Political Orientation Is Always Much More Than Mere Left Or Right.
Cassiel C. MacAvity
The main paper, 2016/4/24
Pre-election update prediction, 2016/11/06
Post election update, 2016/11/11
Editorial note:
The original form of this paper commented on the claimed political spectrum of left through right, with “centrist” in the middle. While the majority of the paper and overall observations remain unchanged, the paper has since been updated to reflect the actual three quite separate political orientation groups of:
“right wing"/primary focus being some local organized faith group,
“left wing"/primary focus being some personal identity group,
“Technocrat"/"Conservative"/primary focus on all individuals achieving best success for all.
The Main Paper, 2016/4/24
An extremely entertaining occurrence for political observers arrived during the 2015 and 2016 American and British political seasons, and particularly as part of the seasonal ongoing spasms of handsprings, backflips, and opportunistic posturing. That time, even more than before, all got to watch both right and left wing extremists having to acknowledge that right wing and left wing really are two limited extremes that merely contrast with the rest of us, that conservative and liberal remain far different concepts than the blind ideology demanded by those in the left and right wing liberal gutters.---Yes, you did just read right wing liberal.
One facet of the 2015 British general election that was extremely enjoyable was the inherent reminder of the gulfs which separate the conservative political focus from the loony extremes that are called the left wing and right wing liberals. In British politics, the right wing parties haven't even been able to get into Parliament at all---the one seat of the Green party is more than the Right has been able to achieve and underlines right wing being completely and utterly distinct from conservative. Labor and the Edstone marked out the main group of left wing liberals, who now continue with the no hit concert tour of Corbyn and The Corbynistas. UKIP almost getting booted from the Commons rather delineated another group of left wing liberals, this group chanting English! English!! English!!!. Being quite separate from both the left and right, the Conservatives took the Commons and formed the standalone government.
Put simply, the left wing liberals got booted, the right wing liberals proved impotent, the Conservatives succeeded.
For a concrete example of right wing liberal, conservative, and then
left wing liberal, consider a trio of assertions, and rate them:
A) Guns and private ownership of guns are Wrong, damned, must be
destroyed, corrected, banned, fixed, whatever it takes to make 'em go
away.
---Is this right wing or left wing? Is this conservative or liberal?
B) Gays and being gay are Wrong, damned, must be destroyed, corrected, banned, fixed, whatever it takes to make 'em go away.
---Is this right wing or left wing? Is this conservative or liberal?
C) We're here, we're queer, we are extremely and thoroughly armed
to the teeth and will remain so, we vote, and y'all will agree with our
armed and gay presence absolutely and totally, or we will vote your
collective ass out of office.
---Is this right wing or left wing? Is this conservative or liberal?
Option A) is the left wing liberal, the practicing extremist who demands that everything different from the left is to be absolutely and totally hated and despised for being right wing---regardless of the fact that there are the three political alternatives, not two.
Option B) is the right wing absolutely-as-liberal, the practicing extremist who demands that everything different from the right is to be absolutely and totally hated and despised for being left wing---regardless of the fact that there are the three political alternatives, not two.
Option C) is the conservative: Conserving, protecting, assessing,
weighing the options according to the needs, noting that something which
does exist just is, noting that as something does continue, it
continues and does not fade away because it does exist and it continues
to exist, whatever that something is.
According to Funk and Wagnall, conservative means;
1. Inclined to preserve the existing order of things; opposed to change. 2. Moderate; cautious: a conservative estimate.
Liberal means;
1. Characterized by or inclining toward opinions or policies
favoring progress or reform as in politics or religion. 2. Not
intolerant or prejudiced; broad-minded. 3. Characterized by generosity
or lavishness in giving. 4. Given or yielded freely or in large
quantity; ample. 5. Not literal or strict: a liberal interpretation of
the law. 6. Suitable for persons of broad cultural interests: liberal
arts.
Classically, i.e., according to popular wit, a conservative is a
liberal who's been mugged.---But that still doesn't cover the actual
definitions.
One particular analogy does come to mind for the
right and left wing liberals, and the guidance and leadership of both
that is provided to both by the conservative.
