This isn't 'Right vs Left'

This is photoshopped… the picture was with mitt Romney and trump with his shiteating grin.. why the edit?
- Right? There are now 1,000 images of these idiots together. Why doctor an old Mitt Romney photo?

What do you think "the left" is??
- I'd love to see a poll of how people in the USA would answer that question.
  
  Leftism is just a fat woman with pink hair yelling at me for no reason.
  I'm not a Leftist, I'm a Pan-sexual Afro-Future Longtermist Egalitarian Social Radical Centrist With Kropotkin Characteristics. I believe in a single worker owned commune unfettered by the cloistered norms of a 50s era revanchist white colonialist culture. But also I reserve the right to think white women with pink hair are shrill and want nothing to do with them. That's why I voted for Trump.
- OP should have phrased it as "It's not Democrats vs Republicans; it's the 1% vs the 99%"

Messaging aside, be aware that this photo is edited, Musk wasn't originally in it.
- Wasn't it Ted Cruz originally?
  EDIT: ah it was Mitt Romney.

"this isn't right vs left, this is right vs left"
uh... okay?

I don't know. My elderly neighbor might be poor like me but his giant fucking Trump flag kind of makes me hope he dies because of Trump's policies, as well as miserable and alone.
I'll admit that's pure irrational spite politics. But the irrationality doesn't change how completely disinterested I am in joining forces with him against billionaires if he realizes he was wrong.

As I live alone and pay $500 a month just to be able to see a doctor, I am more and more enraged yet disillusioned the older I get. This is not living—this is fascistic technofeudalism.

Incoherent take. The right is a tool the billionaires use to take shit away from the rest of us.
- But bringing people over from the right is important and attacking them is counterproductive.
  
  Not an excuse for mystification.
  Also I'm pretty sure most right wing people consider themselves "moderate" or "independent" anyway so it's not like they'll feel attacked if we correctly blame the right for its crimes
  
  Well, when they stop attacking us for believing in human rights, maybe we can have a dialogue.
  
  on a similar, related, note, integrating young men into society and not estranging them by telling them that they're the worst, is also important to have a coherent society.
- I think this meme is clearly made for the average American that sees politics as "left vs. right" being "Dems vs. Republicans".
  I don't think it's referring to "the left" as anti capitalist here. It's meant to appeal to normies.
  
  That was my feeling. It's not a PhD thesis on economic justice or revolution, it's just something I'm hoping might make my Uncle Herb and nephew George say 'Huh'.
- You're right and you're wrong. The 'right' is a made up label for class traitors who have been tricked into supporting billionaires. It's incredibly useful for the billionaires because they get the support and it divides the rest of us and we put our energy into the fake boogeyman instead of focusing our efforts on them.
  
  The right are the lackeys of the owning class and will fight the left regardless of the extent to which the left limits the scope of its engagement.
- 💯%
- Left is a tool of billionaires
- Do the billionaires not use the left to their benefit?
  
  The left is intrinsically opposed to the existence of billionaires as a matter of principle, so generally speaking, no.
  How the fuck did all these dipshit enlightened centrists find their way onto lemmy???
  
  No, they use the culture war to divide and confuse people. Not because they want minorities to be respected, but to direct hate to gay and trans people, rather than them.
  
  Yup. Rainbow capitalism. Whatever way to pit us against each other.

Why did they photoshop the miserable Mitt Romney dinner picture
- Oh my, his anguished face. This is a work of art.
- because that, without context, might make someone feel sympathy for one of these ghouls.
  
  But surely there are enough pictures out there of those ghouls together that you don't need to create fake ones. There's enough misinformation on the internet as it is.

What these dumbasses don't realize is that they do rely on these things - every minimum or even low wage worker absolutely needs these services to make ends meet. These people aren't just evil, they're stupid.
- They're in a cult.
  
  ヤクルト
- How did low wage workers survive throughout history without Medicare and Medicaid?
  
  They died substantially more often and sooner. Look up the working conditions prior to the union wars in the US.
  
  Generally, people just made more money. Things cost less. Relative to buying power, wages across the USA have fallen since the 70s. We are currently sitting in the culmination of decades of people getting poorer, propped up by credit cards and mortgages.
  And free healthcare was the norm rather than the alternative through history. It was rarely as commodified as it is today. If someone was sick, they weren't expected to work and other people took care of them. Generally. Another way the current system in the USA is an outlier, and all the more barbaric for it.

The only war is a class war.
- and what tool do we fight wars with?
  guns.
- The only tragedy is our lives.
  
  Speak for yourself.

Fight a class war, not a culture war.
And you, who thinks you are in the “upper class” by making 500k a year. You’re not, you are among the poor.
We fight the people who own billions, not you.
- 500k a year is a doctor or something. Someone who actually contributes to society. That's someone who should be rich because of how hard they worked to get there plus how important they are to our society. Elon musk shouldn't get paid a fucking dime.
  
