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I once went out with a Serbian woman, and she asked me what 'right wing' means. After ten minutes of the most quintessential mansplaining lecture, I started a Youtube video, then asked "Is this guy left wing, or right wing?".
"You stopped the video after one second!, he hasn't said anything yet", she protested.
"Right, but he's an older man, salt-and-pepper hair, leaning over, patronizing stare, suit and tie. So we can tell his views on abortion, taxation, gun ownership, Marxism, Feminism, military history, and trans people".
She gave me a look which suggested how stupid this all was, and she was right. It's really, stupid.
The Serbians don't have this nonsense, although every foreigner attempts to pin their beliefs on this country. The lefties I know think of the Serbian government as right wing. I have no doubt that the right wing people think of the Serbian government as left wing.
The Serbs themselves typically like public transport, but have mixed feelings about abortions. They don't question gun ownership, but like public healthcare. They're generally Orthodox Christians on paper, but the priests themselves might be pro-choice or anti-abortion.
I persistently hear people putting up unnecessary little excuses about being 'mostly right', or 'mostly left', and peppering in some exceptions, or apologizing for accepting some premises from some other camp.
Imagine someone identifying as a 'vegetarian, except for bacon, and sometimes fish when I'm at a good sushi place, and chicken when I'm at my mum's, and sometimes a cheeseburger'. 'You are not a vegetarian', you might say, if you were feeling polite.
Personally, I unapologetically like accepting supply and demand curves as a reality, and don't need any excuses about it sounding 'right wing', as if banning abortions were right round the corner. I've supported refugee movements, but don't feel the slightest guilt talking about the problems of cultural integration.
Public transport costs have nothing to do with trans rights. Someone who wants strong market competition to keep companies producing lots of cool stuff can hate billionaires better than people who just think they have too much money. We should take the issues as they come, and if anyone has broadly left or right wing views, we can take this as evidence that they can only parrot what they hear at a short range, and have never managed to think about a single issue independently.
(from Twitter)
The moment the union movement started gaining power Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk stopped pretending to be liberals and moved right at light speed. What they're showing us is that fascism is what happens when capitalism goes into decline and tries to defend itself.
Late capitalism makes for a really dangerous time. And I wish it was obvious that billionaires directing your anger at "wokeness" or queer folks or unions are your enemy, trying to get you to look the other way while they take your money, but it isn't, so we need to say it.
This Tweet tries to draw some natural link between riches and hating on minority groups. In reality, Musk only has problems with Unions, because they could lose him money. If he allies with the Republican party at all, he might let a few more anti-trans notions slip past, but at this point, the notion of natural political alignment becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If we found out most Pisces prefer artistic jobs in places where people read about Astrology, it doesn't show that Astrology works, it just shows the idea has spread, and that people take it far too seriously.
Iran performs the second most gender reassignment surgeries in the world, allowing trans people to enter heterosexual marriages. Thinking in terms of wings would demand that Iran has 'Left-wing elements', but it has nothing of the sort. It has one form of Muslim thinking.