This is what happens when several orthogonal concepts are distilled into two categories. Nobody actually knows what left or right actually mean. Originally it was just about economic policy, left being larger government, right being smaller (no party was extreme because that's insane). Now right can also mean authoritarian or racist. To many it's simply left=good, right=bad.

It was never originally about economic policy, you've got them mixed up. Right was originally about support of the French King, authoritarianism, conservatism. Left was in support of the French Revolution, liberalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_s...

The terms have lost all meaning in contemporary American discourse. “Socialist”, “liberal”, “leftist”, “progressive” are just used either as a pejorative or arbitrary categorical unrelated to any prior representation.

To a “progressive”, “liberal” is a pejorative. To a “liberal”, “leftists” are the enemy. To “the right”, all 4 words mean the same thing and are interchangeable in usage.

Unfortunately this is true. The two-party system is removing all nuance from arguments, forces everything into one of two boxes and it's dividing the country. The number one issue to solve is election reform. We desperately need an election system that's not extremely prone to the spoiler effect. If we don't get this, politics will only become more of a shit show or worse we might see more violence. It's encouraging to see that places like Fargo and Saint Louis have success in adopting STAR voting.