This is going to be an opinion rant. No references provided.
In political parlance, there are many categories. One of the most commonly mentioned, and talked about, is the mutually opposing duo of "Left" and "Right". At the very least, they are expected to be mutually opposing.
The "Left", roughly speaking, is defined as those who believe that the society's ills stem from inequality and overwhelming lack of individual responsibility and compassion and hence fairness needs to be instituted via policy. The "Right" believes that individual responsibility is key and hence if one desires to create a fair and functional society it is the character of the individual that one needs to focus on. The "Left" believes in social control. The "Right" believes in the primacy of social order, established tradition and institutions of power. I am sorry if these definitions are far from perfect - I am sure you have heard different ones too, depending on where you heard it, but hopefully you do have some reasonable understanding of what I am talking about.
I may need to be a bit more specific. The definitions of "Left" and "Right" above are those that were most accurate in the 1960's. As someone coming of age in the 1980's - as someone who entered college in the US in that decade - those seemed to be definitions, and practices, most accepted back in that time. The Left was worried about the inequality, the abuse of power by the rich, the encroachment of religion-dominated powerful interests. They wanted to institute policies that would provide sharing of wealth, limitations to power and protections for those less fortunate, to provide the voice to the unheard, to help those whose opinions further what they viewed as progress even if that went counter to the accepted norms. The Right were centered around religion and accepted norms. They viewed power and success as confirmation of legitimacy and viewed faith, even if it took a form of a cult as something to be respected and protected legislatively.
At the time, I was more aligned with the Left. And to some degree I still am - if we were to talk the Left of the 1980's. They were worried about the power being consolidated in too few hands - like, in the hands of he billionaire class. The solution the Left suggested - regulation by the state - seems naive to me now but concerns are real. I am all for protection of minorities, like they were. I am all for compassion to those less fortunate.
And what do we have now? Are the Left and the Right we see now the same Left and Right we had in the 1980's? Hardly. The Left has moved towards truly tyrannical attitudes. Be that the politically correct censorship in the academia or their desire to see those who choose not to get an experimental COVID vaccine fired from jobs if not imprisoned they seem to be rather unconcerned about unlimited corporate power, nor concerned about those who may not be on top in society. The Right, meanwhile, has grown far less religious and far more rational. It is those on the Right - people like Ron Paul, for example - who wish to just see people let alone so long as they don't commit violence against persons or property and allowed to peacefully express their opinions. It is people on the Right concerned about corporate powers going rogue.
It is now the Left that has created various cults - the cult of European/White guilt, the cult of COVID, the cult of political correctness, the cult of global warming/climate change, etc. It is now the Right showing the fallacies of these cults. The roles seems to have switched, in many ways.
So if you were a Leftist in the 1980's you are likely to find yourself on the Right now. As long as you are a person of integrity you don't have much to worry about - you are not crazy, you are just being reasonable. And if you have friends who have joined the cult and ex-communicated you - I sympathize with your predicament, but that too is predictable. That is also no reason to change the course. All cults do it. All cults cause pain - to those inside through internal abuse, to those outside of them through shaming, slander, aggression. Take heart - all cults eventually fail.
And if you were a Rightist in the 1980's then by today you have likely changed. If you haven't, if you are religiously fanatical then you and I would have little in common since. You are on a dead-end course - just like today's Leftists. If fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you had joined them. If, on the other hand, you have reformed with the Right, you probably have come to join what I would call a rationalist class. Reasonable Leftists - Naomi Wolf and Glenn Greenwald being well-known ones - have come into it from he Left. I think within the rationalist class, the class willing to live in reality, we can work through our differences while helping the society make true progress towards better technology, a higher life standard and a more harmonic society. If this is the change you want to see, be that change.
As always - do your own research, use your own brain, draw your own conclusions.
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