There *is* a fundamental core difference between the Left & Right wing of the political spectrum and there's no use pretending otherwise. Teachable moments abound from America's election. The Right Wing wherever you find it in the world right now is increasingly selfish, reckless, hate-filled and with a growing disposition towards violence. It does nobody any good to pretend this isn't the case.
Sounds divisive? Especially to my well meaning friends on the Left? Sure it does. But what do you do? There *is* a difference, and not just with the obvious fire-breathers running around with poorly spelled signs. I know a lot of otherwise nice people that will continue to vote routinely for outwardly villainous people with bad policies. There's great big booming teachable moments to be learned these days and I'm holding them up & saying 'look'. We must. NOW.
High level the prime differential between Left & Right's an empathy deficit. Penultimate differential (yet still critical) is a healthy respect for expertise/science. I've noticed it for years. It doesn't hold up 100% of the time but I'd stake my name on 3/4s. That's bad. It's getting worse. Ignoring it in favour of 'Kumbaya' is what's expected but accomplishes nothing. And what happens when you apply it to the extremes?
Where's it gotten us so far? This #RightWing mindset is literally killing the planet. Places economy over safety during a deadly global pandemic. It's the stagnating omnipresent lock keeping everything broken & backwards. In November of 2020 it brought the entire world right up to the very edge of Fascism. And we're not through *anything* yet.
The #RightWing in America just voted more overwhelmingly for the openly racist, climate-denying, proto-fascist sociopathic grifter stumblebum Donald Trump than any other Right Wing leader in American history. Join the entire rest of the world in processing that fact.
New President Joe Biden talks of reaching across the aisle which is the right move rhetorically, so long as it has nothing whatsoever to do with policy. Surely his time in the Obama admin taught him the utter fecklessness of actually trying to play ball with these people.
Take it back to 2000: Al Gore conceded an election still very much in play to "heal the nation." Judge for yourself that healing. Juxtapose what it would've meant had America placed one of the great minds on Climate into the presidency. It's the greatest tragedy of the modern age.
Trump and the cowardly or outright fascistic GOP that enable him to this day won't even concede a demonstrably lost election & already the Left's latest forces of appeasement want Joe Biden to water it down. Remember when @BillMaher used to matter? I do. Just plain incorrect Bill Maher can't figure out the moment that's past him by. It's America's BIPOC & Progressives that just saved the world from a newly empowered proto-fascist Trump, not old white people like himself kowtowing to a political middle that doesn't exist anymore.
The question for Bill Maher, Democrats, & the Left Wing all over the world is what else are you prepared to give up? How much have you given up already? What's halfway between doing what's right and outright Racism, Sociopathy & Proto-Fascism? Nothing good.
The problem with #TheLeft (and I've noticed it for years and live it to this day) is there's far too many of us that are all geared up for the big Kumbaya drum circle & we get taken advantage of because of it. We bring sniffy markers to a gunfight. It's way past time to stop.
Here in Alberta? I actually do love many of my "Conservative" brethren & sistren(?) but I don't respect their political decisions & often find their outlook selfish & unsustainable & *extremely* money-centric (yet penny-wise/pound foolish) at the expense of all else.
End result of that thinking? Alberta could lead the whole world in the shift from fossil fuels to renewables, a circular economy & sustainable civilization. Instead we're moving fast as we can in the opposite direction will get left behind by the rest of the world as a result.
Alberta's the most #RightWing province in all of Canada. We are the least likely to believe in Climate Science. Even now we're the most likely to still support the morally & intellectually bereft Donald Trump. These are not unrelated things. These are *the same* thing.
Look, I'm not saying *all* "Conservatives" are anti-masker, anti-science, reckless, selfish bozos but I *am* saying that if you are an anti-masker anti-science reckless selfish bozo & you voted in the last election, you voted "Conservative." Shall we do white supremacists next?
It's the world's "Conservatives" that 1st foist austerity on a populace, inevitably creating hatred/division & fertile ground for amoral loudmouth populists to twist into political power for those very "Conservatives" that created the problem in the first place. A #CircleOfHate
All the evidence you should ever need for the danger the world now finds itself in due to the Right Wing is in Covid response. The absolute biggest, most pernicious mistake in the Covid age (& in a pandemic mistakes cost lives) is the #EconomyFirstPandemicSecond approach championed by "Conservatives" worldwide, abysmally failing to grasp the simplest truth of this moment over and over again and in spite of catastrophically out-matched hospitals and mounting deaths of the citizenry: that good Covid practices make for best economies.
#TheLeft needs to figure out QUICKLY where we are in this fight & that we are indeed in a fight & not a drum-circle & that the stakes (Outright Fascism vs Competently Addressing Multiple Disasters At The Same Time) have never, ever before in all of human history been higher.
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