The Left-Right Paradigm in Politics

[WantDisclosure]

This thread is inspired by something in a YouTube video posted by Aragorn in the "Becoming Multidimensional" thread. Here's a link to the post: #16. I thought it would be off-topic to post my comment there.

Here is a screenshot of what I'm talking about, showing what I mean highlighted in red:



I got the term "left-right paradigm" years ago by listening to Alex Jones. I believe he may have coined the term. I heard him saying that the left-right bickering in government and society is encouraged and actually engineered by the Deep State as a way to keep us preoccupied and to prevent us from actually solving our problems. In other words, to keep them in power.

I think there is truth to that.

I wish we would just discuss the facts as we perceive them, and not talk about what the "right" or "left" advocates.

I think that would contribute to a lessening of us and them mentality, which only makes people dig in their heels.

Can we all get along?

[Dreamtimer]

We've been used, imo, by this paradigm for a long time and still are. Our nation (not just ours) is weakened by increased partisan divide. One dominant voice makes something like a dictatorship and will sink our republican democracy.

It's been decades now that I've been hearing people talk about Civil war, Secession, marching on Washington to "take it back". From regular people who work at a Waffle House or live in an Orthodox Jewish Community. Or are Texan.

The tiniest bits of division are corrosive and trying to just take out one side will ruin things for all of us.

That's why one of our nation's mottos is United We Stand.

Do we believe in that? Are we man enough to listen to the 'other side'?

[WantDisclosure]

One dominant voice makes something like a dictatorship and will sink our republican democracy.

I'm a little confused by that part.

One dominant voice?

[Dreamtimer]

If one side controls everything.

[Fred Steeves]

I got the term "left-right paradigm" years ago by listening to Alex Jones. I believe he may have coined the term.

Ha ha, I find that quite amusing considering Alex is about as big of a right winger as you can get.

[Aragorn]

[...]

I got the term "left-right paradigm" years ago by listening to Alex Jones. I believe he may have coined the term. I heard him saying that the left-right bickering in government and society is encouraged and actually engineered by the Deep State as a way to keep us preoccupied and to prevent us from actually solving our problems. In other words, to keep them in power.

I think there is truth to that.

There is, yes, and especially so if you consider that in the USA, anyone who is running for office and who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican is referred to as Independent. In other words, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are independent parties. They have a dependency upon something else, and this something else is the corporate world.

Furthermore, the political left-right paradigm is outdated, and should more appropriately be replaced by a political compass, with the horizontal axis representing community-controlled management on the left and privately controlled management on the right, and the vertical axis representing authoritarianism above the horizontal axis, and libertarianism underneath it.

And in that political overview, both the US Democrats and the US Republicans would be solidly in the top right corner, i.e. favoring capitalism and authoritarianism. The main difference between them is that the US Democrats are typically more in favor of corporate globalism while the US Republicans are more in favor of nationalism.

The existence of both these polarities as the only ones legally recognized in some states of the USA, is indeed a decoy. It forces someone to choose between two evils — because both parties are controlled by psychopathic and imperialist corporations — and also makes the people believe that they actually have a choice.

Europe is even far more convoluted, albeit that it's somewhat different in other aspects. In Europe, you've got many different political parties, or perhaps, given the fact that the European Union is still made up of independent countries, I should say "political orientations". But as an institution, the European Union is just as corrupt. Politicians are either sock puppets for the corporations, or they are in it because it is their career choice — and a well-paid career at that, with incredible benefits.

And as a European citizen, you can vote for what politician you want to delegate to the European Parliament, but even then, their respective party may decide to send someone else instead, and on top of that, you are only voting for a politician in a team of other politicians who are all sent to represent your country — not your opinion! — in the legislative branch of the European Union. You have no say over who gets to be in the executive branch of the EU, because that is something these delegates will decide among themselves, with some meddling in these affairs by institutions such as the IMF et al.

And the EU is every bit as authoritarian as the USA is, if not more. After all, we've got our national governments — and in Belgium concretely, also regional governments and community governments — and then you've got the European Union on top of that, laying additional policies on top of the ones your local governments are already imposing on you.

One of the other main differences between the EU and the USA is also that the EU is not imperialist. It does not invade other countries. The individual European member states decide upon their involvement in military conflicts themselves, but those decisions are usually all situated within a NATO context. In other words, individual European nations — not all of them, but most of them — are deploying their own military forces in the service of US American imperialism.

I wish we would just discuss the facts as we perceive them, and not talk about what the "right" or "left" advocates.

I think that would contribute to a lessening of us and them mentality, which only makes people dig in their heels.

Can we all get along?

The problem, as I see it, is complacency with the situation at best, and an actual addiction to the system at worst. There are many hardliners on all sides of the political horizon — and all of them are authoritarian, for that matter. And I'm not talking of the politicians themselves here, but of the people for whom The System™ works. For example, businesses — from self-employed people over to big corporations — are all pro-capitalist, because the system works for them.

And the socialists aren't really socialists anymore. They're only looking out for Number One, and if it fits Number One to support the socialist parties — who themselves are actually armchair socialists, with equally ludicrous wages as their colleagues from the Christian-democrat factions, the nationalist factions and the Keynesian-liberal factions — then they will vote for the socialists.

We have all been indoctrinated and conditioned from early childhood on, by people who themselves had also been indoctrinated and conditioned from their own respective early childhood on, to support the system. You have to go to work, because you need money to pay your bills with. And the work you do actually supports the very system that demands that you pay your bills with money. It's a vicious circle.

