Do you believe that what is called the "center" is actually the right?

I do. I believe that what used to define the "soft" right is now the media's definition of the center. After JFK's death, LBJ proposed a radical system of government sanctioned assistance program for blacks and the poor, which apparently passed. Would this happen today?

Nixon's administration saw arms treaties, Title IX, open communication with China, and environmental protection laws. Of course, one could argue that Nixon was merely covering his ass, appeasing the "soft" left with liberal-minded policies while at the same time initiating some of the dirtiest campaigning and most heinous criminal nefariousness ever imagined by a public official behind the doors of the oval office. As has been mentioned by other DUers, Nixon today could pass as a liberal (just don't dig into his closet too deep.) By the standard Nixon set, Reagan was a "hard" right-winger, a religious fundamentalist with a reckless approach to economics and foreign policy.

Clinton, ostensibly our last "liberal" leader, pursued the end of welfare (dismantling the good intentions LBJ proposed), allowed the "hard" right to affect his agenda ("Don't ask, don't tell," NAFTA, GATT, etc.), allowed corporations to deregulate themselves and incestuously reproduce themselves in the process thereby becoming larger and more insidious, did not pursue any environmental protection legislation with any emotion resembling "fervor," and invaded Iraq. In his defense, he did preside over eight years of relative ease and peace, but compared to the lofty goals of the Kennedy/Johnson era, Clinton's are small beer at best, seemingly geared to pleasing the greatest number of "middle" voters, who apparently somewhere along the line, became right-wing.

How did the definitions become so scrambled, and how did it become possible for the left to cede public policy influence almost entirely to the right? Since Reagan, our leaders in the white house and in the capitol have been unduly influenced by PACs and focus groups whose intent is to install a right-wing republic; these groups have weilded absurd power over our presidents. In the process, they have allowed the media to conclude and pronounce that the majority of Americans slant politically to the right (they do not) and that any sort of concession to the voices of the left is "weak" and pandering to focus groups. What is now considered the "norm" would have been considered right-wing in LBJ's day. Is this the media's fault, the PAC's, OUR fault, or what, and what are your thoughts?

but assuredly to the right of what used to be known as the center, yes.

Why did the left allow it to happen? I'm only 29 years old, so I missed the 70's. What the hell what the left doing with its victories back then? Did they all just turn into bitter, jaded drug casualties after Watergate or what? I know I'm oversimplifying, but it's sad when I see ideas that even as a kid I knew as "right-wing" being used to define the center.


And how fucking sad is it that Kerry has to pander to the "soft" right, when thirty years ago, he could have won by simply speaking his mind.....

laziness and inattention on our part to the effects of the decades-long rightwing campaign focusing on the language we have to use to get ideas across. All they have to do by now is drop a hot-button word into an argument - "extremist" or "liberal" for example - and it brings to mind a whole host of carefully reinforced images across the heartland and the south. Once you have that kind of lever in your toolbox, it's relatively easy to begin rolling your opponent and the political "markers" in your direction.

How do we fight it? On their flanks, by prying apart the "unholy alliance" of fundamentalist religion and corporatist greed. Attack the source.

is often called a communist.

;-)

Still, it's been my experience that the "communist" namecalling tends to come from even further to the right. The center itself is more content to leave it at "unelectable extremist" or "activist elite".

In Canada we have a centrist party (the Liberals) that Americans would (and do) call Communist.

Far right, living in denial and full of shizzle.

And neo-cons have sucked us so far to the right that Democrats and regular ol' conservatives like McCain and Buchanan seem reasonable to us now.

Here in the US, there is an inculcated knee-jerk reaction against anything construed as having the slightest to do with "socialism". As a result, the acceptable frame of political discourse shifts to the right naturally.

It's like the old joke I heard once about political parties in Britain. They have their Liberal Democrats, who are concerned with the poor, environment and are usually against military involvement. Here in the US, they'd be called socialists. The UK also has the Labour Party, which sprung up as a voice for the working class. Here in the US, they'd be called socialists. Finally, the UK has the Tories, the old "For King and Country" traditionalists who long for the days of the old British Empire -- here in the US, they'd be called socialists.

But the reality of this situation is that although the country is essentially "immunized" against any sort of communism or full-socialism taking hold, it is VERY susceptable to a soft slide to fascism -- as is painfully aware right now.

The people you refer to as the "center" -- they're basically people who take their political cues from the conventional wisdom. They may read mainstream newspapers every day and subscribe to a mainstream news magazine like Time or Newsweek -- but they don't research things on the internet or read The Nation or National Review. The problem we have encountered is that the center, as defined by conventional wisdom, has shifted from being slightly to the right to moving further and further to the right. In fact, I'd say we've gotten to the point at which our spectrum of acceptable political discourse runs pretty much from the center to the far right, with the true center defined as "liberal", the center-right defined as "center", and the far-right defined as "conservative". A good gauge of this is to ask foreign observers of US politics for their thoughts on where the discourse really lines up.

