leftists when in reality the people giving those answers are going to vote for Harris, Biden, Warren, Pelosi, Obama, Newsom, etc. and not whatever random no-name 3rd party candidate the Socialists or Greens or whatever the flavor of the day is puts up.