The left wing liberal fantasy is that all individuals are individual and
independent vines, each vine just like every other vine, and there is
nothing but vines, everywhere . . . and all these vines thus wind up
stuck on the ground, with everyone in everyone else's way, with all
being trapped in a quite flat and limited sprawl, no room for growth, no
place to go. Everyone thus achieves very little, if anything at all,
ultimately finding blatant failure.
In turn, the right wing liberal fantasy is of all together forming the
totally massive, monolithic and uniform structure that encompasses and
consists of everything . . . and there is no space, no flexibility,
total rigidity, no room for growth, no place to go. Everyone thus
achieves very little, if anything at all, ultimately finding blatant
failure.
Contrasting with the left and right wing liberal extremes, the
conservative sees and seeks out an ever rising and always open lattice,
rock solid, ever extending, providing the support for all the vines to
rise up in whatever ways and means that all and every vine can thus
reach, with the lattice being totally rigid and totally open, so that
all will achieve anything and everything, ultimately finding total
success in all areas of absolute growth.
The actual practice can sometimes be complicated, but the basic
theory is simple. To be conservative, pay your bills and mind your own
business. To be liberal---equally right wing liberal or left wing
liberal---don't pay your bills and mind everyone else's business.
When it comes to minding one's own business, the conservative regulates for something:
The conservative is for quality roads, sturdy bridges, health
and safety standards. Conservative government exists to act and decide
on a larger scale than can be managed by the individual, acts solely on
behalf of the people and not for benefit of government except as to
best support and protect the people, acts to best preserve and support
the rights, choices, and actions of each individual person. Conservative
government does not in the least exist to attempt to prevent those
individual actions done by individuals alone. By its own nature,
government can only act in general terms, as only an individual can work
with another individual.
The left or right wing liberal regulates against something:
Therefore, that right wing liberal roaring twenties success called
Prohibition. Therefore, the left wing liberal attempts to ban private
ownership of firearms. Therefore, that right wing liberal narcoeconomy
success called The War On Drugs. Therefore, that right wing liberal
dismissal of at least a division---over 13,000 people---of trained,
career, volunteer military through Don't Ask Don't Tell.
To continue with the virtues of minding one's own business,
another issue which seems to be popular is immigration. A popular
theory is that the first people to arrive and make lives for themselves
are the only people who have a say over whoever else can come in.---at
all times, "purity" must be maintained. According to this theory, all
European arrivals in North America would have been turned around or
otherwise would have sunk like a rock, leaving the western hemisphere to
its first arrived, Asiatic origin, inhabitants.
A classic definition of a social climbing snob is one who achieves a
solely self-valued elevation who then snubs anyone just below. To object
to further immigration just because someone is yellow or brown or
black---and above all, recent--- makes no sense whatsoever. A genuine,
honest conservative realizes and accepts that as his people came in,
others will also.
Over time, the general philosophy developed that America is "the
new world", welcoming of immigrants who will come to make new lives,
etc. etc. The formal version of this can be seen in New York harbor,
courtesy of a poet named Emma Lazarus. Never has this general philosophy
read Give us your preferably strictly white, but we can put up with you if you're carrying lots of cash instead of being poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breath free . . .
Following the original Native Americans, New York had the Dutch,
Florida and Louisiana got the Spanish and French, various parts of the
east coast got a lot of Scots, and there were a lot of Blacks scattered
across the south---Yes, the immense majority of the latter had no choice
in arrival, but they did arrive, and they did remain:
John Adams:
That little paper there deals with freedom for Americans!
Edward Rutledge:
Oh, really. Mr. Adams is now calling our black slaves "Americans!" Are they, now?
John Adams:
Yes, they are. They are people, and they are here. If there's any other requirement, I haven't heard it.
---From the musical 1776.
With the late 1800s and later, add in the assorted waves of extremely
successful and actively contributing Asian immigration. Americans are
not "pure" anything, except American, and never will be.
In turn, consider taxes, as they involve bills and seem the sensitive point for many. Consulting F&W again;
1. A compulsory contribution levied upon persons, property, or business for the support of government.
Being for or against taxes alone makes sense only as one is for or
against government. Taxes, alone, carry no philosophical weight. They
must be considered in relation to a budget before they can be evaluated.
