The two parties do line up well enough with the basic definition of left/right, at least if you squint a bit. We don't actually have a conservative party worth writing home about at all - both Democrats and Republicans are liberal and tend to debate the details.
Case in point, both parties want government to impose laws protecting someone's rights when it comes to abortion, they simply disagree on who's rights need protecting.
In the USA, we have
1. Social conservatives - anyone who isn't white, heterosexual, Christian should be at the bottom hierarchy. Tucker Carlson informs them who they should focus on at the present moment. For now it is trans people. It was Mexicans and Muslims very recently and immigrants are a perennial favorite.
2. Libertarians - We already have people at the bottom of the hierarchy. Let's just keep them there by disallowing government support and subjecting them to monopolies and arcane private contracts. They are also highly supportive of bombing nations perceived to be lower in the hierarchy.
3. Big business - doesn't care who is at the bottom as long as they are guaranteed exclusive reign at the top.
Obviously, hierarchies are difficult to maintain in a democracy as the majority of the people are at the bottom of the hierarchy. This problem is solved by obfuscation and propaganda. Group 3 uses Group 2(rayiner et al) to construct messaging and propaganda to convince Group 1 to vote against their own interests. In fact, the US Democratic party is also center right and operates in a similar, but less blatant fashion. This can be seen from how Bernie Sanders was shut out of the party nominations even if it meant losing the 2016 elections.
> 1. Social conservatives - anyone who isn't white, heterosexual, Christian
Social conservatism is where “black and brown people” have the most in common with white republicans: https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-repu.... By contrast, social liberalism was invented by white people. It arises out of the intense individualism that’s unique to white European societies.
That’s why the GOP had its best performance in decades among minorities in 2022, despite underperforming expectations among white people. Social liberalism—specifically abortion—didn’t motivate minority voters in the same way as it did white voters. That’s why DeSantis and Youngkin straight up won Hispanics in states Obama won twice, by focusing on cultural issues. Back in 2000, Muslims got George W. Bush elected: https://www.cair.com/cair_in_the_news/survey-shows-bush-supp... (“In key states like Florida, where Mr. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by just 537 votes, CAIR says Muslims in that state preferred the president over his opponent by 64-thousand votes.”).
I’m quite offended at the insinuation that I’m a libertarian! I’m a typical “brown” American—I voted for Biden but tell my kids they can’t have tattoos like the white people.
Lol
> Social conservatism is where “black and brown people” have the most in common with white republicans:
Sure conservative blacks and browns, just like the whites can be compelled to vote against their own interests by group 2 and group 3.
> in 2000, Muslims got George W. Bush elected
Your ability to fish for random bits of data to reinforce whatever point you are making is exceptional.
> I’m frankly offended at the insinuation that I’m a libertarian!
I honestly don't care about getting your political category right, but now that I recall - you are a social conservative of the Clayton Bigsby variety.
Anyway, thanks for acknowledging that conservatism is inherently anti democratic.
What‘a bizarre about these accusations is that they boil down to telling brown people that they’re somehow self-hating for not siding with white liberals against the beliefs that their own communities typically hold. If I was self-hating, I’d reject my parents’ values and embrace the drag show loving values of the white Americans around me.
Could you share the data showing this, or at least the point in time did the data reflect this? I'm not sure if you're referring to currently, or to Reagans times. I'd love to check it out for myself, as most of the data I've seen seems to point to the other direction. Always happy to learn more!
Although most Asians came here in the 20th century, this pattern holds historically: https://www.nber.org/papers/w22748 (“Asians achieved extraordinary upward mobility relative to blacks and whites for every cohort born in California since 1920. This mobility stemmed primarily from gains in earnings conditional on education, rather than unusual educational mobility.”). This paper shows that the upward mobility was shown “conditional on education”—I.e. even when comparing similarly educated people.
From 1980 to 1990, the median income of Vietnamese Americans (who came here in the 1970s as poor refugees) doubled, to almost match the national median at the time: https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/kits/.... Today, the median household income for US-born Vietnamese Americans is higher than for white Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_Americans
On the other statistics. Incarceration: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji19.pdf (Table 2). In local jails, Asians are incarcerated at a rate of 25 per 100,000 versus 184 per 100,000 for whites.
Asian Americans have an average life expectancy of 86.3, versus 78.5 for whites: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4567918. The Asian-white gap is double the white-black gap. This is true even though Asians are slightly more likely to be uninsured than white Americans. The life expectancy for Asian Americans is 2 years longer than Japan, and a year and a half longer than Singapore.
There is no “bamboo ceiling.” Asians hold 4.6% of Fortune 500 board seats: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/.... That’s probably overrepresentation if you consider that Asians skew almost 8 years younger than whites and older Asians often aren’t English fluent/lack prestigious American degrees/etc.
In my opinion, the progressive Asian trend of jumping on the racial liberalism train is a profoundly bad idea. It’s not in our self interest for white people to start becoming race conscious.
Nobody cares about or loved drag shows. They care about the first amendment. Don't flip right wing drag-show-hatred to liberal love of drag shows. You are lying and you know it.
> pathologically individualistic
The ones who refuse vaccinations in the middle of the deadliest pandemic in a 100 years, NOT!
>> you are a social conservative of the Clayton Bigsby variety.
> I’m a social conservative of the “typical Bangladeshi” variety
Of course black/brown conservatives are not all the same.
I don't have a strong opinion on the abortion debate beyond my general view that individuals can make their own decisions. I simply don't know why referring to something like a 7 month old fetus as an unborn child would be so appalling, especially if the fetus is at a level of development that it could potentially survive outside the womb with special care.
I'm sure there are some people who have a ceremony or funeral after a miscarriage, why is that a problem? Going through a miscarriage is extremely traumatic, especially later in the pregnancy. Who the hell are you to say how someone can and can't grieve?
When my wife was pregnant with our son, both of us absolutely saw him as our "unborn child". I used to lie next to her and sing to him inside her belly, and she told me she could feel him move in response. Same thing when she was pregnant with our daughter. I find your idea that there's something wrong with using the phrase "unborn child" really bizarre.
> By that definition, every miscarriage should have a funeral and proper burial of the remains - and whatever went down a drain should be recovered with the help of law enforcement and first responders.
My wife miscarried several times. Every time was upsetting for both of us, although (quite understandably) significantly more so for her. I know a number of other couples (both friends and family) who have had similar experiences. The way you talk about that issue evinces a lack of empathy for other people's traumas
If by that you mean that stillbirth and postnatal death are worse than miscarriage, obviously yes. As to what counts as "losing a child", that's partly semantics and partly a matter of how the mother/parents perceive and feel about the situation, which is going to differ from person to person.
> On the other hand, being a parent, I firmly believe that if my child needed to terminate a pregnancy, it is nobody’s business. If your child needed to get it done, would you seek my permission? The way I see it, you lack empathy for women’s issues
I never said anything in my comment about stopping anyone from getting an abortion. You are reading something into my comment I never said, and then accusing me of lacking empathy based on nothing more than your own faulty assumptions.
The right is, in some cases, pushing for censorship which is very much opposed to the general definition of "the right" which focuses on individual rights and freedoms.
The left's strong support for pro-choice is also a contradiction though. The left is generally defined as focusing on the collective, often leading towards larger government oversight and censorship to further a goal of protecting a certain marginalized group or furthering societal progress. Pro-choice is by definition a stance upholding an individual's rights, a view that really fits better on the right.
The abortion debate has always been a really interesting outlier to me. Both sides seem to argue very similar points that individual freedom matters. The debate really is just about which individual is of concern, the pregnant mother or the unborn child.