What we need, first and foremost, is to get out of that system, and out of that kind of thinking. And then, we will need to respect one another, and to approach the problems at hand from a neutral position which is fair to everyone, instead of a position which favors one party and demands that the other party makes concessions. And this demands that humanity would also assume responsibility over its own actions, starting with one's individual self, instead of having responsibilities bestowed upon you by a government — whether deserved or undeserved.

But alas, I personally don't see people developing that sense of responsibility any day soon. In fact, I've already given my impression of what's coming down the pike elsewhere on the forum today.

"Give a man a fish and you will have fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will have fed him for the rest of his life." But most people are just happy gobbling up the fish, without paying attention to how they should catch the fish themselves, if you know what I mean.

The indigenous cultures of North America — and of many other places — understood man's responsibilities toward himself and his peers, as well as toward nature and the land he lived on. But alas, we've seen how that ended. They were either massacred or driven into reservations, and their land was stolen from them by the white man — and his crucifix — and then converted into plantations by people who themselves had been abducted from their own homes and families on another continent, stripped from their rights as human beings, and ordered to work the land under the burning sun and the crack of a whip.

I am sorry, but today is one of those days that I really wonder whether humanity truly deserves the future it claims to aspire. And Earth being a living organism — a consciousness different from ours, but intelligent nevertheless — it would seem like she shares my concerns in that regard. Earthquakes, storms, floods... It's like she has decided to start cleaning the house.

[Dreamtimer]

There are many indigenous prophecies that speak of a time of cleansing and purification. Some say it's the fifth or sixth. It seems parallel to me with what are called global extinctions and many believe we are now in the sixth global extinction.

One thing is for sure, when things get tough, people actually come together to help each other. Most people drop all of their fronts and become human and just help each other. That's actually what we do best. But we periodically forget that.

United We Stand.


You can break one, two, maybe three sticks across your leg. Bundle some together and you can't break them. Strength in unity.

[Elen]

There are many indigenous prophecies that speak of a time of cleansing and purification. Some say it's the fifth or sixth. It seems parallel to me with what are called global extinctions and many believe we are now in the sixth global extinction.

One thing is for sure, when things get tough, people actually come together to help each other. Most people drop all of their fronts and become human and just help each other. That's actually what we do best. But we periodically forget that.

United We Stand.


You can break one, two, maybe three sticks across your leg. Bundle some together and you can't break them. Strength in unity.

Well said Dreamtimer...well said!

[Aragorn]

There are many indigenous prophecies that speak of a time of cleansing and purification. Some say it's the fifth or sixth. It seems parallel to me with what are called global extinctions and many believe we are now in the sixth global extinction.

One thing is for sure, when things get tough, people actually come together to help each other. Most people drop all of their fronts and become human and just help each other. That's actually what we do best. But we periodically forget that.

United We Stand.


You can break one, two, maybe three sticks across your leg. Bundle some together and you can't break them. Strength in unity.

And that, Sister, is because in situations like that, there no longer is any organization that rules over and decides for the people. In times like that, the only thing that matters to people is that we are all brothers and sisters.

And that, then, should tell anyone enough about the validity of these organized power structures, whether they be governments, corporations or religious institutions.

[WantDisclosure]

If one side controls everything.

Is that the way it is in the U.S. at present?

Ha ha, I find that quite amusing considering Alex is about as big of a right winger as you can get.

I agree that he would be a Republican were he to run for Congress.

And I agree that he doesn't practice what he preaches.

I heard him talk about the left-right paradigm years ago, and I think he was speaking from the heart with good intentions at the time.

[Aragorn]

I heard him talk about the left-right paradigm years ago, and I think he was speaking from the heart with good intentions at the time.

Alex's heart is definitely in the right place. His political opinions on the other hand need a bit of a work-over.

[Emil El Zapato]

We've been used, imo, by this paradigm for a long time and still are. Our nation (not just ours) is weakened by increased partisan divide. One dominant voice makes something like a dictatorship and will sink our republican democracy.

It's been decades now that I've been hearing people talk about Civil war, Secession, marching on Washington to "take it back". From regular people who work at a Waffle House or live in an Orthodox Jewish Community. Or are Texan.

The tiniest bits of division are corrosive and trying to just take out one side will ruin things for all of us.

That's why one of our nation's mottos is United We Stand.

Do we believe in that? Are we man enough to listen to the 'other side'?

A few years ago I challenged a rightie to a duel. I offered to write a defensive piece of the conservative's positions if they would do the same for the progressive. They refused, of course. There is a politically hardened hierarchy in the United States and throughout much of the world really that keeps good things from happening.

1-percenters - conservatives
2-factions of 48-percenters - conservatives/progressives

Outliers: independents, pseudo-libertarians, and pseudo-anarchists (actually misanthropes)

[WantDisclosure]

Alex's heart is definitely in the right place. His political opinions on the other hand need a bit of a work-over.

I used to be active in politics as a Democrat.

Listening to Alex Jones made me appreciate the Republican side of things.

Now I'm neither and don't vote.

I think both major parties have good ideas.

Personally, I wish there were no parties—just candidates and government-sponsored elections paid for by the tax-payer.

[Dreamtimer]

People can delude themselves. Alex has been selling something for so long it's entirely possible he's deluded himself about some things. I've seen that first hand more than once.

[Wind]

Alex has literally become the caricature he was playing all along.

Like so many others, I too am disillusioned when it comes to politics.