Conservative taxation, therefore, prepares a set budget for a
particular year and raises enough taxes to pay for it. If one year's
expenses wind up generating a deficit, they get added to the next year's
budget until the deficit is paid off. In turn, if too much taxes get
charged in a particular year, the surplus is then added to the next
year's budget as assorted taxes are responsively decreased. Therefore,
rather than low taxes or high taxes, the conservative level of taxation
is enough taxation.
This last fact isn't popular with some people, especially when accurately assessing presidential candidates and their administrations. After their collective 20 years of gouging taxes, inflating budgets, and staging press conferences, it must be embarrassing to realize that Ronald Reagan, George Bush, George Bush, and their supporters, are hard-core, card-carrying liberals, albeit ostensibly right wing liberals. The single issue of the presidential election of 1984---and 1988, and 1992---was the American national debt. And bad budgets have continued to be the right wing liberal fail, and the conservative success.
In 2008, Barack Obama came from the Democrats, and therefore also
ostensibly came from the left wing, especially so after Hillary Clinton
lost out during the 2008 campaigning. Therefore the left wing
extremists had no choice but to support him: In fact, a particular
facet of the 2008 campaign was the resulting extremely noisy adulation
of the left wing extremists' worship of the perceived Carrier Of The
Faith. Also in 2008, John McCain may not have necessarily been The
Republican---all that The Maverick labeling after all---but in
time he was the only option remaining for the right wing, and, with
Palin on hand to present a hook for the rabid right wing to grab onto,
Palin's presence also had the effect of dragging that non-Obama choice
further off towards the right wing gutter.
In doing so, that rightwards delineation rather inspired the conservative voter---not the right wing voter, the conservative
voter---to vote for the more conservative choice over the more right
wing and extremely less conservative choice . . . And in 2008, the more
conservative candidate, Obama, won because of the left wing votes
combined with the conservative votes, collecting a popular vote of some
52% to 45%---those numbers according to Wikipedia . . .
By 2012, rather a bunch of the left wing extremists were enraged.
Obama, being conservative, had not, after all, followed and carried out
the tenets of The Left Wing Liberal Faith---One sign of such rage was
the very early flurries of that very short lived Draft Clinton movement.
However, especially with Clinton blatantly focusing on being the
Secretary of State, the left wing liberals still ended up with no
choice, as Obama continued to be of and from the Democrats.
At the same time though, Obama still continued to be the same
conservative candidate that he had always been from the beginning . . . .
and again that gave the right wing absolutely nowhere else to go but
further to the right, continuing to focus on The Right Wing Liberal
Faith---with the ongoing right wing liberal mantra of Romney Will Win
because Romney Will Win because Romney Will Win---Oh, Bloody, Hell,
what do you mean that even Fox is declaring that Obama has won?!?!?!?!!?
This time, however, the popular percentages came out to about 51% to
47%. The conservative candidate did beat the right wing candidate,
again, but this time I don't think there were quite so many of the left
wing liberals canceling out the right wing liberals. In 2008 the popular
vote was about 69.5M vs about 60M, and in 2012, about 65.5M vs about
61M . . . . .
So with the 2016 presidential election, the right wing was left
gnashing its teeth---or apparently as the right wing is now toothless,
gnashing its dentures. The ongoing right wing fantasy has been to have
merely the right wing against the left, but now for three successive
presidential elections, so far, the sole issue in the presidential
election has not been the Democrats vs Republicans. The sole issue and
result of these last three elections is that the winner is, hands down,
the conservative candidate instead of the left or right wing liberal
candidate.
But after two of those elections, Obama termed out, and the political
field got to sort out who would be the conservative successor to the
conservative retiree.
A safe early prediction for the 2016 campaign was Hillary and the
seven to fourteen dwarves, with a win by Clinton. Then along came the
effectively entirely self financed Donald Trump, and the quite
independent and successful Bernie Sanders. As the campaigns developed
and continued, Scott Adams, yes, as in Dilbert, provided very
interesting observations of political persuasion calculus at his blog.
