US Politics |OT|

[zorg1000]

curl-6 said:

zorg1000 said:

I don’t think what you are describing is horseshoe theory though, basically what you’re saying is that violence & intolerance can exist regardless of where you land on the political spectrum.

It's more that the further you go towards the extremes of both left and right, the more you encounter a lot the same behaviours; bullying, moral absolutism, a hatred of certain groups of people based on sex/gender/ethnicity/etc, a belief that the ends justifies the means and that everyone else must be forced to conform to their ideology, heavy restrictions on what people are allowed to do and say, intolerance of any difference of belief, the use of coercion, ostracization and censorship to silence and punish critics, etc.

That's not to say that the left and right are equivalent of course, that's not what I mean at all, more that extremists of both stripes exhibit a strikingly similar playbook.

What you are describing is human behavior. The more passionate/obsessive someone gets, the more likely they are resort to any means necessary and push out others who don’t feel the same. That not horseshoe theory, that’s being in a bubble and thinking you are superior.

Horseshoe theory says the further left/right you go, the more you have in common with the other side and less in common with the center. When discussing policy issues, horseshoe theory is bullshit. Let’s look at a few examples.

Healthcare-The left wants socialized healthcare. The right wants private healthcare.

Abortion-The left wants abortion to be the decision of a woman and their doctor. The right wants to ban all abortions.

Climate Change-The left wants to transition to renewable energy. The right wants to expand use of fossil fuels.

At what point do people go so far left/right that they start seeing eye to eye on these topics and others?