Friends of mine, having romantic dinner on their terrace, had bird shot land into their dinner plates. Bird shot is so small, it's no more deadly than raindrops when it falls back down, but it's a startling seasoning for a nice dish. The bird hunter who'd shot was in sight, they caught up with him, and he just didn't deem it to be a problem...
It's overall quite true. But I found that the smaller stores, that live in the shadows of a larger one, do still offer the actual bargains. For example, in Emmaüs Tarare, a smaller city 30 min away from Lyon, you still find solid furniture that can be up to 4 or 5 times cheaper than flimsier pieces in Emmaüs Lyon.
I don't quite know what the dynamics are, here.
I guess it's the same for other charities/thrift shops/second-hand shops worldwide. I've seen the same with Stockholms Stadsmisssion in Sweden: more centrally located stores have nothing of note, more remote ones and smaller ones may have actual treasures.
Your best bet is a less dense but affluent area. The general level of income near thrift shops is probably the best proxy to whether or not good deals will be there across the board.
This post reminds me of the book : Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, by David A. Treleaven. It explains how incompetent meditation can awaken and reinforce trauma, while a competently handled meditation can be part of the toolbox to heal it.
Nothing unusual. Just an answer to the previous comment, that felt thrown over one's shoulder : a whole continent won't switch its energy sources in a couple of days.
I had a similar experience in spite of not needing any R, living and working in several English speaking countries. My name is Mathias, and the variety of ways English speakers called me was a proper issue, in the sense that I sometimes didn't even recognize that somebody was talking about me, or calling me across a workshop. When I started introducing myself as "Matt", all became easy. Never had this issue with pretty much any other culture I worked with :D (all kinds of Europeans and Arabs mainly)
If it's about Rs, I worked on an oil rig with a Mexican guy named Javier. The American OIM had such hard time telling "Javier" (with the two different gutturals) on the tannoy, Javier got called "George" for the rest of our stay.
The top line, "Not Left. Not Right. Forward." kind of reminds me of Macron's "En Marche" ("Let's Go") that took over France in a storm, taking over the presidency AND the parliament only one year after its foundation, with very few previously known political figures in its ranks.
The whole thing looked like doing management rather than politics, and offered an alternative to fed-up voters who didn't dare turn to the usual far-right and far-left "protest votes".
Headed with a nimble tactical vision, the formula was extremely efficient... for one mandate.
I suspect a huge part of Macron's success was his opponent. France elections have a top-2 runoff, and I wouldn't be surprised if many electors were like "I don't like Macron but I really don't want Le Pen to win".
The whole "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN is extremely unpopular in the real world.
> "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN is extremely unpopular in the real world.
... except Germany?
I think it's more popular on the ground than you'd think, but it's very unpopular in the media who like their politics to be professional wrestling.
A lot of people seem to think that Germany is "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" but that is not the case. Angela Merkel and her CDU/CSU party like to pretend and brand themselves as such, but they don't vote that way.
Also, Germans as a whole can be categorized as liberal regarding social policies but very conservative regarding economic ones.
However, the election last week was a big upset to her party and might finally lead to a new government coalition with the policies you mentioned.
That said, "grudgingly as socially progressive as the public demands we be, economically center-right" is pretty common in European politics; CDU/CSU are an example, as are FF and FG in Ireland.
That seems fine/palatable to me. And honestly, that's good leadership. Social policies should follow popular opinion and be flexible enough to shift ever few years. But economic policies may require unpopular actions to be taken.
The population may not want higher interest rates, or a trade deal that kills a local factory. But those things might be for the greater good of everyone.
My issue with this approach is that it tends to put off progress until there is _overwhelming_ public support. For instance, the 38th Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which liberalised divorce rules, received _82%_ of the public vote. That's particularly extreme, but the 34th and 36th amendment (equal marriage and abortion) received 62% and 67% respectively. All of these could have been introduced years earlier and passed with clear public support.
If you wait until you have no choice but to do something, you tend to delay doing things a very long time. And it bleeds over into timidity about making tough decisions; for instance the FF/FG coalition in Ireland has been unable to do anything about housing, because any actual action is going to annoy _somebody_.
