When Both Sides Attack You're Probably Doing Something Right
This will be short but it’s a simple way to look at the political culture in the United States (and probably most of Europe as well).
If I told you a common tactic of the Left is to demonize any opinion to the Right of Bernie Sanders as too Right-Wing and dangerous, you’d probably have already figured that out. What some of you may not know is that this is also a tactic of the controlled opposition on the Right.
It normally takes a tone of wanting to preserve “conservatism” or some other ideology that doesn’t exist in reality but only in theory. As an example, question whether full-on open immigration is a positive and people on the Right, and even A LOT of libertarians, will tell you that the science is settled and open immigration is a common good. They will continue by informing you that opinion is “too far to the Right” and will cause voters to look for “Open border” candidates. This is ridiculous as even Democrats and socialists like Bernie Sanders are for some immigration restrictions. In a CATO Institute survey from 2021, 71% of all respondents (p.16, #26) were against illegal immigration. But yeah, that’s “too far Right” even for Conservatism INC.
Another issue is the America’s Imperial Empire. Mention bringing the troops home or closing bases in Europe and you get branded an “isolationist”. Gladly. One thing I’ve learned lately is that calling myself a “non-interventionist” is a misnomer. I am a true isolationist. Countries need to handle their own affairs and as long as they’re not assaulting us in any way, they should be free to proceed without American interference. Imagine if Mexico decided to invade Texas because of the Branch Davidian massacre. But people on the “respectable Right” will tell you being isolationist is fringe and loses votes even though Trump basically ran on isolationism and won in a year when it was permissible to explore conspiracy theories about election results.
My purpose here isn’t to convince you that open borders is wrong or isolationism is the correct position, but to show that even the Corporate Right in this country plays the game of accusing “populists” of being too far to the Right when results and polls don’t reflect that. I constantly say the Left needs to be suppressed, but if you identify with the Right, we have to police our own house as well. Whether the Corporate Right does this because they honestly believe it, or they don’t want to stop being invited to Beltway parties, they’re not on our side and should be counted among the opposition.