These shifts have happened a few times in the past, and it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
What the author is getting at is the overlapping of the bundles of individual policy stances that we give the label of a single ideology, the folding of the left-right political axis through higher dimensional space. People who agree on some things disagree on others and the old categories become less useful.
These days I think JREG is doing good work tracking political categories if you’re interested and don’t mind some irony-poisoned jargon check him out.
I mean, I've seen people decry market-oriented solutions to problems (eg congestion pricing) as "socialism" which is broadly hilarious.
Here is the political classification of the top 50 developed nations (I tried to organize them, but it's hard...):
Qatar Absolute monarchy
Oman Absolute monarchy
Saudi Arabia Absolute monarchy
Brunei Darussalam Absolute monarchy
United Arab Emirates Federal absolute monarchy
Kuwait Constitutional monarchy (emirate) with parliamentary elements
Bahrain Constitutional monarchy (unitary)
United Kingdom Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Netherlands Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Japan Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Denmark Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Norway Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Sweden Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Luxembourg Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Spain Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Australia Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Belgium Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Canada Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Liechtenstein Hereditary constitutional monarchy with elements of direct democracy
Croatia Parliamentary republic
Czechia Parliamentary republic
Estonia Parliamentary republic
Greece Parliamentary republic
Hungary Parliamentary republic
Israel Parliamentary republic
Italy Parliamentary republic
Latvia Parliamentary republic
Lithuania Parliamentary republic
Poland Parliamentary republic
Slovakia Parliamentary republic
Slovenia Parliamentary republic
Finland Parliamentary republic (semi-presidential features)
Austria Federal parliamentary republic
Germany Federal parliamentary republic
Switzerland Federal directorial republic (collegial executive of seven Federal Councilors)
Andorra Parliamentary co-principality (two Co-Princes: French President & Bishop of Urgell)
Chile Presidential republic
Portugal Semi-presidential republic
Argentina Federal presidential republic
United States Federal presidential constitutional republic (representative democracy)
Cyprus Unitary presidential republic
South Korea Unitary presidential republic
France Unitary semi-presidential republic (Fifth Republic)
Iceland Unitary parliamentary republic
Ireland Unitary parliamentary republic
Malta Unitary parliamentary republic
Singapore Unitary parliamentary republic
New Zealand Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Hong Kong (China SAR) Special Administrative Region of China with “one country, two systems”My own view is that the terms don't signify real, stable ideologies but rather just give the pretense that the duopolistic political parties are backed by ideologies rather than by constantly shifting power dynamics.
IMO, the current US administration seems to be the most left-wing in my lifetime, but contrived cultural wedge issues seem to have eclipsed actual policy positions in most public discourse, so gets called "conservative" despite its policies being almost the diametric opposite of what was called "conservative" 30 years ago.
Can you elaborate?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-roc...
What appears to be "blind support" is people desperately clinging onto what tiny bit of representation they have. It's sad for both sides. It's Stockholm syndrome mixed with political pragmatism. It sucks, but the current political landscape in the US has entrenched itself so deeply in a local minima that people feel like they have to work backwards to make progress. Just see how any discussion of a third party is seen as a psyop to get that side to have a spoiler effect.
> just blind support for your chosen side's leaders.
These are two different questions.
I'm not sure whether the political parties should have consistent ideologies. Even if they did, it's impossible for two or even three or four political parties to represent the diverse political views of over 300 million Americans. Each of the two major US parties have always consisted of shifting coalitions of interests.
On the other hand, loyal partisanship leads to the phenomenon that I described: inventing ideological terms as a kind of personal identity for the partisan, giving the pretense that their loyal partisanship is backed by consistent, stable views, when in fact the parties are demonstrably shifting coalitions of interests.
It’s just, the word did a total 180 in the US and it’s super weird!
I think maybe the term changed meaning in the US because for decades pretty much everyone agreed with it (no social democrats in sight, barring the occasional Bernie). A movement that ~everyone agrees with isn't much of a movement, is it?
I feel like it's very easy to get angry about politics, so speaking clearly is difficult.
I would like to point out that the power dynamics do not always shift randomly, or by the will of the people (be that citizens at large, or party-line voters). The power dynamics have been shifted with intention.
Apart from that intentional push for power, we also have social media dynamics. It feels like online self-critique is always towards the extremes. Once someone becomes energized or activated on a topic, they may start to feel that even trying to understand other viewpoints will cause harm.
For example, an old man with a conservative mentality in Russia may be nostalgic for Stalin and communism. Or someone who has a contrarian, disagreeable personality in a liberal American college environment may decide to become a monarchist or trad Christian to show the middle finger to the real authority figures in his life. And a conformist person in the US workforce would more likely absorb a corporate-HR-compatible (superficially?) progressive worldview.
In the US, much is made about “the left” and “the right”, but we can hardly describe what these things mean. “The left” is simply more liberal than I, while “the right” is more conservative than I. On what issues, no one knows, because we hardly ask.
The point, I think, is simply to label the opposition while hiding any commonality or points of agreement. Useful for propaganda, but useless for substantive political discourse; you know, the kind that underpins a healthy democracy.
Tom Givon used to say in class: "What true language requires a dictionary?"
Language is decontextualized in the West, it's about attributes of individual objects where simplifying laws are derived, rather than language used as interdependent.
At a certain point arbitrary language dissolves into meaninglessness. That's entropy and arbitrariness. As we accelerate language and primate status spirals the role of language is simply to dominate subjectively. It has no end point except for dissolution.
josefritzishere•1h ago
lapcat•1h ago
What do you mean by that?