> for instance the FF/FG coalition in Ireland has been unable to do anything about housing, because any actual action is going to annoy _somebody_
Ireland has a ridiculously high percentage of population dependent on government support for housing. This is in the form of assisted rent payments which in effect, sets a high floor for rent. People receiving support are competing in the same market for housing as pretty much all workers.
We don't build government housing anymore because we saw the actual disaster that became of that.
The far left parties have a 'housing for everyone' nonsense manifest which a) Ireland doesnt have the labour force for, b) tax payers subsiding shit wages c) Ireland already has high income tax and sales taxes.
At some point there has to be the realisation that life on the dole shouldn't equate to a middle class lifestyle without the stress or debt when those who should have a middle class lifestyle don't have one because they're being squeezed in every direction possible and still have to take on hundreds of thousands of debt for mediocre accommodation.
While I agree with pretty much none of that, it also entirely misses the point. The problem with housing in Ireland is, very simply, that there is _not enough of it_. This clearly needs to be fixed, whether by prodding the markets or changing the planning laws or direct social housing construction or all of the above. The coalition's approach has been to do ~nothing (the previous FG government did tinker rather timidly with the planning laws, at least, but it fell far short of the sort of action required).
Counterpoint: California voted against gay marriage once upon a time, and overwhelmingly so. The popular (lack of) support was overridden by judicial activism. The rest of the country followed.
I would not classify 7M votes for banning same sex marriage and 6.4M votes against banning same sex marriage with 80% registered voter participation rate to be overwhelming.
The voting age population was 26M in 2008, so even subtracting non US citizens and non CA residents, there were many millions of people who did not bother to vote, and I would bet that people who wanted to ban same sex marriage were more motivated to
vote than people who did not want to ban same sex marriage.
No, it is very unpopular in the US in those who regularly vote in primaries. The primary decides the race, for many, many elections. The presidential race is not exempt from this, either. To draw enough primary voters to make the ballot in one of the two major parties, candidates are, increasingly, needing to take extreme stances on most social and economic issues. (for example, look at how many people came out for Trump in the 2016 primary. In my parents' county in their Midwest state, the polling place literally ran out of republican ballots)
Pandering to the extremes, and the movement of many politicians toward extreme views is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.
This is part of the reason he and others will be pushing for structural changes, including open primaries, as central to the platform. Changing the mechanics of the elections is the only way to enable a return to centrism in the US.
> Changing the mechanics of the elections is the only way to enable a return to centrism in the US.
There is no centrism to return to. The post-WWII age of bipartisanship wasn't one of centrism, it was one where the party split didn't align with the ideological divide. It was jist as much a period of competing ideological extremes (and governing from ideological polarized positions, which is why it featured the US military being used to enforce the federal will against US state governments.)
Changing the mechanics of elections to artificially favor centrism is...opposed to the kind of changes that would expand the scope of meaningful choices and improve representation.
Americans feel unrepresented. This makes us despair and forces us into increasingly unpopular, existential crisis, that are good for no one.
I do not believe the problem is we aren't progressive enough. The problem is no one trusts the goverment. And no one trusts the goverment is because no one in goverment is accountable to the majority and no one governs the way we would like to be governed.
Frankly it's not about 'centrism'. It's about the fact the parties do NOT represent the diversity of opinion in America. there pro-choice republicans, pro-life democrats, republicans who like trans-rights, pro-capitalism democrats, pro-gun democrats, anti-trump Republicans ... But despite all this diversity of opinion, you have a system that forces binary choices between slates of options.
We are a very diverse country - ethnically, politically, socially. It's beautifully diverse. Among the most diverse in the world. I do not believe the current political system reflects that diversity accurately.
Which is why voter participation in America is low, and most elections across the country do not matter. This is wrong. Every district in America should be competitive.
In order to qualify for the run-off, Macron had to end up in the top 2 first. Which he did. And that En Marche got the parliament as well was a bit of a surprise. Curious to see how things play out next year so.
