by hagbard_c | 2025-10-01 07:06:36+00:00
This is a bit of a pointless discussion but I'll have a go at your points anyway:

> When Education...

Education versus indoctrination seems to be the difference in view here. Notice the downward trend in educational outcomes and relate that to the 'progressive' dominance in education.

> Journalism

More or less the same as above, there is a difference between a journalist and a peddler of agitprop. Most of what goes for 'journalism' in the legacy media falls under the latter instead of the former while the 'new' media mostly lacks the means to do 'real journalism'.

> Knowledge

See above and realise that the term 'different ways of knowing' and the pointless discussions on things like 'indigenous knowledge' and 'standpoint epistemology' are things stemming from the 'progressive' side.

> Science

It is getting quite repetitive but there is a difference between science as in the process of applying the scientific method to gain insight and knowledge and Science™ as a producer of dogma. Ask your latest supreme court justice if she can define what a woman is and you'll soon understand the difference.

> Fact Finding

Rinse and repeat, it is the 'progressive' side which uses terms like 'my truth' and 'your truth'.

What you're summing up is not a 'difference between left and right' but the result of a thorough indoctrination by one of the extremes into thinking 'the other side' is comprised of drooling idiots. For a true comparison you should remove the opinions of the extreme outliers on the 'left' and 'right' and soon you'll find that there is not that much difference between rational people who happen to lean more towards the right or left. The one problem here is that it has become practice on the 'progressive' side to 'center the margin' [1] in an appeal to 'support the oppressed in their struggle against the oppressors' which then creates new marginal opinions which in turn are centred until it is margins all the way down.

For perspective, I'm a European - Dutchman living in Sweden, both relatively 'progressive' countries. It used to be that we considered American politics to consist of two parties, one right (R) and once centre-right (D) compared to the wider spectrum seen here with everything from Lenin-Stalin-Mao-hailing communists to blood-and-soil ultranationalists and everything in between. This has changed, especially in the last 15 years due to the radical left-wing slide of the 'democratic' party which now voices opinions which are comparable to those of European socialist parties. I suspect they do not represent the political opinion of the majority of their potential voter base and with that I don´t see these opinions becoming mainstream other than in the 'deep blue' cities but the American left is now in many ways comparable to and in some ways more radical than their European 'comrades'. Reading or listening to speeches by people like JFK or Bill Clinton in the current situation makes you wonder whether they are in the same party as Obama or Harris or any of the grandstanding loudmouths like Jeffries or 'the squad'.

It is quite remarkable how a country so big with so much potential has managed to produce a political class so dysfunctional and incompetent. Not that we're much better off here in Europe mind you but that is another discussion for another day.

[1] search for the terms or peruse some of the following for an idea of what 'centring the margin' leads to: https://kalamu.com/neogriot/2015/03/21/pov-bell-hooks-femini..., https://primarygoals.com/teams/models/center-margin/, https://www.newamerica.org/family-centered-social-policy/pol..., https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/Arrival%20..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_Theory:_From_Margin_t..., https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3003214/1/Naegler_and_..., ... - the list is endless