I sometimes feel like I’m beating a dead horse, but it is clear that Americans do not understand how right wing their politics are, and that “centrist” can be a very deceptive concept. Here it is again:
The Republican Party is far-right (fascist).
The Democratic Party is near-right (not great, but mostly not fascist).
Neither party values real democracy; they simply have a strong disagreement over who should control America’s faux democracy (anocracy). Both parties reject the idea of true democracy because they believe “the mob” would threaten the supremacy of the people who should really control the country. They disagree over the details of who “the mob” is.
Having said that, the Democrats are the better of the two options. Democrats at least believe in fact-based government run by experts who understand reality. They believe that most irrational prejudices should be stifled — mostly. The problem is that the Democrats’ experts — and most Democratic Party voters — have accepted as true the idea that wealthy people (i.e., capitalists) are naturally superior to everyone else. Whereas the left sees the placement of capitalists at the top of our social hierarchy as irrational, the Democratic Party sees it as not only rational but inevitable. They see capitalist supremacy the same way Republicans see white supremacy — a concept having been proven true because it was manifested in terms of a power dynamic.
While the Democrats and Republicans vary in how far they sit to the right, the real difference is in the quality of their positions; i.e., who they see as superior to the common person. Republicans pretend that this difference in the categories of people that the two groups see as superior is a left/right difference; it is not. The Democrats are perfectly capable of keeping their basic ideological commitments while simultaneously sliding further to the right — even all the way to the right.
The Democrats want you to believe that they are “the left” and the Republicans also want you to believe that Democrats are “the left” (partially to allow Republican voters to believe they are the center). This fiction allows both groups to slide further to the right. Republicans will say, “The Democrats are communists! We must destroy the radical woke Satanic socialists and go further to the right to save America from this threat!” Meanwhile, the Democrats will say, “In order to assure stability and secure more votes, we must move further to the right! This is the only practical solution to save America from the threat of fascism!”
And, yes — sure — within the context of America’s toxic politics, you could say that “centrism” is something that exists between Bidenism and Trumpism. That would be completely stupid, but you could say that, and in a way, it would be true.
Enter the “No Labels” Party
It’s this idiocy — and a few power-hungry sociopaths who are happy to use it as leverage — that has given birth to the “No Labels” party. From their website:
In American politics today, it doesn’t take courage to follow the party line. You don’t need a backbone to hurl pot shots at the other side. To stir up hate and recrimination. To gum up the works. To refuse to cooperate.
Clearly, they think the Democrats and Republicans need to “cooperate”. Very interesting! It sounds pretty good from the perspective of a 5-year-old who is really into Sesame Street. Don’t get me wrong — that’s a great show for little ones who watch TV — cooperation just isn’t a great idea when we’re talking about a near-right party cooperating with a far-right party that is actively working toward the genocide of various groups of people. We should never cooperate with fascists.
Let’s look at the No Labels Party’s list of beliefs:
- “We care about this country more than the demands of any political party.” This comes from a position of assuming that both parties are making completely irrational demands; in truth, their demands are irrational to the degree that they support irrational hierarchies, and one of those parties (the Republicans) are making demands that are much more irrational than the other. Choosing a position between the two means choosing a relatively irrational position — and No Labels is asking you to do this in the name of nationalism.
- “Political leaders need to listen more to the majority of Americans and less to extremists on the far left and right.” When politicians actually listened to the majority of Americans rather than “extremists”, what we had was a true centrist government. I’m talking about the Social Democrat policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt who served as President from 1933 to 1945 — including the New Deal. These policies were of course hated by the elites who began working to dismantle them as soon as FDR left office. In our view, centrism isn’t enough, and it was centrism that tolerated fascist elements in our society and inevitably led to where we are today.
- “We are grateful to live in a country where we can openly disagree with other people.” If we’re disagreeing about whether Pepsi or Coke is the superior cola beverage, that’s fine, but if we are disagreeing about whether gay people, Jewish people, atheists, Muslims, etc. should be allowed to exist or should be allowed to fully participate in society, that is a disagreement that we cannot tolerate. It must be completely shut down immediately; if you let it fester, you end up in the horrifying place we are today. What does partial genocide look like? Vote for the No Labels Party to find out.
- “America isn’t perfect, but we love this country and would not want to live any place else.” Yes, yes, OK. Certainly, though, we must be able to talk about the ways that it is not perfect so that we can make it better, right? If we love this country, then we want it to be a good country — one that is good to its own people, and also good to the rest of the world. If we love it, we don’t want it to be evil. If we love it, we have to look at it critically and improve it when we find it lacking. And sure, “we… would not want to live any place else” sounds really nice, but at the same time, to just say that without a critical examination of what it might be like to live in a variety of other places (with the intent of using those comparisons to improve our own country) is an indication that we are blindly accepting our nation’s superiority — and that is fascism. In truth, the United States of America is not the best place to live; that’s been true for a long time — largely because so many people are unwilling to improve it.
- “We can still love and respect people who do not share our political opinions.” We cannot — must not — love or respect fascists. We must root out intolerance or else it will destroy our entire society.
- “We support, and are grateful for, the U.S. military” I appreciate the intent of the majority of the people who make up the US military. However, I must again point out that we must look at what our government, our military, and our fellow citizens are doing and stand against it when it is wrong. Despite the good intentions of most of the members of the US military, it is unfortunately true that in the majority of cases what our military has been doing has been wrong; and yet, we should still support our veterans. To make a blanket demand to support our troops without critical examination of what they are doing and without any analysis of how we should support them is — again — to engage in fascism.
The dot on the political spectrum for Bidenism doesn’t fall within the range of “fascism” (even though some Democrats cross that line); however, the No Labels Party (in terms of its official positions) clearly stands on the wrong side of that line. Relative to the near-right/far-right dichotomy we are currently experiencing, a truly centrist government would be a fantastic thing.