If Le Pen or Zemmour get through to the second round then I imagine Macron will win, as voters unite to avoid them winning, much as happened in the previous elections.
Although I guess Le Pen and Zemmour might split each others vote, preventing them from reaching the second round.
The National Assembly scores wasn't a surprise, since presidential mandate last 5 years like the AN's deputies mandate and the AN elections come right after the presidential election we haven't see any cohabitation government like it was the case in the past when the presidential mandate lasted 7 years. And LREM, which is easy to place as centrist, is full of recruits that come from the PS (Socialist Party) and LR (The Republican, last name in date of the main party from the right). And LREM got the support of classic center party like the MODEM which get many members promoted in the current government structures.
Yeah, him getting a majority was the bigger surprise. The presidential election is a popularity contest. Both major, traditional parties shot themselves in the foot repeatedly and lost a lot of their appeal. Then, in a runoff against Le Pen, you just win by not being a Nazi.
Getting enough MPs, so many of them outsiders, on a technocratic platform (so without pulling th usual emotional strings) was quite impressive. Of course, the end result is not great, but then nothing really is these days
Sometimes Macron makes me think of Schröder in Germany. Both came as a surpise, both had to implement some unpopular measures. In the case of Schröder, these measures helped to get Germany back on its economic feet (Germany was Europe's sick man in the 90s) and ultimately cost him his Chancellory further down the road. And not all these reforms were actually "good", Hartz 4 is still a damn disgrace for rich, highly industrialized country. Not that it will be changed anytime soon, regardless of the next government we get. We'll see how Macron does.
Not being a Nazi is actually good thing so. Even more so if it wins elections!
> The whole "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN is extremely unpopular in the real world.
I don't know about that, it has won the popular vote in 7 of the past 8 US presidential elections.
I'd think that Bush represented a socially conservative position, and I'm not entirely certain that Trump was any more conservative on particular social issues. Additionally, I think Clinton represented a middle of the road approach to social issues (RFRA, massive deregulation, "begrudgingly" signed Defense of Marriage Act, etc.) On economic issues, they all fall somewhere between middle of the road and hardline neoliberalism.
Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and HR Clinton won it in 2016. The only popular vote victory for a Republican post-Cold War was in 2004. Also, "deregulation" is typically an economic issue.
Economically, neoliberalism is indistinguishable from conservativism so I’m not sure what “hardline” means (it also was certainly not Obama — he talked a good game while still murdering children with drones and funneling tax dollars to corporations hand over fist). Liberalism takes the worst parts of both the left and the right and mashes them together. You can’t divorce socialism from social progress — they are two sides of the same coin. No social justice without economic justice.
Bush was definitely socially conservative. Trump was closer to middle of the road socially.
Clinton was middle of the road socially for his time, at best. Trump was more progressive than Clinton.
See for Clinton regressiveness: signed welfare reform (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act); was adamantly against gay marriage (the Defense of Marriage Act); don't ask don't tell; aggressively championed one of the worst human rights violations in US history in his tough on crime campaign (1994 crime bill); Clinton did practically nothing to advance drug legalization and instead furthered the oppressive war on drugs program by the US Govt; started another major US war; financial and telecommunications deregulation; Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Clinton was an excellent conservative.
And when it comes to the border and immigration (as a mark against Trump on the social score), the Obama Admin deported more people per year than the Trump Admin did.
>Clinton did practically nothing to advance drug legalization
Clinton tolerated the first medical marijuana program in the US when it was passed in California in 1996 (Prop 215). That was the first significant liberalization of drug laws since 1980; if the Feds had shut it down, the movement may have been significantly slowed.
While true, politicians cant stray too far from their base, and there was 20 years of social progress in the general population between them: drug decriminalization, gay marriage, etc.
Only because it’s been pitted against increasingly obvious forms of fascism. And it was unpopular enough that Hillary Clinton lost against Donald fucking Trump who was at least pushing something different.
There are a lot of people in this country, myself included, who have stopped voting period. No meaningful change will happen by continuing to elect democrats and I’m solidly in the accelerationist camp at this point. An economically left platform would get me out to the polls. Yang is not that; this is just neoconservativism in new clothes.