This is, of course, due to a vast variety of factors. One is the rise of the "market fundamentalism" being embraced by the major elements of both political parties and the mainstream media. Another is the fact that the left has been so fractured until recently that they were lapped a hundred times over by the right in organizing efforts. The legalized bribery we know as campaign finance doesn't help. Nor does the deregulation of the media, which has narrowed the range of gatekeepers to the airwaves. All of these factors, and many more, have contributed to this gradual slide.

Jeez, do you do this stuff professionally? You should.

I have too many thoughts that run through my head at once, taking my train of thought in too many directions, to break things down into coherent sequences.

But I'm working on it.... ;-)

The RW media which has now become the mainstream media has redefined the center as far left and gotten away with it too long.

Which is the name I use to describe the entire Bushevik Operation to Destroy America and Seize the Remains in an Iron Fist.

It includes:

Formation of Party-Loyal Busb-Media and Lie Laundry
Judicial corruption using Stalinist-type Front Groups such as the Federalist Society and aiming for the weak points of the structure to fix and corrupt
Vote fraud (this one is so big it requires it's own thread)
Bullying and parasitization of the remnants of the Old American Republic's Free Press.

Have I missed anything? I'm sure I have.

And yes, what was Hard Right is now Centrism. What was centrist is now Flaming Communism.

All the result of a multi-billion dollar effort spanning three decades.

When John Paul Stevens was appointed to the Supreme Court, he was a dead-center swing vote. Now he's the left wing (including being considered to the left of Ginsburg and Breyer).

As to how it happened, pretty straightforward, and not particularly obscure: After the Nixon debacle, the far right moneyed interests decided to straighten things out. They've funded propaganda mills, styled as think tanks, for thirty years. They've gained control of the media. They've put out scare stories about all progressive initiatives, assuring the masses that, if we don't stop the crazed liebrals, they'll take your guns, turn your wimmen folk to libertines, make yer kids ho-mo-sekshuls, and convert y'all to atheism.

Since the majority of Americans don't spend endless hours on political internet forums, they get their information from the major media. The major media is the handmaiden (to put it politely) of the right. If you control the information that gets to people, you control their truth.

We are really, really disconnected and indolent in this country when it comes to fighting for the maintenance of rights. People forget what the point of a union was, what the point of social security was--they forget about all the things that tried to bring up the disadvantaged in even the slightest way. Why? Because the mass media are run by and for people with tons of money, social connections, and power. Their job is to keep us that way, so when the gap keeps on widening, we stay distracted and brag about how much more free we are as compared to the latest enemy nation, while everything quietly gets stolen out from under our noses. Remember when a single income family could exist comfortably?

edit: Us too. We know what we're about to some degree, but we do exactly fuck-all about it because we don't know how. It's been bred out of us.

We know what we're about to some degree, but we do exactly fuck-all about it because we don't know how. It's been bred out of us.

We're *way* too comfy in our little consumer heaven, and we've lost the habit of mind that leads from questioning to action. Do we break out of that as long as we can still get our "American Idol", premium bottled water and readymade dinners?

Inching closer to "worse before it gets better" territory, so I'll stop there. :)

As much as I DO donate to groups I agree with, doante to candidates, gather information, spend time on Internet boards, go to protests, and actively promote/boycott products, it's still woefully pathetically ineffective! Why? Because I work over 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, at a job where I'm performing manual labor. And lots of people have it a lot worse than me. So when you're so busy just working enough to scrape by, you sometimes lose sight of the outside world, and get politically apathetic. I have a theory that this is intentional....

Back in 1968, you could afford to feed a family of four on dad's blue-collar job. So this gave you leisure time, in which you could ponder the meaning of life, one's place in the universe, and try to improve things for your fellow man by means of direct action (which seemed reasonable back then). Obviously, this led to riots, demonstrations, and four dead in O-hi-o, but also to some reforms. The powers that be don't want this to happen ever again, so they've raised the price of goods, rent, gas, etc. so high that you'll be working two jobs, barely surviving, always on the edge of bankruptcy, so that you'll never have a fucking SECOND of leisure time to contemplate just what the hell is going on and why it has to be that way.

And of course, the comfortable, with their 80,000 a year jobs, get a tax break, so they don't give a shit about the rest of Bush's agenda either.

to be ready for it.

Another way to look at it is that a great many ideas that
used to be radical left are now mainstream. I'm talking
about cultural issues, like feminism, envirommentalism,
multiculturalism, and so forth.

So you could say on the cultural front, the center pulled
way far left.

Now we have to focus our energy on the economic battles,
with reregulation of various industries, reinstuting
the Fairness Doctrine, breaking up the media monopolies,
rewriting the tax code so that corporations actually pay
taxes, and so forth.

And it's our fault. We were warned and we just could not comprehend that it was going to turn into some kind of Fundy New World Order. For the past 25 years we were in Cognitive Distortion. Three years ago if you told anyone what is happening now. They would of passed you off as a tinfoil hat nut.
Now we have the New World Order and the Agenda and the new group of the Conitive Distortionist's and none of them will listen to us. They think we're nuts.