the idea the US is a "center right" country

[josephslaton]

It drives me mad.
This shows the beating the Gop has given the population for 30 years Imo. Every poll shows the majority supports ss, Medicare, food stamps, police, roads, Epa and so on and so on. But a lot of these people identify themselves as "conservative"
So how did we get to this hypocritical point? Right wing media using key words like liberal or socialism?

[leveymg]

1. Americans have been systematically propagandized from the right for over a century. It's ingrained

in us to deny our Left-wing instincts. The only exception and let-up of the near-monopoly on political discourse from the Right was during the Great Depression, and that only because there was a real danger of revolution, so Wall Street and the plutocrats allowed some cultural loosening during the New Deal.

There was another loosening from late '60 through the mid-80s, but that got stomped down. The post 9/11 era has been a period of nearly unrelenting conservative dogma and rightward policy drift, despite the obvious crises and fundamental flaws of the system.

This really is nearly corporate totalitarian society -- and long has been -- where Big Business contributors and advertisers have a near total lock on content of government, the news, and political ideology.

[cali]

2. in the aggregate, people aren't exactly brilliant.

[leveymg]

5. I think hope and fear have as much to do with what people choose to pay attention to

and what they choose to ignore.

Right now, we're still basking in the dimming light of the Hope and Change days of 2008. Our aggressive foreign policy seems to have not changed, only repositioned and refocused on more dangerous targets. If sufficiently provoked or fighting for their survival or avenging a wrong done to them, states such as Syria and Iran can definitely reach out and hurt us, even if we can obliterate them. The potential is increasingly there for a police state and time of Great Fear that overshadows Cold War McCarthyism and the post-9/11 hysteria.

[earthside]

3. Democratic officials believe it.

Many, many Democratic officials in the party and in government obviously believe that this is a center-right country.

Frankly, that is how Pres. Obama has governed for the past three years.
That is how Democrats in the U.S. Senate have behaved.
Democrats in the U.S. House have at least spoken and voted like centrists.

It is a funny thing, Democratic politicians are often afraid of their party's liberal and progressive base, always trying to distance themselves from them .... while the Repuglicans can never do enough for their extreme, reactionary base.

Now, it maybe true that most folks in the nation in reality are center or center-left --- but the notion that the United States is a center-right country falls as much on timid Democratic politicians as it does on the corporate media and Repuglican propaganda.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Internationally, I think it is

Death penalty, private health insurance - these are right wing policies, but which even the American centre-left party hasn't been able unite against, or persuade the voters to abolish. Everything you list can easily be supported by a centre-right party in other parts of the world. The thing to remember is that the GOP is not 'centre' right. It's far right, internationally.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. And the virtual disappearance of unions, at least in the private sector

Public sector unions are hanging on, but all organized labor has been under relentless attack in this country and is but a shadow of its former self.

[Orsino]

7. While we were asleep, we let Money rule us.

And Money always votes for itself, or indirectly for the party that best caters to it.

[SWTORFanatic]

8. It isn't a center right country. There are more conservatives than liberals, but

moderates are far more liberal than they are conservative.

[grantcart]

9. Use the facts, start with 21,090,766

http://www.democraticunderground.com/125131741