It's always true that the election system itself plays a big role in how/what candidates get elected. It's also true that the US electoral structure was a huge factor in Biden or Trump's election. Change the structure of the primary or main election, get different results.
That notwithstanding, it's also true that elements of Trump or Bidens' success might translate.
In any case, the "The whole "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN." is arguably the most successful coalition in western (and many non western) democracies for decades.
Depending on vantage, political classifications like "progressive" and "middle of the road" are relative, and we don't usually agree on the bounds. But if
If you compare changes though, these orientations have been politically powerful for decades. ...
Normative beliefs around gay rights, minority rights, secularism, women's rights and such have been marching forward, call it progressing. Circa 2005, gay marriage was fringe and ilegal almost everywhere. Obama, Clinton & other prominent US democrats occasionally even had to pretend to be against gay marriage, for elections. Within <15 years, gay marriage is legal in the US, most of western europe, etc. A religious-conservative position on a lot of issues is considered fringe now. 15 years ago, condoms were still politically controversial. Bush cancelled HIV prevention initiative because condoms.
Meanwhile, the economic middle-ground is approximately in exactly the same place as it was in the 90s. This might be breaking down ATM, but very generally, the conservative position from the 80s became the middle ground. Barriers to trade, corporate shields, tax structures and such haven't changed much since that shift.
> If you compare changes though, these orientations have been politically powerful for decades
They have, but they usually don't go toghether, that was my point.
Social rights advocacy usually goes hand in hand with far-left positions, while more centrist economic policy usually implies conservative social positions.
I believe it's been a policy driver because it's kind of an "elite ideology", which is overrepresented in educated or powerful circles, which have relatively more soft-power.
It all makes sense. If you're part of group X which is legally excluded from wealth or power, you're hardly going to be impressed by a system that says "lets judge everyone's moral worth as a person on their inherited wealth".
So the best way to increase support for market based economics is to remove such government interventions.
But instead the market-based people often team up with the bigots slowing prpgress on both fronts.
I don't think these narratives are ever definitive, but I think this rendition isn't really operative.
>> Social rights advocacy usually goes hand in hand with far-left positions
Maybe to some extent, but mostly I think this is a product of being "in opposition." You get to be more blunt, fiery & vanguard in your rhetoric when you are in opposition. Also party fringes tend to group somewhat.
In any case, "centrism" has been relative to a previously conservative economic outlook and a previously liberal social outlook. A party representing the economic left wing agenda combined with the social conservative social agenda of the 1950s-80s would have bombed in the following decades.
Maybe "elite ideology" has been further right economically and further left socially than the mainstream... but that position tends to be well represented as centrist factions of large parties.
There aren't fringe factions representing these positions because mainstream parties already do. The UK does actually have such a party, the Libdems. They sometimes act as punisher for labour or tory candidates that stray from the middle ground. IE, they get labour votes when the labour candidate is overly radical in rhetoric, and conservative votes if the conservative candidate is overly reactionary. But, any recent British PM would have been at home in the LibDem party.
There's no need for a centrist party that defines political orientation the same way the main factions do. Even in real multiparty systems, this kind of centrism is usually a small, short lived and inconsequential victory. The problem isn't that the ideas aren't popular enough. They're too popular. Both major parties already court these voters.
> The whole "socially progressive, economically middle of the road" political coalition that would win every election on HN is extremely unpopular in the real world.
Is it? "Economically middle in the road" is somewhat around classic Social Democrat politics, a staple of European politics. The problem with the classic European Social Democrat parties is that they shot themselves in their feet by a combination of neoliberalism (e.g. German SPD post-2005/Hartz IV or British Labour) and individual scandals (corruption).
"Economically middle in the road" is somewhat around classic Social Democrat politics
Even more conservative parties in Europe are moving that way. Just look at the Tories in the UK for example, proposing massive government spending plans paid for by raising taxes.
That’s surprising only if you consider the Tories as being economically liberal. They are conservative in the sense that they look after the interests of the old aristocracy and a coalition of the rich. Their policies are intended to benefit a specific subset of the population. Their taxes (as well as things like the universal credit cuts) are perfectly aligned with that ideology.
