And what's right? Do these terms still have any meaning at all in a world where the American Democratic Party are representatives of the political left? Where an overtly right wing leaning pundit like Tim Pool can unashamedly proclaim that he's a progressive? This post will try to stress the point that "left" and "right" still function as useful labels in modern political discourse, as long as their true meaning is understood.
source: YouTube
I'm sorry to have to start this post by saying that political discourse, and discourse in general have taken a beating these past decades. Sure, the increase in the number of participants through the advent of the internet is basically a good thing. And yes, during the days when only traditional media shaped public discourse things weren't better than now. But oh my God, the dumb shit I see and hear people say increases by the year. And that's not limited to ordinary people like you and I, dear reader, dumb fucks are now in parliament, the Senate and even become presidents. Again, I'm sorry, but if your political representatives are of the caliber of a Trump, Boris Johnson or the Dutch Geert Wilders, that's a clear sign of decline in political awareness and the dumbing down of political discourse.
It's amazing to me that you can enter any bar with a TV and hear people fiercely discussing the players and trainers of their favorite soccer, baseball, basketball or American Football team, have intimate knowledge of all the players, have an outspoken opinion and well intended advice for the team's strategy and trainer, but as soon as the discussion becomes about politics and politicians most of them turn away, or display a severe lack of knowledge of both the players and strategies. Politics is boring. Politics is not for me. Politicians all lie anyway. Yes, that's all true, but the achievements of your favorite sports team do not affect your daily life, whereas politics rule everything about it. So this lack of interest and engagement amazes me to no end. And it's not because these people lack the intelligence; they're highly knowledgeable about sports and celebrities; the mental capacity is clearly there. They just don't seem to care..
Where does that leave us? Well, that's easy: we're left with populations that happily ignore their rulers while skipping to the sports pages of the newspaper. A population that never showed any interest about their country's legislature until Johnny Depp sewed Amber Heard, and the Supreme Court of The West's most advanced nation turned back the clock a half century by overturning women's constitutional right to control their own bodies. A population that's profoundly confused about political terms. Like "left" and "right." When the government does things, that's left. And wanting a small government, that's right. And the more a government does, the more left it is. And consequently all communist or socialist countries are dictatorships, even when their presidents are elected in open and free elections. Yes, some of them, like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or Bolivia's Evo Morales, are elected many times and rule for a long time, but that's just because their politics are popular. Term-limits were introduced in America by the right wing after its most popular president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won three times in a row and occupied the White House from 1933 to 1945.
That's the first first meaningful distinction between the political left and right; left wing politics are popular politics. When polled most voters in The West agree on progressive politics; they're in favor of a woman's right for abortion, raising minimum wages, taxing the rich, free education, universal healthcare, gun control, LGBTQ+ rights, same sex marriage, legalizing marijuana and so on. If you pay attention you'll immediately see what connects all these policies, what binds them together; they're all conducive to egalitarianism. And that's THE main difference between left and right, a difference that withstands the test of time and place, that's always been there and always will; the left wants to break, upset and remove hierarchies, whereas for the right these hierarchies are "natural" or "God-given," and to undermine them would be going against nature or against God.
The political right and right wing political discourse suffer from the "Just-World Fallacy":
The just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. For example, the assumptions that noble actions will eventually be rewarded and evil actions will eventually be punished fall under this hypothesis. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of— either a universal force that restores moral balance or a universal connection between the nature of actions and their results. This belief generally implies the existence of cosmic justice, destiny, divine providence, desert, stability, and/or order. It is often associated with a variety of fundamental fallacies, especially in regard to rationalizing suffering on the grounds that the sufferers "deserve" it.
source: Wikipedia
With this fallacy come a whole heap of problematic attitudes, opinions and policies. The overturning of Roe is nothing less than a partial restoration of the "natural" patriarchal hierarchy. The political right's wish to increase funding for the police and the military is a clear fortification of existing hierarchies, arresting the poor and attacking poor nations. Cis-gender normativity is a clear wish to hold on to its "natural" supremacy over LGBTQ+ gender identities. The left emancipates, and the right reacts. The left is emancipatory and the right reactionary. Which is why the threat of a resurgence of fascism, the mother of all reactionary movements, always comes from the political right, and why it's pathetic and dumb to try to bend discourse towards blaming left wing movements, like Antifa or BLM, for being fascistic. That's some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard, coming from right wing intellectuals, pundits and politicians, no less.
Anyway, that's what I have to say on the subject for now, and if you're a regular here you'll know that this isn't the first time I've ranted on this subject. But that's exactly why I was so delighted to find this newly released video by Renegade Cut, a YouTuber I highly respect and recommend. And to be fair: he's way better than I could ever be in explaining it all, so I hope you'll all watch this brilliant video. It's the first of a series he's planning, so keep an eye out for the next parts; I know I will...
The Enforcement of Hierarchies (1) | Renegade Cut
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