'Centrists' don't help much either because they too hold the left to a higher standard than the right and always seem to be looking for any excuse to whip out the ol' "so much for the tolerant left" so that they can feel better about themselves when they vote for who they really wanted to vote for anyway.

People on the right can say in plain English "I want to dismantle women's rights and put all gay people into camps" and the 'centrist' will be like "hmmm yes that seems like a valid political opinion". But the moment someone on the left drops the high road shit for once and bites back, the 'centrist', clutching pearls is like "See? This is why I'm supporting the bigots that hate everyone, because you SWORE and that's unacceptable!"

[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

That's not a Centrist viewpoint at all. That's a solidly right viewpoint.

The Centrist would, however, say "look, if you're going to make your whole vibe about tolerance, that's cool. I love it. But my homie, that's a slippery slope you haven't fully negotiated yet. So when your less disciplined people start to be big picture tolerant through on-paper intolerance, don't expect me to do the same mental gymnastics to defend it that you do with your mom at Thanksgiving. How about you solve the problem before you create it by not being sloppy and bumbling your way into an obvious trap every bully has pulled since the dawn of time?"

But hey, as a Centrist, the Left can't discern me from someone like Bush 43 or a raging MAGA freak because anything right of far left is a legit fascist. Which is why I cant hang with you all, your labels are weird. But the Right usually wants to hang me for being a traitor, so one of y'all is far more worth dealing with occasional cringe.

[–] Zero22xx@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

That's not a Centrist viewpoint at all. That's a solidly right viewpoint.

Well then all I can say is that there's a fair number of right wing people that consider themselves 'centrists' either dishonestly or genuinely believing it. It's actually what I was going for by putting centrist in quotations.

But something that I will never go near the centre on is human rights (whatever that looks like). For example, women should have full rights over their own bodies and not have to die in hospitals when something goes wrong because doctors don't want to risk harming a foetus (that ends up dying along with her anyway), trans people should be allowed to exist without fear and persecution from other people that can't mind their own damn business and everyone should be able to choose their religion or lack thereof. For me personally, these are the kinds of things that are more important than the price of eggs. And anyone that ignores those issues because of the price of eggs, does in fact look pretty similar to a MAGA to me.

As far as the slippery slope goes, I believe in no tolerance for the intolerant. Once you've shown that you just will not give other people the respect that you personally want, you don't deserve it.

[–] hansolo@lemm.ee 1 points 8 minutes ago

Look, I can't help that you have limited real life experience, but the middle is crowded with people of a wide variety of political beliefs. For some, like me, I'm more center-left, supporting things like obvious human rights issues, but I won't go all in on some of the more outlandish financial policies. And I simply will not give machine politics a moment of my life. I've seen it fail miserably too many times to think it can work just because one side does it.

But so when your retort to someone not exactly like you is "you don't deserve respect until you're someone exactly like me and think only how I think," then your genuine intolerance is out there on display, and yet you aren't self aware enough to realize you've just said it.

It's disappointing that you jumped into that within A single comment. Seriously?