They don’t have a problem with the concept of taxation, just taxation of the powerful.
They increased UC for the pandemic, and then reduced it, much like the Furlough scheme, and both of those policies would have been considered centre or centre-left responses if done by a centre or centre-left party.
> They are conservative in the sense that they look after the interests of the old aristocracy and a coalition of the rich.
I thought this was the literal definition of right wing? The side that supported the king against the democratic will of the people?
And is there anyone who has a rhetoric of "less taxes" who actually intends everyone to benefit? That seems like a mirage and it's all done in service of the rich and powerful.
Which is a hard policy to sell to ordinary people, unless you wrap it in some cheap bigotry to confuse them.
The Tories are a coalition of three major faction: One Nation, Thatcherites and Cornerstone.
One Nation, which has tightened its control from Cameron onwards, is closer to centrist Christian democrats, who e.g. oversaw expansion of universal healthcare and welfare systems by themselves or together with the left in many European countries.
People see this as a departure for the Tories largely because the Thatcherites were in control from 1975 until Cameron.
I hadn't realised just how much Macron's party materialized from nowhere. Must have been huge pent-up demand for an alternative. However I suspect that only works in systems that aren't FPTP in the first place, and I suspect Macron is going to the same nowhere that all American third-party candidates go.
Especially if he starts by aiming for the top. What might work is a third party taking a city and then a state. This is how third parties practically operate in the UK, they're all local - SNP, Plaid, the various Northern Ireland factions.
This wasn't exactly a FPTP situation. First, the presidential election spans over two rounds. Second, about a month later, the legislative elections (two rounds also) were won too
with a proper tsunami (350 out of 577 seats, providing a governing majority).
When he won the presidential election, everybody thought it was no big deal, as he hadn't shown a single viable candidate to staff any of the 577 seats in the parliament, without which he couldn't wield any real structural power. But he used that weakness as a strength. He hired inexperienced people from all regular ways of life, young and shiny. To the voting public, the message was "you wanted neither left nor right ? Here you go, vote for the almost normal people I'm offering you." This turned into a huge strength, as once in office these inexperienced MP simply followed the group leader, who, you guessed it, was a seasoned politician from olden, and made the parliament a transparent corridor for the presidential power for quite some time.
The public pitch was along the "climb over the left/right stalemate and go forward". But the mechanics, besides good ties with the corporate world, were a masterpiece of perfect timing for every action along the campaign, and then for the legislative elections. In those days I was admiring Macron like you would admire a talented enemy general.
I have nothing substantive to add, but: here’s the clip of the quote referenced [0] and a larger clip containing most of that Treehouse of Horror skit [1]. Classic Simpsons is the “soul food” of American TV IMHO.
Not sure if he will go nowhere, he is still having the same 4% lead (24% vs 20%) over Le Pen for the 2022 election (I just checked). Macron basically replaced the French Conservatives (they basically died after Sarkozy) while the Socialists (not in the sense most in the US understand that, they are the French left) killed themselves with Hollande after Sarkozy. So there was a huge opportunity for someone like Macron, it seems Le Pen isn't really able to get a true majority.
These numbers are despite things like: Yellow Vest demonstrations against Macron, his hugely unpopular reforms around retirement (especially railways among other things), Covid lockdowns and so on.
In Brazil a couple parties sprouted up in the past few years: Novo (New) and MBL (Free Brazil Movement). They both position themselves as being "outside" of the left-right spectrum.
And of course, it's a marketing trick to capture people who are 'fed up with the system' and don't realize it is an impossible proposition. If you're in government you'll inevitably have to position yourself on all issues, including labour laws, social safety nets, property rights and so on.
Invariably these parties sit on the right of the political spectrum. The current government already ran with this idea back then, made of "outsiders" who incidentally have really far-right ideas and associate with the military. But they see themselves as "apolitical", whatever that means...
I never seen any of them put themselves "outside" of the left-right spectrum.
I probably read what they say in a different way. What I see both movements doing is not align enough to either side to position themselves as such.
