(November 9, 2016 at 3:43 pm)Tazzycorn Wrote:(November 9, 2016 at 1:34 pm)Pandæmonium Wrote: Unfortunately a lot of people, on the right and crucially the left, have been fuelling anti-establishment discourse for well over a decade. How many threads/random conversations have we seen on here lambasting centrism, accusing all politicians of being corrupt and in cahoots with the powers that be?
To borrow a 'Trumpism', some, I assume (know) are good people. People have turned away from centrism and that's why you start to see extremes on left and right. Good old fashioned rational liberalism has disappeared with Obama in the US. A lot of politicians here in the U.K. do a damned good job, at national and local level. The trouble is people want their cake and they want to eat it. They want what they want with no compromise, and are quick to tar all with the brush they tar those who rightfully deserve to be lambasted. "Governments should be afraid of their people". Too true, but not at the cost of what I see as a discourse moved beyond honest skepticism to outright cynicism and anti-intellectualism 'post truthism'.
People don't want centrism, they didn't want Clinton. They reaped what they sowed.
There is no left in American politics. That's a big part of the problem.
The farthest left ye've gone since Eugene Debbs has been Bernie Sanders, who's pretty much an Edward Heath Tory, i.e. a moderate right winger who is willing to adopt left wing policies when he knows they work.
I'm not American.
I think it would be more accurate to say there isn't a left like we have in the UK (far too left now under the Trots) rather than no left per se. Compared to Bush Obama was much more 'left', but then again when we refer to these people on a spectrum as normatively defined the terms become more and more meaningless.
But other than that I would be in a broader agreement with you. Alas the US is too alien a political beast for me to form a proper narrative. This election shows that, to a large degree of people, central and perhaps 'left' leaning liberalism isn't important to them.
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