Hey everybody, you know how we all talk about politics in terms of Left vs. Right, and everyone at all trustworthy or work talking to is on the left?

Believe it or not, there are actually basic underlying value systems those terms are meant to reflect. It's not like picking out

what color of shirt to wear in order to show your support for a team. So while that whole bit about right-wing types being inherently dangerous and untrustworthy can absolutely apply to someone no matter how much they want to label themselves as being on the left.

Mostly, this

can all be boiled down to "let's make sure nobody dies" vs. "I want to have more money in my account."

There's some people out there who are on an extreme of this where they actively want other people to die regardless of the effect it has on their bank balance, but I'd like to

hope that if you're reading this, you generally don't want people to die and also you want to be able to afford things. It's just a question of which takes priority. Do you care more about your money, or my life? How much more? What would you be willing to go without or go into

debt for and how many lives need to be on the line for you to make those sacrifices?

And when it comes to political contests, what people generally try to go for is to try and agitate people into worrying more about the side of that priority struggle that tips them towards their

end of it.

If you want to pull people leftward, you stress that the current political state of things is getting people killed, and we need to do something about that immediately, and you encourage people not to worry about their money.

If you want to pull people rightward, you

talk about the expenses people have, taxes, bills, etc. to make them more financially anxious, and downplay things like people being murdered in the street by agents of the state, and efforts to repeal basic civil rights stuff for people whose lives don't really matter so much.

Basically all political messaging comes down to this, disguised to various degrees to make the messaging more palettable to particular people.

Case in point, I frequently see variations on this:
"The Democrats don't deserve your votes if they won't offer you medicare for all!"

That's a right-wing talking point, flat out.

It's formatted to make you think it's a leftist point, because hey, health care! That keeps people alive! Good! Lefty!

But the argument here isn't actually ABOUT health care. It's an argument which in fact makes it clear that nobody

is talking about health care reform right now. The actual call to action is "don't vote for Democrats," which is overtly right-wing, since Democratics run against otherwise unopposed Republicans, the far right party.

But also, the emotional part of the messaging here is hitting

the drum of "hey you! Worry about your personal finances! Those are the only problems that matter! Pay no attention to the fascists literally already running concentration camps and deploying kill-happy bigots armed to the teeth to commit war crimes on their own citizens!"

That's textbook right there. It's THE right-wing argument. But a whole bunch of people keep making it while saying "trust me, I'm a Leftist" and... no, no they are not.

Same with how you see people posting that ratchet wheel image when talking about how the Dems suck at moving

things back to the left when they take power, and that's very true, but that's an argument to remove those obstructions on the wheel that block it from turning leftward. Not let people keep on spinning it to the right. No motion at all is better than motion in the wrong direction