People Who Profess to be Neither Left Nor Right in TheIr Politics Are Almost Invariably Right Wing
I really should get off social media. As a small businessman with a series of underachieving businesses I see it as a necessary evil that gets less necessary and more evil everyday.
If Musk goes through with his plan to charge users even a modest surcharge I think that will be the point where I depart forever and never look back.
I will of course look back constantly because I am weak and have no resolve but I really do consider every moment I spend on Twitter a goddamn waste.
It is useful, however, when it comes to dreaming up blog topics because how we behave on social media says a lot about how we see ourselves and our connection to the world around us.
For example I have noticed that a lot of folks on Twitter write in their bios that they’re neither left nor right and see the absurdity and stupidity of both sides.
I then call their bluff and check out their Twitter feed. If they were truly neither left nor right then their online trail would either be largely apolitical OR it would reflect the user’s political independence by expressing a series of opinions that are all over the place politically.
Someone who was neither left nor right might be against abortion and affirmative action but in favor of LGTBQ+ rights, socialized medicine and higher taxes for corporations.
When I do any digging into the Twitter feeds of the “neither left nor right” brigade, however, I discover that ninety-eight percent of the time “neither left nor right” actually means extremely Conservative but in denial about it.
When I check out the online antics of these deluded individuals I overwhelmingly see links to articles from Breitbart and clips of Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens eviscerating the “woke” crowd and the “woke” mindset.
This isn’t counter-balanced by media from the Left or Liberal sentiments. It’s almost as if people who say that they are neither left nor right know damn well that they are right-wing in pretty much all of their convictions yet do not want to be identified as right-wing.
Why? There are a few reasons. By professing to be neither left nor right you’re establishing that unlike those Democratic and Republican sheep blindly following the dictates of their party, you can think for yourself. You’re an iconoclast, a maverick, someone whose complicated, contradictory political views could never be nailed down or summed up.
By loudly crowing that you are neither left nor right you are patting yourself on the back and giving yourself a cookie for possessing an independence that turns out to be largely fraudulent.
If 97 percent of the time your views line up with those of Donald Trump or Nick Adams then congratulations, you’re a Republican!
But I also suspect that people pretend to be neither left nor right because they know that people have a lot of negative, accurate opinions of people on the right. They see them as greedy because they’re all about cutting taxes for billionaires and wealthy corporations as well as racist, sexist, transphobic, Islamophobic and homophobic.
So telling a country divided by two warring teams that you are a free agent is a way of separating yourself from all of the ugliness of the Republican Party, particularly how it is now a cult devoted to Donald Trump, a former reality show host who is, objectively, the absolute worst.
Yet Republicans remain in thrall to the guy. They’d probably get his initials branded on their genitals if he asked.
If you profess to be neither left nor right there is a roughly three hundred percent chance that you’re actually strongly right-wing. Own that shit! Those are your opinions. That’s your party. Trump might be incredibly embarrassing but you support him and hold Biden in contempt. You’re better off being honest with yourself and coming out of the closet as a Republican, albeit of the abashed variety.
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