The American Press Is Destroying Itself

I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of right wing thought, either in general or specifically in Brazil.

In general the conservative view is to improve the status quo without throwing away the good things that have been achieved. It’s an understanding that it’s much easier to destroy things (even if unintentionally) then it is to build them.

I’ll agree the left sometimes good at identifying problems, but the proposed cures are often worse than the disease, as seen with the recent abolish/defund the police idea that had quickly gained traction in the left.

To give a more concrete example: Brazil is under a right wing government after 16 years of left wing ones. The current administration seems to want to reduce the size of the public sector, which has massively increased in the last decades, and decentralize government structure (one of its campaign slogans was “less Brasilia, more Brazil”, referring to a reduction of the influence of the federal government in state or city issues).

So one can argue that this is a right wing administration that wants to change the status quo built along the current past decades.

On the other hand, a left wing administration would probably try to increase the size of the public sector even more, or at least increase the benefits public workers have over private sector ones, so you could say they wouldn’t be happy with the status quo either.

In either case, no side would seem to ever consider the status quo as a global maxima. Therefore I don’t think this definition is valid or useful to define what is right or left wing.

In fact, you said it yourself, when you mentioned that everyone likes the status quo when it benefits them. It seems to me every one would be happy with at least some aspect of the status quo, and unhappy with others. Is everyone simultaneously right and left wing? If so, isn’t that classification somewhat useless?

I think the status quo issue is more about corporatism than it is about left and right. For example, I know people who describe themselves as right wing/conservatives, but they are public sector workers, and therefore angry at any mention of possible reductions of their privileges.

I will also dispute that progressive views are what makes society go forward. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. You don’t have to look much further than the issues of cancel culture, online shaming and censorship against people who fail to use the right words or publicly defend the right causes, which are undoubtedly a result of modern left/progressive thought. I think we’re definitely going backwards in this case.

Anyway, sorry if this was too much rambling, it’s a bit late here. Good night :)

But part of that compromise is that you accept the party is going to also do things you don't like. Which is something you can't escape criticism for. Voting is approval for that party. You're choosing to value what Party B does over Party A, which means you weigh the negatives of Party B as being less of a problem than the positives.

That doesn't mean you get to avoid those negatives when someone else calls you out on who you decided to throw your lot in with.

What happens though when one group says (as they recently have) that silence is insufficient, not just on agreeing with not being a racist, but the wisdom of their proposed solution to the problem? I've seen the claim that silence is violence... what do we do then?