  Elon isn't getting paid. He's not a wage worker.
- I mean technically how they make that 500k matters. If it's all just being a landlord we are definitely fighting them too.
  
  We'll burn that bridge when we get to it. Let's handle the people owning a thousand homes first. Then move on the ones who own a dozen or less.
- Don't fight class war.

No, this is Good vs Evil. Right vs Wrong. Truth vs Deception. But yeah, Billionaires are the dark half of those and develop extreme sociopathic megalomaniacal malignant narcissism apparently. How else can we explain it?

We aren't talking about massive tax breaks. That's what's insane.
Currently SS is capped at ~$180k dollars @ ~5%. That means if you earn $180k, you pay 9k in SS tax. If you earn $2 billion you pay 9k in taxes.
These greedy leeches are destroying one of the only semi-decent systems all next to no money from them personally.
The actual tax increase from trump's expiring tax cuts is also something like 4%. Meaning these billionaires are doing all this work to save an extra $0.04 on every dollar of income.
They keep talking about the dangers and problems with debt, yet the blindingly obvious solution is a moderate increase in taxes. But instead of even broaching that subject, they are trying to also give themselves a tax cut while destroying social programs.
It's robbery, plain and simple.
- Meaning these billionaires are doing all this work to save an extra $0.04 on every dollar of income.
  $0.04 for every dollar of income doesn't sound like much until you're talking about a billion dollars, in which case it's $40 million.
  That's a whole extra yacht!
  
  I know, they might have to give up the guest private jet.
- Luigi is the only solution
  
  If they don't respect our lifes, how can we respect theirs?
- at this point i'm actually convinced they're not doing this to enrich themselves.
  they're doing it to crush the population, to keep it living paycheck-to-paycheck, so they can't afford an uprise when they need to fight back.
- Social security isn't a tax. It’s an insurance program and structured as such. We have to decide if there should be more national insurance programs. I’d be down.
  I just started talking. Sorry you’re probably right.
- I don’t understand everything that you said, but as a devils advocate. Social Security is not supposed to be tax. It’s supposed to be an insurance program.
- Everyone should have to pay their fair share. Hell, I bet if they just did a flat 15-18℅ tax on everyone, middle class to the uber rich then we would have all the money for the programs like SS and medicare for all.
- It is not just saving money on taxes, but having desperate old people as cheap labor and pre-retirement people as customers for annuities. Particularly as desperate, cheap labor, since that helps push wages down for any sector that they could work in.

That is exactly why its Right vs Left

Idk, same shit honestly.

No war but class war!
- Class war is literally the least important war
  
  So where should I focus my efforts? Because I think the current political situation in the US is not untenable but is not working well.

You do not have any "left" to speak of. You only have fascists and neoliberals.
- yeah, the left has been systematically eroded in america, and what's typically considered "left" in america today, is actually center-right (i.e. capitalism with small social elements in it).
- Hey, we got some soc dems. Like at least 3!
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_fascism
- I 100% disagree with that statement. I might be in a bubble, but I'm in a bubble of amazing, kind and helpful people who go out and help the homeless, volunteer, etc. Community is first.
  Neoliberalism is a political and economic philosophy that emphasizes free-market capitalism, minimal government intervention in the economy, and the belief that economic freedom leads to social progress. It advocates for policies like deregulation, privatization, and reduced government spending.
  
  I was referring specifically to your two party system and the errant belief that one of them is somehow "left" when it is a group of turbo capitalist corpo swine lobbyists which are only the better choice because they are not straight up fascist kleptocrats.

Culture war manufactured, class war real.
- Class reductionism is a reactionary and deeply flawed analysis. The abolition of the class system alone will not bring with it the abolition of all other injustices if if no attention is given to those.
  This sort of post really brings out all the concavebrained centrists and red-brown alliance types who somehow think leftists and fascists aren't axiomatically opposed to each other, as well as the whining brocialists who are happy to oppose the hierarchies that oppress them but will throw a shitfit if anybody points out any societal problems to which they could still be contributing.
  
  Yo man, please use terms that we can understand or explain your terms
  
  ok so to sum it up, you're saying that not only capitalists, but men in general are also evil.
  well, i guess i disagree. you're engaging in a pithole of fallacies there. consider:
  class struggles lead to poverty, and poverty leads to angry people. the people lash out against one another, and that creates the social issues. fighting against capitalism means fighting against the problem's root, not just its symptoms.
- the fucking left will never understand the need for fighting back in the class war. pointless to keep trying. they just don't understand labor issues.

Medicare can't help a guillotine

guns

I refuse to believe that Elon Musk is human

Eat the rich
- tax the rich
  3% of their net worth annually, give it all to the people. universal basic income.
  
  I could get down with that.
  
  that seems like a pretty small number, even if its based on networth. we can do much better than that.

It kind of is Right vs Left, tho, because Billionaires Welfare and Anti-Tax-the-Rich is a core policy stance on the Right.

Good luck getting partisans to buy into this meme, but it is correct.
- Left doesn't mean the democrats.

