[arghnoname]

I don't define centrism as some middle point between the two parties. Polling on same sex marriage and relationships is highly supportive, I'm among the great bulk of people on this. At one point my position was relatively radical, but it is now a mainstream view.

My view on political parties in general is they all have a constituency, they work to serve that constituency to the extent they must to continue being voted in, and morality beyond doesn't have much to do with their behavior. To the extent parties can maintain the vote of their constituencies / coalitions by demonizing the other instead of actually delivering, all the better. I've watched things quite closely for many years and all I conclude is parties are amoral entities. I don't pay as much attention to the theater now as I used to, but I know what's going on.

I don't have loyalty to any party, but I do make the pragmatic choice you're speaking of when elections come around and even donate to candidates, usually in Democratic primaries. I've voted for green or other candidates in the general elections for the past few cycles, though it doesn't matter in my district.

As for lefties being mean to me, trying to impute that I'm stupid, ignorant or fascist or complicit in this or that, I don't really care. My feeling is it reflects worse on them than me. I don't have to reduce all of reality to some Manichean conflict between good and evil. I find I like living in the world more without having to view roughly 50% of the population as horrible monster people who are voting for evil.

[mptest]

As if given by the gods to illustrate my point, https://x.com/noliewithbtc/status/1716927057954029974 don't try to credit the republican voters as supporting gay marriage when they oust their own for supporting it, lol.

[mptest]

>Polling on same sex marriage and relationships is highly supportive

So is support for abortion, but what party is passing anti choice laws?? Don't make the mistake of excusing those who vote for fascists because they claim not to support the things republicans do in office... That is the issue of centrists.

Missing the only important bit because of some polls. What they do. The laws they pass. I do not care what republican voters say they support in a poll. If you vote for republicans you vote for evil, for death. From ectopic pregnancies of those who can't access medical care to excessive covid deaths, eg medical workers who got it from the maskless hog who ended up in their ER. Republican voters are not excusable people because they say they support some less than evil shit sometimes in polls.

If you can recognize the need to at the end of the day be pragmatic why do you give a fuck what the polls say they support? The only thing that matters is what those in power do. And republicans are going after something ~70% of the public support in birth control access. So i don't care what they say they support. The fascists they vote for do evil.

>I don't have to reduce all of reality to some Manichean conflict between good and evil.

Again this hand wavey platitude acts like I'm not talking about a material reality. A real political party. One that empowers climate change denial, vaccine denial, voting rights restrictions, bans on women's medical autonomy, trans discrimination, book bans, etc etc etc I could go on. This is not some philosophical exercise on good vs evil this is a cold hard recognition of the material evil that the conservatives are in the US. That said to be clear I make no statement on any conservative s/ism outside of the US.