has anyone else noticed the turn towards right wing politics in the last decade?
even nations that have had a left wing dominated government for most of it's time seem to be either making right wing reforms or having a right wing politician voted as leader.
It's a predictable cycle. Most people are centrist but few if any politicians are. So while the people are centrist the people in power tend to be wingers, either left or right. When the right takes over fro too long people get sick of their garbage and support the left as a reaction. When the centrist population gets sick of the leftist garbage and it becomes too much they react by voting for their opposition. The whole time little representation is ever given to the actual views, wants, and beliefs of the general public.
The main problem is, is that politicians come from isolated and disconnected academia and have little experience in the life that most of there people they represent live in. They are isolated and instead of their views stemming from everyday experiences with regular folk. They form their politics based on academic ideals and because of that they don't see reality but this idealistic view that causes them to push into the far right or the far left. The right wing and the left wing academia that politicians come from sees unbridled righteousness in their side and pure vitriol in everything the other side believes. Therefor they rarely, if ever, share the centrist views that most people who live non-isolated lives hold.
I said my view on that. They are isolated from the real world by academia. Politicians come from a place where politics are like religion and governing is treated as if it was a science. So they come from a place where centrism is akin to what atheism is to the Catholic Church. They mistake representing the people as representing a platform and concrete set of ideals. They are just too out of touch to understand or see what the common person experiences or wants. They are taught authority and most people who are centrist don't actually want authority but mostly to be left alone.
Only the last decade? I would say it's a process that's been actively going on for at least 40 years, though rates have been variable. I suppose it depends on what one's views of 'left' and 'right' are.
i meant in terms of farther right than normal western style conservatives. think Nigel farage or Narendra Modi.
This post was edited by relavee at December 23, 2016 12:43 AM MST
I see where you're coming from, but I have to say that the term 'Conservative' has also changed in it's meaning over the years. As have terms used for Labour (or liberal or any pejorative one might care to use).
The angles used by the media to approach subjects have also altered, reflecting this change in political circumstance.
I see it like an old drum toy. A stationary horse (the public) sits in front of a circular drum shape with a picture on it which revolves (political direction). The toy gives the impression of movement of the horse, but only the scenery behind it changes.
Until people figure out how and why they are variously manipulated and ignored, we will get little or nothing done of any real consequence. People will continue to choose from the options they are given because they see no other choice, like diners who order from a limited menu because they haven't seen the 'Specials' board.
That's on us I'm afraid and people are looking for answers. The rise of certain disagreeable groups with extreme views is a symptom of this (just because people look for answers doesn't mean they will find valid ones) but there is a lot of questioning going on.
Relying on markets that are largely unrestrained has failed - badly and irrevocably. People won't forget the pup they were sold and anger at this probably feeds the rise of nasty groups with nasty views. But it also feeds the rise of groups that are (in current political parlance) viewed as 'extreme' but are nothing of the sort. I've seen policies described as such which would have been no-brainers not that long ago.
There is nothing 'extreme' about looking after people, about treating people as people rather than as dangers, yet a large section of popular media paints exactly that position. As I said, people really do need to wake up, pull their fingers out and do a little bit of thinking for themselves.
I partially agree. the left at least in my country has established itself to be firmly anti-india besides a few gems here and there. all the right wing politicians had to do was keep being nationalists to get our vote
Just in the last decade? The trend actually accelerated in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher et al after starting in the 1960s with the rightward shift of opinion leaders such as Commentary magazine (Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell et al) and its contribution to the rise of neoconservatism, intellectuals such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and William F Buckley, as well as the reaction against the hippie/counter-culture movement.
Benedict Arnold 