Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

vmchale.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 138 posts

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#21

Post by skrebbel »

bonoboTP wrote: post #17
skrebbel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah wow huh! It took me many years of reading HN to figure out that “liberal” means “left” in the US. In my (European) country, the word means nearly the opposite, a belief in individual freedoms, free speech, free markets, small governments and so on. It’s mostly championed by right-of-center parties. I’ve been confused many times reading comments that go like “these liberals who want to ban free speech” which, to…

In the US they call that right-leaning version "libertarian".

Nah the thing we call liberalism is much milder than that. It’s like the watered down, we-do-trust-the-government-but-maybe-tone-it-down-a-little version of libertarianism. I mean the same meaning as eg the Economist gives the term.

I think maybe the term changed meaning in the US because for decades pretty much everyone agreed with it (no social democrats in sight, barring the occasional Bernie). A movement that ~everyone agrees with isn't much of a movement, is it?

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#22

Post by csours »

lapcat wrote: post #8

In the United States, terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" seem to be used primarily to describe whatever currently happens to be popular in the duopolistic Republican and Democratic parties. I'm old enough now to have witnessed both parties, and the definitions of those terms, morph into something unrecognizable to partisans of my youth. And the (morbidly) funny thing is that people today call themselves "true…

> give the pretense that the duopolistic political parties are backed by ideologies rather than by constantly shifting power dynamics.

I feel like it's very easy to get angry about politics, so speaking clearly is difficult.

I would like to point out that the power dynamics do not always shift randomly, or by the will of the people (be that citizens at large, or party-line voters). The power dynamics have been shifted with intention.

Apart from that intentional push for power, we also have social media dynamics. It feels like online self-critique is always towards the extremes. Once someone becomes energized or activated on a topic, they may start to feel that even trying to understand other viewpoints will cause harm.

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#23

Post by [deleted] »

amradio1989 wrote: post #19

I’m starting to think political definitions only have use as propaganda. Definitions are definite, yet political definitions are anything but. In the US, much is made about “the left” and “the right”, but we can hardly describe what these things mean. “The left” is simply more liberal than I, while “the right” is more conservative than I. On what issues, no one knows, because we hardly ask. The point, I think, is sim…

[deleted]

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#24

Post by mallowdram »

Try "Obsolescence of all Definitions"

Tom Givon used to say in class: "What true language requires a dictionary?"

Language is decontextualized in the West, it's about attributes of individual objects where simplifying laws are derived, rather than language used as interdependent.

At a certain point arbitrary language dissolves into meaninglessness. That's entropy and arbitrariness. As we accelerate language and primate status spirals the role of language is simply to dominate subjectively. It has no end point except for dissolution.

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#25

Post by psunavy03 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #17
skrebbel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah wow huh! It took me many years of reading HN to figure out that “liberal” means “left” in the US. In my (European) country, the word means nearly the opposite, a belief in individual freedoms, free speech, free markets, small governments and so on. It’s mostly championed by right-of-center parties. I’ve been confused many times reading comments that go like “these liberals who want to ban free speech” which, to…

In the US they call that right-leaning version "libertarian".

Which is itself an ugly word because the Libertarian Party proper is mostly a bunch of kooks and cranks. So using it invites comparisons to them even if you only are proposing what the above poster was proposing.

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#26

Post by bonoboTP »

lapcat wrote: post #8

In the United States, terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" seem to be used primarily to describe whatever currently happens to be popular in the duopolistic Republican and Democratic parties. I'm old enough now to have witnessed both parties, and the definitions of those terms, morph into something unrecognizable to partisans of my youth. And the (morbidly) funny thing is that people today call themselves "true…

What tends to be more conceptually solid is temperament and personality, rather than ideology. That is, things like conformism, trust in paternalistic authority figures, or instinctual contrarianism and distrust of authority, and openness to new ways of doing things, optimism about tweaking the knobs on society vs a more static view of how people are, etc., making it yourself (individualism and atomisation) vs focus on collectivism / community orientedness / family obligations.