Quite particularly, Adams predicted a win by Trump starting in August of
2015, even as he also made it clear that he doesn't even like Trump,
he's just focusing on the communication aspects. A particular comment
from Adams was that;
"According to a Fox poll, Trump leads nationally with Republican men, women, every age group, every income group, and among those with a college degree and those without.
"So, if somehow the GOP nominates a candidate other than Trump, the only Republicans who will be angry about it are . . . men, women, every age group, every income group, and among those with a college degree and those without."
Trump kept commenting on issues instead of reciting ideology, following the conservative axiom of When the facts change, I change my mind. Political reporter and historian Gwynne Dyer noted the tactical details of the Trump campaign, particularly; .
. . he even opposes the traditional Republican policies that have
contributed to their marginalization and impoverishment: free trade, low
taxes for the rich, deep cuts in welfare programs. And he gets away
with it, although no other Republican candidate would.
Somewhat granting the French Revolution period idea that politics should be seen as a spectrum of right wing through left wing, and noting any political activity that ostensibly would be related to that, a website called The Political Compass shows Clinton over towards the right wing with the Republican candidates, where Sanders is emphatically ranked as being more conservative than left wing. Regardless of what the left wing liberal ideology demands, Clinton and Sanders followed the conservative lesson provided by the conservative Obama. Therefore, with echoes of the Obama campaigns, the Democrat supporters got to sort out which conservative would be the official Democrat candidate.
For the 2016 election, only the blind and the desperate still attempted to claim that right wing and left wing are the only choices, and that right wing means conservative. The most evident proof was having three conservatives, Clinton, Sanders, and also Trump, fighting for the two presidential nomination seats of the Democrats and the Republicans. Very little came out of the left wing liberal gutter, and from the right wing liberal gutter, the right wing liberal candidates were reduced to hoping for a VP slot and assessing how to pay off campaign debts.
A mid electoral campaign editorial note about that last paragraph,
above: The first edition of this paper was finished and emailed as a
magazine submission on 2016/4/24. While the particular magazine had no
response to the submission, the submitting email does confirm the date.
Three days later, Ted Cruz announced that Carly Fiorina would be his
VP.
And, a final note from Dyer, from a review of the events and occurrences of 2015:
. . . there is a strong argument for saying that Trump's main
appeal to potential voters is that he is not boring. This could be a
problem for Hillary Clinton, who for all her sterling virtues is deeply,
deeply boring.
They have been holding a mock election at Western Illinois
University one year before the national election ever since 1975. They
have chosen the correct party and even the right candidate every time,
including people who were still very dark horses at the time like Jimmy
Carter (for the 1976 election) and Barack Obama (for the 2008 election).
They held their mock election for next year last month --- and the
Democrats won. But Hillary Clinton didn't. The next president,
according to the mock election, will be Bernie Sanders. At least he
isn't boring.
And a Just Before The Election---2016/11/6---read of the political entrails . . . and after a while a slight bit of phrasing clarity in the second paragraph . . .
There is zero certainty of the following, and is based on little more
than daily skimming through Google News headlines and some scattered
stories, and commentary by Scott Adams, and tracking down some latest
articles by Gwynne Dyer . . .
And: Noting that any claim of a strict political split of only right or left wing is an open fraud, noting that the well documented reality is a trio of quite separate focused political groups, noting the ongoing reality is that a general majority is the conservatives and then the “right” and the “left”, the predicted results are:
Extremist Right minority: Screw this, I ain't voting!!!
Right Wing minority: Screw Trump. I'm voting for the libertarian!!!
Conservative majority: Trump
Left wing minority: Clinton!! Clinton!! Clinton!!
Extremist Left Minority: Screw Clinton. I'm voting for Sanders, writing 'im in if I have to.
---The uncertainty is in how much of a Trump majority, be it a 60
percent plus clear majority, or a 48/51 percent Brexit style fiasco
where the UK will be mired in that for years . . . . At least the clear
difference between the Brexit vote and a presidential election with no
incumbent is that with the latter, the one person with the clear 51 percent or more majority will be the new incumbent and get inaugurated come January . . .
And here the final results, written up on 2016/11/11, Armistice Day, and Veterans Day, with Donald Trump now confirmed as being the president-elect.
