[NoGravitas]

Conservatives want to increase the power of those government institutions that are the least accountable, and are most connected to the use of violence: the police and the military. They want to reduce the power of any government institutions that would serve to provide public accountability to other power centers in US society, mainly corporations and the wealthy. Corporations and the wealthy need police: to protect their property, to enforce property relations and quell unrest. They need the military: to ensure them access to foreign resources and foreign markets. They're also willing to take advantage of any other government expenditures that benefit them (infrastructure), but generally want to see any expenditures be under their control if not eliminated.

The Left ultimately wants to abolish government power and create a stateless, classless society. Leftists differ among themselves with regard to the value of government power in achieving this, with the two opposite poles of the discussion being anarchists and Marxist-Leninists. But in general, leftists realize that they have nowhere near the organizational power to even think about those goals, and just want to improve the material conditions of working-class people, who make up the majority of society.

The Democratic Party is far from being controlled by leftists: I can count the number of actual leftists in the US House on one hand, and in the Senate on one finger. The Democratic Party is a center-right party, dedicated above all to the stability of the existing ruling class. They sometimes virtue-signal cultural values that are shared with the left (feminism, anti-racism), but largely as a means of providing an outlet for those values that is not threatening to capitalism, and which can be co-opted to protect it.

[_ivvf]

> Conservatives want to increase the power of those government institutions that are the least accountable, and are most connected to the use of violence: the police and the military.

That's just not true. Conservatives want to balance the need for police to enforce the law with the risk that the police acquire too much power. Also, conservatives recognize far more correctly than the left that we need military strength. It was the leftist call for demilitarization prior to WWII that contributed to Hitler's success. The left-leaning Jimmy Carter found his policies wholly inadequate for dealing with the Soviet Union. In contrast, it was Winston Churchill that saved Britain in WWII, and it was Ronald Reagan's expansion of military spending that bankrupted the Soviet Union. Leftists have grand ideas of defunding the police and military that simply don't work in reality.

> The Left ultimately wants to abolish government power and create a stateless, classless society

The left think they can create utopias. Again, their grandiose visions never work in reality. Where has this stateless, classless, society ever succeeded? The 20th century is littered with the bodies of those slain in pursuit of false utopias.

> The Democratic Party is far from being controlled by leftists:

Biden's administration is by far the most leftist we have seen in history. It makes Obama's administration seem almost reasonable. 6-10 trillion in projected socialist spending on socialist programs, unconstitutional eviction moratoria, authoritarian health mandates, and woke agendas with regards to race, gender, and public education, all provide a wealth of evidence that your current view on the democratic party may not be grounded in reality either, at least when it comes to what they are actually doing.

[NoGravitas]

I'll skip over the theoretical stuff, and just skip to talking about the Democrats (whomst I hate).

With Biden, you need to watch the hands, not the mouth. Biden only proposes stuff that the left likes when he knows it won't pass — and he has a couple of thumbs on the scale (Manchin and Synema) to ensure that they don't. It's a matter of optics. On the eviction moratorium, for example, Biden knew he'd be overruled, and he knows that the Senate won't allow any extension by legislation to pass; all he actually did was get the actual leftists to stop camping out on the capitol steps. The Biden administration isn't practically governing to the right of the Obama administration, which was itself right wing. Look at the notable accomplishments of the Obama administration: a massive bail-out to investment banks, blocking socialized health care while enforcing/guaranteeing the revenue streams of private insurance companies, and maintaining the Global War On Terror, in part by ramping up the drone war.

On the other hand, if you consider health mandates authoritarian...I don't know that we have any common ground for speaking. If public health isn't a legitimate government concern, then probably nothing is.

[_ivvf]

I can't say I agree with you that Biden is putting on a show just to keep his party together, but I'll leave it at that for now.

I do actually think public health is a legitimate government concern. That doesn't mean the government needs to exercise authority to the fullest extent for every health concern.

The 2010 and 2018 flu epidemics both killed far more children than COVID has killed. Where were the child vaccine mandates, school mask mandates, and school lockdowns then?

Once the COVID vaccine came out, the need for government intervention was mostly over. The authoritarianism comes from the continued over-reactions and unnecessary use of authority that lasts to this day.