You said it yourself: they need to position themselves on "all issues". If you align yourself 90% to the left or right, you can align with a traditional party. If you split your positions 40-60% on the issues, you are neither right or left wing.
One example for both Novo and MBL: Both movements align in economic ideas closer to right wing parties, but both movements are pro environmental polices. Traditionally you don't see political groups in Brazil that support both ideas.
Both parties supported the (terrible) idea of merging the environmental protection and agriculture ministries.
The previous Minister of the Environment came from Novo, and in only 2 years his policies had a disastrous effect on the environment, especially deforestation in the Amazon (he was kicked out of the party but the damage is done).
If you split your positions 50/50, you're in the center :)
It's also almost the tagline Rita Verdonk used to use: "Niet links, niet rechts, maar rechtdoorzee" ("not left, not right, but straightforward").
This was when she started her own party after being sidelined by the party of the current prime minister of the Netherlands, after getting more votes than he did. Her party failed miserably, and ten years later he's still prime minister.
Which is to say: success doesn't just come from the tagline, I suppose.
Happened in the UK as well. A group of centrist MPs from different parties got together and started a new party called Change UK. They got a lot of good press and good will from people wanting a more 'rational' center option. One catastrophic election later the party collapsed and later dissolved.
"forward" means "progress" which means "left". I don't really see the point there :P I've seen many parties claim "we are not left-wing or right-wing" but they evidently have to be either.
In the case of "Macron", forward was clearly "right", as it was mostly about getting rid or reducing social schemes. In France, "neither right nor left" generally means "right".
If what you say is true, there must be some underlying outlook or philosophy that leads to one or the other.
What I suspect is that's true for some kinds of issues, but other issues are more of a mixed bag that just happened to end up polarized. Maybe those other issues are important enough to make a third party worthwhile.
forward in Yang's case means "anti incumbency". Not sure if that's leftist or not because incumbency is basically a mainstay of the current political system of both parties.
Macron (a banker) was strongly supported by mainstream medias. And when people realized he was a potential winner, many politicians from left and right started to rally him.
Macron's "En Marche" never took over France "in a storm". That is just media spin. Macron is your typical establishment droid and has always been perceived as such by the majority of the French population. The only reason he won the presidency is because of the extreme vilification of Marine Le Pen by mainstream media.
En Marche benefitted from the peculiarity of France's electoral system, which combines proportional representation in a 1st round with a "sudden death" 2nd round for the powerful presidency with only the two best-polling parties taking part. When it became clear that the far-right would be the largest single party, people ditched traditional party allegiances to back a candidate they found tolerable.
</strikeout>
(Apologies for posting my half-mangled recollections without checking and thanks to the commenters who fixed my incorrect claims).
France's electoral system is not well-suited to its current political landscape.
> which combines proportional representation in a 1st round
No it doesn't.
The french parliament is elected in 577 single member constituencies by a 2 round system: in the 1st round, voters vote for any candidate.
If no candidate wins >50% of all the votes in that constituency, a 2nd round is held, where candidates that came 1st or 2nd or got >12.5% of the vote, in the 1st round, can run.
Thus the French 2 round system is similar to Instant Runoff Voting, except that it isn't instant.
As an example of how the French system isn't proportional, En Marche got 32% of 1st-round votes but 61% of seats.
> for the powerful presidency
Presidential elections, like any other election that elects 1 candidate cannot in principle be proportional, because each party must either win 100% or 0% of the candidates elected.
> When it became clear that the far-right would be the largest single party
No, the National Front only got 13.2% of 1st round votes (and only ended up winning 8 seats, 1.4% of the total). They were nowhere near being the biggest party.
That's not entirely correct. Macron got 24.01% in the first round, 66.1% in the second. Le Pen, the far right candidate, got 21.3% in the first and 33.9% in the second. The runner-up in the first round was Fillon, a coservative, with 20.01% in round one. There was the fear Le Pen would win the second round, sure. One thing about the French system is, that usually the second round is not won by a radical candidate as those usually fail to get enough votes from the other parties and candidates not qualifying for round 2. We'll see how that plays out next year so. Not sure how the French system wouldn't fit the current political landscape.
