pittmike wrote:
Curious Hair wrote:
pittmike wrote:
I guess if the right has to own all their rascists and nut jobs the left should own their whack jobs?
I like "rascists" as a portmanteau of racist and fascist. It's very efficient!
But
does the right "own" its fringe element? Their ownership of it usually consists of benignly neglecting it and letting it thrive so that they can drag the continuum of acceptable political thought ever rightward.
I will just say it's my perception that all the whack jobs on the right get lumped in with all republicans more so than the other way on the left.
I understand. But our political spectrum doesn't just run 0-50 Democrats, 51-100 Republicans, for lack of better phrasing. Right now, you have a Republican Party that occupies the far right, a Democratic Party that ranges from the center-left to center-right if not well into the meat of the right wing in some places, and tons of practically unrepresented territory to the left of the Democrats. And it's like that because the Democrats patrol their own flank much more than the Republicans do. Look no further than the 2016 primary, where the Republicans let the process play out, even if that meant a gasconading fascist being nominated, while the Democrats did everything but wrap Hillary Clinton in a box and smuggle her through the service elevator.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.