And bloody well finally, with Trump indeed winning the election,
concession speeches made, and the transition process in progress, the
entirely too long campaign is done.
Albeit with the guide set by this campaign, the next campaign season
for the late 2018 mid term election will have a likely start up in mid
to late 2017, and then the campaign season for the late 2020 next full
election will start up in early to mid 2019.
Attempts have been made to claim that Trump getting elected is, for America, the equivalent of Brexit for the UK, which is, of course, quite blatantly wrong. The Brexit vote was a variety of opinion poll regarding whether or not the United Kingdom should do something. As with all such opinion polls, that vote rather needed to be a two thirds plus majority to be a serious declaration, and it was not a viable majority nor was it serious. The resulting vote was forty-eight point something on one side, and fifty one point something on the other, which is effectively a complete tie, especially for a statement of opinion. In the UK, the resulting national scale chaotic thrashing about will probably continue for at least five years, and might even continue for a decade before all the ripples finally die down. As of this writing, actually achieving Brexit is unlikely with absolutely no one able to state what the final result will be with any certainty.
Very, very, very, very unfortunately, there is one mirroring aspect between the US election and the Brexit opinion poll that will probably have echoes for quite some time. Quite ideally the winning margin between the two top candidates would have been a genuine margin of sixty percent to forty percent, or seventy percent to thirty percent, but even the voting and not voting numbers turned out quite differently.
Aside from that, very simply, an example of the US election being a
version of Brexit would be that three years, five years along after the
2016 election date, the United States would still be arguing over who
gets what electoral college vote. Three years, five years along after
the 2016 election date, Obama might even still be President and quite
pissed off at still having to be in the White House because of the lack
of a successor.
Quite delightfully, quite by contrast with Brexit, the issue with the United States election was that an office will be empty in early 2017, someone has to get picked for that office, that pick is done, and happily unlike Brexit, everything is moving forward from there.
During the campaign, commentary turned up from assorted noted
individuals who rely on the entertainment industry for a living, with
claims that if Trump won, they would all leave the US. The actuality
is, of course, that showbiz production funding is not going to leave the
general vicinities of New Angeles or Los York until there are actual
economic reasons involved, therefore there will be no exits by any such
staff relying on that money.
During this transition time from the proven quite conservative Obama
to the equally conservative Trump, election analysis and political
observation is rather likely to range from intriguing through utterly
hysterically funny, at least for all conservatives, if not anyone on the
left or right wing liberal loony extremes. Two particular issues that
have already started getting commentary are the matter of who voted or
not, and the matter of how much of a shift there will actually be in the
resulting update in government.
Addressing the matter of how much change will occur, even during the
campaign Trump was already getting noted as being a mirror clone of
Obama for the ideological fantasists . . . Obama was the conservative
winner that the left wing liberals then bitched about, Trump is the
conservative winner that the right wing liberals have already been
bitching about. Before the election, one of the recurring congressional
jokes was the right wing attempts to revoke the Obama health care
program. Only three days after the election of the equally conservative
candidate---not right wing, remember, but instead, conservative---,
there is already a scattering of headlines stating that Trump is
looking at keeping in place great masses of that same Obama health care
program, details to be following.
The other particular issue of discussion is the actual voting numbers that turned up in the election---and a particular look at those numbers shows a very interesting, quite possible, quite different election that could have occurred instead. Various early news reports stated the electorate numbers being pretty much one half or so not voting, something like one quarter for Trump, the same for Clinton, some fragments for the others. According to wiki, the actual numbers are pretty much 40% not voting, something like 30% voting for Trump, something like 30% voting for Clinton, some fragments for the others.
Here are some additional numbers pulled from wiki: Trump got 62,984,828 popular votes, where Clinton got more popular votes, with 65,853,514. Trump won the overall election because he won the electoral college, getting 304 to Clinton's 227. At the same time, there were also the actual electorate voting numbers: The total votes for Clinton and Trump are 128,838,342, where the voting age population was 250.6 million people and voting eligible population was 230.6 million people, with the overall respective voting rates of 55.4% and 60.2%---So, eyeballing that, indeed, about 40% did not vote, and Clinton and Trump got about only a third each of those who did vote.
