ChrisL
Diamond Member
Divide and Conquer: Politics and the Left/Right Fraud : The Corbett Report
From education to the environment, business to banking, housing to health care, it seems that there is no issue in the world that the industrialized western democracies cannot reduce to a simplistic paradigm of “liberal” vs “conservative.” In fact, this point has been so hardwired into the modern political system that it has been distilled into a childlike shorthand: political positions are “left” or “right,” “blue” or “red.” These convenient, color-coded political choices infantilize the political process, making the public little more than spectators at a sporting event, rooting for one team or another without even having to understand the issues being debated.
Nowhere has this process of simplification become so refined as it has in the United States of America, sometimes laughingly referred to as the “leaders of the free world.”
This inane lowest-common-denominator reduction of all political thought has taken its toll on the public. Many are now unable to conceive of what a political movement that is not attached to one or the other ends of this so-called “spectrum” would look like. Yet, interestingly, this is precisely what has emerged in the past several years, not once, but twice, and not on one side of this left/right divide or the other, but both.
In the past five years we have watched the rise of two distinct movements expressing popular outrage at the political status quo in the US. Both movements decried the nexus of power that has developed in the fascistic relationship of big banks and big government. Both movements believed that the bought-and-paid for politicians have robbed the people of their rights and even their ability to participate in the political process. Both movements believed in mass protest as a way of effecting change in the system. And yet, we are asked to believe that these movements are not only incompatible, but diametrically opposed.
From education to the environment, business to banking, housing to health care, it seems that there is no issue in the world that the industrialized western democracies cannot reduce to a simplistic paradigm of “liberal” vs “conservative.” In fact, this point has been so hardwired into the modern political system that it has been distilled into a childlike shorthand: political positions are “left” or “right,” “blue” or “red.” These convenient, color-coded political choices infantilize the political process, making the public little more than spectators at a sporting event, rooting for one team or another without even having to understand the issues being debated.
Nowhere has this process of simplification become so refined as it has in the United States of America, sometimes laughingly referred to as the “leaders of the free world.”
This inane lowest-common-denominator reduction of all political thought has taken its toll on the public. Many are now unable to conceive of what a political movement that is not attached to one or the other ends of this so-called “spectrum” would look like. Yet, interestingly, this is precisely what has emerged in the past several years, not once, but twice, and not on one side of this left/right divide or the other, but both.
In the past five years we have watched the rise of two distinct movements expressing popular outrage at the political status quo in the US. Both movements decried the nexus of power that has developed in the fascistic relationship of big banks and big government. Both movements believed that the bought-and-paid for politicians have robbed the people of their rights and even their ability to participate in the political process. Both movements believed in mass protest as a way of effecting change in the system. And yet, we are asked to believe that these movements are not only incompatible, but diametrically opposed.
Lol.
