What do "left" and "right" mean to you?

[RainDog]

61. I think your pov is determined by rightwing ideology

you sound like an Ayn Rand acolyte, whether you realize it or not, to reduce people to economic units and assign a value-laden term to those economic levels of accumulation.

you don't seem to understand much about rhetoric or the value of words as symbols through their association with other attributes assigned to them in other contexts.

I would not want you to frame any debate because you seem to be tone deaf to the way your choice of labels undermines the entire concept of democracy, even, by reducing people to middle-school sounding labels of winner or loser.

I note this is a social darwinian frame because, in the gilded age, the wealthy used this idea that they were the "winners" in society (made possible by their abuse of other people within a rigged economic system) as a way to justify their circumstances and dismiss others'. They "deserved" their privilege because they were superior simply because they had economic advantage, according to their beliefs, and could thus label themselves as winners who, as this author goes on to say, should be rewarded because they have defined themselves as the winners, according to current rightwing frames.

According to your framing, as you note above, 99% of the population are losers - including you. But that 99%, itself, is simply another frame. The breakdown could be made in other percentages, but the reality remains that you are deciding to accept the idea that those who have had exceptional privilege are winners, simply by the accident of their birth, for the most part. They did nothing exceptional, in most cases, to deserve the label of winner.

This is what I take exception to.

Winner/loser is middle school rhetoric.

When someone games a system to allow them to win, they're cheats, not winners. Someone who has a much more interesting view of the current American system is Marjorie Kelly, who wrote "The Divine Right of Capital." She deconstructs the fake winner and loser paradigm you embrace.

It's also inaccurate to claim that the left only cares about the downtrodden. The left cares about a society that offers more opportunity for all, no matter his or her accident of birth, with access to those basics of life that are considered human rights by other western democracies - such as access to health care, basic economic security, access to education, a seat at the table of democracy because of someone's birth right, as a citizen of this nation, in a representative democracy.

So, basically, I am saying you sound like a rightwinger by reducing the complex nature of humans to economic haves and have nots - to a dichotomy of this or that, when reality is much different than this frame. There are haves, have some, had but now don't, have nots... where, along this continuum, do you situate someone as a winner or loser?

You have stated you accept this guy's framing of reality vis a vis the use of these terms. To accept such framing means you should recognize how much you buy into rightwing views of reality.

...which is interesting, to me, because it demonstrates one of the basic concepts of the function of ideology - which is the inability to rise above a frame set within a society - which, in this case, is post-Reagan political framing.

Your acceptance of this demarcation of political sides indicates your thinking is deformed by the rightwing ideology you have stewed in since birth simply by the accident of your birth after decades of rightwing power grabs.

It's difficult to rise above such societal... brainwashing, but not impossible.

But you should recognize that your thinking is distorted by rightwing ideology if you reduce citizens of this nation to the concept of economic winner or loser.