the intended changes are radical but good for everyone, and involve no sacrifice or tolerance for mess in getting there, slowly and conservatively enough that nobody’s too uncomfortable at any point except the people who were already DEEPLY uncomfortable and fucked by the current shape of things, not rocking the boat too much, etc.
that’s, like, the definition of moderate. it’s the psychology and strategy right wingers claim to have when they’re pretending to not just be evil monsters who get off on oppression, applied to ‘make the world better’. that’s almost the definition of centrist.
It’s true it’s moderate and push for gradual changes to ease everyone in, but it being appealing to more people doesn’t make it centrist, I don’t think. It’s purpose isn’t to balance in the center between the left and the right, but rather to use softer kind of force to move society left.
As in the example you used, what we consider right and (nowdays even far right) manages power without much fuss from the society, and is appealing to some despite it’s facist undertones. Would you consider Republicans to be centrist? Because if you wouldn’t, I’d argue that any democratic socialist party wouldn’t be either.
I think the intent matters more than public opinion, you could sway the public with charismatic enough figurehead without changing anything about policy. I see the ‘center’ as more of the tendency not to change anything either way or balance between the ‘extremes’, and democratic socialism intends to be polite about beheading the capital class.
I said “good for everyone” not “popular”. exterminating the brutes is usually popular. it’s not good for anyone, long term.
the insane fascists who reject every policy that 60% or more of americans favor, like legal weed, single payer healthcare, doing SOMETHING about climate change, and making abortion legal in at least the case of a child rape or a pregnancy that would not result in live birth endangering a the pregnant person’s life, who haven’t won the popular vote once in my lifetime, are popular? you’re so thoroughly wrong here it took me a minute to figure out where to even start taking this apart.
you think intent matters more than public opinion, but you conflate popularity with doing good? I don’t understand how your conclusions follow your arguments, and your arguments seem to contradict each other. I’m genuinely having trouble understanding you, what you’re saying, and how you came to the arguments and conclusions you did.
i feel a bit dizzy right now, so it could be me. can you try to explain another way?
The popularity I’ve talked about referenced your point about it being moderate and easy on everyone nerves. I’ve oryginally started my previous comment by saying, that full blown socialism right here and right now would be good for everyone and it would be considered pretty leftist, but deleted that after deciding this part was pretty much obvious. Something being good doesn’t make it centrist. That’s why I stayed on point of public sentiment, which you seemingly invoked by defining center as moderate in the eyes of voters.
Say whatever you want about their hienous ideas, there wouldn’t be an issue in USA right now or anxiety about Trump winning if they weren’t reasonably popular. And I’m not conflating that popularity with doing good, but using their example to reject your argument about popularity making a political system ‘centrist’.
I don’t understand where did you get popularity = ‘doing good’ from me, but before we get into argument about that, I don’t see how either of those would make a system centrist. ‘Good’ is relative, and further left would be ‘better’ by this logic, right? So how does that make a democratic socialism ‘centrist’ if ‘doing good’ is the measure you’re using here? It being moderate is for the sake of popularity, gradual shift to the left so no one has any major complaints, and I think I’ve spoken enough about how I don’t see popularity as reasonable measuring standard here.
Democratic socialism wants to overthrow the capitalism, bring socialism, give everyone free healthcare, have worker co-ops as default mode of working, UBI, yada, yada, all of those propositions are radical (as in fundamental) and definitely leftist. Instead of violent revolution this system proposes a reformative approach, and that’s basicially the main difference from wide range of socialist systems that would attempt to implement the same things. So how is that centrist? Moderate, I get. Popular, sure. But center would refer to either a midpoint between the furthest right and left ideologies, or a minimal degree of change from the current political system, depending on how you want to define that word. I can’t see Democratic Socialism fitting either of those definitions, so it has to be a leftist system. I don’t see how it being moderate or popular would even influence that.