While Macron did indeed win the second round of voting in a landslide, I think that had more to do with an overwhelming rejection of the social-nativism of the National Front. In the first round of voting, it was striking how evenly split four of the candidates were. This is particularly interesting because (as a general political rule) as the margins between candidates decrease, tactical voting tends to correspondingly increase. This is why you very rarely see four-way (or more) splits in voting, and means voters must have been especially divided along multiple axes (i.e. not just "left" and "right"!). Macron was really the candidate of the "internationalist right" - a supporter of global institutions who opposed redistribution (see his abolition of the ISF - the wealth tax).
This. I want someone who will throw the culture war out the window (both the left and right wings of it) and focus 100% on competent problem solving and execution and on real world practical problems facing the country.
These are problems like infrastructure, transportation, water security in the West, energy modernization and decarbonization, repatriation of critical manufacturing capabilities (or at least making the country attractive for it), bringing government services into the digital age, and so on.
"Competence!" should be the battle cry of this movement.
The culture war gets everyone to focus on culture war issues instead of the basic competence of the candidates, leading to the election of the likes of reality show star bullshit artists and people with early stage dementia.
It's not easy to divorce "culture war" from "problem solving", since the question of whether problems even _exist_ and need to be solved is frequently a culture-war issue.
For example, you can't pursue "energy modernization and decarbonization" in the USA without taking a side in the "does anthropogenic climate change exist?" culture war.
Any infrastructure plan, whether heavy-infrastructure or social-infrastructure, touches the culture-war questions of "should the government subsidize industry?" and "should the government subsidize the working class?"
Because much of the culture war stuff isn't substantive. It's theater. There aren't any numbers on it.
IF your concerned with say racial inequality - well then good! Solve a practical problem by focusing your energy on poverty which already selects for a racially diverse group.
End gerry mandering ? That right there is the root of racial disparity in representation, and people hate it. Open Primaries is the only thing Libertarians and Greens agree on - that should be an easy lift when 65% of America wants more options.
What Yang is saying is "Instead of 2 flavors of ice cream, how about 10!". Who the hell votes for only 2 flavors?
Culture wars fall within the purview of media op-eds and social, which tries to rope in policy makers. I don't think Biden for instance has devoted much time addressing identity politics any more than Yang. Does it not then mean he's focused on pragmatic problems? Competency is up for question.
I like that Yang narrows the focus of what he purports are policy changes in need. I don't think this has resonated well, but I expect it's because UBI and VAT scares off moderates who want someone to feign upholding something close to the status quo. Also because UBI and VAT don't rank among the more imperative concerns people have, or at least don't obviously address them, e.g. healthcare, cost of living, economy.
The was once the slogan in ex Yugoslavia, death to fascism, freedom to the people.
Socialism/communism light followed.
Eventually, once that failed, people started saying f##k communism, death to fascism, freedom to the people.
Things never meaningfully changed, though.
Macron presented itself as the "reasonable" option between classical left & right & the extreme right.
He seems in a pretty good position as far as poles go. The left will be divided as usual. The right is struggling to find a candidate, has many court cases to deal with, and has yet to find its position relative to the far right. The far right is torn with crazy extremists such as éric zemmour.
While Macron has made many communication mistakes, his success with the vaccine pass and his ability to deliver good speeches at the right time may allow him to win a second mandate. After that his party will probably collapse.
> "En Marche" ("Let's Go") that took over France in a storm (...) with very few previously known political figures in its ranks
"En marche" is not "Let's go" ("allons-y") but "March on", a military reference. They had key figures in the previous government, for example Macron who was ministry of economy and supervised the destruction of working law protections (2016 reforms) for the "socialist" (huge quotation marks) government.
His first prime Manuel Valls minister was also part of the previous government, where he supervised the crushing of popular uprising as ministry of interior. They both represent the national-capitalist turn/wing of the "socialist" party that emerged in the 80/90's. They both have countless blood on their hands, and have betrayed all their campaign promises. For example, Macron campaigned against Le Pen's racism, then passed racist laws doubling retention times (90 days) for undocumented people, pressured against rescuing the Aquarius...
