political hot take
I think "progressives" should generally be classified as "right-wing" and not "left-wing", because they generally only seek to improve things for demographics of specific privilege, they don't seek true equity
re: political hot take
@joepie91 In modern practice, it's customary to patch it over by using categories such as "working class people".
re: political hot take
@joepie91 British politicians love to throw the phrase "hardworking families" around a lot, because they assume that everyone thinks it includes them
political hot take
@joepie91 Hmm... Depends? This seems to be more true of neoliberals than progressives in my experience? But that is just my experience, since the bar for progressive is stil low, even if neolibs have put the bar in hell. But then again, the overton shift of American politics has their moderates just be conservative. Joe Biden, running as a moderate leftist, is a tough on crime Israel above Palestine guy, and that's like, just conservative.
re: political hot take
@mdstevens0612 Perhaps there are progressive parties that actually strive for equity, but so far I've not really seen that happen (and this is not restricted to the US - I am also thinking of Dutch political parties here for example, like Splinter and SP).
It seems that a lot of parties interpret "progressive" to mean "improving things" and "conservative" to mean "keeping things the same", but both of these have similar outcomes if equity doesn't factor into it - whether they stay the same for everybody, or they improve for a specific demographic, there is still widespread inequality.
I don't think it's a coincidence that you so rarely see progressive parties getting involved into more radical protests. They often only wish to represent the 'respectable' crowd (which again goes against equity).
re: political hot take
@joepie91 I think a lot of progressive parties embrace incrementalism. Was watching a video on how sometimes this leads to a plateau in which only a radical paradigm shift, often for the worse, can actually lead to progress (although this had to to do with tech and not politics so grain of salt).
Is a good point, but I guess individuals use the lable progressive different to parties. Or at least the ones I am familiar with.
re: political hot take
@joepie91 but I do also get your point of the philosophy of progressivism, as in a march to an end state of betterment, no matter how big in leaps is counteractive towards radical change? Like, yeah, if you only think of change as a series of corrections rather than a repeated necessary paradigm shifts you can only get to the top of the hill you set out to conquer.
re: political hot take
@joepie91 You know, that's not even the first strong argument this week I've seen to that take.
(the first was the dude on Adam Connover's podcast talking all about what the right is, and describing a lot of behavior and mindset that, while yeah I see in the right, I also see in the "progressive" groups)
re: political hot take
Example: "working people should be better socially supported", which excludes those who cannot work for whatever reason