The political spectrum is not a straight line from "Left" to "Right".

[DetlefK]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-2016-election-was-not-a-fluke/2017/09/18/b45a8a0e-9cb4-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html?utm_term=.bc70994ded76

My view is that the traditional left-to-right, progressive-to-conservative, Democratic-to-Republican political axis that we’re all so familiar with is no longer a valid schematic of American political opinion. And I believe neither party has the foggiest idea what the new diagram looks like.

I don’t think Trump can see the new spectrum either, as evidenced by the way his approval ratings have plunged since his inauguration. But both he and Sanders deserve credit for seeing that the old model has outlived its usefulness.

Look at the issues on which Trump and Sanders were in basic agreement. Both doubted the bipartisan consensus favoring free-trade agreements, arguing they had disadvantaged U.S. workers. Both spoke of health care as a right that should be enjoyed by all citizens. Both pledged to strengthen, not weaken, entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Both were deeply skeptical of U.S. involvement in foreign wars, vowing to do their nation-building here at home. Both advocated mammoth, job-creating investments in infrastructure. Both contended “the system” was rigged to favor the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.

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"Left" and "Right" were originally defined as democrats vs monarchists. Later the definition changed to Communism vs Capitalism.

And now we see that the model no longer works. Want some examples?

- Germany has this party, the Free Democrats. They are liberal, anti-war, pro-civil-rights hard-core capitalists. A party like that would be unthinkable in the US, yet it exists.

- Germany has the "Alt-Left" (they don't call themselves that), who hates racism and the US-imperialism but absolutely adores Trump. Pro-immigrant and pro-Trump at the same time. A political movement like that would be unthinkable in the US, yet it exists.

We need more than one political spectrum to express parties and politicians.
We need one axis for Communism vs Capitalism.
We need one axis for Democracy vs Authoritarianism.
We need one axis for Establishment vs Revolution.
We need one axis for Racism vs Inclusiveness.
...
Andsoforth.



You might think that the Far Right and the Far Left are natural enemies, but they overlap at their hatred for the political system and society as it is right now.

[leftstreet]

1. Trump said health care was a right?

[Expecting Rain]

2. The Far Right and the Far Left are natural allies...

both hate liberal democracy and liberal values and both embrace the fiction of "populism" as their means to taking total power.

[SharonClark]

3. It's not a line, it's a circle.

[CrispyQ]

4. Get money out of politics, NOW, then see what happens.

I would still like to get away from the two-party, winner-takes-all system we have, but first & foremost, we must demand publicly funded elections. And shorter campaign cycles. Our political process is a fucking business, right now, & it shouldn't be.

[JoeStuckInOH]

5. There's both political (conservative vs progressive) and executive (pure democracy vs dictator).

there's a difference in what your political beliefs are (conservative vs. progressive) versus how you believe those beliefs should be implemented (democracy vs. authoritarianism). I think a 2-axis system is enough to categorize most mainstream candidates and political feelings that have even a chance of being relevant. Sure, there's probably a hundred different metrics you can quantify to put everyone in their boxes.... but it's unnecessary to pick nits at the level. Left/Right vs democracy/dictatorship is plenty.

Nobody really needs to know that somebody else is a progressive-libertarian-anticorprocrat-jingoist.
Just say, "After Bernie lost I decided to vote for Trump". Then we'll all know everything wee need without the political word-salad description.

I find it funny that everyone feels the need to quantify everything about everything. Did a bunch of biologists decide to pursue post-graduate anthropology studies at some point?

[nycbos]

6. I have always thought the far right and the far left are unified by many causes.

They include buy are not limited antisemitism, racism, anti-vexers, feeling repressed by the establishment (a la Monty Python)