For example, an old man with a conservative mentality in Russia may be nostalgic for Stalin and communism. Or someone who has a contrarian, disagreeable personality in a liberal American college environment may decide to become a monarchist or trad Christian to show the middle finger to the real authority figures in his life. And a conformist person in the US workforce would more likely absorb a corporate-HR-compatible (superficially?) progressive worldview.

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#27

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #11
lapcat wrote: post #8

In the United States, terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" seem to be used primarily to describe whatever currently happens to be popular in the duopolistic Republican and Democratic parties. I'm old enough now to have witnessed both parties, and the definitions of those terms, morph into something unrecognizable to partisans of my youth. And the (morbidly) funny thing is that people today call themselves "true…

Modern US mainstream politics have become weirdly like the ancient Roman "Green" versus "Blue" political parties that evolved out of chariot racing fan clubs. No consistent ideology or underlying theory of government, just blind support for your chosen side's leaders. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-roc...

[deleted]

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#28

Post by lapcat »

nradov wrote: post #11
lapcat wrote: post #8

In the United States, terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" seem to be used primarily to describe whatever currently happens to be popular in the duopolistic Republican and Democratic parties. I'm old enough now to have witnessed both parties, and the definitions of those terms, morph into something unrecognizable to partisans of my youth. And the (morbidly) funny thing is that people today call themselves "true…

Modern US mainstream politics have become weirdly like the ancient Roman "Green" versus "Blue" political parties that evolved out of chariot racing fan clubs. No consistent ideology or underlying theory of government, just blind support for your chosen side's leaders. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-roc...

> No consistent ideology or underlying theory of government

> just blind support for your chosen side's leaders.

These are two different questions.

I'm not sure whether the political parties should have consistent ideologies. Even if they did, it's impossible for two or even three or four political parties to represent the diverse political views of over 300 million Americans. Each of the two major US parties have always consisted of shifting coalitions of interests.

On the other hand, loyal partisanship leads to the phenomenon that I described: inventing ideological terms as a kind of personal identity for the partisan, giving the pretense that their loyal partisanship is backed by consistent, stable views, when in fact the parties are demonstrably shifting coalitions of interests.

Re: The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

#30

Post by bonoboTP »

csours wrote: post #22
lapcat wrote: post #8

In the United States, terms such as "conservative" and "liberal" seem to be used primarily to describe whatever currently happens to be popular in the duopolistic Republican and Democratic parties. I'm old enough now to have witnessed both parties, and the definitions of those terms, morph into something unrecognizable to partisans of my youth. And the (morbidly) funny thing is that people today call themselves "true…

> give the pretense that the duopolistic political parties are backed by ideologies rather than by constantly shifting power dynamics. I feel like it's very easy to get angry about politics, so speaking clearly is difficult. I would like to point out that the power dynamics do not always shift randomly, or by the will of the people (be that citizens at large, or party-line voters). The power dynamics have been shifte…

People want to belong to a tribe. I think it's often quite a tossup where a young person ends up, depending on friends or whichever online circle accepts them best. It's also not rare for young people to flipflop between nominally widely opposing tribes before setting into one. People gradually learn all the opinions they are supposed to have on the various issues to truly belong to the tribe. It's not unlike learning the dogmas of a religion. It's much much more convenient socially to speak the same language and have the same cultural references and opinions to bond over and feel camaraderie about and curate a bubble of friends following the same opinion-setters, vs. creating one's own grab-bag idiosyncratic set of opinions that doesn't fit neatly into either well known combo-deal. You gotta support either this football team or the other one. People who start to lecture about how they like the goalie of the one team, but the striker of the other are just "not fun at parties", are kind of annoying and hard to relate to, especially online where people decide in a split second whether to upvote or downvote based on a fast pattern matching check to my tribe / enemy tribe.
Post reply on HN