Current Events > Why the left wing will always have a harder job than the right wing.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was talking about this with my wife just now and wanted to make a topic about it.

The left wing is ALWAYS going to have a harder path forward in regards to governance and getting votes. This is because not only do they have to take the job of educating an entire population as to why their policy matters, but they also have to be "doing something about it" at the same time.

Left wing, by definition, will always be progressive in comparison to the right wing. Right wing will almost ALWAYS default to some form of tradition. Tradition and deeply held values and beliefs. While arguably this can be positive depending on your perspective, traditional values will always be inherently "behind the times". This leads to a problem where the first job a progressive government has to do is educate in a meaningful way.

Look to the Black Lives Matter movement. I don't think there can be ANY QUESTION that inherent racism exists at a foundational level in the United States. Hell, in all western/European descended culture. It was built into the foundation of the creation of countries that came from that ideology. These are thoughts and deeply held beliefs that regardless of where they come from (system racism, social ideology, white supremacy), still have hold even in progressive areas of the world. The job of the progressive has to start with not only identifying this is a problem, but also educating the populace about it and basically trying to undo hundreds of years of biased upbringing.

This is NOT at all easy. As an educator myself, trying to teach even young students about their bias and teaching them how to take in new information and overcome your bias? It is one of the most difficult things I've ever done. This only gets harder as the target of your teaching is older and more set in their ways. I think we saw with the way in which people responded to BLM that shouting from the rooftops about injustice and inequality isn't going to EDUCATE people. We can say all we want that it is the responsibility of the individual to educate themselves, but that is not how this works. If you want to win VOTES, you have to meaningfully educate people about those biases.

Beyond this, people who are educate who already know about all this stuff? They get fucking pissed off when nothing is being done. They want (and arguably rightfully so) meaningful change to happen now. Telling someone that you have a comprehensive 50 year plan to educate the masses and slowly shift public discourse to the left? You're telling groups of people who have been oppressed for centuries to "wait a little longer". Again.

This is the double edged sword of being "left wing" politically. You have a built in base that want meaningful changes immediately, while also the responsibility to teach to the principles you fight for to an entire generation of people who have grown up in a system that is already inherently biased. I don't know how you do that honestly. I don't how you reconcile these two hurdles at the same time. The right wing basically has to just tell you everything is fine as it always has been, have no burden of education, and can fall back on some key talking points.

I'm not saying that I think Conservatism is bad either. My father is a conservative and in the best possible way. He spends time and money helping his community. He buys abandoned homes and invests in them and turns them into low income housing options for people who are strapped for cash. He's had property he has made maybe 1000 dollars on a year for the last two decades. He is an accountant and he knows how to properly manage money. His whole philosophy on why he is a conservative is that he wants more control of his own finances because he doesn't trust anyone else more than himself. He is exceptionally well educated. He calls out conservative rhetoric that is against minorities. His accounting firm has hired more women than men for the last 3 decades. He has no issues against gay marriage and fought for them to have that right.

My father took on the burden to educate himself, and came to the conclusion he will always be fiscally conservative.

So... back to my original point. Even with everything equal the left wing might lose out on a well educated "woke" person like my father due to the inherent benefits right wing will allow them. Left wing politics will always have the harder job.

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Sir this is a Wendy's

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Ivynn posted...

Sir this is a Wendy's

6000 chicken fajitas please!

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Sum it up in 2 words that is to long

You will never, ever educate bias out of humans. That is inherently built into all of us. Biasing, othering, tribalism, pattern seeking and stereotyping, etc. I do it, you do it, literally everyone does it on some level.

It will never go away. The most you can do is redirect it. People need an "other" to compete against and be wary of. If they don't have one that is apparent, then they'll manufacture one.

Thats the way I see it anyway.

I think you can educate people out of bias. At one point almost everyone would have agreed that women shouldn't vote. It took time but we educated people out of those thoughts.

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It doesn't help that us leftists can't even get along

Although I mainly blame the MLs and Socdems for that.

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Alot of the issue is that there are more states that lean right then left. Most of the center and south tend to vote red and more of the east and west coast tend to vote blue.
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Just offer free stuff and look smarter than you really are

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It's always harder to do good over evil, but it's worth it to create a better future.

I appreciate that you value education and don't support the immature us vs. them rhetoric that's rampant nowadays, where they assume everyone has the right answer on the test before even being exposed to it - and if they don't they're worth throwing in a trash heap

You don't educate people. That's not how you get people to change their views. Look up Propaganda by Edward Bernays. He's a large part of why we don't see those old timey advertisements with walls of text explaining why a product is good anymore.

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I guess I'm not people then - considering I've had my mind changed on things multiple times in my life through discourse

bobbaaay posted...

I guess I'm not people then - considering I've had my mind changed on things multiple times in my life through discourse

This. Advertising a product is an inherently different beast to me. Not to say that there is not advertising done to try to win an election. Of course their is. You can't advertise an ideological position. It comes across as insincere and people see it from a mile away.

You could try to argue that Trump advertised himself very well, but it was less about advertising and more about just being himself.

You won't have success being the progressive if you don't try to educate people on why your progressive ideology is ultimately a better good.

Hell, look at how many people legitimately believed that Obamacare would lead to death tribunals. Lack of education.

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