Ffs, i appreciate the sentiment but that's a fucking shit Photoshop. This was when Romney dined with trump in 2016 at the Florida tat palace
- Lol, I wondered what was wrong with elon. I like how when you zoom in you can see the scallops from the eraser circle.

Like honestly, my slightly pedantic and rather uneducated take is that there is no right wing. Calling one party ‘right wing’ and the other ‘left wing’ implies that they are in some way comparable, two sides of one coin. They are not, and I suspect never were. The party to the left is on some level concerned with a good faith attempt at governance, however compromised. The party to the right has no interest in governance at all. On the contrary, they have a direct and specific interest in breaking down and carrying off the bricks and mortar of governance. In the US at the moment, the party to the right is doing quite literally that.
My argument therefore is that calling a right wing group ‘political’, or right wing ideology a ‘political position’ is not only a bad idea, it is also inaccurate. Such an organisation is inherently anti-political and anti-state by extension. It is no more concerned with governing than thieves are concerned with the Highway Code when making their getaway, which appears to be exactly what is happening at present. Booooooo. Disqualified. Not a party, not fun, not political.
- my take was always that the "right" wing is called that way because their left brain half is more active, which engages in logical, geometric and algebraic thought.
  similarly, the "left" is called that way because their right brain half is more active, leading them to think long-term (in balance with nature), sustainably and also emotional.
- Hey. Right wing here. People drive right, legally, and don’t hurt anyone.
  I’m not right. But that’s the level of discourse. Got them civil rights?

They played us against ourselves and won.
I meant "Us" generally.
Non-Generally: A lot of us also saw it coming and are watching it happen.
Now we, meaning all of us, need to either accept it and do something about it or continue to deny it and submit.
This -is- the end game.
I can't tell you what to do, because it's going to take a lot. But find whatever makes sense to you, and find people who agree.
I know it's going to get worse before it gets better, but i'd rather "better" come sooner.
- it's my personal take and i know many will disagree but:
  they distracted the people for decades with this bullshit men-vs-women litigation, to distract them from the systematic erosion of the wages, which is what left politics should have actually concerned itself with.
  they attacked the women-men relationship specifically because they knew that love and personal relationships give people enormous strength, and by systematically eroding exactly that (by fearmongering and propaganda), they could weaken the people, making them easier to conquer and subdue.

Can we cut them out of society when we cut their taxes to 0? Seems fair. Just revoke their citizenship

that is why, crash tesla stock so that Elon loan collateral will be cashed out by bank forcing Elon to pay tax.

What exactly do you think right vs left refers to?
- Will you explain it to me like I'm five?
  
  It goes back to the French revolution where the people who sat on the left of the parliament opposed the ruling class, in that case the feudal aristocracy, while the people who supported the ruling class sat on the right of the parliament. Even after the aristocracy was gone, people started to use the term left to refer to people who oppose the ruling class of capitalist society (wealthy capital oligarchs) where as the right is those who support them.
  
  Right political ideology says the class that owns and controls your workplace, land, and government, billionaires, should own and control your workplace, house, and government.
  Left political ideology says we should control our workplace, land, and government.

And chess isn't good vs evil. It's kings vs the rest of us
- well, queens really, the kings are useless
  
  Almost as useless as billionaires, don't you think?
  You might point out that queens are part of the ruling class, but they are still oppressed by patriarchy hence they have to do all the work while kings just hide away.
  No one is free until everyone is free.

Durrrr both sides.
Compare Project 2025 to HR1 and stfu.

The people vs the rich/the corporations

It was the decades of corrupted legislation from the "Right vs Left" mentality since Watergate that got them where they are. These billionaires, specifically these two clowns, are the metastasized end result of a cancer ridden system.
- Left vs right is working people vs billionaires. It is right-wing propaganda trying to deny or obfuscate that. That is why socialism is left-wing and free-market neoliberalism is right wing.
  
  There is no right wing propaganda in my statement. "Working people" includes the magats that got these clowns where they are now. Wtf is free-market neoliberalism being the right? I thought the extreme right were the magats. This is why everything is the way it is and proving my point. Nobody can agree on anything and everyone has their own idea of saving the world.

I’m of the opinion that the Cold War never ended. Instead, it became like Syphilis and low-key kept its head down for years before coming back with a vengeance.
What we need to do is fight back and force-educate our simpleton brethren that right now are victims of propaganda. This might be a good time now that there are those who are having their faces eaten by leopards.
Sure it’s deserved; it’s kinda funny; and fuck them for backing bone fide traitors; but they are still Americans, and at some level they deserve pity and empathy for their mistakes.
And if we take out of a few billionaires along the way, then all the better everyone is for it.
Give ‘em Hell!

It's kinda right and left vs everyone else

Reads as: I hate it when people have more money than me
- The wealth gap can't simply be captured by "more money". Here's my favorite visualization of the wealth gap for the ultra-rich. Enjoy!

this is egg vs noegg