It's also important to note that if they appear to come out of nowhere, they are not emerging challengers. They have been chosen by the oligarchy (media and land/industry owner establishment) to represent their interests, and have been heavily promoted across private/public media as an "alternative" to the politics we knew. As you could guess, this "alternative" was always more of the same: less public services, more cops/prisons, less taxes for the rich, more corruption in the heart of government.
> The whole thing looked like doing management rather than politics
That's politics, too. Just very reactionary, anti-humane politics that destroy people's lives and autonomy in the name of micro-managed stats. You may be interested to know that historically, having a strong government managing society without "politics" (huge quotation marks, everything is political) is Mussolini's historic definition of fascism:
> "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
PS: "Neither left nor right" is also a popular fascist meme.("third position"). In France, it's still represented by famous holocaust-denier Alain Soral ("working Reft, traditional values Right") or Troisième Voie (the neofascist militias who were dissolved after murdering Clément Méric). Hitler was also famously "neither left nor right", and actively campaigned against existing parties, claiming the plurality was a form of chaos that ruined efficiency. He historically managed to convince some workers that he was going to be their defender against the bosses, while at the same time taking considerable funds/support from the German industry owners who he convinced he would be their defender against "communism".
You seem to suggest Manuel Valls has also been prime minister under Macron presidency (after having been under Hollande's), which he hasn't.
Also, the "neither left not right is also a fascist meme" is both true and misleading: when you have several leftist parties that reclaim being "the only true left" for themselves, portraying anything else as evil or stupid, and rightist parties that move further and further to the extreme, and both wings being plagued with moral/financial scandals, you may as well consider that the left/right dichotomy is broken, or that the parties broke it joyfully.
So trying to pave a way with another, maybe more subtle and demanding understanding than just left/right, progress/conservatism, is not completely absurd either. And that, without going necessarily right into fascism.
> You seem to suggest Manuel Valls has also been prime minister under Macron presidency (after having been under Hollande's), which he hasn't.
Thanks for correction. I thought he was prime minister of Macron, but that was in fact Edouard Philippe. I must have confused with Jean-Yves le Drian, previously Ministry of Defense (under Hollande) then Foreign Affairs (under Macron).
> and both wings being plagued with moral/financial scandals
I don't agree with all of their politics, but when was the last time you heard the NPA or LO (left-wing parties) had a financial/moral scandal? I've never heard of any.
> you may as well consider that the left/right dichotomy is broken, or that the parties broke it joyfully
Left/Right dichotomy (collectivism/capitalism) is as alive as ever, in terms of politics. But the "left" and "right" labels have lost any form of sense when parts of the left in the 80/90s started accepting capitalism, applying right wing programs (eg. neoliberalism) and then started to campaign/act on extreme-right ideas (eg. anti-immigration measures). But the media apparatus have not called them out on moving right and continue to call them "left" without any form of meaning. That's why we're so confused about the terms, at least in Western Europe and North America.
> more subtle and demanding understanding than just left/right, progress/conservatism, is not completely absurd either
Oh sure, we have to look at the measures behind the keywords. I think that was exactly my point to begin with: that just because you say "neither left nor right" doesn't mean you aren't very very very right-wing. And having a "progress party" with the leader's face placated everywhere and no actual discussions of the most pressing issues we face as an entire species is not giving me a lot of confidence.
Same here. After, like every little French boy, having been fed with Tintin and Asterix in my baby bottle, much of the more modern work made me feel like the author was not straight to the point enough, wasting my attention with his uncertain and meandering process of drawing. It took a lot of time to appreciate anything else and stop feeling like it's all amateurish sketching.
> After, like every little French boy, having been fed with Tintin and Asterix in my baby bottle
Not French but I've felt this too -- purely on an aesthetic level I enjoy the artwork of Tintins, Asterixes, and even older American superhero comics, because of the simpler, more traditionally comic-like artwork.
Modern comics have more realistic colors but appear "over-pencilled"[1,2] somehow.
