American Politics is a Joke
As we all know by now, Donald Trump lost the 2020 United States election to Joe Biden. We all know Americans are highly polarized… right? No. The American political spectrum is small. This year almost all candidates were behind what I like to call the McCarthy Line, and most behind that line are also in the authoritarian side of a compass.
If you need a reminder on where everyone is on the spectrum, here is that spectrum.
This is an interesting graph, and one that should not be treated lightly. So let me explain what the McCarthy Line is, by first showing you where the McCarthy Line more or less is.
If you were alive between 1950 and 1990, or you learned this in a high school or even middle school history course, you would know who McCarthy is. If you need some reminding, during the latter half of the 1900’s America was in what was known as the Cold War. The Cold War was all about politics between two economic giants. Both in the authoritarian spectrum of government having more control, but on different half's of the economic axis.
Now these three giants, the USSR/China and the United States had two different philosophies. USSR/China were Stalinist and Maoist dictatorships and the United States being capitalist (and a tiny bit socialist, as it still is today) and a representative republic. During this time a politician named McCarthy started what were known as the McCarthy Trials where he went around and targeted mostly democrats and anyone on the economic left. He went around calling these people “filthy commies” and trying to get them out of office. This was during the peak of the Red Scare, when the United States were fearing the “communists” of China and USSR to invade.
That’s all you really need to know about the McCarthy Line, but McCarthyism is another term you need to know. Notice how I put the word “communist” in quotes when describing China and the USSR? Yeah, so let me explain.
Communism and Socialism in the United States relatively mean the same thing. However, this is otherwise untrue. By the furthest stretch of the definition of Socialism, America is Socialist. Now that’s an unrealistic stretch to look at, but still. Democrats are pushing socialist ideas, which originate from the French Revolution back in the 1700’s and many items being implemented by president Roosevelt (FDR) during WW2 and the Great Depression. The thing is many consider FDR a communist, and here is what I call a Square-Rectangle rule. Communism is like a square, and Socialism like a rectangle. While all squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares. Just like how all forms of Communism (which there are many) are Socialist, but not all forms of Socialism are Communist.
Trust me we will get into what McCarthyism is in a moment, but there is a little more to explain with what Communism is. Most people think Marxism (the origins of communism) defines Communism, when in reality Americans associate Stalinism and Maoism to be Communism. There are many forms of Communism, some more Libertarian like Late-Marxism, but others increasingly authoritarian, like Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, and Maoism. Leninism is what the USSR founded on, and Stalinism during most of the USSR’s existence. This is a mere fraction of what classifies as Communism, live alone Socialism.
Okay, that explains just enough for what needs to be described in order to describe McCarthyism. So you know how all of that was leading up with a lot of information? Throw that out, ignore the facts, and think all Socialism is Communism. This is a common trait still seen today. But why did we go over all that information for us to throw it out? Well we didn’t.
McCarthy lumped what needed to be described as a very complicated subject that takes half of the political spectrum. The “Socialism” line starts slightly off the middle half of the spectrum going left.
Before we go too deep into the facts, this line is around what we would classify as Democratic Socialism and other forms of right-leaning socialist ideas.
Notice anything with the two Graphs? Like how there is overlap with the McCarthy Line. There is a slim margin in the middle that gives you some leeway in being socialist but still being accepted in American politics.
Here is the presidential compass again, and let’s talk candidates for 2020.
The only person who falls behind the McCarthy Line is Hawkins, and only very few democrats and other political party members fit in. Notice how Sanders is also more Libertarian. Nothing special about Sanders other than it’s ironic the people we elected for our freedoms both don’t compare to the one person who we (as in many Americans) called a socialist pig who hates our freedom.
So with our political axis broken, let’s talk how much of a political axis we debate on in America. We eliminate almost half of the left of the X axis. We consider the McCarthy Line as a solid stop for how Socialist you can politically be in America, as I have explained. Sorry, Howie. But we also have the Libertarian Party being as libertarian as the Green Party, at most this year. It’s not going to be common for anyone to be more Libertarian than that. Meaning about a third of the political spectrum on the Y axis. This means Americans at most are polarized as Libertarians' to literal Nazi’s, which is a mere 2/3rds majority of the Y (social) axis.
So why is American politics a joke? We are polarizing what isn’t even a huge majority of the compass. We have roughly 3/5ths of the compass to debate on because of a mix of McCarthyism and the stretch of Libertarianism for a government like the United States. We agree on so much more than what the mainstream media thinks we do, and a Trump supporter could side with Biden on many ideas but we keep radicalizing ideas we already agree on. Sane and safe gun control that allows for our freedoms and limits dangers? The Democrats and many Republicans agree on this. Police reforms without defunding the police? Democrats and Republicans can agree. Police reforms that give more money to different help than brute force? Democrats and Republicans can and do agree. Americans agree on so much, until they are radicalized by the people who oppose those ideas, which then pushes us back down to practically only getting to vote in a 1/4th to 1/5th of the political spectrum, with radical ideas only filling in the last 3/5ths of the spectrum. This is insane. We must fix how we look at policies, and look at them as objectively the subjective eye can work with, and do our best to not polarize ideas for no sane reason.
