"They call me the Far Left"?

[Caliman73]

12. That is the point, and unfortunately a lot of liberals oblige the Right and move toward their center

One of the key criticisms of liberalism from the actual "far left" is that liberalism is easy to exploit and move about. People do not seem to understand that the purpose of the Right is not to have a debate or discussion of ideas, but to move the country BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY to the right. They don't care about free speech even as they use the idea of free speech to keep their views being aired on the national scene.

They call people in the center "Far Left" for a few reasons. 1. Because liberals are scared of being seen as "far left" or "socialists" because we have all been indoctrinated to think that socialism is synonymous with Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China. There is no real understanding of Socialist Theory. Now personally, I am not sure that Socialism would be sustainable in large populations over long periods of time, but then I think that of any "pure" economic system. Becoming socialists would require a paradigm shift that I am not sure that we are capable of at this time. 2. The right wing knows that capitalism is a system that dehumanizes and inevitably concentrates the wealth and power in very few hands. Their focus is concentrating it in the correct hands, basically White Straight Christian Protestant Men. They do not care HOW they do this and so they prey on the liberal sense of fairness by claiming victim hood. The way Fox News personalities started with "The Liberal Media" which they never really define, but imply that anything outside of Fox is liberal. Now, they have moved beyond that to calling anything not specifically pushing their agenda as "Fake News". The sad thing is that "Fake News" started as a liberal concept pointing out actual news stories that were deliberately misleading or completely fabricated to push a right wing agenda. They take and use concepts like "the Deep State" which begin as liberal or leftist ideas (The Deep State was originally a concept used to define the CIA, FBI, and other law enforcement structures that infiltrated and disrupted leftist and populist movements like the Black Panthers, SNCC, the environmental movement, and others who were pushing against the status quo).

Like I said, the right wingers do it on purpose because they are gambling on the fact that Liberals will react by saying, "I'm not far left" and will thus monitor themselves and reject anything seemingly to the left of center. They do it so that they can call our welfare programs "socialist" and people will start to agree. They do it so that they can say that Social Security, Medicare, and especially Medicaid are "socialist" and "far left" and people will distance themselves from those programs at least politically. They call AOC, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and other candidates "far left" so that anything they propose like the Green New Deal, which is an ambitious plan but with relatively moderate first steps; is considered a fundamentally leftist, communist take over of society. They did that to the ACA and it kind of worked. They called the ACA a "government takeover" and painted it as radical, when it was based off of a conservative model of healthcare finance. It worked, during 2010 and 2012, a lot of Democratic politicians ran away from ACA.

We have to get away from being appalled at being called "far left" or "socialist". If my desire that all Americans have access to high quality health care and that the financial burden is spread throughout society, with those with the most ability to pay sharing a larger share of the expense labels me a "socialist" then that is a title I will accept. Healthcare is a human right not a commodity to be bought and sold. If the government has to mandate that we move away from burning dirty fuels and invests our tax dollars aggressively in alternative, sustainable fuels; if that labels me "far left" then I am far left because apparently only the "far left" cares enough about the sustainability of people on earth to make those changes.

Right wingers know that they do not have the numbers, but they know they have the wealth. They will use anything they can to maintain their power. We should not oblige them by playing their word games.