Trump is in, but by no means is that one third a majority.
To play with varieties of Venn diagrams, over two thirds of the possible electorate chose other than Trump, and again, over two thirds of the possible electorate chose other than Clinton.
When looking at these numbers, one rather interesting magazine article that already turned up as of November 11th is rather likely to be joined by many others and also entire books in enough months.
That article on the website of the magazine Mother Jones is http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/forgotten-class-trump-voters-democrats and titled "Meet the Trump Democrats".
A very interesting pattern turns up in the article, one that rather brings up those voting margins.
. . . And this was the first time she was voting in 25 years of eligibility. . . .
. . . who said he was voting for the first time, . . .
. . . Some of them had never voted before; some had voted for Barack Obama. . .
. . . she was considering Trump - even though she usually voted Democratic. . . .
. . . that there's just too much sidestepping on her. I don't trust her. . . .
. . . Obama was still winning: . . .
. . . I am voting against Hillary, come what may with Trump. . .
. . . was viscerally opposed to Clinton who, . . .
. . . still startled by how long it was taking me to find a single Hillary Clinton voter. . . .
. . . another voter who had been for Obama in 2008 . . .
. . . Her vote, she concluded, was "more against Hillary than for Trump." . . .
. . . where Obama had won 56 percent, Clinton got only 49 percent. . .
where Obama got 63 percent, Clinton got only 50 percent. . . . getting
30 percent, down from the 48 percent Obama had gotten, . . . where Obama
had managed to get 43 percent in 2012, Clinton's support plunged to 26
percent, giving Trump a margin of 293 votes just in that one precinct,
triple Romney's margin four years earlier. . . .
. . . More importantly for me, to NOT have Hillary as Commander in Chief.
Let's go back and have a look at that Gwynne Dyer comment from late 2015:
They have been holding a mock election at Western Illinois University
one year before the national election ever since 1975. They have chosen
the correct party and even the right candidate every time, including
people who were still very dark horses at the time like Jimmy Carter
(for the 1976 election) and Barack Obama (for the 2008 election).
They held their mock election for next year last month --- and the
Democrats won. But Hillary Clinton didn't. The next president, according
to the mock election, will be Bernie Sanders. At least he isn't boring.
At some point, Clinton was a Democrat senator from New York, where
Bernie Sanders remains the Independent senator from Vermont---not
Democrat, Independent. The state motto of New Hampshire is Live Free Or Die,
where one of the long borders of New Hampshire is shared by Vermont.
One of the issues that Sanders faced in the election is that recurring
left wing liberal distaste for personal defense and other aspects of
public ownership of firearms, where Sanders is conservative and quite
supports the personal defense matters of the public control and
ownership of firearms.
Noting the 2016 US presidential election numbers and To play with varieties of Venn diagrams, around two thirds of the possible electorate chose other than Trump, and again, around two thirds of the possible electorate chose other than Clinton.
And: There is zero certainty of the following, and is based on little
more than daily skimming through Google News headlines and some
scattered stories, and commentary by Scott Adams, and tracking down some
latest articles by Gwynne Dyer . . .
And: Noting that any claim of a strict political split of only right or left wing is an open fraud, noting that the well documented reality is a trio of quite separate focused political groups, noting the ongoing reality is that a general majority is the conservatives and then the “right” and the “left” . . . . .
And: Quite particularly also noting the rather visible pattern that when given the choice of Clinton or Trump, instead of being given the choice of Sanders or Trump, rather a few voters chose to go against Clinton much more than genuinely being for Trump.
Therefore:
A very realistic assessment is that if the conservative Bernie Sanders had been the candidate of the Democrats rather than Hillary Clinton, the actual electorate would have instead been pretty much 40% not voting, something like 30% voting for Trump, something like 30% voting for Sanders, instead, and some fragments for the others.
In short, and going back to Gwynne Dyer; The next president, given a very minor shift in voting patterns in the 2016 election, would have been the conservative Bernie Sanders.
At least Trump isn't boring.
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© Cassiel C. MacAvity
--This is just extra space added to let the links work . . .